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Lessons From Growing A Speed Training Business
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In this different type of episode, Les shares the messy, unpolished origin story: from building the first “Speed Lab” in a school closet, to testing elite athletes before the system even existed, to struggling financially while trying to scale something no one had ever built before. He breaks down how analytics, education, business systems, and community became the pillars that carried the company past 200 Speed Labs worldwide.
If you are interested in learning more about becoming a Speed Lab, schedule a time with our team at the link below.
https://universalspeedrating.com/learn-more-partner-with-universal-speed-rating-speed-lab-podcast
Episode Timestamps
00:00 – 01:02: Why this episode is personal + hitting 200 Speed Labs
01:02 – 03:40: How COVID, fatherhood, and a school basement led to the first Speed Lab
03:40 – 07:15: The first athletes tested & discovering what a “Speed Lab” really was
07:15 – 12:10: Standardizing speed, early testing chaos, and building the MPH database
12:10 – 17:17: Building software, courses, systems — and why community became the backbone
17:17 – 20:35: Burnout, overexposure, money struggles, and NFL players stepping up to invest
20:35 – 24:57: Finding his role, rediscovering the excitement, and blending family + business life
24:57 – 27:28: Lessons learned: Start before you’re ready & simplify everything you build
Recommended
Transcript
Reflecting on a 16-hour Presentation in San Diego
00:00:06
Speaker
What up, guys? It's 10 p.m. I'm in San Diego. I literally just landed from Mexico City. My eyes are tired. um i just finished presenting for 16 hours total.
00:00:19
Speaker
um Eight hours each day. Actually, more than that. Yeah, about 16 hours. um But man, i I've had this on my mind for a while. And this post and, you know, this podcast can be a little bit different. Like it's not something I've really done in the past. Like talk about my personal life, talk about business, those things.
00:00:40
Speaker
um So yeah, this is deeply personal. So um hope you guys like it.
Celebrating 200 Speed Laps Milestone
00:00:46
Speaker
So the reason why I wanted to talk about all this stuff today is that we just hit 200 speed laps.
00:00:54
Speaker
And i wanted to like get out there and just say this for the record, like like how it started and where it started, because it's a little bit embarrassing. It's a little bit um it's little bit funny you think about it and you know just how it scaled because it's not like a typical story of like you know everything just worked out from the beginning um so yeah no i appreciate you guys listening so honestly like we never intended on building something called speedlapse like we intended on building like a software product that connected to a piece of hardware and, you know, try to scale it that way.
00:01:31
Speaker
Um, and you know, honestly, like might've been a great idea, but COVID hit and lot of things shifted. Like I know COVID also represented, you know, me becoming a father also. And from a time perspective, I didn't, I didn't want to be outside coaching every single day. i didn't want to be out there.
00:01:50
Speaker
um I mean, I did want to coach. I'm saying like, I didn't want to spend all my time coaching, right? I wanted to be present. I wanted with my family.
COVID-19's Impact and Personal Changes
00:02:00
Speaker
And i was thinking about different ways we could scale products and, you know, software and hardware was a great way to do it. But I just felt like there wasn't like a personal in touch to it. There wasn't like, um, kind of remove the need to, to have coaches. Right.
00:02:14
Speaker
And i was thinking about our products. we We were like, dude, we need to develop something that helps coaches and helps the athletes. And we're just trying to figure out ways I could i could do that.
00:02:26
Speaker
And at the same time, during this whole COVID mess, we were also helping one of my best friends, Devin, build this private school called Together Ship. And basically, TogetherShip was like a middle school where athletes would come and train as athletes and go to school and finish their seventh and eighth grade, um open to boys and girls. And it was a great idea. So, like, we're helping out.
00:02:49
Speaker
My uncle is literally building out classrooms during, like, winter or break. And we're in there.
Building the First Speed Lab with Family
00:02:55
Speaker
It's, like, midnight. And I was like, yo, Unc, like... what do you think about building this room? was like a room downstairs, like into like a lab.
00:03:03
Speaker
And we could put like a treadmill in there. we could put video in there. We could like put all my force plates all these other things in there. And we could like bring athletes through and we could test them and then give them a report and then tell them what they need.
00:03:16
Speaker
And then, you know, they can keep training. he was like, yeah, let's do it. was move some stuff around. So it was midnight in the middle of ah a four volleyball where the school was, was basically built into a classrooms and things like that. and We're building out our first speed lab.
00:03:32
Speaker
And by the end of the day, um the next day, like it was done. Like we just put like a little green turf in there, a desk. um We put a shred mill in there, shout out Tony Golani, a couple of tripods and like, cool, let's promote it.
00:03:48
Speaker
And i remember telling my business partner, Todd, who's our first investor, and you know he he always believes in the projects, but he was like, dude ah yeah, I don't know. He's like, all right, well, I want to respect your idea. So why don't you try to get some athletes through and just let me know how it works? I'll say, cool.
00:04:07
Speaker
um And at the same time, Tower Gaffney, who played in the NFL, just retired. And he was like, OK, like, I'm going to work with you. Like, we're going to figure out how to get some athletes in so the process was I don't even know how we put it out was probably on Instagram. We were like, yo, we have a speed lab.
00:04:26
Speaker
And if you want to come and get tested and hit us up. So we get our first email within like 24 hours.
Young Athletes Alyssa and Giselle Thompson
00:04:34
Speaker
And it was from Mario Thompson, who was a um principal at an elementary school. And he's like, hey, I have two girls, 13 and 14.
00:04:43
Speaker
ah Their names are Alyssa and Giselle Thompson. And we'd like to come to the Speed Lab. I was like, oh, shoot, like we got our first client. So Tyler's like, yo, I'd really love you to be there, but if you can't make it, Dylan can come.
00:04:55
Speaker
I was like, all right, just send Dylan. So Alyssa and Giselle, I don't know if if you're listening and you you watch TV and watch sports, you you've heard these names before. Alyssa's up for player of the year worldwide um for soccer. She's one of the best players in the world.
00:05:11
Speaker
one of the most dangerous strikers in the world. And Giselle, her sister, just made the national team, women's women's national team at 18. And they're both professionals by 18 years old, signed to Nike.
00:05:23
Speaker
um But at the time, they were just, they were young. Like, I think Alyssa just started freshman year high school. Giselle was like seventh or eighth grade. And, you know, young.
00:05:35
Speaker
And, you know, they went through the testing and um the dad got the data and was like, okay, this is great. Now what? Dylan's like, okay, well, train
Comprehensive Testing at Speed Lab
00:05:43
Speaker
you. And yeah was literally our first speed lab, right? so like our first...
00:05:48
Speaker
I don't know how I don't even know if we charge them, to be honest, like it was nothing negligible. um But I was like, dude, i you know, I think this could be something like I see some some value.
00:05:59
Speaker
And we started to to kind of define like what a speed lab was meant to be. So it wasn't just a gym. It wasn't just a weight room. It wasn't just a field. It wasn't just testing.
00:06:10
Speaker
It was like a place where athletes can get tested and then receive like, i don't know like a SWOT analysis of their speed. So strengths, weakness, weaknesses, opposition, threats, whatever.
00:06:22
Speaker
um But and in speed terms, it was like we gave them like a structural profile, a physical profile. And then a technical profile. And and we understood how they moved.
00:06:32
Speaker
Right. And then we were working to train specifically around those areas. Now, if you look at our first V-Lab test, it was like 16 tests deep. It was like, I have a video somewhere. i think I've posted it, but it was like a drop jump, CMJ, single leg CMJ, active straight leg raise, Jordan test.
00:06:51
Speaker
It was like all these things, mobility tests, speed test frame tests, strength tests. And like, to be honest, we still do a lot of those tests now, um but it was way too complex and it wasn't scalable. It it took a lot of data and, um you know, it was cool, but it was it was definitely too much.
00:07:09
Speaker
So we were like prototyping different combinations of tests and see what worked and see what stuck. um How long was our process? I think Alyssa and Giselle went like an hour and a half. like They were still like not even done before we like stopped. right Hey, come back for day two to get the rest of the stuff.
00:07:27
Speaker
So it was like a really bad product if you think about it from that from that standpoint. um But really, like, I knew, okay we have to productize what we're doing a little bit.
00:07:38
Speaker
And we want to make sure that the product is is easy enough for coaches to think it's valuable and also easy enough for athletes to think it's valuable.
00:07:50
Speaker
So, Tyler Gaffney, you know, coming out of the NFL and, um you know, Drew, who's our operations guy, and Todd and I, who's my first investor, we're like, well, what's the one thing that everybody can kind of like hang their hat on is like,
00:08:07
Speaker
we develop, you know, um faster athletes or stronger athletes. I was like, honestly, it's just speed. So how fast you are. Like, that's the main outcome of all this. Like, we want to know how fast you are.
00:08:19
Speaker
And the number one question I get from parents at this time in my life is like, How fast is my kid compared it to other kids? And everybody's comparing 40-yard dashes. Everyone's comparing mile times. Everyone's comparing 100-meter dashes, like things that just don't have like true scale and relevance to each other.
00:08:38
Speaker
um Plus, we know like the 40-yard dashes aren't timed very well. The 100-meter sprints are like only for the kids who run track. The 60s are only for the kids that run 60s. So I'm like, yo, let's just standardize like how fast people are. Let's start there.
00:08:53
Speaker
And let's just build a massive database, um starting with what we have, which was like, i don't know, 200 athletes.
Standardized Speed Test Database Initiative
00:09:00
Speaker
And let's build that as big as possible so we can get context on how fast athletes actually are relative to their peers.
00:09:07
Speaker
And then what would be cool is if we like gamified it a little bit. and like Once we got enough people, we could say, this is how fast you are in your state. and And Tyler was like, dude, what about if you could see how fast you are in your city?
00:09:21
Speaker
Um, and then drew was like, well, what if you could see how fast we are compared to boys versus girls versus age groups and be able to filter through all those different levels. And I was like, yo, I think that's it. Like, I think we need to start there where we're just going to quantify, um how fast people are in a measure and a metric that makes sense, which is miles per hour. Um, and So that's where we started.
00:09:47
Speaker
To give context to end the end of this story, we have 600,000 tests now on miles per hour. um So it's it's it's a lot. It's grown. But at the time, we were like, okay, let's figure out how we can get as many max speed tests as possible.
00:10:05
Speaker
And make sure we have their their height, their weight, their age, their city, their sport, their position, all these different, you know, metadata type things. And that became the vision.
00:10:17
Speaker
So, you know, obviously around that, um me, Dylan and Cece are like training athletes consistently on high school teams. I was working with a college team, um pro teams, and we're just taking all this data, how fast people are. and We're putting it into these spreadsheets.
00:10:35
Speaker
We're building out all these things and we're consistently working on the the test, um like the initial test as well. like i Like, basically they would come in and we had a big Google sheet and we're just typing things into this Google sheet.
00:10:48
Speaker
Now, eventually the Google sheet got to the point where it was like, okay, There's like thousands of lines of data in this Google sheet. And if you add another one, it's just going to explode. And me and Cece would literally like be like refreshing the page and would be buffering. And we're like we don't know if the data went in.
00:11:06
Speaker
And we get to the point where we're like talking to Todd and Drew and and Tyler. And we're like, dude, we have to figure out a way to like turn this into like a real software.
Development of the Universal Speed Rating System
00:11:16
Speaker
And at the time, we probably had like, i don't know, two or three speed labs, like not a lot, um which was amazing to me at the time, like that multiple multiple people wanted to do something like this.
00:11:28
Speaker
And yeah, so we set out to go find a software partner set to really help us build it into like an actual software piece. And that's kind of how Universal Speed Rating came about.
00:11:40
Speaker
And i remember like as we grew and we got some software rolling got an MVP, which is like the minimum viable product we can get for um software. And, you know, we get to 10 labs. I'm like, oh, OK, that's crazy. We got 10 people that want to do this.
00:11:56
Speaker
And we got to 20. I'm like, OK, 20 is like 10 more than I thought was actually in the market for something like this. And then we got to 50 and when we got to 50, I started to think like, man, is this valuable?
00:12:11
Speaker
Like we're just collecting a few metrics and a few things. Um, and what, what's the actual value for the coach? Like we, and we understand that the athlete value where you can see where you rank and see how you stack up against your peers. But like,
00:12:28
Speaker
For a coach, the actual value is that you grow your business. and And Drew like really started to think about this and Todd really started to think about this where it was like, okay, well, if there's not a lot of coaches in the market for our product, that means you have to develop coaches for this product.
00:12:48
Speaker
Or you have to go find a way to help coaches that are already in this. So there's two levels of it. Like you're developing coaches into the the customer that you want. And the second level is that they a lot of these coaches already exist, but it's not valuable enough for them to participate in it.
00:13:04
Speaker
And, you know, we got 50 of our best friends to join Speed Lab pretty much, our homies. But, you know, that doesn't represent it as a actual like business opportunity, like massive business opportunity. So,
00:13:19
Speaker
Todd was like, you need it you need to do more education. And then i so I was like, cool. So Drew helped me build courses. And basically, I mean, these courses were tough, man. I was literally locking myself into a room for for days, just writing out an outline and then weeks writing out the the plan of how I'm going to, you know,
00:13:42
Speaker
teach each module and like it it wasn't something that was natural to me like I was naturally as a kid i was more introverted like didn't like talking didn't like talking in front of people i hated class presentations I hated speaking in front of people and I was like man I gotta figure out how to overcome this and i remember being in my room at night just writing and writing and writing and trying to make it perfect and trying to make it simple and trying to make it make sense. And, you know, it took me, took me months. The first course I did took me months and it was, it was short, like, uh, speed
Importance of Education and Business Systems
00:14:15
Speaker
pillars was extremely short and I did all this prep. And then the day that I shot speed pillars was literally a day and a half. And that was it.
00:14:24
Speaker
And I was like, Oh my God, that went by so fast. um So we're like, let's do another one. So Art of Acceleration came right after that. And again, I spent hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours, weeks building, building, building. And then our videographer, Katie DeFeo shows up and we shoot it in like three days. I'm like, oh my God.
00:14:44
Speaker
So we do another one. Right. So I knew that education was, was important, especially around something like speed that was relatively new in the industry in terms of like productizing it into a business.
00:14:56
Speaker
Um, but yeah, like we just went out from that standpoint. Now, the second thing that, that drew and Todd were really big on was like, this needs to have a level of like business structure to it. Like,
00:15:11
Speaker
Meaning like if we're giving this as a package to a coach and they're going to add speed lab to, to their business, then we should probably have a level of like business systems with it.
00:15:23
Speaker
And that could be marketing. That could be um onboarding. That could be developing your coaches. Like we need to start educating that. So Drew made that an entire um pillar of speed labs is like the business side of it. Like,
00:15:40
Speaker
What does that look like to to become speed lab from a systems and operational standpoint? And Drew is one of the best operational minds I've ever been around. a he heing He can think about all the the possible outcomes of things and then draw line to the connections and how they work. and figure out who needs to do what. Like, that's just how his brain works. And um Drew was able to really draw up that into a pillar.
00:16:07
Speaker
um So now we have analytics, we have education, and then we have business. And 50 to 100 happened relatively to quickly, you know, after that.
00:16:21
Speaker
And our first speed limit, speed summit, we were announcing like, yo, we have 100 labs. And I was like, okay, now we're 90 more Speed Labs than i ever imagined. here now we're at I thought it was going to be like 10 of my friends doing this and we just like grow it. But now we're at 100. And I remember looking out into the crowd when I was at the Speed Labs Summit and there's 100 people there. And I was like, how is this possible?
00:16:49
Speaker
And i kept thinking about the main thing that came to mind wasn't how great software was because at the time it was okay. It's a lot better now. I thought about our offering.
00:17:02
Speaker
was okay. Education, you know, it's good, but there's tons of education out there. It wasn't any of those things by itself.
00:17:12
Speaker
It was all those things together along with community. And I think community was the thing that took us from 100 to 200. And it was going deeper with that community.
Facing Challenges: Burnout and Financial Strain
00:17:25
Speaker
And to be honest, while building this... It was very hard for me um from a personality standpoint, from an energy standpoint. like It was something that I felt like I was working on 24-7. I was sleeping and dreaming about. I know Drew was doing the same. I know Todd was doing the same. like I know Cece and Dylan, all these people were doing the same. like It was so...
00:17:47
Speaker
uncomfortable and so difficult. And I always was was wondering, like, do we reach the entire market already? Are we tapped out? Is there any more people out there that would be interested in this? And sometimes sales were really slow and really difficult and it got really boring and really monotonous.
00:18:05
Speaker
And I felt like I had no time because I was constantly presenting to a screen. i was constantly doing education. i was constantly traveling. I was constantly coaching. i was like burn i was like, I can't do all these things.
00:18:17
Speaker
and early on, like putting myself out there was actually really embarrassing for me. I, I am, I'm a coach, meaning like I can talk to people and get out in front of people. Um, but like, i wasn't like a content creator. and what I did was actually gave my passwords to like the people that were doing the content, like Katie DeFeo and Drew. And like, I just, Hey, here's my password.
00:18:42
Speaker
So I would wake up and I look on my story and I'll see a bunch of stuff that I didn't post. And I'll see what can my feed and a bunch of stuff I didn't post. But they were posting nonstop on everything. LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, ah Instagram, TikTok.
00:18:57
Speaker
And I'm like, oh, my goodness. And I'm watching it grow. I'm watching it grow. And, you know, I felt the need to I was like, I need to respond to everyone because, ah you know, I remember getting ignored when I was hitting up.
00:19:10
Speaker
businesses or teams or athletes and things that i was trying to work with. And I remember how that felt. So I'm like, I'm, I'm trying to respond to everybody, everybody. And it's, it's overwhelming. And there's content everywhere. And I'm like, some of this content I don't even like. Like, I remember there was a drill that was posted and I was like,
00:19:29
Speaker
I only did that drill to show you what not to do. And it was posted as like, do this drill. And then um I remember another time we had a content creator that was posting a series like every day. And I was like, i hate the a series.
00:19:42
Speaker
Stop posting the a series. And it was like always a March and switches and things. Like, don't post it anymore. um But it was, yeah, I was burning out, man. I was tired and I didn't have time for myself.
00:19:56
Speaker
Didn't have time for family. um You know, contrary to like what people think is when you run a startup business, like, money was really tight too, like very tight. I was making significantly more money before than in the beginning parts of the business. It was so, cause every resource had to go towards people or software, other things. And you realize like pretty quickly, like you were the last priority as, as the, as the founder um and owner of the business. Like,
00:20:26
Speaker
It's not something you can just like pull money from and go buy a house or a car. At the time, it was like it was hustle and grind, you know. And um there was a point where i remember Todd came to me. He was like, yo, like if we don't turn this business around and start getting higher revenues, like, you know, this this is going to be over.
00:20:50
Speaker
And i was paranoid. And luckily at the time, like few of my NFL guys um became investors like Tony Jefferson, River Craycraft, Alex Bachman.
NFL Players' Investment in Speed Lab
00:21:01
Speaker
um You know, they they were like, dude, we want to invest in this thing and we believe in it. And I couldn't believe it because I'm like, obviously I knew my value as a coach and what I did with them, but they believed in the business. Like,
00:21:12
Speaker
their financial guy signed off on this investment. Like, let's make it happen. um So, you know, around this time, I started to realize, like, my strengths were definitely, like, the vision, but also coaching relationships.
00:21:26
Speaker
But my weak spot was clearly operations and systems. And Drew had that skill set. um And me, CeCe, and Dylan... We can coach.
00:21:38
Speaker
um We're not really that good at any anything else. like So he was able to create systems and processes and checklists and all those things. like How do we build this into an actual product?
00:21:50
Speaker
So long story short, um the shift happened when I realized that I'm not good at all the things that we need to grow.
00:22:01
Speaker
And we need to find the people that can help us grow. And i realized what I was good at was doing the community piece. And I needed to do more community piece.
Renewed Passion and Clarity in Business
00:22:10
Speaker
I need to talk more to people.
00:22:12
Speaker
I need to get out there more. And, you know, since I had this revolution, I've done 12 speaking engagements a year. I've done more courses. I've tried to get out there more. Like it's been a focus of mine to do more and to be out there more.
00:22:28
Speaker
Um, and now it's like, Man, I kind of feel like how I felt in the beginning where I was like, wow, I was so excited about working on this every single day.
00:22:40
Speaker
um From zero to 100, was miserable every single day. From 100 to 150, I was burnt out. And from 150 to 200, am in love with the process. Like this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.
00:22:57
Speaker
I'm very clear on the outcomes that I want. I'm very clear on the people I want to work with. um And I'm getting more clear on who I am, like not just like in business, but like as a father and as was a husband. And I think all these things work together. Like you can't be one way in business and one way at home. Like you can, but that that's fatiguing. That's difficult.
00:23:20
Speaker
um I've really thought about like, how do I sync these things together?
Integrating Family and Business Life
00:23:24
Speaker
Like, how do I bring my family with me? How do I take them when I go places? How do I bring them and have an experience with them? So they grow up in the business as well. It's it's theirs, they understand it.
00:23:35
Speaker
um And I've really thought about this over time. Like, I don't wanna create a separate business life from my personal life. i I know like that might sound crazy. I think a lot of people would say like, it is good to separate.
00:23:49
Speaker
But I'm living literally my dream, like coming from not being able to walk and run to running Division I to getting into the Olympic program as a coach to now helping people for for a living.
00:24:06
Speaker
and That's literally what I get to do every day. um So I'm just incredibly grateful, um you know, especially Drew and Todd, CeCe and Dylan, Tyler Gaffney, our first clients, Giselle from Mario, um you know, the whole USR team, like the new...
00:24:30
Speaker
The people that have come in the past, like, four years, it's just, like superstar team from Olivia and Dylan and Luke. um Just their abilities to to turn, like, a vision into something concrete is is incredible. Like, just not not just, like, like i have i have abstract ideas. Not all of them are good ideas, but...
00:24:53
Speaker
they have no problem telling me that's not a good idea. That's that's not going to work. um And they just work passionately on this nonstop, nonstop. And yeah I'm just, I'm grateful, you know, and and literally coming off of a flight thinking about this. I'm like, I'm coming in the podcast studio at 10, 20 at night, even though I haven't slept. And even though I'm tired, like, man, I got to get this off because mean, i'm I'm hoping this helps somebody because the the whole way is just, I got, you know, if I were to go back and start, like, I think the the way that I would think about this is that,
00:25:30
Speaker
You don't have to have the right idea first. You just have to start something and you just have to start building it. And as you go you different steps will reveal themselves as you go, you'll get better at it. And it will just like, every failure is just going to lead to another level that you, you know, unlocked.
00:25:50
Speaker
So when we failed 60, 70 times building the first like score in the algorithm, it was like so painfully obvious that the answer was so simple, yet we were avoiding it because were like, it can't be that simple. We have to make it complex. We have to go this deep in these many layers. And we spent, don't even want to say it on here.
00:26:13
Speaker
but a lot of money going in the wrong direction, like a significant sum of money going in the wrong direction, trying to make things too complex. And it didn't hit until we simplified it.
00:26:26
Speaker
A system has to have a common purpose, component parts that all work together. So we had to find our system, right? It's analytics, right? That's the main thing is where do you stack up?
00:26:42
Speaker
It's education. So we don't want to help coaches, right? And then we have the business element tied into it. And, you know, we know that that the common relationship between all this is community and it's developing relationships that are authentic and really are based around helping each other.
00:27:01
Speaker
yeah. appreciate you guys listening to this one a little bit shorter this week but um man this is probably the one that is the most emotionally driven from me so thank you guys um i'll see you guys next week