As I've said, I've succeeded in getting a website of sorts up (Athletic Nation of the Triangle). I created it with CoffeeCup's Visual Site Designer. It looks good on the software but less than great in person. On both Firefox and IE on my computer, it looks as if everything is compressed into the left 2/3's of the screen. On my friend Jess Stoke's computer, it looks horrible, with text and pictures overlapping. Jess, who is in charge of our church's website (True North Church) and does a great job, told me I'm using absolute positioning. This piece of Greek was explained to me by him. Suffice it to say that I need to do a better job or hire someone to do a better job. Being the cheap small business owner I am, I did a search on the internet and came up with a great article on software for web design on the Consumer Search website. It describes the software that's out there in great detail. They give praise to a free program called Nvu. They describe Nvu as a "gem" in the category of free web design software so I thought I'd give it a try (They also loved CoffeeCup's HTML editor, but I've tried that and I just can't do HTML). I went through some of the tutorials and I really like it so far. I'll play with it a bit tomorrow and see if I can get a website that:

• Look the way I want it to on the majority of computers
• Provides the information I want it to in a fashion I want it to
• Can be effectively seen by Search Engines
  
• Can be monitored by me (Google Analytics)

We'll see how it goes.

We're at the point at our gym that we're pretty set with expenses. Now, the revenue side needs attention. We've hit a bit of a lull the last few weeks with no new members but a few on the horizon. My GM, Clay, is getting a bit frustrated but is wise beyond his years and gave me good advise. A friend of his is in the financial industry and told Clay that when you hit a slow period in sales, it is easy to give up or get down. That is my natural tendency. But his friend, and Clay, feel that this is the most important time to grind it out, to keep working. The results will come. I know that's true. Luckily for me, I've got a great guy like Clay to do the grinding and keep our business going. He also keeps my spirits up. Next week, for example, we'll have a table at Golf Galaxy's Customer Night and we hope to make some contacts there. That was all arranged by Clay. Well done, big dog!