The Life Before This One

I had a large hotel I bought at foreclosure in San Diego from Mitsui Bank. One day at Villas Chapultepec I interviewed a woman to be the marketing director. I had previously gone around to the pro teams, Padres, Chargers, and San Diego Sockers and told them I knew it would take me two or three years to fill the place up so in the meantime if they wanted to impress someone they could put them up at Villas Chapultepec. The Padres used me, the Chargers used me, the Sockers abused me. I hired Shari and she said she saw a lot of the Socker's players on the property. She asked if I knew her dad who workd with the Sockers and I did not. One day Russ came to pick her up after work. We talked, found out we both grew up in Salt Lake City, not too far from each other, and about the same age. We became friends and one day we went around and he showed me some skating rinks he had in San Diego and on weekends he would roll turf out and run indoor soccer leagues.

In time, since we both had daughters we spoke of girls in some states like Utah weren't getting college scholarships. They could only play when weather permitted while girls in Florida, Texas, and California were getting all the scholorships and the talent gap was obvious since they played year round. We found a piece of dirt in El Cajon by the airport and speedway, rented it, built a field and started running indoor soccer. We put up a second location in San Diego and another at an abandoned ice skating rink in Salt Lake City. After a year or two Russ said he had cancer so I bought him out and brought a few more people in as partners. Then it became my life.

I went on the road for years looking for locations for new facilities bur we weren't going to rent anymore. We own the location or we don't do the deal. Tucson, Midland, Five in Salt Lake, three in Denver, Colorado Springs, Boise, Wichita, OKC......I slept in the buildings, in the bleachers, on the desk. whatever worked. I was working 100 hour weeks for years and years. It would take a couple years to get profitable but by year five at the latest we had gotten all our money back and were making $100,000 plus a year, sometimes up to $1,000,000 a year. Plus, our real estate was going up. At first I would drive into a town like Houston, map it out, make my route all right hand turns so I didn't have to wait for stop lights. I spent 13 days and drove every street, every block. The owner of the pro team had ask me to find a facility so they could practice as they were currently in the garage of the Astro Dome and that garage had poles. Imagine playing soccer or hockey with poles in the middle of the arena. After 13 days I couldn't find a single building I liked.

I called the owner of the team and told him the bad news. He ask me to come visit. I went up to the top maybe 14th floor and we talked. He ask why we don't just build one. I told him I didn't have the experience. He said he did. He had built the building we were in. I would find the dirt and design it. He would contact his vendors and ask them to build it for cost and he would sell it to me for cost but he got to practice for free. Now I was dangerious. I could buy used buildings, build new buildings, and take over existing ones owned by others. Plus I now knew what everything cost. When I went to Austin next the builder there said concrete was five bucks a foot, but I new it was three bucks. I built locations for hundreds of thousands of dollars less then the appraisal would come in. I would pull into town and if I was going to have a competitor I'd spend a few days in their bleachers watching games trying to decide how much work it was going to be to run them out of business. Sometimes I'd offer to merge but it was really a purchase. Sometimes I would just build and outwork them until they were gone.