A little more than 2 years I uprooted my family to move to a city that I’d never been within 120 miles of to start a business from scratch. The past 2 years have been a bit of validation as I love the area (we live in Cary, NC part of the Raleigh-Cary metroplex) and our business is thriving. Yesterday I received a very informative newsletter from my great commercial real estate agent, Blair Graham, with info from Forbes magazine stating that Raleigh was rated the top metro area in the U.S. to start a business. This was great to hear because I had spent the 10 months following my resignation from my previous job researching the best place to move and start the business. I had some very strict criteria both for the business as well as for quality of life. The Raleigh-Cary metroplex was in my top 5 (probably last choice to be honest) but I chose it, almost impulsively on a site visit (which was the first of what was planned to be one visit to each of the top 5 possible cities), based on a string of events and ‘opportunities’ that fortunately never panned out. Glad things turned out how they did.

Here’s what Forbes has to say about the area:

Topping our 13^th annual list of the Best Places for Business and Careers isRaleigh, N.C. It is one of those locales with a strong university presence helping fuel growth in the area (albeit in an East Coast state, a rarity in the upper part of the list). Raleigh and nearby Durham (ranked No. 31) get a strong boost from three elite schools in the surrounding area in University of North Carolina, Duke University and North Carolina State.

Raleigh ranks No. 1 after dipping to third last year. Low business costs (18% below the national average) and a smart labor force (42% have a college degree) make North Carolina’s capital an attractive spot for employers like First Citizens Bank and Progress Energy. Job seekers get it: The net migration rate to Raleigh was the second highest in the U.S. over the past five years.

Related articles

• Fortune Names Cary-Raleigh the Fastest Growing in the Nation! (kcmclaughlin.wordpress.com)
• The 20 Cities That Are Having An Awesome Recovery – RALEIGH, NC #15! (kcmclaughlin.wordpress.com)

• MSNBC says North Carolina is the best place to start a business in 2008
• Money Magazine says Cary, NC is the 16th best small city in the U.S.
• Relocate America says Cary is in the top 100 places to live in America
• Kiplinger’s says Raleigh, NC is the 2nd best place in the U.S. to Live, Work & Play
• Forbes says Raleigh was ranked as the top place in the U.S. for jobs in 2006 & 2007 (9th in 2008)
• Forbes says Raleigh is the best place for businesses and careers in 2007 & 2008
• CNN Money says Raleigh is the 20th best place to live and launch a business in 2008

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If you’re a regular reader of my blog you know that I’ll be setting up my business somewhere in the next month or two. In my last blog entry I mentioned that Raleigh, NC may very well be the current front runner. I’ve done a lot of research on where to do it to have the best chance of success and also live somewhere I want to live. I’ve had quite a few emails asking about what cities are on my shortlist. Here they are in no particular order:

1. Raleigh, NC
2. Charlotte, NC
3. Atlanta, GA
4. Austin, TX
5. Jacksonville, FL
6. Tampa, FL
7. Irvine, CA (probably ruled out now)

I have some very specific criteria I am looking for when I chose these cities? Can you guess what they are?

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Had a great week. Got a lot of things done. Not as much dissertation writing as I would have liked but a lot of other “nearly as important” things. On top of that, this week has brought some interesting opportunities that should be unfold in the next month or so.

The first one came about as a result of a random email I received a while back. I get a lot of those. This one however was from a former attendee of the baseball clinic that my company put on in 2006 out in California. The guy is from around the Raleigh, NC area and has just started a performance training center that focuses on baseball. I remembered him from the clinic and I respect what he’s doing. He was looking for a person to replace his speed and strength coach who left for another job. Well, long story short is that Raleigh is one of the 6 cities on my short-list of places to set up shop with HPC when I’m done with my dissertation so I wrote him back interested in seeing if we could perhaps work together in some manner. We’d been playing phone tag for about 2 weeks but finally managed to talk this week. At the very least we will be working together on some collaborative projects and it looks like we may very well partner to work out of Raleigh. I’ll be taking a visit there in the next couple weeks to check out the scene and see if it meets what I’m looking for in a business location.

The second opportunity that came up this week was the potential to become a professor at my Alma Mater. I guest lectured 2 classes this week at Ohio University and my advisor for my MS said that I could be a faculty member for their online education classes as soon as I finish my dissertation. The attactive thing about this is that it allows me to stay connected within academia (although in a non-traditional manner), it provides me with tons of freedom (because I can actually live whereever I want), and it would provide a steady stream of income to supplement whatever I’m getting from my business.

Kinda funny how things can just fall in to your lap sometimes.

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