An interesting day......

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend of mine. It had been sometime since I had seen him and it was good to catch up. The last time we had caught up he had just graduated with his MBA from Davis and was searching for a job in the real estate market. Since then, he has been hired by a national homebuilder and was really enjoying his job.

As the conversation continued, we talked about how we had met each other. At the time, he had just graduated from Stanford and was working with a start-up company called Core Youth Centers. It was an amazing company that focused on helping kids from the ground up -- athletics, college consulting, mentoring, etc.... In many ways, it was CORE that inspired me to start ESM. Sadly, CORE had a short fuse and made it only a year or so before their venture capital money dried up. But what we both remembered about CORE was the feeling that the kids had when they walked in the doors. To this day, I haven't seen a more passionate, productive and fun environment in our area for kids.

While my friend is convinced now that there is no successful business model that could sustain such an operation, I remain a little bit more optimistic. In fact, at ESM we have spent a substantial amount of time trying to tweak business models in order to find the right combination that would allow us the opportunity to bring CORE 2.0 back to our area. As our non-profit arm, Education Now, prepares for a huge undertaking -- a capital campaign to raise $5MM -- that will help us develop such a centre for kids that will once again give them an opportunity to grow mentally, and physically we realize what a challenge is ahead of us. However, I can honestly say that there is no issue more paramount to our mission than the completion of this proposed project.

As always, I am interested to hear about what others think? Would a multi-use sports facility that would house sports and academics be a successful proposition in Sacramento? and beyond?