Moving Forward With Purpose
Reflections on selling my business and embracing uncertainty
The summer has ended. A week ago, our two children walked into school for the first time as 8th and 6th graders, respectively.
Please allow me to pause for a moment of reflection: I have no idea how we got to this point. It seems like it was yesterday that my son was heading to his first experience of full-day pre-school. He LOVED it! Then last night we attended an information session at his school on applying to high school. HIGH SCHOOL?!?!?
And wasn’t it just this spring that I walked into the local elementary school with my daughter so that we could register her for kindergarten? Her words at that moment were, “Daddy, is this where I am going to school? Because I am sooooo ready!” Now she’s studying algebra and playing on the middle school soccer team!
Where. Did. The. Time. Go?
The summer of 2024, to me, felt like it lasted six months, and not always in a good way. This is because the summer of 2024 was the summer I sold my business: I am no longer the owner of the Greater Philadelphia Aquatic Club as it has merged into Jersey Wahoos and Greater Philadelphia Aquatic Enterprises, LLC is in the process of being closed out.
The Good: for the swimmers and coaches of GPAC, the changes are more on the outside than the inside. Jersey Wahoos offered every GPAE employee their same position with the same salary. The team name has changed and the colors have changed. But the practice groups, practice schedules, costs, coaches, meet schedule, and goals remain the same.
Also, I get to move on. Running this particular business was no longer enjoyable to me. I had lost all passion for the work, and it was really showing in my output. I came to the realization that it was unfair to the athletes, coaches, and parents to continue to have someone overseeing the business who did not want to be overseeing the business.
The hard part is how it has affected some of the people involved. More than a few were upset by this move, feeling like the rug was pulled out from under them. Looking back, there are a few details which I could have handled better with the sale and communication with the team, especially the staff. However, I have no doubt that in a few months, they will all realize that things are just fine and maybe even better than they were previously.
What I do know is that Jersey Wahoos is extremely excited about the new future of the program. This makes me very happy.
Ever since the announcement was made and the news started to spread through the different segments of my life (swimming, business, friends, family, etc.) the question I have heard most often is, “What are you going to do next?”
I tried to answer the best I could and thought I had a decent answer to the question. Yet it still felt forced and unnatural. It took a few weeks until I came to realize this was because I am actually not ready for the next thing just yet.
I started with the program in 1998 as a part-time assistant coach. It was known as “GCIT Swimming” back then, owned by the public school district which operated the 50 meter by 25 yard pool we called home. When I started, coaching was just a way for me to make extra money. I was in the process of transferring to Rowan University, just a few miles from the facility, and coaching with GCIT fit my school and swimming schedule perfectly. My plan was to coach for the two years I had until graduation, and then I would be moving on to attend graduate school to fulfill my dream of obtaining a doctorate in history and becoming a college professor.
The universe, however, had other plans for me.
As the years progressed, my involvement with the team and job title progressed with it. I became a full-time employee and the head age group coach in 2001 and then was named head coach in 2004. By 2008, the strain of making $42,000 a year to work 60-80 hours per week was becoming too much. The team was the round peg in the square hole of a public school district which considered the swimmers “students” even though not a single team member took academic classes there. It got to the point where a parent would be upset with a relay decision or the meet schedule and I would get called down to the principal’s office to explain everything.
About to get married and with no interest in continuing my career in this way, I began interviewing for other coaching positions and even considering jobs outside of swimming.
Then the universe again intervened. A new superintendent was in place at GCIT and agreed that it would be better for everyone involved if the district stopped operating a swim team and I started a new program in its place. The school would receive pool rent and not have to deal with anything else. Greater Philadelphia Aquatic Enterprises was officially born on September 3, 2008 and I added the title of “owner” to my role as head coach.
Over the next 16 years I would experience every high and low imaginable as a small business owner and swim coach:
Participating in governance on the regional and national levels
Selected to the staff of two USA Swimming international team trips
Rapid growth of the swim team and the addition of a swim lesson program
A budget which grew by almost 300%
Coaching a National Champion and two-time USA Swimming National Team member
Coaching multiple swimmers to Olympic Trials qualification
Seeing the team drop in local and national rankings (despite our size)
Having the parents who were previously going to the school principal with complaints now coming directly to me
Three years of absolute hell as the result of a project to build a swim school which went horribly wrong
A lawsuit (which I filed as a result of the project) that took over two and a half years to resolve
Realizing I was on the verge of bankruptcy, that I was worth much more dead than alive, and actually considering acting on that
COVID closing our pool down for just shy of 10 months. We trained outdoors up until Christmas 2021 in a 6 lane, 25 meter pool with a makeshift heating system which was costing $2000 a week in propane just to keep the water at a barely tolerable temperature that December.
And so much more.
As I was contemplating my role with the business and the sport this past year, I originally had the thought that I now hated swimming. I wanted out and did not want to go back. My journey in the sport started as a six-year-old summer league swimmer on a team who’s head coach left three weeks before the end of the season to go watch the Los Angeles Summer Olympics (he told us he was an assistant coach on the volleyball team).
Forty years in the sport was long enough for me.
It took some time, but I came to realize that I did not hate the sport, I just needed to experience it in a different way. I had no passion for what my position had become. I did not want to miss any more of my children’s activities (they are not swim team members) because I had to sit behind a computer at a swim meet. I had depended on GCIT and its facilities for 26 years as my main source of income and I wanted to break free of that dependency.
I also realized that the skills I have honed, in and out of the sport, have value outside of swimming. Perhaps the next thing for me resides there.
It was time for me to move on.
In realizing that I still loved the sport, I also realized that I still have a lot to give to it. What that might look like is to be determined and there is no timetable for me to make a decision.
I believe the answers are somewhere inside of me and through patience, silence, and even some distance, the answers will emerge.
While I was trying to keep my business and personal life afloat during the aforementioned lawsuit, there were several songs I would listen to on repeat day after day. The message in these songs helped me see the light at the end of the tunnel and understand that there was a greater story and opportunity in everything I was going through.
One of those songs was “Wait For It” from the Hamilton Soundtrack and performed by Leslie Odom, Jr. as Aaron Burr. I’ve recently gone back to this song and the lyrics below, in particular:
“I am the one thing in life I can control,
(Wait for it)
I am inimitable, I am an original,
(Wait for it)
I’m not falling behind or running late,
(Wait for it)
I’m not standing still, I am lying in wait.”
Whatever is next for me, I am willing to wait for it.
Great read. I'm in a similar spot with finishing an old business and not yet ready to charge into a new one.