This image illustrates the importance of keeping things simple. What you’re looking at is six years worth of daily planners used for scheduling assessments and training sessions here at Cressey Sports Performance (CSP).

You read that correctly – we used (and in some scenarios continue to use) a old-fashioned pencil and paper to book training sessions here at CSP for the first six years we were in business. You can judge us if you’d like, but it won’t change the fact that we got by just fine without sinking thousands of dollars into an account with an enterprise scheduling software provider at a time when cash-flow was of the utmost importance.

Ask Yourself:

Are you budgeting $6,900 for a Keiser Functional Trainer when you could just buy the floor model of a generic brand for a third of the price from a local equipment distributor? Guess what – the Paramount model I picked up on day one is still perfectly functional here at CSP Massachusetts today.

Did you just spend $1,000+ on a York Oak Platform when you could have just dropped an extra panel or two of rubber flooring down to dampen the noise and vibration? We’re still “gonna get platforms someday” almost ten years after opening our doors.

Are you dropping $125/month on MindBody’s Pro package when you could have brought a pencil and a $12 planner?

You’re running a startup. Start acting like it if you want to be blogging about your experiences doing so a decade from now.