Asha De Fre­itas-Mose­ley

Of­ten peo­ple think sports and they think "fun" or "any­thing goes" but the sports and sports med­i­cine in­dus­try is a busi­ness like any oth­er in­dus­try and in T&T is not an easy one to ma­noeu­vre with­in, much like any oth­er in­dus­try here. Many young grad­u­ates re­turn home with vi­sions and dreams to do their part to make things bet­ter here, on­ly to find them­selves ei­ther chang­ing ca­reers or search­ing for any op­por­tu­ni­ty to leave.

Most peo­ple would have heard the sto­ry about the two shoe sales­men. Two shoe sales­men from com­pet­ing com­pa­nies were sent to a for­eign coun­try to as­sess the mar­ket po­ten­tial for sell­ing shoes there. They both did their re­search and came up with the same con­clu­sion: no­body there wore shoes. Both went to the same tele­graph com­pa­ny with the same as­sess­ment ex­cept the mes­sage of shoe sales­man one said that there was no op­por­tu­ni­ty be­cause no one in the coun­try wore shoes while the oth­er sent that it was a fan­tas­tic op­por­tu­ni­ty be­cause no one in the coun­try wore shoes.

Isn't this what life is usu­al­ly about? Per­spec­tive! When two au­thor­i­ties on a top­ic dis­agree on a point it is of­ten about per­spec­tive and what in­flu­ences that per­spec­tive. In the sto­ry of the two sales­men, the con­clu­sions ar­rived at by each sales­man was based on their strengths and their abil­i­ty to de­liv­er suc­cess­ful­ly with­in the giv­en en­vi­ron­ment.

On a blog I came across, I read one man's ac­count of the rest of the sto­ry. Ap­par­ent­ly sales­man num­ber one re­turned home and went on to build a suc­cess­ful busi­ness in ladies dress shoes in a new mar­ket­ing ter­ri­to­ry that in­clud­ed an­oth­er first-world coun­try, France. He be­came ex­treme­ly wealthy and lived a se­cure and com­fort­able life.

Sales­man two set up shop in the for­eign coun­try in pur­suit of his vi­sion. He pro­ject­ed sales of 15,000 in his first year of busi­ness but was dis­ap­point­ed to re­al­ize less than 100 sales. The project was in jeop­ardy. Pay­roll cuts were made, threats of aban­don­ment made by home of­fice, the gen­er­al at­mos­phere in the com­pa­ny was anx­ious and de­pressed, etc. By all stan­dards, the first year ap­peared to be a fail­ure.

Wait! The sto­ry goes on. Dur­ing that first year, sales­man two, be­ing the type of en­tre­pre­neur-mind­ed in­di­vid­ual he was, spent the year mon­i­tor­ing the mar­ket's be­hav­ior–some things that he had missed when he first re­searched the mar­ket.

He learnt that many liked the "idea" of shoes but found them to be claus­tro­pho­bic and did not like hav­ing to con­stant­ly stop to emp­ty the sand from them. So, he start­ed to bring in san­dals. An­oth­er seg­ment of his mar­ket had no in­ter­est in wear­ing shoes and rather en­joyed be­ing bare-foot­ed. How­ev­er, they would of­ten cut their feet on rocks and de­bris. So, sales­man two found a lo­tion made by a Ger­man firm that would tough­en up the soles of the feet. In an area com­plete­ly un­re­lat­ed to feet, he start­ed to bring in straw hats and walk­ing sticks for this pop­u­la­tion that spent many hours in the hot days, walk­ing.

Year two he broke even. Year 3 was a lit­tle bet­ter again. The hats were a hit, he could not keep enough of the lo­tion in stock and he had de­vel­oped a niche mar­ket for his shoes. It wasn't un­til sev­en years lat­er that sales­man two be­came a mil­lion­aire.

In T&T, the same sce­nario seems to play out all the time in the sports in­dus­try. New gen­er­a­tions of pro­fes­sion­als, en­er­getic and ea­ger re­turn home on­ly to re­al­ize how dif­fer­ent­ly things op­er­ate here from the world they trained in and how un­re­cep­tive it is. Feel­ings of frus­tra­tion and de­spon­dence step in quick­ly. They be­come mis­un­der­stood and ac­cused of be­ing pompous when they come with on­ly good in­ten­tions. Still, this is the re­al world. School does not pre­pare you for this part.

To be adapt­able does not mean you have to low­er your stan­dards but it does mean hum­bling your­self to un­der­stand your new en­vi­ron­ment. There is a lot of tri­al and er­ror in­volved which is why al­liances are im­por­tant but it is pos­si­ble to grad­u­al­ly de­vel­op a niche. Like sales­man two, di­ver­si­fy­ing may be nec­es­sary which brings new op­por­tu­ni­ties for learn­ing but em­brace such chal­lenges and as best you can and nev­er stop be­liev­ing in the change you can make.

Of­ten the young grad­u­ate says, "I need to un­learn every­thing I learned in school," but this is not the an­swer. It is more about build­ing on that knowl­edge and ap­ply­ing it ap­pro­pri­ate­ly, like sales­man two did. He did not give up, he just re­mained dili­gent.

Asha De Fre­itas-Mose­ley is a cer­ti­fied ath­let­ic train­er with the Na­tion­al Ath­let­ic Train­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion of the USA. She has over 11 years of ex­pe­ri­ence re­ha­bil­i­tat­ing ath­letes and mem­bers of the ac­tive pop­u­la­tion from in­jury to full play. She can be reached at Pulse Per­for­mance Ltd., lo­cat­ed at #17 Hen­ry Pierre St., St. James. Tel: 221-2437.

?