Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1550: How to Get Rich as a Personal Trainer

Episode Date: May 10, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin discuss ways to make money as a personal trainer. The misconceptions around the money in fitness. (1:44) How few people get into fitness intending to make money. (3...:26) The guys look back at the time they fell in love with fitness. (6:46) How to Get Rich as a Personal Trainer. (14:45) Breaking down the prototype of a successful personal trainer. (15:52) The pros/cons of working for a “big box” gym.  (22:40) The pros/cons of working as an in-home trainer. (28:51) The pros/cons of working in a private studio. (33:00) The pros/cons of working as an online trainer. (41:40) Mind Pump’s trainer hacks for success. (45:00) The art of effective communication. (54:25) The importance/value of education. (56:43) Related Links/Products Mentioned May Specials: MAPS Aesthetic & the Extreme Fitness Bundle 50% off!  **Promo code “MAYSPECIAL” at checkout** Visit ChiliPad for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! Personal Trainer Annual Salary Study: Money Buys Happiness When Income Is $75,000 - TIME Prime Bundle | MAPS Fitness Products - Mind Pump Media 3 Things You Should Know Before You Become a Personal Trainer – Mind Pump Blog Why All Personal Trainers Need to Understand Mobility and Correctional Exercises – Mind Pump Blog How to Become a Successful Personal Trainer - Mind Pump Media The Most Important Skill For Personal Trainers – Mind Pump Blog NCI Certifications x Mind Pump Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Arthur Brooks (@arthurcbrooks)  Instagram

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Starting point is 00:00:00 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the world's number one fitness health entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pup, Ryan Tzase. Today's episode, we talk about how to get rich being a personal trainer. Now, as you know, Adam, Justin and myself were trainers for over two decades. So this episode is full of amazing information. So if you're in the
Starting point is 00:00:30 fitness industry or thinking about getting in the fitness industry, listen to this episode. Now, this episode is brought to you by our sponsor, Chili. Now, Chili Sleep makes these amazing products that sit on your bed. So it's like a, it's almost like a thin layer that goes underneath your sheet that you can cool or warm. Essentially, you can set the temperature of your bed and there, some of the products have two sides. So you and your spouse can have two different temperatures. By the way, it uses water. So there's no EMFs in the pad themselves.
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Starting point is 00:01:39 Just use the code may special with no space for the discount. So Adam another good topic you came up with. Oh, are you giving me credit for this? Two in a row now. Wow, well, two in a row, that's it. No, there's more of a two out of 50, but these are two thousand in a row. Oh, let's say a hot streak, hot streak. Yeah, you want to talk about how to get rich in famous.
Starting point is 00:01:58 I think that's a good, not rich and famous. I don't know, I said that rich in fitness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If that's even possible, right? So that's another topic. Yeah. No, I think it's I think it's a really cool conversation for a couple of reasons. One, I think there's a lot of misconceptions around how much money is in fitness. So especially since the the new category, which will address, which is the influencer, right? So that didn't exist when I first started. That wasn't an option, like,
Starting point is 00:02:25 hey, good, fancy. Would you like to be an influencer actually? I want to influence fidget dirty work. Yeah, it is. So that's now a new category slash online coach, whatever you get, right? So, but there's also this idea that there's a lot of money in owning your own gym.
Starting point is 00:02:43 I mean, I used to think that was kind of like the pinnacle of a personal training. You become a personal trainer. That or actually becoming a trainer for athletes, pro athletes, right, or celebrities. That one was a mind blow. I blew my mind when I realized, oh, much they don't make it.
Starting point is 00:02:56 That's why I think it's a good conversation because there's a lot of things that I thought were true that were not true at all. In fact, many of the things that I thought were true were like the complete opposite. Once I was in the space long enough and met enough of these trainers that had success in these categories. Yeah, one of the things, and we'll get into all the categories where at the common places you can work in fitness and then what it looks like or what the strategy should be in terms of how to make a lot of money in those. But one of the things I love about fitness is that very few people actually get into fitness
Starting point is 00:03:29 with the intention of making a lot of money. And I like that because, I mean, there are definitely people that go into fitness to try and make a lot of money. They don't last though. That's what I mean. If you're doing this and you're doing a professionally full time for longer than five years, definitely longer than 10 years, It's usually because you have a deep passion for fitness and for helping people.
Starting point is 00:03:48 And that's good, in my opinion. It kind of weeds out the, I'm just gonna jump into this because it's a money making opportunity, which would bring in a lot of people who maybe aren't, you know, is passionate about fitness. That doesn't mean that everybody in fitness knows what they're doing and is good and a lot of stuff, but at least, at the very least,
Starting point is 00:04:06 I think when people get into fitness, it's usually because they like working out or they like helping people with fitness. Well, the good news is a lot of the phonies that got away with a lot of their techniques before the internet has really taken off. Like, I mean, you can't really pull that off anymore. You can just Google and fact check a lot of information. Like, people are providing these days. So you really do have to be educated
Starting point is 00:04:28 and know something in terms of, you know, how to then relay that to your potential clients because they're gonna call you out on it. I don't know if I fully agree with that though. I feel like there's, it might be worse now because of the, how many people now, just because of the sheer volume. Well, yeah, because there's this new category
Starting point is 00:04:47 that kind of existed like when we first started, so when we first started, there were the anomalies that made it on the cover of a magazine, or maybe we're on a TV show and you were a celebrity, and just because of that, you become a famous trainer and make a lot of money regardless of your education.
Starting point is 00:05:04 But to me, that was a very small percentage where I feel like there's a much bigger percentage of people now that get famous on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat or one of YouTube because they look amazing or they're funny or they do something cool. And then they're out. They say waste trainers.
Starting point is 00:05:22 Yeah, and then they're out giving you, and there's still that. No, that's a good point. Although I will say this, if you were to look at the total number of people that make money doing what you're saying versus the total number of people that work in fitness in general,
Starting point is 00:05:35 it's still a small sliver, right? Cause it might be the perception is, oh, all these influencers, it's easy to make money this way, but really it's a small percentage of people. Oh, you think so. I do that. Oh, that'd be an interesting statistic for Doug to look up.
Starting point is 00:05:48 Just as he's getting comfortable. I, sorry, Doug. I know, I don't, I think it's bigger than you think. Well, I think there's a lot more. Like if you look at like all the trainers, all the people that work in gym. Right, right, yeah, if you compare. Compared to people who make a good living just
Starting point is 00:06:05 through being an influencer. Yeah. I mean, I mean, I guess the an easy way to start to try and figure this out would be, you know, how many fitness YouTube channels exist, right? Yeah, but how many of them make money is what I'm saying? Like, how many of them could actually support someone versus how many people support themselves working in traditional fitness? Well, I mean, as we get into these,, I think it's pretty similar across the board. I think the lower percentile of people in all these categories make 20% of the money, and then the bulk of the money is made, and the 90%ile of people that, which is a very small percentage, I think that it's across all of them. Regardless.
Starting point is 00:06:45 Yeah, regardless. Yeah, no, this is a good topic because I remember as a kid, right? So I fell in love with working out right away. I was 14 years old, working out my backyard, my parents' backyard, and just loved it, and knew that I wanted to work in fitness. I didn't know much about gym, the gym industry and stuff like that, but I knew I wanted to do something with fitness. And I remember my first day as a personal trainer, it was like the first time in my life, I did something that felt like so, like it's the first time I did somewhere, I'm like, this is what I'm supposed to do. And then
Starting point is 00:07:20 and if you're like that, you know, you want to think about how can I support myself and also be successful? What a dream, right? If you like that, you know, you want to think about how can I support myself and also be successful? What a dream, right? If you love fitness, you love helping people, you love the industry of fitness and health. What a dream to be able to make a good living doing that thing? Because I'll be honest with you, since the day I worked in fitness, I've had fun every single day. I mean, there were more challenging days and others, but if I compare myself to the average person and what jobs that they do and how they feel about their work, I mean, I loved it.
Starting point is 00:07:51 I loved working in gyms. I loved working in my studio. I love what we do. It's just fun the whole time. It's very rewarding if you come into it with that mindset. And you're coming in with a helping attitude and really trying to make an impact on people's lives. And you have that kind of
Starting point is 00:08:06 interpersonal relationship skills, which is something that is vital to this industry. You can't really pull off sitting behind the desk and not being super social. You gotta be really into the fact that you're gonna be interacting with people. Well, ironically, the money actually is what kind of pulled me in, right?
Starting point is 00:08:22 So I kind of fell into the job. We have a similar story where we were going to school, we were gonna finish Kinesh, and then we both decided, no, we're not gonna finish. I think I got a tiny bit further than you did, that's it, because you only did one class, right? I know, I know, I know. Literally one class.
Starting point is 00:08:34 I almost got my A.A. I sat in class and left. I don't totally beat you. Yeah, I did beat you there. The second most I did, yeah. Yeah, I did. Yeah, I did. The second most I did.
Starting point is 00:08:43 The least I did. The third if we count Doug, I should say. Yeah I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
Starting point is 00:08:50 I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
Starting point is 00:08:58 I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. was pursuing kinesiology and I've heard that word in a while. I wanted to be a personal trainer. He said, well, he didn't use puke but he made me feel like one,
Starting point is 00:09:12 you know. You want to do it my daughter and you want to be a trainer? You know, he said, you know, he said, well, you're not, you're not going to make anything more than about 50 grand a year. I mean, that's what the, and you know, when you, when you google what the average income is, he's actually right. It's true. So I had no thoughts of like, oh, this is gonna, I'm gonna make a ton of money. What ended up happening was, I loved it like you so much. We're like, I didn't wanna leave, dude.
Starting point is 00:09:34 I remember being there all day. Because the first job that ever happened to you? For, oh yeah, by far. It was the first job that I didn't ever look at the clock. And when I was off, I wanted to be there. I just, I loved the atmosphere. I loved, I did know that I liked working with people. I love talking and meeting new people.
Starting point is 00:09:52 So I enjoyed the communication aspect of it. I also was about improving myself and wanted to change my own physique. And so I was learning the subject that I was also trying to learn to teach people. And then I was so in love with all that. And then I was watching every paycheck. A little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more.
Starting point is 00:10:11 And realized like, oh wow, there's potential for me to make some money in this, because I love it. You know what I like about your story that I think is most interesting, Adam, is that you did that. You left the fitness industry in pursuit of money. Yeah. When you opened up some of the first cannabis clubs, remember, this is back when now marijuana is much more mainstream
Starting point is 00:10:31 and it's not so gray market. But you did it when it was gray market. When the money was flying, you took a lot of risks. You made a shit ton of money. You left anyway to go back to fitness. Yeah, yeah, that was a very important moment in my life, right? So I got into the fitness, not knowing I can make money, made at that time the most money I ever made.
Starting point is 00:10:52 I was in my 20s, I had reached six figures by time I was about 22 years old, I popped my house at that time, all the success, but I still wanted more. I mean, what was still driving me was this desire to make more money. And I loved personal training, I thought, oh, this is great. But I was quickly seeing that, oh, man, I don't know if I'm ever going to reach this, you know, half a million, millions of
Starting point is 00:11:13 dollars a year, which I had these aspirations to make this kind of money. And I remember, like getting this opportunity after I think it was like nine, eight, nine years, maybe more in the fitness space when a client offered me this this opportunity And he slid a piece of paper over to me and all that piece of paper It said the minimum I would make would half a million dollars a year I go, that's what I expect you to make in the first year who knows where it'll go from there. It's good five times more than you would probably Yeah, yeah, and so I said yeah, I'm out. I literally was like walked away from the 401k the benefits everything and with you know I literally was like, walked away from the 401k, the benefits, everything, and with no money yet
Starting point is 00:11:46 coming in from that, just the opportunity. Well, and at that time too, you were a fitness manager, right? So there was like, within the corporate setting, you were still kind of aspiring to get, you know, like different jobs where I got like a promotion. And so there's ways you could, you could like, you know, make more income within that setting, but it was still capped at like what would you say? Like eight, 80 to like
Starting point is 00:12:09 a hundred thousand. Yeah. Yeah. So as an FM, so I was making about one 10, right? So you 80 to 120 would be like the range, actually go even lower if you were in a small club. And you know, you remember, you got to you got to explain it. You were a high performer. Yeah. That wasn't what the average. So what actually did push me over was this was they kept every year So I was there for six different comp plan changes So basically every other year a new comp plan came out and anybody that knows you know When a company does that it's never to give your employees more money. It's always to figure out how to save money Yeah, I had to save money
Starting point is 00:12:41 But what they did up until the last comp plan, they always did a good job of You know, we're gonna rearrange this so the company saves money But we still want to dangle that carrot for those top performers that they can still make as much maybe more money And so I just had to rework how I worked I had to figure out new ways to get that new target until the last year The last year they did a comp plan where it was here's your ceiling I don't care if you sell a million dollars item and fitness this month for our company, you don't make any more dollars once you hit here and they put a ceiling on me.
Starting point is 00:13:11 And that was really what kind of pushed me out because I was still aspiring to make these numbers or like you said Justin, looking at the positions, two positions ahead to where I could get there. Like okay, this guy makes a quarter million, how many more years do I get there? And then all of a sudden this guy comes to me and says, hey, half a million dollars a year
Starting point is 00:13:27 if you come manage these clubs for me and that's what sent me out. But to your point, I did that and I reached this amount of money that I thought would be I would be so happy. And temporarily, I was. I mean, when the money first started coming in, like I was enjoying every bit of it.
Starting point is 00:13:43 Yeah, the novelty is really awesome. Yeah, yeah, you know. No, it was. It was incredible. I was spending money on all kinds of stuff and flying all over the place and having a blast. And probably about a year of that went by. And I did.
Starting point is 00:13:57 I just had this moment of reflection where I was in the worst shape of my life. So I'd reach the highest body fat percentage I ever reached for. I just had a girl cheat on me. First time that I ever happened in my life, I just lost a best friend, not like he died. Just we stopped being friends anymore. And we were like long, long time friends.
Starting point is 00:14:16 My relationship with my siblings and family, that time was pretty poor. It wasn't making a lot of connection. When I looked around, I was just, I will, every other aspect of my life, I wasn't happy. And that was what made me go back to fitness. And I remember thinking there was sitting down, I was like, man, I've got all the money I ever thought I would need. So I don't have to do anything to work for money at the time. So I can really think about like, where do I want to be? So then when I came back in fitness, it really truly was for
Starting point is 00:14:42 the love of fitness. Yeah. And that's a great story because, it's a great thing to talk about here because to, if you love fitness, making good money and fitness is amazing. But really it's not about just the money and the studies actually support this. There's lots of studies that are done on this, but when you make enough money to cover your basics
Starting point is 00:15:02 and when you're not stressed out about money, anything above that brings you no additional happiness. In fact, Arthur Brooks was an expert on happiness talks about this quite a bit. Now, when you work in fitness, especially if you have a passion for fitness, it's rewarding because you're seeing, you're helping other people,
Starting point is 00:15:19 you're doing something very positive, you know. Every, if I do better in fitness, if I own a gym, or if I'm a personal trainer, or other things that we're gonna talk about here, it's usually because I'm doing a better job with the people that I'm working with. And so the rewarding aspect from it is incredible.
Starting point is 00:15:35 Now if you throw money on top of it, boy is that an incredibly fulfilling situation to be in. So this is a great topic, right? How to get rich, but do it in a field that tends to be very... You have your cake and eat it too. Absolutely, very rewarding. So this, the most obvious job in fitness
Starting point is 00:15:54 is personal trainer. I think that's where most people who are fitness fanatics think, right? They think, okay, I love working out. I'm already like training my friends just as well as it is, right? I've already trained my friends, I already tell people how to work out. Everybody asked me how to work out. I love already like training my friends. It's what it is right I've already trained my friends already tell people how to work out everybody asked me how to work out I love it. It's my favorite thing to do
Starting point is 00:16:08 I would live in the gym if I could anyway. I might as well, you know, make money doing this Now personal trainers boy There's a there's such a range in terms of how much money you can make as a personal trainer average trainer in the US Makes about $40,000 a year Now, average trainer in the US makes about $40,000 a year. That's not much in most places. Now, in some places you can support yourself and be okay. Probably can't support a family in most places in the US, definitely not metropolitan areas,
Starting point is 00:16:36 but there's a huge range there. And I'll tell you this, as a trainer, I'd make well into six figures, but that was the top range. It's not gonna be very, very common. That won't be what you think, what you see things. Now, I used to think when I first became a personal trainer that the celebrity trainers or the NFL or sports team trainers
Starting point is 00:16:56 were some of the highest-painter. Well, I'm just a pinnacle of what you could ever achieve. That's what I thought. Now, the truth is, they don't make much at all. It's the opposite. That was one of those areas. So when I became a personal trainer, another thing, I mean, early on, that's what I was aspiring to be.
Starting point is 00:17:10 It was like, oh man, I'm, you know, getting my certifications, getting my experience. And then maybe one day I'll be, you know, the trainer for an NFL team or for a basketball team. Like that's like your dream job. I actually dated a girl that went to school. I forgot what her degree was from Cal Poly, but it specializes in like, it's like sports rec something management, some shit like that. And she got a job. This is actually when this all, when I found this all
Starting point is 00:17:34 out, she worked for Staples Center. You know, she's hanging out with Kobe Bryant, Chiquil O'Neill during that, that era and stuff. I was just like, oh my God, so amazing dream job. Yeah, dream job, right? She was making like 40 grand a year working for a stable center. And I remember asking her like, what, that makes no sense. That company, they make so much money. She goes, there is a line of people waiting
Starting point is 00:17:56 to do my job for free. Yeah, exactly. Because people, there's a lot of people that would love just to be in that light so much that they would just- The supply connections, all that kind of stuff. It's just huge. Yeah, the that light so much that they would supply connections all that kind of stuff. Yes.
Starting point is 00:18:07 Yeah, the supply is so big that the pro that's it. And of course, it's supplied demand right is a huge supply of trainers that would die to train professional athletes for free. So the pay is very low. Now that's not to say that these trainers aren't good. Many of these trained are very educated and very good. They just don't make a ton of money. Well, it was interesting too because I was always trying to attract
Starting point is 00:18:27 that professional athlete. I just thought that was gonna be in the perfect client I could possibly get, because not only will they be, they bought into my methods and my system, but I'll be able to display that. Everybody's gonna buy in and see, oh, hey, you know, I got Michael Jordan
Starting point is 00:18:41 to do my, you know, whatever workout that I just came up with and You know, I ended up getting Like a few NFL players and just came to realize real quickly that they have a totally different perspective of You know your your your value and they come in like expecting a lot and not willing to pay Right you're lucky that was the intention to you That was the other thing that was so surprising to me, was again, thinking that they were gonna make all this money when you got them.
Starting point is 00:19:09 I finally got the opportunity to do the same thing too. And because they are so used to getting everything handed to them, all these companies wanted them to sponsor or say you like my stuff. So everybody gives them this free shit. That's what they have this attitude. That when they walk in, that's like, oh, worse. I gotta pay for it.
Starting point is 00:19:26 No, you're best bet as a personal trainer if, from a money standpoint, is to train the average person. That's it. The everyday average person. And if you wanna go even further, you can become specialized in training like, the elderly. That is an incredible market. I'm gonna tell you that right now,
Starting point is 00:19:42 towards the end of my career, that's a market I focus on. Huge market, still growing. Incredible market. A lot of trainers, they don't wanna do it because they think it's too challenging or whatever. So the supply is actually quite low. And believe me, when someone hires you over the age of 65,
Starting point is 00:19:54 they're the most consistent clients you'll ever get in your entire life. They show up every single time, they resign, every single time they feel and see the value, or you could specialize in like training moms or business people. but generally speaking, that general population, that's probably the best place to focus on.
Starting point is 00:20:12 I could literally wrap it and reduce it down to like one thing, which had in common with all my very best clients I've ever had, and it was all related to pain and managing that. And yes, there's the weight and there's all these health issues that you're working through, but a lot of it was definitely, it was working through a lot of the pain and alleviating that for them.
Starting point is 00:20:33 It was the lifelong clients you get from that. I would agree, because I specialized in like CEO, middle age, middle age, CEO, VP, high performing person. And yeah, a lot of them came and said, oh, I wanna lose weight, I wanna Middle age, CEO, VP, high performing person. And yeah, a lot of them came and said, Oh, I, you know, I want to lose weight, I want to build some muscle on, but really more than anything, they just wanted to feel good so they kick ass their job. Oh, yeah, they were very driven at whatever it was they did for a profession and they did not want their health slowing them down with that. So being able to relieve them of pain and just
Starting point is 00:21:01 make them feel good, trumped even them saying, oh, I need to lose 15 pounds out of them or I want to gain five pounds of muscle. No, the beauty, I mean, you take someone's pain away that they've accepted is like, this is the pain I'm gonna live with because a lot of these people just like, oh, I just identify this with the other. I have a bad knee or am I bad?
Starting point is 00:21:17 And you solve it for them, which oftentimes chronic pain is a result of muscle imbalance. It's very solvable. You blow their mind. And here's the beauty of it. Fixing pain doesn't require oftentimes, not sometimes it does, but not oftentimes.
Starting point is 00:21:30 This requires them to do the work on their own all the time without you, which losing weight does. Like I can train you twice a week. You're not gonna lose weight if you don't fix your diet. Twice a week, sometimes I can make your pain way better and my value goes through the roof. This is always why when I get a your pain way better, and my value goes through the roof. This is always why when I get a DM from a personal trainer or a message and we're talking,
Starting point is 00:21:50 and I ask them if they own Prime and Prime Pro, and they don't, I want to slap you in the face. Because literally what we did with those two programs, we gave you, it's all there, man. Well, and in something that we've collected over two decades, individually, we came together and tried to simplify it, so even a relatively beginner trainer could come in, get that information and then be able to apply it to 95% of their clients and really truly help them with chronic pain.
Starting point is 00:22:20 If you don't own that and you're a personal trainer, you deserve to be slapped for that, because that to me, I think there's a one common thing that we all talked about, that even though we train different types of clientele, you being able to alleviate chronic pain in most regular clients is like huge difference. There's a huge, huge one.
Starting point is 00:22:38 And so there's different places that you can work as a trainer. So we'll start with probably the most common, which is your big box gym. Now there's pluses and minuses. Now we'll start with probably the most common, which is your big box gym. Now there's pluses and minuses. Now we'll start with the minuses, okay? The minus of working in a big box gym is you'll probably make less per hour
Starting point is 00:22:55 working in a big box gym than you will doing private or you know, training people in the houses and stuff like that. This is true, but that often fools people. Oftentimes people look at the per hour, like, oh, that's gonna make more per hour doing this, but here's a problem, you're not gonna be working very many hours.
Starting point is 00:23:13 Now what a big box Jim provides you with is tons and tons and tons, almost an infinite number of opportunities to get clients. Now, if you're a new trainer and you find it difficult to walk the workout floor where you have 50 people working out, all of which who potentially could hire you, if you find that challenging, multiply times a trillion.
Starting point is 00:23:36 That's what it's like to train privately. When you have nobody on your workout floor and you gotta go walk around the streets to find clients, big box gyms are just lead machines, literally. And this is something I got good at real quick. I had no problem approaching and talking people and talking to people. So it was beautiful.
Starting point is 00:23:55 I would show up to work prime time, workouts are going on. And I used to be able to say, I'm gonna get myself two clients today. And I would, every single time. Big box gyms allow you to do that. There's no better training grounds in my opinion, especially somebody like me too that maybe had to work through a lot of those initial conversations
Starting point is 00:24:13 and sparking that up that was really challenging. There's something that I had to immerse myself completely in and challenge myself to approach people and find out, hey, what are you doing today? What's your name? How long have you been working out here? All these types of things, it started to build a lot of momentum in my own confidence,
Starting point is 00:24:30 which then I carried with me throughout the rest of my career. Well, what do they say? It's 10,000 hours before you're considered a master in anything. Good luck getting 10,000 hours being private and trying to find clients like that. Try getting a thousand hours. So a big part of the value, too, this is why I think we all agree on the big box as one of the best places for a trainer to learn in, is just the practice, to sheer practice.
Starting point is 00:24:53 Forget what you're getting paid, forget what they potentially can convert into revenue. There's just tremendous value. And you're getting a different person in front of you every hour every day. Yeah, you're a detective. You got to work through a lot of variables. You wouldn't even have thought of. And this is where you get more volume, where you can like figure this out in a big box city.
Starting point is 00:25:14 Yeah, and now the potential to become a great trainer after working a couple of years in a big box gym is higher than the potential training on your own or in a private studio for a couple of years, just because of sheer volume and experience. If you do a decent job within a short period of time, you're full time in a big box gym, it's because of the opportunities.
Starting point is 00:25:35 Very hard, not saying it's not possible, much more challenging in other scenarios. Now, big box gyms are not gonna pay you as much per hour. However, that's not where the opportunities stop. If you don't mind moving up into management and leadership positions, Big Box Gems companies can provide pretty damn good pay. Now, I worked at 24 hour back in the day.
Starting point is 00:25:58 I don't think it's like this anymore, but I was a general manager. In the late 90s, I was making six figures. That was phenomenal money for anybody in those days and I was managing big box gyms. I know there's a lot of companies out UFC gyms, for example, the management positions and opportunities there are tremendous.
Starting point is 00:26:16 So if you're okay doing that because you're still in fitness, but you're not training people one-on-one. So I understand someone may be watching and thinking, I just want to train people, in which case, then this isn't applied to you. But if you don't mind managing gyms, leading other trainers, and you worked in, let's say, UFC gym, and you got that big box experience,
Starting point is 00:26:35 and then you want to make more money, but you like that environment, you can move up to a fitness manager, a general manager, a district manager, and beyond. And then the pay gets pretty damn good. Now you're making pretty good money working in fitness in that kind of environment. Now there is another drawback of working in a company like that is you're very limited to you building additional revenue streams for you.
Starting point is 00:26:59 Very true. So this is the fact many of them prevent you to do that. That's right. Yeah, most of these big companies would not allow you to be working there as a personal So this is what- So this is what- So this is what- So this is what- So this is what- So this is what- So this is what- So this is what- So this is what- So this is what- So this is what- So this is what-
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Starting point is 00:27:24 So this is what- So this is what- So this is what- So this is what- So this is what- So this is what- So this is what- So this is what- So this is what- from there. You also to some extent have to drink the Kool-Aid if you want to succeed. If you want to move up into management and you're working for a company where you're like, I don't always agree with everything that they say. They want me to sell this supplement package or they want me to train people in this way that doesn't jive with how I like to teach fitness. You're probably not going to get up into management unless you're like a team player. A team player, and that can be challenging, right? That can be challenging if you're in a position
Starting point is 00:27:51 where you don't agree with everything, then you're limited, right? You kind of have to follow their structures. That's another draw. But I like that as far as training ground, right? I think there's a lot of value in, how do I navigate, because that's real life, man. How do I navigate something that I don't fully believe in?
Starting point is 00:28:07 So how do I keep my integrity, but yet also a piece of our management? Do there's, and learning. It's like level two, right? Yeah. So you work your way past level one and you get all the experience, all the volume and you work your systems out.
Starting point is 00:28:20 So one thing that I was doing the whole time that I was training was figuring out my own systems and figuring out You know what kind of marketing materials like we're being used by the company and like if because I was always thinking about if I'm gonna Do this on my own? What are they doing right and what are they providing that I would then have to do you know Af on my own because just going off on my own before going through that would have been a big mistake in my opinion. Yeah, no, totally true. So, you know, there you have it with the big box dims and being a trainer, but there's
Starting point is 00:28:50 other places you could become a trainer as well. You can train people in their home and do it remotely. Now, the pluses of that, you typically make a lot more per hour. For a couple of reasons. One, people will typically pay a bit of a premium to have you come to their house. Two, you don't share that revenue with anybody else, right? So typically when you're working a gym,
Starting point is 00:29:12 if the gym charges $75 an hour for your personal training session, you're getting at $30 of it or whatever, right? So they're gonna take a big chunk. You are working for yourself in home, you charge your client $100 an hour, You're gonna make $100 an hour. Now the drawback to that, of course, is the just amount of volume of clients.
Starting point is 00:29:31 I cannot see a new trainer being successful doing this at all. You gotta have a following. Yes, in fact, that's the only way I could see the succeeding. You already have to have clients in a good amount of them who wanna stay with you for a long time Because here's a deal you could have a decent client base doing in home But if they don't refer people to you and they don't stick around as they drop off That's it you're done like I lost four my clients now. I have four less hours or eight less you know eight less hours a week
Starting point is 00:29:59 You got to do your best to build a good reputation That people start to know you and know of you to then be able to create basically a brand around you going off on your own, which in a sense, like if I'm going to start training people at their house or they're going to come to me at my place, my garage or whatever kind of situation you have, like you have to do a really good job of being able to show a track record of success stories or other things you can pull from to really be able to market yourself in that direction. I think of this as like an all-acart thing
Starting point is 00:30:32 for private trainers, like it's not a job by itself. Like being a part of the roster. That's right. That's really, really tough to build a full clientele of all people that you show up to their house and to not expect that you have some sort of a portfolio before that or a roll index of people that you've trained before.
Starting point is 00:30:52 So, I think of that as like an offering that you do. You have another, you're a private trainer, you have all these clients that you train like at your at a studio or somewhere and then, oh, you also offer this for like a premium price, you do that. Yeah, now here's actually one of the main reasons. Besides the fact that it's hard to get a lot of clients when you're training people in the houses, the other reason why a lot of trainers think
Starting point is 00:31:14 this is a good idea and realize they don't wanna do this is logistically, it's very hard to train more than four people in a day. You got one client that lives over here. He's up a lot of time. Yeah, you're driving, now you're driving to another client, now you're driving to, but you know, it takes you 30 minutes to go from client to client or more.
Starting point is 00:31:31 So it's not like when you're in a gym and one client's done and the next one comes to you, you're taking time between. I dropped it for that exact reason. So I was charging double to come to your house and thought, oh, this is crazy. I mean, this is premium right here. Double the fee to come to your house and you know, it's not crazy. I mean, this is premium right here. Double the fee to come to your house and, you know,
Starting point is 00:31:47 it's not that far and all I'm thinking is gas and maybe time, but really tough to coordinate, you know, back-to-back at home people. Totally. And why you're missing out on other business opportunities that would have been able to fit in, you know, your schedule if you're in one place. Yeah, this is a mistake that trainers make a lot of times.
Starting point is 00:32:03 They just calculate the dollar per mile. They make for that one client. They think, oh, this is the place to be. This is how it should be. 30 minutes to get to this house. I'm going to train at eight in the next session at 9.30. And the next set doesn't work that way. It takes way more time to do that.
Starting point is 00:32:17 In my opinion, to be a successful trainer at in-home, you will have to have already had a very established name and reputation and people willing to pay you one and a half, two and a half times more than you would get paid anywhere else, minimum for it to make any sense to you. So I know it sounds good and you may even know somebody that does this, but I'll be honest with you, this wasn't even an opportunity for me. And I was a high performing trainer. Every gym I worked in, I was a top trainer in terms of sales and clients.
Starting point is 00:32:49 This wasn't even an opportunity for me until I was training for like 10 years later. It took me that long to get to the point where this even became something that I could do. Which takes me the next one, which would be training in a private studio. Now, a private studio, there's a lot of pluses here. Typically, you pay a fee to train your clients there,
Starting point is 00:33:09 some studios charge, these are the more common ways, right? Either a studio will charge you per session, so I'm paying this facility 15 or 20 bucks an hour to train my client, or they charge you a flat rate. So, okay, I pay them $1,000 a month rent or whatever, and I can train as many clients as I want, I have a key and whatever. Now, the good thing to this is that you own your own business.
Starting point is 00:33:31 So, you're very flexible in terms of how you want to train your clients, your programming, the kind of value that you can provide your people. You can really go above and beyond in terms of providing tremendous value to clients. Typically, you could have the higher, much charge more because it's a private setting and the person's paying a premium for that. But you do run into the, how do I get clients? Like how do I, you can't like in a gym
Starting point is 00:33:55 and a big box gym, I could literally sit near the front desk and watch opportunities walk in. In a private studio, you'll get one walk in a week and ain't going to you, by the way, it's going to the owner of the studio. So you have to know how to market, you gotta get yourself out there.
Starting point is 00:34:12 And let me tell you, selling personal training out on the street is a very difficult thing to do. It's very, very challenging. Well, I think the trainers that I saw that actually had success in this first had success in the big box. Yes. Like I think they go there first before they make it into like a private suit.
Starting point is 00:34:28 Now one of the things I like about the private training is because it's basically your business, you're just like a hairstyles as you're leasing or renting a stall, you can pretty much do whatever you want, right? So long as you follow the rules inside their facility. But as far as business wise, there's not really any rules on you, what you want, right? So long as you follow the rules inside their facility. But as far as business wise, there's not really any rules on you, what you charge, like, having to train two clients, three clients, you can, so it opens the door for a lot of flexibility
Starting point is 00:34:52 and creativity for a trainer that may want to look at some of those all-acart options that I was talking about. So if you were to do, you could be a private trainer in a studio working four hour blocks a day, but then you have this one or two clients, you go to their home, you have this group training session you do, plus maybe you have some remote things online
Starting point is 00:35:08 that you do, you could really build a business model around that. But I think you need to have the experience to be able to do that really well and manage that quick. If you're working in a big box gym and there's like 10 or 15 trainers in there, and you're like the fifth trainer in terms of
Starting point is 00:35:25 revenue and clients and you think you're gonna go to a private studio and do well, you're not, okay? You got to be, you need to be one of the top people in your gym if not in your area and then you might have what it takes to do and I'm not exaggerating. I'll tell you my story. I, when I opened my studio to do private, I didn't have a client base that I brought with me because before that, I left the fitness industry and worked in finance for a second. So I left all my fitness contacts. I went and started from scratch.
Starting point is 00:35:54 Now, for me, I was a production machine. I could sell training, I could get leads, I could make it happen. So I'm maybe the exception. It took me a year. It took me one year to get to a decent six figure amount of building clients. And I was hustling my ass off. And I know I can do that better than most people just to give you the idea of the challenge. Now all those pluses that
Starting point is 00:36:16 we talked about, those of course are very real. You're going to make more per hour. You've got the flexibility. And it's yours. You're not working for anybody else, but if you think it's gonna be, if you think working a big box is hard to build a business, private is 10 times stronger. Well, and you also now have to factor in like accounting and stuff, right? Mo, if you work for a big box gym,
Starting point is 00:36:37 your W2 employee and your tech stuff, all that stuff is pretty much handled for the most part, right? Right off stuff is pretty basic, just keeping receipts. But now when you start managing your, all your, your own business, like tracking everything, it becomes extremely important. And if you're busting your ass to try and make 60, 80, 100 plus thousand dollars a year, and then you think you're also going to run books really well, really tough to do. So you also have to factor that in, like, oh, am I going to have to farm some of this
Starting point is 00:37:06 out? Unless you're somebody who just loves numbers and you're good at that. The hardest part was the marketing. I hated that part. Oh, the numbers? Oh, yeah. I outsourced that like crazy. Yeah, there's all kinds of stuff like that.
Starting point is 00:37:17 And like creating your own contracts, you know, along with the pricing and everything else, like in really figuring out, like what type of client you're attracting and where to get them? Like, so it's really about, you know, marketing, I had to really dive into that specifically. How can I find ways to get my dollar to make me money? Because I had to now spend money on Google AdWords, I had to dive all the way into that to find out what the keywords were, the people were searching. How can I be the number one on that search list? And how can I, you know, vest on my time and it just takes
Starting point is 00:37:53 a lot. It's a whole nother step of education that you have to really like apply yourself towards. So if you're not ready for that big of a leap, you know, that's something where a big box, you know, might be more appropriate. Here's a tip. This is something I did and it's just it worked. It's a kind of guerrilla style, but it actually worked for me. And what I did was is when I started with my studio, as I went to local businesses, small businesses, and I introduced myself to the owner, and I offered the owner free personal training with nothing in return.
Starting point is 00:38:27 And the strategy was, I knew if I trained them for free that they owned a business next to me and that inevitably they would talk about me and would refer people to me. And this strategy actually worked. And the business that actually, the business has actually provided me with the most leads by the way,
Starting point is 00:38:44 were hair salons, by far. I would train hairstylists for free, and because they're cutting people's hair and working with them, they would end up talking to them and talk about fitness, and then they would send me people. But it was a long process, and I asked for nothing to return. This was just like, okay, let me see if this works. So there's a strategy for you. If you're in a private gym, look at your local businesses and see who can give, because that's one thing you always have is your time. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:39:08 See if you can give training away to get referrals. That's a massive advantage to a private studio versus a big box. Yeah. You can't, you don't have that flexibility, give away free training. That's true. If you're working for a company that's paying you, because they have to, for time and labor laws, they have to pay you if you're working. You can't just do that for free, where you can, when it's your own time like that. And I think this is all, such a great point, so I'm glad you brought that up. I didn't know we're gonna go there,
Starting point is 00:39:31 because this is a mistake that I think a lot of, so many trainers are calculating the dollar per hour that they're making right away, and they just don't wanna do the free stuff. It reminds me of even when I had trainers working for me in a big box gym, and they had to, we used to have a like what they called fit hours Where it was like four hour blocks where they only got paid minimum wage
Starting point is 00:39:49 But at minimum wage they had the opportunity to go walk the floor and talk to people and try and give someone more than I got Early days. Oh, yeah, and I remember me too and I remember trainers just grumbling about the I'm gonna go make seven dollars an hour And then I'd see them out on the floor, they're just rewacking weights for $7 an hour, and like not trying to capture leads or talk to people or anything, and I thought, this is so crazy that this trainer is getting paid right now to go seek out leads, and they're grumbling
Starting point is 00:40:19 about how much they're making, and they're just, and they're just, you know, be grudgingly putting weights away, and some of that, I'm thinking like, wow, if you were out in the real world right now, one, you wouldn't be getting paid for this prospecting. And two, you would probably have to offer your services for free to potentially get somebody, and there's tremendous value in that.
Starting point is 00:40:36 So don't be afraid to give services for free. For people, in fact, I think it's a great place to start to see if people even want what you have. That's a huge component. So when you go off on your own. I mean, you have to do that. You have to network in order to survive. And I mean, I would find opportunities to go into their work setting and do a presentation or just make my services available for a weekend where I would help their employees out and get just stuff like that of just being more visible. This is something too.
Starting point is 00:41:12 Now we have tools to make that easier, right? So we have social media and we have all these other types of outlets where you can get your message out a little bit more effectively. But back then, it's foot traffic. I have to get myself into these companies to even have them know that I'm here. Yeah, that's the most valuable thing you have as a trainer is your time.
Starting point is 00:41:32 And that's one of the easiest ways to get somebody to become a lead is to offer them some free services. Now you mentioned online in the media, this is very different now than back when I was a trainer. When I was a trainer, there were no online coaches that didn't exist. Now, there are people doing pretty damn well building an online fitness business. This is very different than when you work in a big box jam or work private.
Starting point is 00:41:58 How do you get leads working through social media or trying to build an online business. Well, the tried and true way of doing this is to build a page, provide tremendous value, and engage with your audience, and then give it time. And don't worry about the big follower number. Just worry about how many people you're actually providing lots of value to. Now, the problem with this online side of the business is that people have the misconception that it's different than other types of business. They think online business it just takes off. Oh, I'm going to do this thing. It's going to grow. It's like any other business it's going to take a lot of time. It's quote-unquote passive income. Yeah, you
Starting point is 00:42:36 say, I take a lot of time, a lot of effort, and you'll make nothing for a while. In fact, I tell people who ask me about this and I say, you're going to give it about a year. Give it a year of building this before you ever start to make any money off of it. Yeah, there are some people that have some somewhat overnight success in the online space, but I think it's short lived. It's again, in fact, I think there's somebody,
Starting point is 00:42:55 here's a TV show idea for somebody or a YouTube show, which is where are they now? I would love to like, you know how they do that with like celebrities, like, with influencers? Yeah, I would love to like, you know how they do that with like celebrities like. I would have influencers. Yeah, I would love to see these influencers that reached millions of followers relatively quick and then started peddling fitness programs
Starting point is 00:43:13 or supplements or whatever to make money where they add in five or 10 years from now. So I do think that it's this new anomaly that we have now that we didn't have before where you do have some people that get quite a bit of people following them and have an opportunity to sell and make money. The problem with that is I don't think it's sustainable.
Starting point is 00:43:33 I think they're so focused on acquisition and not retention and they're chasing that, oh, more leads, more followers, more people coming in. Doesn't matter that I have, you know, 90% of them fallen out the back end because they didn't like the service they didn't care for it. If I keep growing exponentially, then I still get that 10% to work with and I can still build a big business, I really think this business model is fleeting and it's going to be interesting
Starting point is 00:43:55 how this all turns up in the next 10 years. Yeah, now I will say this, there's a couple different ways to approach personal training. One is the volume approach and the other one is the high value, high service, high dollar approach. So the volume approach is low dollar, the high value approach is high dollar. The high dollar approach is, in my opinion, superior. But it takes time. It takes time to develop the experience, the skill, and the value with clients. But it's the same for all these examples that we gave, is be a phenomenal trainer, provide tremendous value and be consistent as a trainer.
Starting point is 00:44:33 Remember, consistency's key with fitness. You as a trainer need to be consistent as hell with the service that you provide. I can't tell you how many times I saw talented trainers fail because they just weren't consistently talented or consistent with how they applied it. tell you how many times I saw talented trainers fail because they just weren't consistently talented or consistent with how they applied it. So tremendous value and over time, you can raise your rates slowly to the point where you're making well over $100 an hour as a personal trainer.
Starting point is 00:44:57 I would love to give some more hacks related to personal training. I think that, we talked about the whole focusing on pain, right? I think another area that trainers skip out on paying attention to is the communication and sales aspect. And to me, I remember having trainers that were extremely successful at their job financially but weren't always the best trainer as far as their knowledge. Maybe they didn't have the degree or as many national certifications, but weren't always the best trainers, as far as their knowledge.
Starting point is 00:45:25 Maybe they didn't have the degree or as many national certifications, but they were really successful because they were good at the sales aspect. And there's a lot of trainers that enter the space that are coming in here because they love the job, they're passionate about helping people, and they almost want to be like, well, I don't want to sell. I don't want to come in. Yeah, I don't want to do that. Or they're turned off by it.
Starting point is 00:45:44 And it's such a big part of your job that if you hate it that much, you're gonna have a really hard time being a very successful trainer without learning how to do sales. That's because the misconception is that you're not selling if you're a trainer, which is false. Anything you do as a trainer is selling.
Starting point is 00:46:04 Everything you do as a trainer is selling. Everything you do as a trainer is selling. Now you might not be selling for money always, you might not be selling products always, or even services always, but you're constantly selling ideas. In fact, you need to do a damn good job of selling ideas because here you are talking to Mrs. Johnson, who has never exercised consistently, who eats terribly, she's thinking about losing weight or she wants to lose weight.
Starting point is 00:46:32 And my job is to get her to completely change how she lives. That's gonna take some tremendously effective sales skills in order to do that. Now, it's obviously a long sell, right? So I can't take somebody and sell them and right away they change their life, it's obviously a long cell, right? So I can't take somebody and sell them and right away they change their life. It's a gradual process, but if you think you're not constantly selling your client every single session, you train them, you're totally wrong. So get out of your mind if you're a trainer or thinking of becoming a trainer
Starting point is 00:47:00 and you're thinking, ah, the sales part, I don't really care about that. That is everything that you do. You are literally selling these people, these ideas about fitness, health, and nutrition, and you have to figure out ways of selling them that are so effective that the person adopts them forever. You know, I remember one of the biggest shifts in my career was learning how to prescribe training and what a difference that made in my income was learning how to prescribe training. And what a difference that made in my income as a trainer.
Starting point is 00:47:28 You know, early on, 24-hour fitness back then used to provide this binder for you. And it was like, oh, five sessions, 10 sessions, 20 sessions, given the one in the middle. Right, and then trainers would just flip it open and be like, oh, which one do you want? And sometimes if you did a really good job training them, they were already sold on your training
Starting point is 00:47:47 and they liked training with you. They had the funds, they would say, okay, and they just picked the one in the middle, like just Justin's point. But where you get good is learning how to prescribe everybody like a certain session amount versus this generic, oh, this is what everybody does. So I think there's tremendous value in learning
Starting point is 00:48:06 how to do this. And part of that is comes from the practice of seeing a lot of people. So once I had dealt with enough people that needed to lose 20 pounds and dealt with chronic pain, knee pain, I could say, okay, I know whoever I'm talking to expect the first four to six weeks,
Starting point is 00:48:25 we're gonna focus on A, B, and C. You know, the next four to six weeks, we're gonna focus on DE and F, right? And I'd have these things, and by the way, this is what's, the beautiful part about this, is it's your business. You make these rules up. You decide what you think is most important,
Starting point is 00:48:41 free to focus on your clients with in those first four weeks in the next four weeks, but you kind of phase their program, or the program out just like we phase our programs out when we teach training for trainers. And you do that, and then when you tell a client, this is what we need for these reasons.
Starting point is 00:48:57 And then my favorite thing to do within was I give them the one, two, or three time a week option. It's like, okay, we need to- We've already decided you're gonna 12 weeks. That's right. We've already decided that these, this minute, the first four weeks were focused on this, the next four weeks were focused on this,
Starting point is 00:49:10 the next four weeks were focused on that. That's a total of 12 weeks, like Salah's saying. Now, the only other real option is this. Do you wanna see me once a week out of those, the three days you'll come in here twice or three times. And then I would give them examples of the type of person that would go for each one. So I say, oh, somebody who only sees me one time a week, they feel pretty confident in
Starting point is 00:49:29 the gym. They feel like they know their way around, their form, their technique. They just want to make sure I'm kind of there to guide them through. So that's that person. The three time a week person is somebody who's like, I don't know anything I'm doing. I'm not motivated. I want you there every step of the way so you're there. And then the two time a week person's somewhere in the middle. Now, you know, Sal, which one of those of the way so you're there. And then the second, the two-time week person somewhere in the middle.
Starting point is 00:49:45 Now, you know, Sal, which one of those three do you think you are? Right. Yeah, and this all comes with practice and experience. And this is something that you kind of nailed down once you are able to see how that all plays out. Because what people really want is for you to be honest. And I think a lot of trainers get insecure with the fact that they want to tell them, I'm going to be able to get you all these results really quickly in like, you know, and it's all about this whole hustle
Starting point is 00:50:09 to provide them with the most amazing experience and then they get in that trap of just training them to have them feel a certain way versus like prescribing it and learning exactly what that looks like and being able to paint that completely. People will buy into that picture and you have to be able to provide them with that entire picture
Starting point is 00:50:30 and you're gonna get a lot bigger clothes that way. Well, yeah, and they just don't know, right? A client doesn't know, okay, I can hire you for 50 sessions. Why don't I just get 10 at a time or what's the difference? Oh, I save a little bit of money. Well, okay, you need to paint the picture because the person really has no idea.
Starting point is 00:50:46 They have no idea that's gonna take this long to work on correctional exercise and we're not gonna expect much weight loss here, but your metabolism's speeding up and then things start to typically kick in here so long as you're consistent and we're gonna focus on these types of things. You have to paint the picture.
Starting point is 00:51:00 And also, this is the kind of confidence that somebody wants and the person that they're hiring to get them into shape, right? You want the trainer to tell you, this is what the training is gonna look like. By the way, Justin made a great point. You also wanna be very, very honest.
Starting point is 00:51:13 In fact, one of the biggest mistakes I see trainers make and one of the main reasons why some of them fail is they over-promise. They over-promise and then they end up under-delivering. Like if I have someone who says they wanna lose 30 pounds, yeah, I know in a perfect world that if I train, you know, I could get the person to lose 30 pounds and maybe three months if I really cry
Starting point is 00:51:34 and they follow everything or whatever, but I'm not gonna tell them that because that's rare and if they don't, now I look like a failure. I'd rather say, well, here's a deal. It's probably gonna take us about a year. Here's why, here's what's gonna happen, but we're looking for permanent results. And then if it happens in six months,
Starting point is 00:51:49 it's amazing. You wanna be very, very honest about what's happening. Paint the picture, make your recommendations. Adam's right, I like to give people three options. I always say this one's my favorite, but it's totally up to you, which one do you want. And then you'll allow them to pick, and they get started.
Starting point is 00:52:04 But that's not where the sale stops. The sales happens every single time you're training the client. So what do I mean by that? Well, it's everything from talking about movement, talking about sleep, talking about exercise, talking about nutrition. And you want to do it in a way, and this is what I mean by effective sales. Effective sales is not somebody feeling pressured. It's not somebody feeling overwhelmed.
Starting point is 00:52:30 That's ineffective. Who the hell? Have you ever bought something from someone where you feel overwhelmed or of course not. You're going to run away. Effective sales is communicating in a way that really resonates with that individual. What does that mean? You got to meet them where they are at. Start them where they're at.
Starting point is 00:52:46 You know what I like to do? I like to take obstacles away from people rather than put them in front of people. If I have someone in front of me that says, Sal, look, I'm gonna be honest with you, I can only work out once a week. I'm not gonna create an obstacle and say, that's not enough.
Starting point is 00:52:58 We gotta work out three days a week. You need to get motivated. This is good for you. It's for your health. It's the best thing in the world. I'm gonna say, okay, once a week works perfect, let's start with you right there, John, and that's what we're gonna start with.
Starting point is 00:53:08 And here's how long we should probably work out for. So that's the sales aspect, and I'm gonna tell you something right now, it's the most important piece of your personal training success, not just for the business aspect, but also for the success of your clients. You're gonna have to be very effective at that.
Starting point is 00:53:25 So get out of your head that you're afraid of sales. In fact, change the word from sales to communication. You gotta get really, really good at communication. Well, the difference between a good closure and a great closure is this, right? A good closure can push anybody into a sale, overcome objections, try and motivate you into it. A great closure can pull you into a sale
Starting point is 00:53:41 by asking all the right questions. And so, we set up this exercise that I do with my trainers, and I would give them like a, you know, oh, this is Suzy, she's 42 years old, she needs to lose 30 pounds. Sal, I want you to recommend me 72 sessions. And I would give them a number and then you had to justify that. Now of course, it's just an exercise. So whatever they make up is totally okay, but exercising that and practicing that, like communicating that way with each other
Starting point is 00:54:09 is such a great exercise for when you get into the real world situation where you've got somebody in front of you, you can start to justify why they need this many sessions for this, why they need this many sessions for that. I think it doesn't matter what your personality is. Anybody can learn this. Yes, and thank you.
Starting point is 00:54:24 I think that's a big point I try to convey because I know a lot of people tend to ask me a little bit more questions because I seem introverted sometimes. It was just difficult for me to convey information and communicate, and that's something I had to actually put effort and work into, but it's something that you can learn.
Starting point is 00:54:42 And I think it's really important that you go in that direction. I'm glad you brought the communication piece for for yourself Justin because you're right if you listen to me and you listen to Adam and you listen to Justin you'll hear kind of two different types of communicators with training. You know Adam and I probably are more similar right than Justin and yet all three of us found lots of success in personal training. Effective communicating can look and sound like very different things, but at the end of the day, what do they all have in common? They're effective, right? The clients are listening, it's resonating,
Starting point is 00:55:17 it's making sense, and here's something that's also very important, and I hate to have to communicate this, but it's very, very true. I've seen way too many trainers fail because of this, but you need to be very consistent when your client shows up. And what I mean by that is, you're client is showing up oftentimes, they don't want to work out, right? So oftentimes they show up and they're like, I don't want to, I'm not in the mood to work out.
Starting point is 00:55:41 This isn't my favorite thing in the world to do. I, you know, whatever. You need to be the one that is, they show up and they are happy to see you. Why are they happy to see you? Because you're in a good mood. You're happy to see them. I've seen lots of trainers who can't deal with that
Starting point is 00:55:56 and they client shows up and sometimes they're feeling good, sometimes they're a little whatever. And the client kind of senses that and feels that. Somebody that hires you to train them, to get them in shape, what they're looking for is somebody to make them feel good. They're looking for somebody that makes them want to be there, and I'm gonna be quite honest.
Starting point is 00:56:14 I know that oftentimes my clients showed up, not because they wanted to work out, but rather they wanted to show up to see me, and it was because of the consistency that I brought to the relationship and make no mistake, this is a very important thing here. If you do a good job as a trainer, you will develop a very good and deep relationship
Starting point is 00:56:32 with these people. Some of these people I saw and talked to more than most of my family, right? So you gotta be that person, remember that. And if that doesn't work for you, this might not be the career choice. There is another thing that will in indirect, your direct,
Starting point is 00:56:47 directly connect or influence your income as a personal trainer. And that is your level of education and certifications, right? I'll never forget, I was like four or five years into management and I went to this big company meeting and I had never seen this statistic before. And they put up on the big projector and they showed like, okay, here's all your trainers
Starting point is 00:57:12 that have one certification, two certifications, three certifications, four certifications, and what would consider a master trainer. They had their longevity in the company, their revenue that they would bring in, the hours that they would service every month. And for every certification that they had, this dramatically increased. How long they stayed in the company, how much money they produced, how many hours they
Starting point is 00:57:33 trained. And then I went, I'll never forget going back to my club. And then that was a major focus was everybody getting elevated as far as their education. So even though we didn't touch on that a lot, at the beginning of this and talking all about ways to make more money, this is something that will directly impact how much revenue, because this is where you pull from this knowledge. Right, there's no way that I would be able to tell somebody
Starting point is 00:57:56 in that, that I get, right, that has an ankle or knee or some issue that I know that I'm gonna have to address. If it wasn't for my corrective exercise specialist, you know, certification, I wouldn't have the tools to know how long it's going to take to rehab or if it's... Or if you value increases, which then builds your confidence, which then I can raise your rates, like a bunch of factors play into that. And so I think it's definitely something to seek out as a nutrient always gets yourself enrolled in something where you can elevate your
Starting point is 00:58:25 skills. Yeah, there's two reasons why I think those statistics are pretty consistent at them. One is obviously you know more. So if you know more and you can apply more knowledge, then now you have a greater value to more clients or even a greater pool of clients that you can work with. Whereas maybe before there were some clients who were afraid to train, now you're more educated, you feel like you could train more maybe before, there were some clients who were afraid to train, now you're more educated, you feel like you can train more people.
Starting point is 00:58:47 But there's a second reason, and this is one of the big reasons, I think, people tend to do better when they get more certifications. If you're listening or watching this, and you've gotten certified before, just remember the excitement in the, just how jazzed you were after you just finished your course,
Starting point is 00:59:03 and you were ready, and you couldn't wait to train people, it reinvigorates you to go through a course, learn something new and re-spark that passion in fitness. And it's funny because I could always pick out the trainers that stopped educating themselves versus the ones that could. You'd see people train like, man, that trainer is stuck in the 90s.
Starting point is 00:59:23 They haven't furthered their education, their knowledge. And as a result of that, it wasn't just their skill and technique, but you could tell they weren't as, again, they didn't have a spark like other people did because they weren't going out and learning and growing. They were wearing fanny packs. Yeah, that's right. So that's a very, very good point.
Starting point is 00:59:40 And I don't think, I mean, gosh, could you think of a better time than now to get more, to get this, this, we need it more than ever? Oh, it's crazy. There's so many certifications, there's so many ways to learn. And again, Adam brought up our, or even our prime and prime pro programs, which I would place up there with certification courses in the, from in terms of tools, right? Obviously, you're learning necessarily from instructors the same way,
Starting point is 01:00:05 but with those tools, I mean, the value. Well, yeah, you look at the, you know, I mentioned the CES certification right from NASM. I think they cost me like $580 or some shit for that, okay? So, and that's in that program. And in addition to that, you've got Ken Stretch information in there. You got stuff from Eldoa in there. Each one of those certain things immediately applicable. Yeah, each one of those certifications
Starting point is 01:00:27 are gonna cost you $500 to $1,000 a piece. And that's something that we've put into that program. So that's why when I hear a trainer who's asking me questions about building their business, and I ask a question back that way, like do you have prime and prime pro? Oh no, I didn't think I needed it. This is a slap, yeah.
Starting point is 01:00:42 Look, if you liked this episode, you liked our content, you liked our content, you liked our information, head over to MindPumpFree.com. We got a lot of free guides there. You can learn from, and they're all totally free. You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at MindPump Justin. Me at MindPump Salon, Adam at MindPump Adam.
Starting point is 01:00:58 Thank you for listening to MindPump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by South Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs.
Starting point is 01:01:28 With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is MindPump. support and until next time this is Mindbump.

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