Sean Furey, Furey Athletics

[00:00:00] Sanjay Parekh: Welcome to the Side Hustle to Small Business Podcast, powered by Hiscox. I’m your host, Sanjay Parekh. Throughout my career I’ve had side hustles, some of which turned into real businesses, but first and foremost: I’m a serial technology entrepreneur.

In the creator space, we hear plenty of advice on how to hustle harder and why you can “sleep when you’re dead.” On this show, we ask new questions in hopes of getting new answers.

Questions like: How can small businesses work smarter? How do you achieve balance between work and family? How can we redefine success in our businesses so that we don’t burn out after year three?

Every week, I sit down with business founders at various stages of their side hustle to small business journey. These entrepreneurs are pushing the envelope while keeping their values. Keep listening for conversation, context, and camaraderie.

Sean Furey is not your average small business owner. Sean grew up in Methuen, Massachusetts, about 30 miles north of Boston. When he was in high school at Methuen High School, he began throwing javelin. Turns out, Sean was really good at throwing javelin. Fast forward 12 years and Sean represented the United States in the 2012 Olympics in London. Four years later, he qualifies and competed in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Amazing story, right? But why is he on the show today? Well Sean knows a thing or two about athleticism. He’s channeled his love of fitness and sports into his business: Furey Athletics. Furey Athletics is a coaching and online training resource with the mission of helping power athletes and coaches of all ages and experience levels realize their dreams and maximize their potential.

Here to talk more about his story and his business is Sean Furey. Sean, welcome to the Side Hustle to Small Business Podcast.

[00:01:51] Sean Furey: All right. Thank you very much. Glad to be here.

[00:01:53] Sanjay Parekh: Look, you've got a fascinating background, but I want to understand it like from the bits and pieces first. Tell us a little bit about you and like, where were you born and raised in early part of life?

Where did that all happen?

[00:02:07] Sean Furey: Okay. Yes. I'm from Methuen, Massachusetts, which is about 30 minutes north of Boston.

[00:02:12] Sanjay Parekh: Okay, I'm glad you said that because I was going to have to stop you and say like, where is Methuen? Because I've never heard of Methuen.

[00:02:17] Sean Furey: Yeah. Methuen. Yeah. I grew up in Methuen, Massachusetts.

Went to college up in New Hampshire at Dartmouth College. And probably my big claim to fame was being a javelin thrower. So, I did track in college through the javelin for four years there then moved to San Diego shortly after college, was there for about 11 years, and now I'm back on the east coast in Barrington, Rhode Island.

It's just south of Providence. And I live here with my wife and two kids.

[00:02:51] Sanjay Parekh: Javelin thrower, you were doing that in college. When did you first realize that like of all the things that you can throw, I guess there's not that many right? Discuss, shot put, javelin, I think that's it, right? Is it, is there any more being that?

[00:03:04] Sean Furey: And the hammer throw.

[00:03:06] Sanjay Parekh: Oh, the hammer throw? Of course. Yeah, the hammer throw. When did you decide, like I want to throw things and other things that I want to throw, I want to throw the javelin.

[00:03:14] Sean Furey: Yeah. People always ask me that question. I think my whole life, I knew I wanted to throw things, right?

I was the kid just hucking rocks, playing catch with myself, throwing a football back and forth over the roof of my house. But I played football in high school, and was the quarterback, and the football coach was the track coach, so he made everyone go out for track. I know I did all the events: hurdles, pole vaults, high jump, things like that, and then it was javelin tryout day, and the coach said, Hey, you're a quarterback, why don't you try this? And I wasn't that good. I was small, early on in high school but really loved it.

After trying it, I was in my yard, throwing hockey sticks and golf clubs, and then it just progressed. So really javelin chose me. I did play football in college as well. But it ended up being javelin was the thing that I was the best at. I'd love to be a quarterback for the Patriots, but instead I spent my time mastering the javelin, which was equally as fulfilling.

[00:04:11] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah.

It seems and we'll talk about it in a minute, but it seems like you did okay doing the javelin. I'm trying to understand too, like this was one of the things – I watch all of the events in the Olympics but I never have a sense you have a sense of some of the other sports of how many people are competing to be the top tier of that.

I have no sense in terms of javelin, how many people do this in the US? How big of a club is it? And how many people do you actually know that throw javelin as well?

[00:04:45] Sean Furey: Yeah. The world becomes very small when you're thinking in terms of your javelin throw groups. It's awesome that I've made friends from all over the world, but in terms of the US, there are only 17 states, at least my last check, there were 17 states that did this in high school.

Massachusetts being one of them. So, I was pretty lucky that I grew up there and then javelin is an event in every college track and field program. I think that it's personally I think it's the best event, but it's a primary event in college track and field.

In terms of the numbers, I can't give you an exact number of people that throw the javelin in the United States. I should probably remember that statistic.

[00:05:32] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, but it's obviously a lot smaller if you're saying there's only 17 states. That have programs at you said a high school level, right?

[00:05:40] Sean Furey: Yes.

[00:05:41] Sanjay Parekh: I mean your numbers, there's just going to dwindle from there. Right? That's a tough thing. Does that impact how we as a country compete at an Olympic level, in that sport?

[00:05:53] Sean Furey: Yeah, so that's a great question, and there's a lot of discussion that goes on about that.

The United States is a big country. So, I think the number of javelin throwers we have throwing at the youth and high school level is still greater than many of the countries like Germany, Finland, Norway, Czech Republic that are very good and winning medals. It may not be a numbers game. It may be the coaching and the technique.

There's a big discrepancy between how you throw a javelin and how you throw a baseball or a football. A lot of the Americans, even the ones that are doing it in high school, have bad habits in our throwing with a different technique and kinetic chain than you should. There's always that debate – are we getting the top talents? Because even in the top countries, hockey, soccer, take away the best athlete or the best athletes.

There's always, the question, is it, we're coaching the wrong technique or is it that we don't have the talent pool? I personally believe that it's more the right technique, that there's plenty of talent to go around and it's not just that baseball, football, basketball, are stealing the best athletes, but that's my opinion.

[00:07:08] Sanjay Parekh: That's interesting, it seems like it might be actually two parts of that, right, because if you're only doing 17 out of 50 states, there's a lot of kids that we’re missing, but then also the countries that you were talking about a lot of those don't have baseball and football to give you those bad throwing techniques.

Right. So maybe they're learning the right techniques from the get-go. And so maybe it's a "this and" instead of "this or" problem that we've got.

[00:07:35] Sean Furey: Yeah, exactly. That's a good point.

[00:07:38] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Okay, so you went to the Olympics.

[00:07:41] Sean Furey: Yes.

[00:07:42] Sanjay Parekh: Twice?

[00:07:42] Sean Furey: Yes.

[00:07:43] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. What was that experience like?

[00:07:46] Sean Furey: It was amazing.

[00:07:49] Sanjay Parekh: And which Olympics were it that you went to?

[00:07:52] Sean Furey: It was 2016 in London and then it was, I'm sorry, 2012 in London and in 2016 in Rio.

[00:07:58] Sanjay Parekh: Okay.

[00:07:58] Sean Furey: Yep.

[00:08:00] Sanjay Parekh: Very different experiences I'm sure between those two different countries.

[00:08:03] Sean Furey: Yes, I think I was extremely fortunate to have gone to those two Olympics. My first experience in London, obviously it gets a little bit easier when the native language is English and the United Kingdom just did a great job hosting.

They bent over backwards. It was like every person, every volunteer you met was the nicest person on earth. And then Rio, oh my God, the South American culture and the laid-back atmosphere, the Olympic Village in Rio, you felt like you were on the outskirts of the jungle, which kind of you were. And it just had this atmosphere, even though at the time of Rio, the Zika virus and mosquitoes was the big thing.

So, you're a little bit nervous there, but it was a great atmosphere, and I think some of the performances in 2016 showed how that atmosphere really led to top performances. I think there were a lot of Olympic records set, especially in the field events at the Rio Games.

[00:09:02] Sanjay Parekh: So, let's understand. As you're preparing for this, you moved to San Diego to go to the training. We have a training facility, I'm assuming, there are for javelin?

[00:09:13] Sean Furey: Yes, so it's the Olympic Training Center, it's in Chula Vista, just north of the United States/Mexico border, and there are many multiple sports that train there,

We have track and field, archery, field hockey, rugby, so there's a large group, it's an amazing facility. I spent 11 years there training. You get the top coaching, medical, nutrition, sports psychology advice, as well as being surrounded by other Olympic hopefuls. So, a steel sharpens steel effect where you're all just making each other better.

[00:09:45] Sanjay Parekh: Right. During those 11 years then, are you working any jobs? Are you like, are you doing anything? Like how do you support yourself for 11 years?

[00:09:54] Sean Furey: Yes. I did, I was a little bit of unique of a situation where, coming out of college, I wasn't what you would call an Olympic shoe-in. I got third at the NCAA championships and was All-American, but I wasn't internationally ranked, but I had, in my heart, the dream and the belief that I can make it.

I was lucky enough to go to Dartmouth College and get a degree in engineering and get a job right out of school, working for Raytheon Technologies as a mechanical engineer. So, I worked full-time for them right out of school, and then I was actually able to transfer to part-time when I moved to San Diego to work for a facility there.

It was a situation where I was almost funding my own my own development where I didn't qualify for USA track and field, the US Olympic committee funding, I didn't have a sponsorships, so I had to pay my own bills. And I did that by working in a part-time mechanical engineering job, which I was very fortunate to do so during that development period, yeah, I was working as an engineer as well.

[00:10:59] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, I don't remember like I've never seen, I don't think a javelin thrower on a box of Wheaties or anything, so I was assuming that there's not big sponsorships. That's probably a third part of the issue with us having enough athletes that do javelin throwing is that there's probably not the sponsors there, and I'm not sure why we don't have that too, because it's pretty cool. I can't throw anything worth a darn. And so y'all throw them so far. It's amazing.

[00:11:25] Sean Furey: Yeah.

That's true. I think you probably need to be like top 10 in the world to be making your living off of javelin. If you took all of the javelin throwers in the world and saw who was making a living, most of them are people who are probably funded by their country.

And then maybe the top five to 10, are actually sponsored athletes from a shoe company – Nike, Adidas, Mizuno, something like that – and make enough money to live off of.

[00:11:53] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. I don't think there's a chance I could break the top million with the way that I throw things. So, okay, so this experience then you're basically hustling to further your Olympic dreams or athletic dreams by working, and then doing this. At some point in this is this, when you really started thinking like, Hey, I want to do something on the side? I want to do something entrepreneurial. Or did you do something entrepreneurial when you were younger first? And this kind of just grew out of that?

[00:12:23] Sean Furey: It was really after I had retired and I had energy and time and still a burning interest in not only javelin, but everything that I had learned, right? So, almost like taking the engineering design process, the strategic process of how you're going to achieve a goal, and I had applied that to my athletic career. And then wanting to continue to do that, and maybe if I couldn't do it with myself, because I'm getting a little bit older and the wheels are starting to fall off, I wanted to pass that on to the next generation. So that is really what drove my interest to do something entrepreneurial, to have my own business where I'm helping athletes with the desire, with a goal, to achieve that by just setting up a framework. I'm not going to be the one that makes them succeed, but I can help them light the path a little bit, based on my experience and the research that I've done and other people have done.

[00:13:26] Sanjay Parekh: So, this is for you, right now, this is truly a side hustle still because you're doing this. The company is Furey Athletics.

[00:13:34] Sean Furey: Yes.

[00:13:34] Sanjay Parekh: You're helping people and doing coaching with them, but you’ve got a full-time job and you're still with Raytheon.

[00:13:43] Sean Furey: Yes that’s true. Yup. I'm now, I've been at Raytheon for 16 years.

I'm a lead mechanical engineer. I'm leading a team as we develop different products. And it's very rewarding. I get to work with a lot of very enthusiastic engineers achieving technical goals and Furey Athletics is very similar. I look at this, and I try to find the similarities, so that if I ever get down on my day job, it's like, this is making me better for the thing I'm most passionate about as well. There's so much crossover between designing some type of complex device and achieving a complex athletic goal.

So, that's where I'm at right now, splitting my time between those two things.

[00:14:32] Sanjay Parekh: So, you got to tell me, Sean and I'm sure this happens how many times a day does somebody ask you to throw things at work at Raytheon? I'm sure this is happening.

[00:14:42] Sean Furey: Yeah. I've been asked that a couple times.

And maybe not so much a demonstration, but how far could you throw this or that?

[00:14:51] Sanjay Parekh: And the answer is always further than you. I can always throw it further than you.

[00:15:14] Sanjay Parekh: Okay, so when you decided to start up Furey Athletics how is it that you got your first client? How did that happen and when did you realize okay, this is something real that people want?

[00:15:27] Sean Furey: Yeah. It was mostly through word of mouth, like I think I mentioned earlier the world gets very small when you start to talk about the javelin community. I started this without any customers. It was like, I know that this is what I want to do. I started the website because I wanted to have some place for people to reach me through and to get the word out, and right when I was finished that, I got an email through that contact link from – it was actually pretty amazing – the national high school champion in the decathlon his father had contacted me and wanted a little bit of help with javelin, and I guess he had been at a clinic and somebody gave him my name. And that was really how I got my first customer was a referral from a good friend who also was another top coach in another part of the country. So, so that's the story there.

[00:16:26] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, so that actually that does expand your circle a little bit, right?

It's not just javelins throwers, but decathletes have to throw the javelin as well. I I've had the honor of meeting one, Dan O'Brien, who got the gold here in Atlanta. He does a bunch of work here in Atlanta for a large organization, and we happened to be together at this event and just fascinating what those folks have to do, right?

That's a whole another level versus  – no disrespect to you and the other athletes that do one sport, but to do that many, and have to be at least decent at all of them, it's just it's mind blowing. So, your first client being a decathlete is just phenomenal. What did you learn from them?

You were probably learning a bunch of stuff from them as well.

[00:17:17] Sean Furey: Yeah, so I've been so fortunate to train at the Olympic Training Center, as well as being on so many international teams where I get to be good friends and in observed training of some of the top athletes that that are around.

I've seen decathletes throw the javelin for many years, and there's been some top decathletes that lived and trained in Chula Vista alongside me. It's always been, I've seen the challenges, right? There are some decathletes who are very good, they're kind of supple natural throwers, and there's other decathletes who are super athletes and you just can't believe why they can't throw the javelin farther, because they're a little bit stiff.

I think that had been something that I was interested in for a long time. In addition, my wife is a multi-eventer. She did track it at Dartmouth College. I had some background in the multi events, so I wasn't too far away from them. I think I was very happy to work out some of the strategies or techniques that I had worked with previously, with some training partners, of how to get someone who is extremely explosive extremely fast and strong, how to get that energy into the javelin.

It was an honor to be able to work with him and to work with someone who can pick up movements, just so quickly.

[00:18:34] Sanjay Parekh: I find this super interesting. You're a multi-eventer as well then, but you went to the Olympics for the javelin. How do you feel like that experience has helped you in being an entrepreneur? Because entrepreneurship, a lot of people think it's just, hey, you do the thing that you love, but there's a lot of stuff that you have to deal with when you're starting up a company, right?

There's stuff that nobody tells you about. It's the ugly side, it's the non-fun side. How do you think that has helped you? And maybe the engineering part has helped you as well. And in terms of tuning you to be an entrepreneur.

[00:19:09] Sean Furey: Yeah, I feel like it's a culmination of everything that I've done in my life that's helping me.

In terms of the engineering, it's being able to take a structured approach, right? Having concrete goals, schedules in laying things out, as well as the ability to learn new tasks quickly, right? So, from designing a website, getting an LLC going, taxes, all that kind of stuff, there's just an endless amount of things that I have to learn, and I think I have some experience doing that in my engineering job, and then with the sports background, I think the sports psychology that I learned, and the mindset that I developed as an athlete is really helping me here.

So as an athlete you would have a lot of ups and downs. And as your career goes on, you learn to not get too excited about the ups, and don't get too worried about the downs and you focus on the process, focus on what you can control and keep those goals in your line of sight, and know that you have the confidence that you're going to achieve it. And it's the same with this entrepreneurial endeavor where I say, some mornings I wake up with an ambition hangover. If you had a really productive day or you had these big goals, these big ideas, the day before, you wake up in the morning, oh, how am I going to do that?

I think now I understand that there's going to be ups and downs. You're not going to set the world on fire every day. I can work through the days when I'm a little bit down and conserve energy and focus on the process, focus on what goals I have outlined or what small steps.

And then on the days that I'm feeling great I can let it go but try not to burn myself out because I know that what goes up must come down. So yeah, I feel lucky that I'm able to have this activity, trying to build this company that pulls everything together like that.

[00:21:10] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. That is great advice by the way, the ups and downs, that is quintessential entrepreneurship right there. Thinking about that you've got a lot going on in life, right? Like you've got Furey Athletics, you got a full-time job. You've got a wife and you've got two kids. How do you balance all of these things to make sure that everything is still functioning properly, and nothing is getting ignored along the way?

[00:21:37] Sean Furey: Yeah, that's a great question. I almost feel grateful for having so many things because it forced me to set my priorities and understand what my values really are. My family's always going to be the first priority, and that's really why one of the driving reasons that I want to have this business for myself, is so that it's really on my own time and I can carve out the exact amount of time I want for my family, to be with my family, and that's, like I said, the most important thing to me.

I'm a very black and white, concrete type of guy. I made a schedule. This is what I'm going to do every hour of the day that I'm awake, and I'm going to attribute different hours to family, to work, to Furey Athletics, to personal things, and then I can see, okay, this is broken up the way that I want it to be. And then that's the target. I'm not always going to hit it. But at least I have a framework and I understand that, okay, these are the hours allocated to this, these are the hours allocated that to that breakdown, that percentage reflects my priorities.

So I'm not over-scheduling myself or I don't have unrealistic expectations of I'm going to accomplish so much on Furey Athletics and then I'm going to be ignoring my family or something like that. I've tried to create a structure that reflects the balance that I want it to.

[00:22:58] Sanjay Parekh: So, okay, you use your big tool, it sounds like it's a schedule, but are there any other like great tools that you use that man, if this didn't exist, I wouldn't be able to really run Furey or run my life. Is there something that is like the key to the kingdom?

[00:23:16] Sean Furey: I say I would keep it pretty simple. The schedule is my is my main tool.

So I think one of the techniques is called the unschedule. What are the areas that I have to do? When do I have to be at my main job? Right. And when, it's a mandatory thing that I have family time. When is the family time, that's non-negotiable? And then when can I fill that in?

And then when I have that framework and that recurring schedule and I can get into a groove, that's when I really feel like I can get in the zone and make progress and anticipate when I'm going to have more time, less time. Yeah. I would say the schedule is my main tool.

[00:24:01] Sanjay Parekh: That the main tool. Okay, that's awesome. Okay, so I'm looking for now, a piece of advice. There's a lot of people that are probably listening to this that are teetering on the edge of starting their own side hustle. You came into it somewhat naturally, right? Because you're, you retired and you still wanted to stay involved and you knew that you had a lot of experience, but for other folks, what do you advise them in terms of when to decide to jump in and do a side hustle and do things like how you've done them?

[00:24:35] Sean Furey: Yeah, so I would say I'm one example of maybe a more gradual approach, right? There's probably two ends of the spectrum where there's the spartan method of burn the boats, and it's, I'm going to, it's not really a side hustle then, but I'm going to go and do this, and that's really successful because for Spartans, you can't go back, right?

There's no boat to swim home. We have to move forward, and we have to succeed. So, you know, I wasn't in the situation to do that. That's not a risk I was willing to put on my family. I took a more gradual approach, the experimentation method. So, my advice would be, if you're not going to take the jump in and go all in, that you can find small ways to experiment and to make steps forward and that probably starts with getting a very clearly defined set of principles and a mission of, what do you want to do? Why do you want to do this? What is the service that you want to provide? And every day take little steps moving forward to getting closer to having a company or some concepts that fulfill that.

[00:25:46] Sanjay Parekh: So, okay yeah, I love that. And in this process that you've been going through then, for you, what do you define success as for your side hustle?

[00:26:00] Sean Furey: Yeah, so, this has been evolving and getting more defined as the years go on. Success is going to be when I can support myself and can support my family through education of others surrounding the topics that I love so much, dealing with sports and fitness.

So really, I want to be giving services to athletes who are interested in achieving goals. This isn't just javelin throwers, but any overhand throwing, any power athlete, and maybe it will expand over time.

But if I can provide services to those athletes, help them achieve their goals, avoid some of the problems that I experienced, and get higher than the level that I experienced, and support my family while doing that, that's a success. And entailed in that is me learning more and really getting paid to become a smarter and a better educator about the topics that I love so much.

I think that's really the dream. I loved throwing the javelin. I loved pursuing the Olympic Games and I want to continue, maybe not as an athlete but as a coach, learning more and more about that, really understanding what is the best way and how can you help people achieve goals like that.

Long-winded answer but that's what I want to do.

[00:27:25] Sanjay Parekh: No, that's a great answer and I love it. Okay, so I've got two final questions for you, and they're about the javelin because we've talked about it this whole time. One is a personal question because I've never understood this. So first, why is the javelin so floppy?

We see you guys and gals run out there with it, right? You're going to the line. And the thing is just flexing all over the place. Why is it that way? Cause it seems like it'd be better if it was stiff and obviously that's not the case. Why is it so floppy?

[00:27:54] Sean Furey: Yes, so maybe a little correction. You may have been watching a little bit too much Revenge of the Nerds if you're seeing javelins flopping, when people are running. Because typically they are stiff, and that is one of the design characteristics is making the javelin as stiff as possible without, if they're too stiff, you potentially could have an arm injury, but most javelins are so stiff that they're not going to flop when you're running. You would see in these nice, beautiful slow-motion pictures of, yeah, the javelin, and that's only…

[00:28:26] Sanjay Parekh: They do flex, yeah? I do see them flexing. Yes. The front and the back from where the hand is.

[00:28:32] Sean Furey: Yes, that's true. And that's when you're throwing it. It's because you're watching people who are absolute beasts put a lot of energy into the javelin, right? When you're designing a javelin, you'd like to minimize that flex. But you can't eliminate it. If you're watching the current best guy in the world from Germany, Johannes Vetter, you're going to see the javelin almost bending in half because of the power this guy can put into the javelin, and it's not always directed right through the axis, the long axis of the javelin, it's across the shaft, so you're going to get that oscillation.

[00:29:09] Sanjay Parekh: I see. Okay. The design intent is not for it to do that, but these people are just beasts, is what you're telling me.

[00:29:16] Sean Furey: Exactly. That's the short answer.

[00:29:19] Sanjay Parekh: Okay. Okay. Got it. It makes a lot of sense. Okay, so if we happen to have somebody out there that wants to be the next great javelin thrower, what's like the one best trick, or a tip you can give them, and maybe one biggest thing that they should avoid doing, so that they can go onto the Olympics just like you?

[00:29:41] Sean Furey: Yeah, so I would say being a well-rounded athlete is the number one priority, right? It's going to be no one thing, right? If you're spending all your time lifting or you're spending all of your time throwing, then you're probably not training the right way. The javelin throwers, you need to be in shape from your fingernails to your toenails, and you need to be a very well rounded, robust athlete, and that means doing a lot of diverse things.

I think someone in high school who's playing multiple sports, getting a lot of just dynamic experience, is going to be well-suited to, to continue the sport and move up the ranks.

[00:30:19] Sanjay Parekh: That is awesome advice. And I’ve got to tell you, Sean, I'm going to be watching the javelin next time, a lot more differently because of this of this talk, Sean, thanks so much for coming on to the Side Hustle to Small Business Podcast, really appreciate it, I learned a lot.

[00:30:36] Sean Furey: All right, thanks Sanjay, it was great to be here.

[00:30:42] Sanjay Parekh: Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business Podcast, powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit hiscox.com.

[00:34:15] Sanjay Parekh: Thank you for listening to this week’s episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business Podcast, powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit hiscox.com.

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I’m your host, Sanjay Parekh. You can find me on Twitter at @sanjay or on my website at sanjayparekh.com.