MeDirected » Business and Economy

Property Hunting Update

mike — Sun, 10 May 2009 06:00:25 +0000

The last 2 weeks I’ve devoted much of my time to nailing down a place to set up my training facility for my business. I’ve got about a 7 mile radius that I’m looking in that encompasses most of Cary, NC and some of Morrisville and Apex, NC. I’ve scoured craigslist, loopnet and all the individual commercial real estate web sites; done countless 3 hour long exploration drives, and taken about 2 dozen property tours. I have a definite price point I need to hit and specific requirements both for the property itself and to a lesser extent the specific location. After much looking I think I’ve finally found the right spot. It’s 2,500 sqft and was formerly a kids gym. It’s located in a high-end part of Cary (officially one of the best places in the world to live and work). The best part is that because the previous tenant ditched their lease, the property needs no up-fit because it was previously set up as a gym, and the fact that the economy is still in the toilet means if I go forward and take the property it will be a very good value. It literally will just need some paint and it’ll be ready to go. It’s on a road that gets great traffic counts and the property is only a couple years old so everything is in great condition. On top of that, it’s only about a half mile away from where I live in Cary and it’s about 2 miles away from the track that I think we’ll be training at. The only negatives is that I was hoping to find an area where I could set up a 70-80m track to do some sprinting on-site but this probably won’t be possible at this place. There is a nice paved hill with a really mild incline though, and that will allow us to do lots of uphill and downhill sprint work. The other drawback is that it’s a little more than I wanted to spend. I addressed this though by proposing an increasing lease payment that started VERY low and went up incrementally each month over the first 13 months and then 3% per year over the next 2 years. Even by the 3rd year it is less than they had asked for. This type of plan allows me to get in to a nice training facility and build a client base without worrying about getting swamped by huge up front lease payments when I don’t have a client base to support it. My first year’s lease rate actually averages out to a little less than what I was actually budgeting for a facility. The last 3 months of that first year are above my initial budget but the average is still lower. For years 2 and 3, the lease payment is slightly higher than I was wanting but the property and location is MUCH nicer than I was thinking I could afford. And as Seth Godin points out, value (benefit / price) is more often a better indicator than pricepoint alone. I’m taking the weekend to think about it but I’m leaning toward signing the lease early next week. If and when I do, it will be a nice relief because I’ll be able to finally have a place to call home for the business and can actually get down to day to day operations. For the last couple months I’ve basically been operating a virtual business but now all my training equipment is ordered and either here, on its way or being custom made I’m excited to get rockin and rollin’.

What I need in a training facility

mike — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:17:52 +0000

As I’ve mentioned in the past couple days, I’ve moved to Cary, NC to pursue my business full time. One of the things I need to take the next step however is a facility. Up til this point HPC has been largely run without a facility. We’ve had an office in Cali, and some agreements with several universities to allow us to use their athletic facilities but we’ve never had a centralized training facility to call our own. Having no facility was largely a by-product of none of the partners in HPC working on the company full-time, and thus not being able to generate the revenue to justify it. Also, a very large chunk of our revenue comes from services that do not require a facility at all. For instance, our sport science consultation with National Governing Bodies doesn’t require us to have a facility at all. In fact, it’s completely unnecessary for this service. Not having a facility has brought limitations though. One, it makes it hard to train athletes with optimal efficiency and effectiveness. Second, it has the potential to cost us clients who are fooled by the fancy equipment smoke screens that other businesses in the athletic performance field use to cover up their incompetencies. With the move to NC I’m hoping to put an end to these issues. I’m pretty close to finalizing a great opportunity at a HUGE facility that is very nice. With that said, I was by no means expecting this and I really don’t NEED anything fancy. In fact, before this recent opportunity presented itself only a week ago today, I had kind of thought that it would be nice to start with a plain warehouse, forgo any semblance of style and flash and make up for it with substance and the best, most comprehensive approach to training possible. This may still be the route we go but even if it is there are still some minimum facility standards though. I NEED at least 1000 sqft of training space, some minimal office space, high ceilings, an open floor plan, a bathroom, and a building structure and / or neighbors that permit me to have athletes dropping heavy weights on a regular basis.

I’d like to have more space (~3,000 to 5,000 sqft), enough area to set up a short straightaway for running, 3-5 office spaces, room for a movement analysis lab (probably about 1,000 sqft), locker and shower rooms for both genders, medical areas where therapy could be performed, and enough room outside that we could do training on a grass field when we wanted. Right now I’ve got several plans in place that encompass both ends of this spectrum. Obviously I’d prefer the bigger and better place, especially if the terms are right; but I’m not above moving in to a warehouse and just getting things done. I’m ready to roll.

Why start a business in Raleigh (Cary), NC

mike — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 05:21:16 +0000