MeDirected » facility

The Move to our 1st Business Home…Part 1

mike — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 07:30:25 +0000

So 2 weeks ago my lease agreement was finally executed by all three necessary parties which meant it was only a matter of time before we’d be able to move my company in to our new business home. We were supposed to have already moved in on July 1 but the current tenant (the group we’re actually subleasing from) needed more time to vacate and didn’t have a hard date on when they’d be able to leave. That was good in that it reduces the initial cost of the first month (security + 1st month’s rent or in this case 1st month’s pro-rated rent) but bad in that I was getting desperate to move in because there was so much to do before we could even consider opening for business. Compounding that problem is that my business partner who still lives in SoCal had scheduled a trip out to the triangle to help me move in thinking that we’d already be in by this week. With his visit pending, and not wanting to waste his expense and the opportunity to have another helping hand, I spent the bulk of last week scrambling to ensure we would at least be able to move in on Saturday. This meant several meetings and making sure we had insurance that we didn’t know that would be required. Because of the special nature of the business, underwriting for this type of insurance can be a little difficult and more laborious. I started applying and filling out forms for several providers on Tuesday and didn’t get confirmation of a policy until 6:30 pm on Friday…just 5 minutes prior to my business partner arriving at RDU. If it hadn’t been for this saving grace, hail Mary policy, we wouldn’t have been given the keys to the property on Saturday and his trip out here would have been wasted. Thank God for the fact that our insurer was on the West Coast (and still finishing up the business day) otherwise I’m not sure what would have happened. Over the next couple posts I’ll try to cover a brief synopsis of what we did over the weekend and what my wife and I are doing now that he’s left to prepare for opening day.

Overloaded

mike — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:43:30 +0000

The last couple days I’ve been teaching at a USATF Coaches Education school and I’m exhausted. Day 1 had me teaching for 3.5 hours; Day 2 for 7 hours; and Day 3 for 3.5 hours. It worked out to 14 hours of speaking in a 44 hour period. Needless to say I’m sick of hearing myself speak and I’m sure that the students in the class are too. I’m tired physically and mentally and I feel like I need an extended vacation somewhere in a small island in the Caribbean. Though I won’t have that, I am going out to Eugene, OR for USATF National Championships tomorrow. I was supposed to leave today but that’s another story altogether. Unlike the previous 3 years, I’ll have a relatively minimal workload. The past 3 years I’ve had coaching duties for my athletes; doing the motion capture and spatial calibration necessary to fulfill my role as the biomechanist for the shot putters: and managing my company’s operations as the first 3rd party provider of immediate on-site feedback and video analysis services to the athletes. This year I’ll only have the first two to handle. No more 19-20 hour days and micro-managing a crew of 25 people to get an average of 3 camera views on every single event and turn around that video for analysis and distribution of the video to athletes within 60 minutes of the conclusion of the event. No more cataloging, meta-tagging, and backing up those files (600 gb of data last year!) in to the wee hours of the morning. 2 years ago it took me about a full month to recover from the week of running operations at the national championship meet. Due to last year’s lighter schedule (during Olympic years it changes) and the fact that we get more efficient with every job, things weren’t so bad but this year returns to the non-Olympic year format and I’m glad to not be handling that load again on top of dealing with organizing all our remaining equipment orders and ironing out the final steps of our property lease. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a little rest and hammer out the final details of our property lease while I’m there. The goal is to have all aspects of the remaining customs and shipping done by the time I return to NC, pick up whatever equipment that isn’t already in the Triangle from Wilmington, NC, and then start moving everything in to my two public storage rooms to the facility on July 1. I’m also hoping that the two athletes that compete for my club will do well and make the World Championship team. Knocking on wood.

A Business Update

mike — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:36:53 +0000

Sorry it’s been a while. Infrequent blog posting on my part means that I’ve been overwhelmed with work. The good part is that it looks like things are all finally starting to fall in to place with HPC. I found a great facility that’s actually two to three times as large as I was originally looking for and it will accomodate sport science

research, athlete training, offices, and storage of the training equipment and goods that I’ll be selling as a separate but related venture. Speaking of which, all our equipment is now within 100 miles of us and we just need to clear things with our customs broker and get everything from a port in Wilmington, NC to our storage in the triangle before we can move in to the training facility. We should be signing the lease any day now. I’ve been saying that for about 2 weeks but there were quite a few errors in the lease that needed changed and it’s held things up a little bit. In any case, I can finally see the end of having a homeless business and if all goes to plan we’ll be moving in on July 1. While dealing with customs brokers, shipping agents, property attorneys, and real estate agents I’ve also started taking on some clients. While I don’t have a facility, I’ve just been training at local high school tracks with the aim of generating some relationships that will allow me to ‘hit the ground running’ when we open our doors. I’ve also been doing a lot of web work lately. First, to bring my 2 main sites (ELITETRACK and HPC company site) closer to W3C validation standards; and 2nd to create the new ecommerce site where I’ll be selling DVDs, Books, and fitness and training equipment like squat stands, bumper plates, olympic bars, kettlebells, and glute-ham developer machines. The idea of this venture and the accompanying ecommerce site will not be to compete with the mega giants of the industry that seem to pride themselves on carrying every crapgadget and training gimmick under the sun; but instead, to provide super high quality versions of the products that are essential to well trained coaches and athletes…and provide them at unbeatable prices. Sorry for the rambling post but I wanted to give a quick update while I had a moment.

Full Circle Again

mike — Wed, 20 May 2009 17:36:24 +0000

My last blog post was about how things seem to go in cycles. Well today, I had another experience of this happening. 4 months ago I moved to Cary, NC from NY (by way of a short stop in OH) with the idea that I’d be moving in to what is at the time a mega fitness facility to manage their rebranding from a failing fitness center to a high-level sport performance center. After an unexpected change of operational control of the facility that put me in a holding pattern for a long time and then seemingly nixed the entire collaboration went through I started to look to go out on my own. It had always been my original plan to open up my own stand-alone location but when the proposal for collaboration came from the mega facility four months ago it seemed like a great opportunity and I jumped at it. So when the collaboration seemingly fell through it didn’t bother me so much as knowing it had wasted my time. Well this morning, I actually had a meeting with the new management team and a potential collaboration might still be in the works. Same meetings, same location, different people. Funny how that works.

I’m not sure how this will play out and I’m moving much more cautiously this time so I don’t end up holding out for promises that will never come to fruition. The one thing I do know for certain is that I’ll be in a place come hell or high water by the middle of June. My equipment has started coming in so the only thing holding me back now is an actual physical address. I work well when dealing with deadlines and this self-imposed mid June deadline should be no different.

‘All In’ & Fully Committed (medirected.com)
A Productive Day. A Productive Meeting.(medirected.com)
The peculiar Anytime Fitness logo (afterglide.com)

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’.

Startup tips from My Last 3 Months

mike — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 07:34:01 +0000

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:

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

Why start a business in Raleigh (Cary), NC (medirected.com)
What I need in a training facility (medirected.com)

More Waiting

mike — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 07:15:48 +0000

So to continue where I left off yesterday, much has happened in the last month or so. First the Impact facility opportunity fell through due to a complete staff overhaul from the ground up. Then things quickly picked up as the very people who had brought me in to that deal (only to later be laid off) partnered with me and we made a whirl wind tour of every possible option in the triangle area….leasing our own facility, having one built from scratch, or moving in to an existing sport or fitness facility. All scenarios had strengths and weaknesses but one particular opportunity clearly came to the fore. We had several meetings with another huge sports complex (to go unnamed by request) in the area and the owner was VERY interested in what we were trying to do. He has a pre-existing business operating that would be very complimentary to what I am already doing and that would benefit from a high-profile, high-end training center. The problem was that the facility that he owned was already spoken for….leased out for several years. The current leaseholder wasn’t interested in giving up space (we’d asked for 10k sqft) and losing what he had developed over the past couple years so it looked like it wasn’t going to work. Instead, it seems that it may work out better than any other possibility as the owner is so interested in what we have to offer that he is researching building a new neighboring facility from the ground up to house my training center along with some complimentary medical groups (massage, ART, chiro, orthos, etc). This means that it can be ‘built to order’ and made just how I like it. The drawback is that it will take some time to build and get the medical groups at the table. The estimated time that I’ve been given is 6-9 months. I would love for it to be that short but realistically, it’s probably more like 9-18 months. So in the meantime, I know I can’t sit around doing nothing in the HOPE that it panned out. I knew I needed to find a temporary facility which is another story altogether. Ont that I’ll discuss tomorrow.

Expecting the Unexpected

mike — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 07:30:34 +0000

Well, I’ve had a whirlwind couple weeks since my last post. In many ways it’s been painfully slow waiting to hear back on things. In other cases things have changed fast and furious. I’ll lay out the developments over a series of shorter posts. The quick low-down is that my situation with the Impact facility fell through a couple weeks ago when an outside company purchased operational rights to the facility and promptly dismissed the existing staff including the administrative staff who had been working with me. The good side is that I didn’t get involved before the new group came in because they don’t seem to be going the same route that I want to take my business. Additionally, I’m still working with the same people that had brought me in to Impact facility in the first place. One of them in particular is a real hustler. He gets things done, he has the same business vision as I do, and he’s well connected both locally and nationally. So in many ways, things aren’t going to plan…but they are still going very well. And to be quite honest, I was fully expecting things to not go to plan so these ups and downs are an exciting and expected part of this transition. More tomorrow…

Still Waiting on Facility

mike — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 07:18:29 +0000

Conspicuously absent from my last mega update post was any new news on opening my training facility. The reason for that is that there is no update. In fact, things are exactly the same as they were 2-3 weeks ago. I’ve actually been through enough of these things to realize that I tend to be fatally optimistic on time lines and it’s always best to expect about two to three times as long as you think you should be. So the update is basically this- the group at Impact training facility is undertaking a massive restructuring. They have already agreed to the first step which keeps me in the hunt for their facility. The second step is final decision making about outsourcing services and facility remodeling, and so far no decisions have been made. My contact has kept me in the loop on most things and just asked that I be patient. I’ve surprised myself at how patient I’ve been able to be. I’m still very optimistic that things will work out at Impact but if not I have other avenues to pursue for a facility, including the original plan of working together with my baseball colleague. All in all, while I’d like to have known by now, I’m looking at this as a ‘no news is good news’ situation.

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.