It's been 10 days since surgery and I am starting to feel more like myself again. I was amazed at how much this surgery took me down. An umbilical hernia surgery, in my mind, should have barely slowed me down. Yet, not only did it slow me down, it brought me to a stand still.

I could barely move for the first 4 days. Then on day 5 I tried running an errand and came home and slept for 3 hours. I worked 4 hours on day 6 and was only supposed to work 4 hours on day seven but instead did 12 hours. This made my whole stomach area swell up really big and get hot. Needless to say, this was not good. I got a good bit of bruising from all the swelling.  It is still sore today and there is a large amount of what I assume is hard scar tissue around the incision.

I thought I would not be training today cause they said I shouldn't, not because I felt like I couldn't. But there is no way I could train today.  Needless to say I am very frustrated with not being able to train.

I've gotten a lot of business advice over the years. Some of the best advice was to take the numbers on my business plan, raise expenses by 25% and cut revenue by 50%, & if the business can still not lose money then you may have a solid business plan.

But the advice I want to give, to anyone thinking about opening a gym, is to first start by writing a business plan. I get emails from people asking about opening facilities and usually they are looking at space already before they have a business plan. I know that this seems like a no brainer but I have had some very smart people come to me when they are looking at space without a business plan.

Your business plan will dictate the location, amount of space and so forth. So looking at space without a business plan is useless. Plus you should know all the demographics of an area before you start thinking of getting space there. These are all things that should be hashed out in a sound business plan.

There are business people who open a business to make money and I assume if you are reading this site you are a technician who wants to open his own business. Make sure that you have your business plan looked at by someone who is a solid business person. I took mine to several people before I opened The Spot Athletics. It's funny because one of them is a good business attorney and two of the first things he said after looking at it came true. They were issues we overcame for the most part but if I would have listened to him to begin with, I would  have saved myself a lot of frustration.

So make sure that if you take your business plan to someone that you listen to their suggestions. Not that they will all be right but in my case 2 out of the 3 concerns happened and I didn't listen to any of them because I was so passionate about what I was doing and was sure I was right.

It's like asking someone to look at your training plan and then ignoring their suggestions. If you respect them enough to ask them to look at it, you should probably seriously consider what they are saying and making changes.

All I can say is that starting  gym without a sound business plan is like just going in the gym every day and training with no thought. Sure if you are gifted and hard working you may get stronger but odds are you will stall after not too long.