MeDirected » Small business http://www.medirected.com My Life Redirected Fri, 02 Jul 2010 02:45:47 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0 Guerilla Marketing http://www.medirected.com/2010/06/guerilla-marketing/ http://www.medirected.com/2010/06/guerilla-marketing/#comments Fri, 18 Jun 2010 03:17:30 +0000 mike http://www.medirected.com/?p=1380 My business, Athletic Lab, has been open for almost a year now. Business has picked up slowly but steadily throughout the year. Overall, a little slower than my usual fatally optimistic expectations but growth is good nonetheless and we’ve moved beyond the proverbial tipping point that all businesses must reach before they either fail or succeed (we’re succeeding :) ). One thing that’s helped with current growth is that I now have an assistant helping me out so that I can hand off some duties to allow me to work ON my business rather than just IN it. More importantly, he’s been able to work ON the business as well as I have him doing guerilla marketing all over town. Handing out flyers at sporting good stores, soccer matches, and business parks; talking to soccer moms, runners, and businesses around the Triangle; helping me set up and spread the word at expos at sporting events. The hard work has been paying off as we’re getting more interest than ever before. This is a great contrast to the lousy returns (nothing?) we’ve had from advertising in a local magazine and online. I’ve known all along that business would thrive when people knew we existed. Because I was completely new to the area and had to build client base from scratch it took a while. But increasing word of mouth from existing clients and the current guerilla marketing led by my assistant has proven far more effective than more traditional routes.

Related articles by Zemanta

Enhanced by Zemanta
]]> http://www.medirected.com/2010/06/guerilla-marketing/feed/ 0 Battling Burnout http://www.medirected.com/2010/06/battling-burnout/ http://www.medirected.com/2010/06/battling-burnout/#comments Thu, 03 Jun 2010 03:38:10 +0000 mike http://www.medirected.com/?p=1377 For the past couple months, I’ve been putting in 75 hour weeks at Athletic Lab. Days typically start at 6am (with the first training session at 7) and end around 7 or 8pm. Add to that about 10-12 hours between Saturday and Sunday. And 2-3 speaking engagements a month that take me out of town. The past two days have been 15 hour days and yesterday I didn’t see my daughter other than coming home to find her sleeping.

So much for life balance.

Although difficult, I’m inching towards the long term goal of doing what I love while having financial freedom and some free time to do things outside of work. I’ve heard that one of the biggest problems facing start-up business owners is burn-out. Although I don’t feel anywhere close to this I can see how easy it could happen if someone lost sight of the progress being made. The financial, time, and emotional investment of pursuing something as all-consuming as a start-up business could easily become overwhelming. I’ve found it helps to make sure you learn from the inevitable mistakes while focusing on the progress being made.

Related articles by Zemanta
]]> http://www.medirected.com/2010/06/battling-burnout/feed/ 1 Working In or Working On Your Business http://www.medirected.com/2009/11/working-in-or-working-on-your-business/ http://www.medirected.com/2009/11/working-in-or-working-on-your-business/#comments Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:55:32 +0000 mike http://www.medirected.com/?p=402 Over the past month one of the realizations I’ve made is that I’m spending too much time working IN my business and not enough time working ON my business. Part of this is to be expected being a small business owner on a new venture. I’ve had Athletic Lab open for 4 months now and in addition to the training, coaching and program design that is our core-business; I end up doing the majority of the menial tasks just to keep the gym in working order as well as handling the less-local consulting and correspondence training operations of HPC. But I’m coming to the realization that to get things to accelerate at Athletic Lab I need to start working more ON the business rather than so much in it. Things are working ok right now but as the business continues to pick up steam I’m inching closer and closer to the limits of what I can handle. By working IN my business, I’ve been spending too much time doing things that I should be delegating or outsourcing. The tricky thing is that making the transition from IN to ON takes additional time investment. To make the switch you not only have to handle what you’re already doing; you also have to figure out what needs done, develop a system for doing it that others can follow, and then train someone to do the job your currently handling. To work ON your business you need to start out doing all the work but have the goal of eventually turning much of it over to someone else. You need to keep track of what you’re doing, when you’re doing it and how you’re doing it. In my case, I’ve started writing down detailed procedures as I do the things that I think will eventually be passed on to an assistant.

The four main things you need to remember in this process are (via Gerber):

  1. What can I do to make my business run without me?
  2. How can I get my assistants to work with as little interference or direction from me as possible?
  3. How can I own my business but still be free from it?
  4. How can I spend my time doing the work I love to do, rather than the work I have to do?

The ultimate goal of working ON your business should be to make it function well enough that you can go on vacation, get sick, or deal with family emergencies and not have to shut your doors or worry that things aren’t operating like they would if you were there. You need to make the business autonomous enough that it isn’t DEPENDENT on you. For someone like myself who is very exacting and particular with how I want things done and typically does them myself because of that, I realize that making the transition will not happen overnight and that it will take a concerted effort on my part to trust others and be patient with the process.

Related articles by Zemanta
]]> http://www.medirected.com/2009/11/working-in-or-working-on-your-business/feed/ 6 The Benefits of Diversifying Revenue Streams http://www.medirected.com/2009/09/the-benefits-of-diversifying-revenue-streams/ http://www.medirected.com/2009/09/the-benefits-of-diversifying-revenue-streams/#comments Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:36:09 +0000 mike http://www.medirected.com/?p=360 I’ve now been in NC for a little over 6 months and I’ve had Athletic Lab fully operational for about 7 weeks. Business at Athletic Lab has been modest but growing steadily. In an odd twist of fate, the very things I thought I’d be counting on as major profit centers are lagging behind expectations slightly. While this is obviously not ideal, the bright side is that my business has several fairly diversified profit centers. They can be categorized in to:

  1. Training athletes
    • On-site Training of Olympic Development Athletes at Athletic Lab
    • On-site Training of non-elite athletes at Athletic Lab
    • Off-site via correspondence
  2. Sport Science Services
    • Biomechanical Analyses
    • Managing High Performance Centers
    • Research Grants
    • Product Testing and Development
  3. Education
    • Lectures
    • Speaking engagements
  4. Merchandise sales
    • Training equipment sales
    • Book and DVD sales

      • After I resigned from my steady job and decided to manage my own business full time I laid out my business plan and where I figured my revenue would come from. On the list above I’ve highlighted highlighted the revenue streams that are beating early expectations (green), meeting early expectations (blue), and under performing relative to early expectations (red). I had actually figured that training weekend warriors, high school and collegiate athletes at Athletic Lab would make up the bulk of my revenue after the training center was opened. I likewise had no reason to expect a large uptick in revenue from our book and DVD sales from earlier in the year. Oddly, neither has been the case. I’ve got a growing training group but they’re pretty much all elite or emerging elite athletes. Current revenue from training non-elites has been practically non-existent. Obviously this isn’t where I wanted to be. But on the brighter side, revenue from training a small group of elite athletes, a big spike in book and DVD sales, some unexpected equipment sales (even prior to launching our ecommerce site we’ve gotten a steady stream of sales just via Craigslist, and hitting the road for quite a few speaking engagements has offset what would seem to be a big gaping hole. The point of the post is to say two things:

      1. You can never TRULY expect to accurately predict revenue from any given area when entering a small business venture.
      2. Having a handful of related but diversified streams of revenue can serve as a means of safe guarding your venture while allowing the slow-starters get off the ground.
      Related articles by Zemanta
      ]]> http://www.medirected.com/2009/09/the-benefits-of-diversifying-revenue-streams/feed/ 2 Expecting the Unexpected http://www.medirected.com/2009/04/expecting-the-unexpected/ http://www.medirected.com/2009/04/expecting-the-unexpected/#comments Mon, 06 Apr 2009 07:30:34 +0000 mike http://www.medirected.com/?p=290 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…

      ]]>       http://www.medirected.com/2009/04/expecting-the-unexpected/feed/ 0       Small business owners must be jack of all trades http://www.medirected.com/2008/12/small-business-owners-must-be-jack-of-all-trades/ http://www.medirected.com/2008/12/small-business-owners-must-be-jack-of-all-trades/#comments Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:48:16 +0000 mike http://www.medirected.com/?p=196 Long time since my last post. Been very busy writing my dissertation as well as making some changes to ELITETRACK and totally redoing the store and services section of the HPC site. I’ve actually been doing quite a bit of web work lately on my various sites. With the HPC site the changes were business motivated. Our store is getting enough business now where I thought it would be worthwhile to improve the shopping environment and make the site more secure. It took quite a bit of meddling but I think I’m done now. It took quite a bit of time and diverted me from some other things that I like but don’t need to do (i.e. blogging). All that to say, that as a small business owner, I often find myself having to wear many hats- web developer, marketer, coach, sport technologist, researcher, salesman, etc. Because I’m just trying to get this business up and running I don’t have the means to pay others to do things that might otherwise be delegated to specialists. It’s not necessarily a bad thing but it definitely places a high demand on time management and prioritization of tasks. I’ve found that becoming competent at a variety of tasks can save a lot of money but cost you a lot of time. It then becomes a question of prioritizing tasks so that you can figure out what you’d be better off outsourcing and what you should handle yourself.

      Related articles by Zemanta
      ]]>       http://www.medirected.com/2008/12/small-business-owners-must-be-jack-of-all-trades/feed/ 1       A Shoe Deal for HPC? http://www.medirected.com/2008/10/a-shoe-deal-for-hpc/ http://www.medirected.com/2008/10/a-shoe-deal-for-hpc/#comments Wed, 29 Oct 2008 15:54:55 +0000 mike http://www.medirected.com/?p=182 My business partner had a meeting with an international shoe company yesterday. It looks like somethings going to come of it. This company has a major international presence but is just starting to get in to the U.S. They want to use us for product testing

      because they are getting in to a new market and would like to use my experience as a biomechanist and access to elite athletes as a way to create the best possible product. Right now they aren’t ready to rush a product out for commercial release and really want to do things right which is refreshing to know. I think this relationship will grow in to something very fruitful.

      Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
      ]]>       http://www.medirected.com/2008/10/a-shoe-deal-for-hpc/feed/ 2