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.
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