It was the job of my dreams, I think.

You know, when people talk about how you're always right where you are supposed to be. 

This sort of felt like that, failing into growth over and over again had led to a folk in the road. 

Take a huge risk/ opportunity or take a lower risk jump to the side. 

That's what the autobiographical story would say. In truth I didn't even see the opportunity because it was too big for my brain to even notice it.

To put it into story form. In 2005 I wrote a letter to 30 rehab businesses and got a job at 4 of them. 

One of them, my favourite actually. Was a gym. I really enjoyed working there and the team were great. 

I worked there learning from much more experienced therapists and trainers for 3 years before the business went into administration. 

I'm not sure why but if you've done the maths you'll know the recession didn't help a high-end personal training studio. 

I'm sure if the owner told his story he'd say it was the best thing that ever happen to him. 

Anyway, the resident Osteopath took the place on and I approach him with a proposal. I'd would keep the doors open if I could rent the gym to run a small gym and personal training business from the place. 

I was starting off the back of having lost 90% of my own work both as a result of what happened there and a pretty cut throat act from a physio who was losing work to me at an insurance company I did sports massage at. 

What I quickly discovered was that I had been an amateur up until this point. 

Amateur writers talk about writers block, profession writes don't have time for it. 

They just sit down and they write, most of it crap, some of it gold. 

They keep the gold and carry on writing. This was the lesson l learned from keeping my promise. Being present in the gym 7am open til 8pm close Monday to Friday and 9-3pm on Saturdays. 

Hard work and long hour are exhausting, for a while, until they're what you do. But you stay sat at the table to gold will come. 

As Hemingway once said, "writing is easy, you just sit down at a typewriter and bleed." 

I bled for a year and a half, but then I hit a tipping point. The gain one client at a time model eventually paid off. 

We always want success fast but the only model that works in the health industry is to give the person in front of you the best service of their life. 

If you're not doing that, you aren't building anything, you're just a crafty sales person. 

4 months after that tipping point we hit our fork. I said it was in the road but it felt like it was in the eyes. 

What you get to learn from these ordeals is that there is rarely a good guy and and bad guy. 

Just people who have no choice but to put themselves and their family first and hope that everyone else gets on ok. When you're the writer it's hard not to write yourself the good guy.

Although I like to think I've never held the fork I'm almost certain there are plenty of people out there who feel wronged by me. I apologies to anyone who feels like that and I hope you've healed stronger as I have. 

It was January and the business I had build up was to close. My first daughter was due in 2 months and I had zero income. For 2 days I panicked, paced and planned. Until my father in law said. 

"Why don't you take on the gym?"

It felt like he has said

"Have you considered becoming an astronaut?"

It might sound ridiculous but I don't know, it felt like something I didn't have the right to do. 

"Who me? No no, way above my station". 

I started asking questions and looking at numbers and pretty quickly it felt like the logical thing to do. What looked like a big risk was probably the smallest one available to me. 

2011 - Aaron, James, Jayne, Rachel, Francis, Ben, Matt, Matt, William, Quinner, Neil, Frank, Sarah, Lara, Conrad, Paul, Ian, Zoey, Pete and so many more... 

Members, clients, staff in the early days, people who bent over backwards to help me make it a success in the beginning. 

People talk about being a self mad man but in many ways that's both not true and even offensive. 

It's hard to know what the exact mechanism of success is but I can tell you it's never transactional. I give you take. It's chemical, it's the combination of energy between people. 

It's 1 + 1 = 3 

It's this knowledge that has caused my change in direction. I love the people, the energy equation, creating results in each others lives disproportionate to the investment. 

I just finished working with someone who wanted a diet tweaking to some fat she just couldn't shift. 3 months on, loves food, love playing, less stress, new career, small business launched. These might all read as big changes but let me tell you they are tiny compared to what actually happened. 

We want to be able to fast forward through the pain and the hurdles and the mess and the emotion and the broken hearts, the wrenching guts, we want to glide smoothly along the path. 

The funny things is, I'm not sure there is a path. 

This is just the way, always in the right place, learning the right lesson to get to the next phase to prepare you for the next challenge. 

All that changes, is you.

Ed Ley

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