We were lucky to catch up with Laura Stark recently and have shared our conversation below.

Laura, appreciate you joining us today. Do you take vacations? How do you keep things going – any advice for entrepreneurs who feel like they can’t step away from their business for a short vacation?

Similar to most millennials and small business owners I fall into society’s “hustle culture”. I love to work evenings and weekends for this vision I carry. There can often be guilt associated if I take time off or say no to a day of work while I take smaller trips.

But I find myself sitting down to write this as I just came back from 3 weeks in South Africa where I did the bare minimum of work. This time away is imperative on a personal and business level. It provides clarity to why you do what you do, but more importantly traveling and seeing other people and other cultures gives you insight into life. Coming back to “my real world” seems so NOT real. We are so lucky to have the opportunities we have, even if you came from nothing. I have been looking for the right word to describe my experience in South Africa but the only word I can find is “special”. This doesn’t do it justice, but for me it will help spark my passion to continue to work and help others.

So my “millennial entrepreneur” advice to you: take time off, look at others lives, understand what truly drives you and makes you happy. I am so proud of my business and I know I have purpose behind each day, however I am counting down to the next time I make it back to Africa.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As a former NCAA Track and Field athlete, going into Sports Performance I wanted to provide athletes the tools I hadn’t been able to find even as a college athlete. I had a lot of unanswered questions about not just sprinting, but also movement in general and the best ways to train to capitalize on your potential.

My first internship was with offseason NFL training in 2014, leading to a job in Sports Performance right out of college. I took that a step further by opening my own business in 2016 while continuing to find high level coaches and mentors I could learn from and train under. My mentor to this day has played a great role in shaping my training style and philosophy. I spent years jumping into his workouts with NFL Combine prep and NFL Offseason training. By training under and coaching alongside him, I realized that the answers to all my questions I had as a college athlete are there but scarcely found. My next goal was to take these tools only seen at the pro level training and bring them to a younger generation of athletes.

In 2020 I founded the Speed Enhancement Mentorship where we specialize in speed development and injury prevention for middle and high school athletes. Built on education, our job is to not simply get our athletes faster while preventing injury, but also give them the tools they need to be able to train on their own with purpose and reason beyond their time with us.

These tools have taken a soccer club from 9 ACL tears the year before us down to zero while training with us. They have helped athletes shave half a second off their 40 yd dash time and they have instilled the confidence to allow athletes to compete to their best ability.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

Managing a team is something that many people find to be the hardest aspect of business but should be the easiest.

In the book “Good to Great” the author mentions that people are not your best asset, the RIGHT people are your best asset. When you find people who are eager and passionate about the results they can deliver, you should not have to micro manage but simply guide.

Of course this is easier said than done, however most businesses or people don’t take the time and effort to truly find the best team.

Although I am always searching for ways to be a better manager, boss, business owner, mentor, etc. I am so lucky to have the best team that LOVES seeing our athletes win and will do anything they can to help them earn results.

So to start, begin with understanding what each of your team members truly want. What they want now, and what they see for themselves long term. This will help you understand what drives them and how they can fit in best in your business.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Any business starts with CARE. Do you CARE about your clients? Do you CARE that they have results delivered to them?

Care and results are at the forefront of our business. Anyone who comes into our program should leave feeling like they were delivered the best product from coaches who care about them not just now, but as they grow in their athletic career and beyond.

When you focus on a quality product, reputation follows.

The results are delivered by the correct training and staying up to date on the best tactics. We use simple and effective tools seen at the pro level and bring them down to middle and high schoolers in a way that they can understand and replicate. Communicating in a way that our audience understands and can build on has been something that we hear they can’t find anywhere else.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://starkstrongperformance.com/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/stark.strong.performance?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coachlaurastark?mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-stark-00362263