If there is a silver lining to living with an infant who wakes up every three hours demanding food, it is that my day is all but guaranteed to start before the sun comes up, and that is a distraction-free hour or two that most people don't get to enjoy. I now drink more coffee, watch more morning news, and consume more useful business content before half of my family rolls out of bed.  

As a result, I've got some great content for you in this edition of my "Friday Four."

First things first, here's a look at some content published on my own site this week:

• 3 Tips for Transitioning Your Training Model to Semi-Private: It doesn't a rocket scientist to realize the accommodating 5 athletes at $50/session is more practical than a single athlete at $100/session, right? So, why isn't every gym in the world at least considering a transition to a semi-private training model? More often than not, I find it is because they can't decide where to start with the process of convincing personal training clients to embrace a modified training model. This piece discusses three steps a personal training facility can take to get the wheels in motion toward a more profitable model. 

• The Emotional Weight of Entrepreneurship - Huffington Post: With each of the three points covered in this post, I felt as if the author had walked a mile in my shoes. While I 100% agree with the first two discussions covering the emotional nature of being a business owner and the constant challenges to my value structure, it was point number three that hit especially close to home. For those of you grinding through the day-to-day of running your gym, this post will remind you that there are plenty of others out there handling the same struggles.

• Random Thoughts on Long-Term Fitness Industry Success - Cressey: You could easily replace the term "Fitness Industry" with "Professional" in the title of this post and the message would ring true regardless of your industry of choice. The "four predominant ways to win over a potential customer" portion of this article was beefy enough to stand on it's own yet there are several more spot-on insights in there. Take close note of the importance of humility and which component of your professional skill set may be what Eric refers to as a "trip wire."

• How Readability Can Make Sure People Actually Read Your Content - SJO.com: Go ahead and bookmark Sol Orwell's website right now and thank me later. His blog posts are always packed with actionable content grounded in real world experience. I challenge you to find a single piece he's published that would qualify as "fluff." Now that you've got him locked in for future reading, start thinking about how some simple modifications to font and formatting may help to increase the size of your audience as you continue to pour your blood sweat and tears in to creating valuable content.

• Small Business Owners Should Manage Profit First - Forbes: This quick video from Forbes contributor Luis Mosca challenges you to think differently about how you look at your financials. I'd imagine this will be the first time you hear someone suggest that you move your desired profits directly to the top line of your expense sheet. He makes a great point when he says that an active owners who take a salary are doing so to "perform a function," as opposed to collecting profits.