One Year In Business

Summer in Tennessee has wrapped up. Kids are back in school, the leaves are starting to fall, though we’re still waiting on the cool weather. September 1st is a big day for me. I’ve been looking forward to it since May. It marks the one year anniversary of Form and Function. Not exactly to the date, but pretty damn close. I registered the LLC toward the end of August 2023, and by September Form and Function was operating as a business.

Let’s rewind to last year.

September 2023. Summer had just concluded, and I had left a string of jobs behind. I was at a loss. I felt unhireable. I was sick of job hunting and taking painful interviews. I was even more sick of working at jobs where I felt undervalued. I found myself jobless, in my apartment, with a big decision to make. Where would I go next?

I hatched a plan. I would work for myself. Screw it. It seemed to be “now or never”. Plus, I’ve always liked doing things my own way.

The sky was overcast one afternoon. Cool air rushed around the hills of Hermitage, cooling me down as I marched up and down apartment stairs. I carried a stack of flyers with me. I had printed them from home, and driven to complexes and neighborhoods near a gym I had access to. I went from door to door, delivering news of my new venture. In my Airpods, played the commanding voice of an audiobook narrator. I needed something to listen to while I advertized my personal training service. I chose The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.

I knew my path as a business-owner would be arduous, but I was hopeful of success. “I don’t think Daniel knows how hard this is going to be.” A friend, and someone I casually refer to as my mentor, told me this a couple months later. He was partially right. At the time, I wasn’t thinking too far ahead. I couldn’t afford to. I had so much to focus on in the moment. I was present, motivated, and free. I had nowhere to go but up.

Earlier in 2023, I had been dealt a deathblow, of sorts. I had been fired from a job very dear to me. I was devastated and disregulated; turned upside down. I had lost my friends and my career path. The effects rippled across the next 6 months. I pursued other opportunities. I left a job, took another one, quit it in two weeks, and found myself with a blank slate. Or rather, I *was* the blank slate.

In the Alchemist, the main character is a bit of a blank slate too. He’s open, ready, and waiting for whatever is to come next. He sets out on his hero’s journey, discovers his path, and his indentity, through struggles and turmoil.

“Who says I can’t start my own business and be successful?” I remember asking myself. The man who had fired me from my previous job in fitness had certainly done it. And I despised him. If he could run a successful training business, then so could I. And I could do it better. I would be damned if I let him ruin my life. So, out of spite, I pushed forward. I pinned my ears and chased my rabbit.

When I started my company, I had one client. Her name was Val. Two weeks into our training, she shared something with me that left me speechless. I was putting her through a workout. She sat down during the rest portion and told me that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer that morning. “I don’t want to do the chemo. I can beat it on my own,” she said. “I will get healthy and beat it myself.” She wanted me to give her the hardest workouts I could, and push her to her limit. She was choosing a gritty attitude, and putting up a fight with her circumstances. She would be damned if she let the cancer dictate how she lived.

I fed off of this energy. If she could push forward through such a damning reality, then I could as well. One month later, Val had disappeared from my life. I didn’t hear from her again, and I have no clue what happened.

A while later, I was hired by an an accountant from a wealthy Nashville suburb. He talked endlessly about his involvment with The Remnant church, and his wholehearted belief in QAnon, and how soon the End Times would be upon us. He spoke often about how a group of Satanists were building underground tunnels beneath the city, and would soon be taking over the government. When shit hit the fan, he told me, I could come live with him and his family in their rural Tennessee cabin, that he had been outfitting for the apocalypse. He was also relentless in his attempts to get me to date his daughter. Some months later, he disappeared from my life as well.

Another client found me: an eccentric and private publicist in the music industry. He gave me gifts, spoke hopefully about us having a grand and long-lasting friendship together, and assured me that he could be trusted. He pushed my boundarires, disrespected my time, and attempted to control me. I cut him off and moved on. I later came to learn that he had groomed, drugged, and raped multiple young men, and had over two dozen allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct. I believe those were his intentions with me.

December crept by, and 2023 came to a close. On the 5th day of the new year, I was homeless.

It was late. And cold. I pulled into the parking lot of a 2 star hotel near the Nashville airport. After paying the clerk, I stepped into a dark, cold room that smelled of cigarettes. I scooped protein powder into an empty gatorade bottle and drank it. I pushed forward. I didn’t have any other options. I wasn’t going to lose my business, and I had nothing else to rely on. So I focused, and pushed forward.

I walked into client sessions with a smile on my face, and let on to no one that I was in a crisis. I knew that if I let it affect my work, I was cooked. In this business, there is no wiggle room. The smallest bump in the road is enough to destroy a relationship, and lose someone’s business. I couldn’t afford to provide an experience that was less than stellar.

In the one month that I was homeless, I didn’t lose a single client, and not once cent of income.

In February ’24, I moved into an apartment. I would wake up at 4:30 to make coffee and drive into town for my first client. The next couple months were my worst since the beginning. Income dwindled, and I scraped by on what little work I could find. Eventually, business started to pick up. Client turnover was slowing down, and I was finding some predictability with my income.

And here we are, one year since the beginning. I still strive to develop strong client relationships by showing up authentically, while maintaining a professional dynamic. I still do my best to keep my personal struggles from affecting my work. People still have opinions on how I should run my business. And that’s okay. I know that I will ultimately make the right call myself. No one knows my path better than I do, and no one has to live with the consequences of my choices like I do.

I heard a statistic once: 90% of personal trainers don’t see their second year in business. I told myself that I would be in the 10% that did. And that’s why September 1st 2024 is an important day to me. It’s the day I get to celebrate making it to year 2. Catch me on the dock at the marina, saying goodbye to summer, and thanking myself for staying strong when things got tough.