I returned from China on Monday morning. The trip went great but I was excited to see my family after 11 days away. I didn’t really sleep on the 20 hour transit back because I wasn’t really tired. There were some good movies on the plane and I was able to get a ton of work done by squeezing out about 7 hours of battery life out of my macbook which made the 12 hour first leg of my trip back to the States relatively easy and productive.

That first night back I went to sleep at 3:30 am which is about my normal time when I’m in the states. I thought I was golden and had made an easy transition back across time zones (Beijing is exactly 12 hours difference from where I live so when it’s 8am at home it’s 8pm in Beijing). By day 2 I learned that this was not the case. On Tuesday I fell asleep before 10pm. I did the same for the past 3 nights. On each of those nights I woke up at 3am, 6am, and 5:15am respectively. While this might seem like a desirable change from my normal 3:30am to 9am sleeping pattern I’m actually hating it. I don’t really like to use alarms to wake up if I don’t have to and with the adjusted circadian rhythm I’ve been sleeping more than usual and more importantly, I’ve seen my productivity drop considerably. The 10pm to 3:30 am time blocks is usually my high-gear productivity time. The time I can get a lot done and when my brain is operating at full tilt. Now it’s my ‘can’t keep my eyes open, fall asleep time.’ I’m hoping that I’ll go back to ‘normal’ soon as there’s no way I’ll be able to continue with my desired productivity with my current sleep schedule.

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So I’ve been in Beijing for 2.5 days now and am absolutely loving it. I’m staying at the hotel on Beijing Sports University. The university itself is NOTHING like anything in the U.S. It’s actually like a sports factory…producing the best coaches and athletes for China using every possible resource available. Since discussion of that is better suited to ELITETRACK, I’ll post laster today about the university itself, the facility and the great coaches and administrators I’ve met. So far the trip has been amazing. My hosts are great and I’m enjoying everything about it. The totalitarianism and overbearing government control that is so commonly mentioned in the West about China and its sports programs is no where to be found. I kinda feel like a kid in a candy store here. The only things I can relate to it is when I was 24 and took my first USATF funded trip to help out with elite shot putters at a meet at Stanford. I thought that was the most amazing thing in the world at the time to be paid to work with elite athletes. I remember being SOOO excited to be traveling across the country to do that excited to be getting paid to do something I would have gladly done for free at the time. Within a couple months though I was doing that on a very regular basis and while I still enjoyed every moment of it it had lost it’s wonderment. Now that feeling is back.

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I’m actually writing this blog somewhere over the pacific (I’m posting it now I’ve arrived). I’m on my way to Beijing to give a biomechanics lecture at the Beijing Sports University on some of the research I’ve done. I figured that the 13.5 hour flight would give me a nice opportunity to catch up on the blogging that I’ve been neglecting for the past 10 days or so. As many readers know, I have this blog as well as my blog on ELITETRACK and my microblog on twitter. Of the three, my twitter account is really the only one that has seen any action over the past week or so. When things get really busy for me and I have to really crack down on prioritizing things, blogging and posting on the forums at ELITETRACK typically get cut out. With ELITETRACK I hate to do it because the site is my baby. I love learning from others on there and giving back. With this site though it actually becomes a little ironic. Ironic in that the times that I have the most to blog about I often have the least time to blog. The last couple days have been a bit of a whirlwind. After getting back from a 5 day trip to Baton Rouge for my graduation and a business related meeting, I had 4 days to catch up with life and prepare for another trip- first to Orlando for 2 days where I gave 8 hours of lectures in a 24 hour span; then from Orlando to Beijing for a week where I’m giving the presentation I mentioned previously and attending a short symposium. Between preparing for these speaking engagements, packing and unpacking my bags, continuing what’s seeming like a never-ending quest for a property for HPC and running the day to day operations of HPC

I had to put many of the things that I love to do on the backburner. Even sleep got put on the back burner…because of early flight departure times and lecture times I was stuck with 3 consecutive nights at 4 hours of sleep…too little even for me. I’m hoping that this trip to Beijing can be rewarding for networking, business opportunities, and getting in a little R&R.

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Ok…picking up where I left off, when the opportunity to operate my business out of the Impact Athletics center fell through I was scrambling to find another place. Mind you, I had had back ups all the while

(tip 1). Number 1 backup, if you can even call it that, was the original warehouse I was going to move in to when I first checked out the triangle area. I’m not sure if this option was really fair to call a backup option since it was the original plan and I never let it slip off the radar even when it seemed as if the Impact facility partnership was a lock. The reason I kept pushing forward with this option even while it looked like the multi-million dollar opportunity at Impact was certain is because you NEVER know what’s going to happen (tip 2) and the time lines given by other people are almost always fatally optimistic (tip 3). The guy I’d be working with at this location would also be a good match for what I’m trying to do. I had also been looking for commercial real estate in the Cary area as a second backup. When Impact fell through, options 2 and 3 moved to the forefront. Temporarily. In no time at all though, the managing director from Impact who was going to bring me in (and was laid off when the new company bought operational rights) hustled his ass of to make things happen. He was on the phone, building connections, and exploring all possible alternative options. He wanted to act fast to keep our original plan intact. He was worried that I would go elsewhere and then he wouldn’t have the sports performance company he needs to create a combination medical and sports facility. He also had some other contractors from Impact who had been laid off who would be able to bring their client base with them if he acted fast to open a facility. We made Barnes & Nobles are new office, made up a new LLC, and visited every existing facility that might be interested in collaboration or sub-leasing for a temporary holdover. I appreciated working with him because he knew the business as well as I did, found a way to get things done, and had lots of connections. It really drove home the importance of surrounding yourself with people who complement what you do and do their job well (tip 4). We managed to get in to another facility but as I mentioned in a previous blog, the entire facility had already been leased and the leasors weren’t interested in sub-leasing. Seemingly bad. What happened though is that the owner of said facility tentatively agreed to build another facility from the ground up that would rival anything in the country as a comprehensive center for athletic excellence. Something like this obviously takes time though which means that I’m back to waiting for 6-9 months (also see tip 3 above). So I need a holdover facility. One that I can have for 6-12 months and get out of if necessary if and when the new facility is ready. So I went back to backup plans 1 & 2 from above. Last week I was scheduled to sign a lease and move in to a property but then I pulled the plug and decided to wait til June. Why did I do that after months of waiting to finally get going? Because I looked at my calendar for April, May and June and realized that between my graduation, teaching three USATF Level 1 schools, one USATF Level 2 school, coaching and providing sport science services at USATF National Championships and several other smaller domestic elite track and field meets, and lecturing in Beijing for a week, I would be out of town for 36 of the next 70 days….not exactly the best scenario to have when you want to put up a grand opening sign. In fact, it seemed like business suicide. With that is tip 5: know when to hold.

So that brings me to where I am now. For the first time since I’ve moved to the triangle, I actually have some sense of certainty. I’m not depending on anyone else’s time schedule or facility availability at this point. I’m looking to open doors to a training facility (either the original facility in Apex or another short term lease somewhere) in June once everything has died down enough to make it work. It might be June 1st, might be June 8th…it just depends how much I can get down between all my other commitments to prepare the facility for ‘doors open.’

So to wrap this up, business startups please take away the following:

1. Have backup plans
2. Recognize the certainty of uncertainty
3. Realize that you shouldn’t count on the time tables or promises of others
4. Surround yourself with good people
5. Know when to hold

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If you’ve been anything like me you’ve been taking in as much of the Olympic Games as possible. They only come around every 4 years and to me it’s the best programming on tv…even with all the cheesy tidbits between events. The track & field competition starts in just a couple days. I can’t wait. I’m a track nut. When I watch the games I can’t help but wanting to be there though. It’s a big dream of mine.  Doing it as an athlete is no longer an option (and never realistic even when I was at my best!). But this year I had 2 other avenues: as a consultant to theUSA Track & Field Field team and as a personal coach. A year ago it seemed as if I (and maybe some more of the HPC crew) might be able to go as a sport technologist and biomechanics consultant for the track team. That fizzled away though amid logistics and planning for Beijng. Then three of the athletes I train qualified for the Olympic Trials in Eugene, OR. They were all in the same event (triple jump) and 2 made the final so even though none of them were favorites on paper, odds alone said there was a chance of going as a personal coach. Two of the three placed much better than expected but unfortunately, none of them made the team. So I’m stuck as an outsider looking in. Maybe next time.

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