Owlnotes.com

I am the owner and operator of a private lacrosse company. I am also the CEO of a non-profit organization dedicated to girls' lacrosse. I also referee Division I lacrosse through universities such as Notre Dame, Northwestern, and Ohio State. I referee all the time in the spring, because that is off-season for my company. I also help coach a new lacrosse team at a high school in Lisle, Illinois. My job is a lot about maintenance, especially making sure the website is up-to-date.

My company is an events company that runs lacrosse leagues, camps, clinics and tournaments for girls and women in the Chicago area. All participants sign up individually and are then assigned to a team, where they play under a coach I have hired. We rent space in the winter and run leagues, mostly for high school age kids. We offer nothing in the spring, but in the summer and fall we offer club leagues, like Club Regional Select, and travel teams. The non-profit organization offers community-based leagues for third through eighth graders, which are run mostly in the spring and fall. In the summer, we offer weeklong camps and clinics.

It depends on the season. My main concentration is business development. I'm always trying to look ahead to schedule events and to get people to sign up for them, as well as renting the necessary space. I have day-to-day duties for any events we are running in the present, but I'm always looking ahead six months. But once again, it's hard to define daily duties because I'm working with two companies and I'm always doing something different. For example, right now I'm preparing for my company's second winter session for January to February, and getting registration all figured out. About 500 girls have signed up. Also, I'm always trying to attract new business by keeping in touch with many high school coaches in the area.

We're always trying to keep the parents happy, which I wouldn't call a problem. But every once in a while, I'll get a complaint from a parent that we have to address and try to fix. We always have to keep the coaches on task and make sure they are doing a good job. But honestly, things run really smoothly. We don't have a lot of problems. Everyone who works for my company or the non-profit does a really good job.

Every October, we run a tournament called the Chi-town Classic, and we had 27 teams this year. Last year we had 19, so we grew by eight teams. It's on the lakefront in Chicago, and it's a great tournament. I love it. We have high school teams, collegiate teams and post-collegiate teams. Everyone comes and plays for a one-day tournament, and it was really successful this year.

Well, it's all pretty much women; women working for a women's sport. So I think that everyone is on board because they love the sport and they want to help other girls learn how to play lacrosse in a good environment. I think people get pretty excited about it because it's fun, and people who work for me believe in sports and what they can do for young kids. Most of the coaches play as well, so they still love the game. I deal with men in terms of contracts and renting space, but with coaching there are no men. We're not discriminating against men; they just haven't played women's lacrosse.

I referee a lot in the spring, and some in the summer and fall. When you're coaching, you're out there running all the time. Also many of the coaches are on a post-collegiate team and still play, including me. This year, we are going to Kentucky and the University of Illinois for tournaments. We frequently travel to Vail and play as well.

I earned a degree in History from the University of Illinois. I got a job right out of college in computer software sales at a technology company, and it was awful. I was just sitting in an office, making cold calls. I lasted two months before I quit. Then I worked for an industrial oil company, which I actually liked. I would call on customers around the O'Hare area. I just didn't see it going anywhere, because it was a small, family-run company, and I didn't know anything about oil. Then I got a job with an appliance company for three years, and I liked that, too. But I just got bored. I was doing repetitive sales rep jobs, like going to retail stores and refilling their orders. Then I decided I was fed up with it, and was just going to referee and live off that all spring. So I quit in February of 2003.

I started my company five years ago. In college, I helped start the University of Illinois girls' lacrosse team, so I was always interested in lacrosse. After I left the appliance manufacturer in 2003, I started running a women's summer league in Chicago. I built my company off that idea of a league. It was an adult league, and I thought having high school events would be a great idea. I started creating opportunities, and my idea eventually grew into the company I own today. I also did things on the side to supplement my income while I built the company, like babysitting, substitute teaching and refereeing. Luckily, I don't have to do any of that stuff anymore.

No, because what I'm doing now is sales. I'm selling my company all the time. Everything in life is sales. I was a company representative for the appliance manufacturer, and it didn't even feel like I was doing real sales. I was just bored with the job I was doing there. It's amazing how many things I have to do now. When you own your own company, you are doing a million different things. I do marketing, advertising, and making sure the accounting is accurate. I create the events, find and manage employees, answer phone calls, handle registration, and make sure the parents and kids are happy. I also find locations to do the events and constantly update the website.

A year ago, last September, I and three other women founded our non-profit organization, which is dedicated to girls' lacrosse in Illinois. We weren't really doing any events for the younger kids, and we wanted to work hand-in-hand with the park districts. So we created a non-profit to enable us to do that. We partnered with park districts in places like Wheaton and Glen Ellyn, and they contract us to run lacrosse events in their community. It's like signing up for something you see in the park district brochure. I'm really trying to work harder on the non-profit now, because it's fairly new, and my company is basically running on it's own. The non-profit needs some special attention right now.

Well, I guess my company is running pretty smoothly after five years, but the non-profit we started still has a lot of opportunity to grow, and we need to build a structure to bring in new communities. I want to keep the company growing, because right now we are just in a small area of Chicago, and there's still the whole state of Illinois.

I always check my e-mail first. My days are always different. It depends on the season. Right now, it's winter, and I have one person who is in charge of all the events, and a different person at each location. Then I have coaches and referees at each event as well. I'm really just doing office work, where I'm getting ready for the spring and summer, and some general preparation and catch up for the company.

There is a lot that goes on behind the scenes. While we are preparing for our second winter session I am getting registration ready. There are hundreds of people registering. In the beginning of the sessions I try to go to all the events in the first week of the seven-week session, but I don't have to go to them all because I have people running them. I'm also getting the end of the year financials together, getting ready for taxes. Indoor is a big part of our company; a lot of money is flowing in from that.

I'm always working. If someone calls, I'll answer his or her phone call. Parents are always calling, asking about signing their kids up for indoor lacrosse. In the spring, I'm always refereeing and coaching on the weekends, but in the winter it's not as busy. We have a lot of different things going on, and it just depends on what type of year it is. There's nothing I won't do. Right now, I'm working on setting up a goalie clinic in February.

There is always a wide variety of work to do, because anything can come up, and I have to deal with it all. Depending on the season, you are always preparing for different things. So I could have a day where I'm moving goals into a storage unit or going to pick up t-shirts for a team, and the next day I could be meeting with a potential client that wants us to come and run programs for them. The next day, I could be out refereeing a Division I lacrosse game or writing paychecks.

No one else I know has a job like mine, so it's hard to say, but probably between $50,000 to $100,000 a year. Coaching and refereeing provides supplemental income, as well. Division I referees make $200-$300 a game. I didn't get paid when I was refereeing in Canada and Prague.

It depends on the season, but on average, it takes about 50 - 60 hours. Some weeks in the spring, I work 70 hours a week, but in the winter I don't work quite as much. I care so much about people having a good experience with my company. I want the coaches to enjoy coaching, but I also want them to do a good job. I want the kids to be challenged.

It is a part of my life. I'm so invested in it, and if I'm not constantly working, I don't get paid. I'm working for myself. There's an anxiety that comes from being self-employed. If something doesn't go well, things could go under. But it's really rewarding when things go well. I haven't had anyone telling me what to do for five years, which is a good feeling. But it's also very stressful sometimes, because other people are still counting on you. If something bad happens and things get screwed up, you're done. Usually, they say five years is the point where you're good to go. I really feel less anxious and more comfortable about everything now that I have so much experience.

A lot. I'm on the board of the national governing body for lacrosse. I travel a lot to the east coast for meetings with them. I travel a lot for tournaments as well, to Vail every summer and to Philadelphia in the fall and spring. I travel at least once a month for lacrosse. For refereeing, I go to Northwestern, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Cincinnati, and Louisville, to name a few. This summer, I went to Prague for the Prague Cup, which is an international refereeing opportunity that I recently got involved with.

My dad, aunts and uncles have helped me with legal and accounting questions. It's nice to get business advice from people you really trust. I think everything has been really positive. I have become friends with a lot people who work for me, who are really involved and care a lot about the sport. It's been an amazing opportunity. No matter what happens, I'll always feel so lucky that I was able to do this. I make my own schedule, so I can work when I want to work. It's good for my social life, because I can work my schedule around other plans, like hanging out with my friends or my boyfriend.

I hope to referee for a really long time because it's such good exercise, but I don't really think about retirement. I'm thirty years old. I've been running my own company for five years, but I just don't know where I'll be in the future.

I received a letter from a mom whose daughter had played on one of our travel teams. The girl's family wasn't wealthy, and another dad had paid to put the girl through some of our programs. Her mom was so impressed, because her daughter had some behavioral issues, and playing lacrosse helped her to improve. A lot of colleges offer scholarships for lacrosse. It's such a new sport, so there is a lot of opportunity. I talked to a lot of college teams about this girl, and she ended up getting a scholarship for school. Her mom wrote me this letter and sent me an angel pin, because she said we had changed her life. That pretty much sums up the reasons I love my work.

There are a million frustrations, like knowing that I can't dump problems on anyone else, because it's my company. I'm the person who ultimately has to deal with any problems; the buck stops here. If something comes up, I have to deal with it, even if I'm not in the mood. Dealing with people who may not care as much as I do can be frustrating. At this point, I feel like the rewards outweigh any of the frustrations, though.

Lacrosse is considered the fasted growing sport in the country. It originated on the East Coast, so it's fairly new to the Midwest. There is lacrosse in Japan, Australia, Britain, Scotland, Spain, and the Czech Republic, just to name a few places. The U.S. referees are the best experienced because we have a really strict training program here. International rules are slightly different. We went over to the Czech Republic, and the referees had no clue what was going on.

Yeah, definitely. I have sacrificed building a career in another company. If my company were to fall apart tomorrow, what would I have? I haven't devoted five years to another company. I didn't get my MBA or go to law school, but I have the experience of running my own company. I sacrifice a lot of my time, but it's worth it.

We started off focusing on one thing, and now we're running numerous events. Since the first year, the company has quadrupled in size. We had about 100 kids work with us the first year, and this year we'll be working with about 5,000 kids. Due to the growth of the sport, the demand for our services has increased. Northwestern University has won the NCAA three years in a row. People are seeing they are the best team in the country, and high schools are picking up the sport. The sport's rapid growth has changed my job. I have to delegate now, versus having to go to every event when I first started out.

In business, success comes from building a solid customer base. It's about word of mouth. A good business flourishes when people spread the word. Think about a good movie; the word spreads based on various people's accounts. All of the parents are telling each other to sign their kids up for lacrosse with us because it's fun. I'm sure every once in a while there are parents who say it was a bad experience, which hurts us. But overall, it's been really good.

With entrepreneurship, you have to be a natural-born leader with lots of energy. You have to be willing to take risks. You're investing your own money and time, so you have to possess a really strong passion and desire to do what you're doing. I love sports, but also I was in the right place at the right time. This is new area for sports, and no one else was doing what I wanted to do, so I started it. I saw the niche.

I don't think anyone ever knows what he or she truly wants to do. People think they know when they graduate, but it doesn't always happen that way. You can get sick of what you're doing after ten years. I have no idea how anyone knows. I didn't think I was going to be doing this for a living, but I am doing it now. I don't have that mentality of thinking that I have to do the same thing for the rest of my life.

I would have liked to know that my company would still be around in five years. When you start a company, that feeling of security is lacking. No one can truly know what's going to happen in the future. I feel secure now, but it's something I wish I had known starting out.