Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1842: Why You Should NOT Become a Personal Trainer

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover ten reasons NOT to become a personal trainer. Some jobs require a DEEP passion and some don’t. (2:11) Ten Reasons Why You Should NOT Become a Personal Trainer. #1 - You deal with A LOT of DIFFERENT people. (5:51) #2 - Failure is part of the job. (10:59) #3 - Hard to make money. (15:31) #4 - You work A LOT of hours initially. (21:19) #5 - You have to be “ON” all the time. (24:07) #6 - You can’t be idealistic. (28:53) #7 - You are judged by pain, soreness, and sweat. (33:11) #8 - You have to counter wrong info constantly. (37:01) #9 - People expect instant results. (39:37) #10 - It’s a LONG process. (41:47) If you have the PASSION, NOTHING is more rewarding than being a personal trainer. (44:30) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Paleo Valley for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! **Promo code MINDPUMP15 at checkout for 15% discount** Father’s Day Special: Free Shipping on all apparel and equipment for $150.00 or more 6/10-6/24 June Promotion: Shredded Summer Bundle or MAPS HIIT 50% off! **Promo code JUNE50 at checkout** The Fitness Industry’s 80 Percent Annual Trainer Turnover Problem Has a Solution 3 Things You Should Know Before You Become a Personal Trainer – Mind Pump Blog Finding the Best Personal Trainer for YOU – Mind Pump Blog The Key to Fitness Success is Self-Love – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, hop, mind, hop with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the number one fitness, health, and entertainment podcast in the entire world. This is Mind Pump, right? In today's episode, we talk about personal training, but more specifically, why you probably should not become a personal trainer. Now, some of you should, but most of you should not. We give you all the reasons why it's one of the hardest, crappy, suckiest, but yet most rewarding jobs in the world. Look, this

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That program alone is also 50% off. So if you're interested, go to mapsfitnisproducts.com, and then use the code June 50 for the discount. All right, here comes the show. You know, I hear a lot of people when they listen to the show and they see me and they meet me or they DM me and I know you guys get the same thing. Tell me that they became trainers or business co- Smaller inside person. No, that's not the same. That's not the same thing. Obviously for me, it's like, I'm usually,

oh wow, thanks. Wow. Why are you so much smaller person? Not where I was going. Where I was going. Sorry, bro. Sorry, what were you talking about? No, they say to me that they became trainers

or got became fitness coaches because of our show. Now I find this funny because I don't, I thought we scared him away. That's what I was gonna say. And really, I wanna talk about being a personal trainer because it's not a job for most people. It is not a job for most people. And I think it's important we communicate why

you should not become a personal trainer. Here's the 10 reasons why you should not become a personal trainer. Here's the 10 reasons why you should not become a personal trainer. Well, because it's, it's, look, here's a deal. I'm going to, I'm going to start with this. Some jobs require a tremendous amount of deep passion. Other jobs, not so much. Yeah. Some jobs you can show up.

Do your job. And you know, you like it. It's okay. You make your check. You make your money. You go home. It's all good. Other jobs, if you don't have a total desire,

like a deep burning desire to do that job, it's gonna suck and that's personal training. Like if you don't feel like, I didn't have a choice, that's the way I view it. Like I wanted to do it so bad, I had no other choice. And that's what got me through, especially that first five years, it's just so challenging.

Do you think personal training is the only thing that's like, obviously there's people right now. I know jobs like that. Well, I think to just the off hand, entrepreneurs, starting your own business in general, is pretty parallel to personal training in terms of just a lot of the hardships you face, initially with a lot of return.

Yeah, but I mean, obviously any job, the more passionate you're about it, the more successful you are, but I do agree with you that personal training is unique that I think you actually have to have a deep passion for it. Because some of the things that I think you, I think you're gonna allude to later on in this episode,

because you, because you're dealing with so many people on a day to day basis, different people, different people. If you lack the passion for what you're doing, that will wear on you really quick. And you will, where you cannot be passionate about computer engineering and, you know, and all you're doing is sitting in a desk, as long as you don't hate it, you could, well, you could even hate it. When you can, you can mess it up on Facebook, you can play games or whatever,

while you're also doing, you can be punching numbers. So I guess the professions where you have a lot of interaction with a lot of different people, I would say would require it. That's part of it. I would put musicians up there. I know we look at like famous celebrity musicians.

We're like, oh my God, that would be so great. The vast majority of musicians are not that. And the ones that stick to it and don't become famous and make tons of money, it's that deep burning. I just love it. Yes, yes. And that's personal trainer. Here's the truth.

The turnover rate for personal trainers. Super high. 80 to 90%. Ideal turnover rate for a job, if you want a company, where it's it 10%. So like, and I experienced this managing gyms, like until I became good at who I hired and how I trained and developed,

you would see people come in and out all the time. Because again, it's one of those jobs where if you love working out, you think you're gonna love being a personal trainer. That is not true at all. You have to have a deep, deep desire and passion for fitness, but also for people. And it's for that, one of them is for that first point,

which is you work with a lot of, you deal with a lot of different people. Like, you know, I've trained, you trained people from all walks of life, different ages, energy levels, political affiliations, opinions, and you have to not only work with them, but you're working with them intimately in person, working on their health and fitness, taking them through challenges. And if you can't deal with those different personalities, if somebody, if you're

one of those people, it's like, oh, those kind of people annoy me. Or I, if you can't be a chameleon, you're screwed. No, you have to step up and mirror their energy. And a lot of times, especially for somebody, and I'll just speak on my own behalf in terms of being just somewhat of an introvert, but working one on one, I tend to do a lot better with that, but still, like having that kind of high energy person that I would have to deal with every now and then, I would have to just sort of get myself in that headspace just to be able to provide good service for them because I want

them to continue to keep resigning with me to enjoy the process, not just be on a level where I'm my energy levels might not be matching that I have to exceed it. You know, you said it perfectly, Justin, by saying, mere their energy because it's not, a lot of trainers think you just need to have lots of energy. I did. So that was something that I was good at. I was good at being super full of energy and loud and excited to train you.

But I quickly learned that I couldn't be that way with everybody. So I totally, vividly remember, like it's a specific day, even, of like, I had this like crazy day of like, I don't know, eight or nine clients in the day. And I had this like crazy day of like I don't know eight or nine clients in the day and I had this like client and client the client and all like all four of them in a row were like so drastically different in personality it was like an engineer like a CEO like an artist and

I mean they were just these just really random jobs and random type personality types that I remember being so drained because of how I had to switch gears for each person. And I'm even being checked early on, like when I was learning this, like being checked by like the engineer guy, like, can you calm down? Like, yeah, yeah. I've been told by a client, you calm down, like,

you know what, my play to that is like, I'm so sorry, I'm just so passionate about what I do. And I love doing this and excited, but realizing like, you come down like, you know, my play to that is like, I'm so sorry, I'm just so passionate about what I do and I love doing this and excited like, but realizing like I was talking at a speed that was too fast for him. Like he's, he was just like, I'm not here to get all hyped, you know. Well, you get a like, you get people who are coming in first thing in the morning or after work or after they drop the kids off, they're gonna be in, if you train somebody two or three days a week and you do it for five months, six months, a year, two years, I had clients that were with me for over 10 years.

They go, you see all their moods. They're not gonna, you know, maybe the first month, they're gonna show up and they're gonna put on a good attitude for you as well. But after that, you're dealing with real people and they show up and bad mood, annoyed, irritated, whatever, with their job, with their spouse, with their kids, and they're showing up to go do some hard shit

and workout, which the reason why they're hired is they need help for it and they kinda wanna do it. Oftentimes they kinda don't wanna do it. So you have to deal with all that and that is exhausting unless you deeply wanna help these people. And so you were talking about mirroring people and being a chameleon, someone may think, well that's not, you know, why would you do that?

Why don't you just be yourself? Well, there's nothing wrong with just acting the way you want to act, but if you really want to help them, you're in your passion to just do so, you really try to figure out ways to break down the... That's a relate. This is part of emotional intelligence. This is actually what sent me down that rabbit hole

of reading in that direction. I really enjoyed that. It's having social awareness. Yeah. So it's not a, I'm not being myself. It's becoming aware of your surroundings and understanding that not everybody receives and learns and likes to communicate the same way that you do.

It doesn't mean that I that I change as a person. I just slow down the pace of what I communicate or. You're trying to be more effective. I say less with this person. I say more with that person. This person needs me to be more loud and energetic to get them up. This person needs me to calm down and slow down.

It's just, to me, you're not changing who you are. It's just becoming self-aware and socially aware of your surroundings. And that's just, to me, you're not changing who you are, it's just becoming self-aware and socially aware of your surroundings. And that's just emotional intelligence, the ability to be able to recognize that and then develop that skill. Yeah, and you do have to learn how to do this and do it well because you said it earlier,

you get drained otherwise. So, and the only thing that'll drive you, and I mean, again, I'm gonna go back to this, but the only thing that'll drive you, and I mean, again, I'm gonna go back to this, but the only thing that'll drive you to be able to do this well, because it is not an easy thing to do, is the constant passion. I want to help these people. I want to really want to do a good job. I really want these people to feel and see what I see or improve their life through health and fitness, and I love it so much. And so, so it keeps bringing you back and it keeps bringing you back But if you don't have that I swear to God after three months. You're gonna be like screw this. I hate this

I'm dealing with I don't want to train that person. I don't want to train that person I just want the perfect client which doesn't exist and it's gonna totally suck The next one is that failure is literally baked into the job There's very few jobs where you go do it and they're like, hey, here's the thing. 80% of the time you're gonna fail. 80% of the time your clients are not gonna be over it and they're just gonna leave.

They're either leave or they're not gonna do what you tell them or it's not gonna work. And that is hard, especially when you're like a fitness fanatic, because you want to be like, you want to shake people. Like, come on, just do it. I tell you, you got to deal with it. The hardest part is if you've had personal success and you have certain formulas that you've figured out, you're on your own, whether that's nutritionally or training wise, and you're trying to pass on this knowledge and you're trying to express passion and get them on

board with it. And maybe they do get on board, but it's not working for them because they have all kinds of their own individual needs and variables that might not be the right formula for them. And this is something I had to learn out of the very beginning was people just that they're not going to move the way I want them to. And like, how do I reconcile with this? How do I figure this out? How do I get better at, you know, tapping into that? Do you remember being confused where you're like, okay, we're gonna do a squat, and then they can't.

You're like, huh? Like, why can't you do that? Now do I do. Yeah, I mean, let's go to the ground. Do you know, it's like it's crazy. If you have to accept that again, that failure is a part of the job because otherwise it gets to you.

Well, you have to accept that you can't control all the variables, right? So I mean, there's responsibility on their part to follow the steps that you are teaching them. And the fact is that many people are lazy, don't follow through, don't show up, you know, do things half-assed, lie, that's all part of it. And so because you are dealing with, this is a team effort, right? I'm your coach, you're the client, together,

we're gonna try and achieve these goals, but there still is an accountability and responsibility on their part to execute. And I still, my trainer's a lot like baseball. Baseball, if you bat 300, you're doing good, you're a killer. Yeah, what does that mean? Yeah, you're like breaking records if you hit about 400, you know what I'm saying? So I mean that that means six or seven of the times you miss, you know?

And that's kind of what personal training was like, it quickly realized that. And I remember telling you guys this story that was like when I realized like, am I really that good? When I was looking at my trophies, I'm five years in, and it's all for like sales, and things like that. And I'm like, man, when I really think back to all the people that I've helped, it's like, man, it's like 25%. You know, actually really do I feel like I changed their life

and so that that's terrible. It's like eight out of 10 people almost, that I don't get to the goal, you know? Well, part, this is part of the challenge is where you're training someone, and they tell you what their goals are. It makes it even harder, you know? Well, part, this is part of the challenge is where you're training someone and they tell you what their goals are. This makes it even harder because it's like, you told me what your goals are. So, they tell you what their goals are and it's not happening and they're not following

your advice and they're not doing the stuff that you know will help them. And so, you have to do two things. One, you have to take it personal because ultimately you're the coach. You have to say to yourself, what am I doing wrong? But then two, you also have to be accepted. That's hard. On one hand, I take it personal. Okay, it's my fault.

What's going on? On two, I'm going to be okay with it at the same time. And that's the hard part of this failure being baked into the job because with other jobs if you take it personal, you don't accept it and you hammer it. And this is where I get messages from trainers who are like, Hey, Sal, how do I deal with a client that won't count their macros?

I keep telling them. How do I deal with a client that won't do exercises on their own? And it's like, well, okay, number one, it's your fault, but also number two, because you're the coach, ultimately you have to accept that. Also, number two, you have to accept that. That's okay, that's a hard, those two things are hard

to have together in your mind. And people can't, a lot of, I've seen trainers not be able to deal with this. And what they'll do is they'll either hammer their clients. And I've done this before early days. And I learned a really, really tough lesson early on where you set a client down and you basically beat him up. You told me you wanna do this goal.

I'm telling you what to do. You're not following it. It's your fault and you think that's gonna help them. And of course the client disappears and it's like, I'm not going back to that trainer again. This is real uncomfortable. And then you think to yourself, I mean, this happened to me. I thought, yeah, I told her.

And I'm like, wait a minute. At least they were showing up once or twice a week. Now they're not even doing that. What did I do? I totally screwed up. Like this is not the right way. Where are they now? That's like, how are you helping them?

That's right. The next one, and this one's great because I know, if you think being a trainer, if your goal is to make a lot of money, and that's why you want to get into fitness, you're like, I like working out, trainers charge $100 an hour. This would be a great way to make a lot of money.

You're in for a rude awakening, is it very? Well, it's a very hard way to make money. I think this is directly connected to the, the stat that you gave to open this up, which is that 80 to 90% of the turnover. And I believe that 80 to 90% is closely related to all sales jobs. Maybe Duncan looked that up to, to fact,

sales jobs in general do have a high turnover. Yeah, sales jobs in general Doug can look that up to factually. Sales jobs in general, do you have a high turnover? Yeah, sales jobs in general have a really high turnover rate. And it's because of the failure rate and the inability for them to make money. Many people get into a sales job because it sounds like, oh, I make this big commission on a house sale or I make this big commission on a car rip

or a personal trade gets $100 an hour when they train a client. And so you think it's like this gonna be this high paying job and then you realize, oh wow, getting leads and then converting leads into sales or customers is a lot harder than I thought it was gonna be. So it's a grind to make money. And so that's why I think the turnover rate

is so high in personal training. It's because it's very closely related sales. And I didn't know this when I first started. It was actually, so the irony for me, as it's coming up personal trainer, it's actually what made me fall in love with training. I actually am not, I'm kind of an anomaly. So like, what Sal always talks about like, well, what you should be like to be a trainer, like I was not that guy.

I was somebody who kind of fell into it because I liked working out and what I fell in love with was the sales aspect because sales was in my backgrounds, my family, everybody in my family didn't say so. So I was already a kind of a natural communicator and liked people. And then I realized like, oh wow, this job is like all sales. This is kind of cool. And I got into it because I enjoyed that aspect.

But that's a lot ends up turning off. Most trainers is because they don't think it's that big of a portion of it. And so when I would hire people, because most of my job, my career was hiring trainers, I would lead with that. Like, hey, this is mostly a sales job. So if you're here and you just want to help people, it's like, you're going to be in for a rude awakening

because mostly sales, and then it's a bonus, you get to help people. Well, because- Yes, and also the weird part is you're selling these people on work that they have to do. Yeah. Which is- So you're not tangible in a dream. they have to do. Which is like, and a dream.

And a dream and a vision of what, you know, you'll be able to provide or be able to get them on the journey towards that. It's such a great point. It's why it's so hard to sail. And it's almost like, I guess comparable, like let's say, you're somebody that can build a house

or build like a, some kind of like a shed or whatever it is, right? And you're, you're the person that's just gonna sit there and tell them how to do each one of those steps mixing the concrete. Do it themselves. You do it themselves, then you get, like I'll provide the hammer and the nails,

I'm gonna sit here and watch you and tell you exactly how to do it. Like who's gonna wanna do that? You know, and you have to like, you have to really be, and this is where that passion, we come back to the first point, it's like you have to be insanely passionate about uplifting this person and infusing that energy into it.

Well, the truth is people don't come knocking down your door to hire you as a trainer until you've already kicked ass for a long time. That didn't happen to me until much later. So you built the reputation. And it takes years. Yeah, yeah. It takes years to do that.

If you're in a gym and you want to have the kind of reputation where clients come to you, but can I please hire you? You're going to have to kick ass for a couple of years. But it took me 10. Yeah, it took me 10 to where I got to a place where you turned people down. Yeah, to where I didn't have to go get clients. Like that literally most of my job was actually turning down,

raising prices and getting, it took 10 years to get there. Cause the first five was all about just loading my schedule. And during that time of like just trying to get my schedule loaded and get it, like I had a good client base early on, but that's still at the time when I was turning them over so fast because I wasn't getting the results. I wasn't really changing their life because my focus, I was still at the hype, energy, push, motivation, type of trainer in those early years.

I really wasn't about long, sustainable results. I wasn't meeting them where they were at. I was the guy who was just like, you could commit to three or four days to be a hammer. Yeah, I'd hammer them. And then, yeah, they get a little bit of results or whatever for the six months they're training with me, but then they fall off the rest of their life or I'd never see them again. So it took me 10 years before I think I was really

giving people that kind of results where they, it would spread, then people would go like, you gotta meet so much. And I mean, the truth is, if you're in a, let's use a big box gym as an example, and let's say there's 20 trainers, which is a lot for a big box gym, and it's a successful big box gym, because there's varying degrees. Like is a lot for a big box gym. And it's a successful big box gym.

Because there's varying degrees. You could have two different big box gyms, like 30, 40,000 square foot facilities. One is managed well, one is managed poorly, and the difference between the two is massive in terms of clients and revenue and all that stuff. But you take one that's run well with 20 trainers, what percentage of those trainers is making a lot of money?

It's not 50%, it's less than. It's 80-20. Yeah. So the 80-20 rule applies to trainer success, or this is definitely what I did most of my career was training and developing trainers and analyzing this. Just like four out of 20. Yeah.

Yeah. Most of most of, I mean, we were talking about this off-air the other day about like when you have a staff of like 20 trainers I could literally I could I ended up doing this when I'd inherit a staff fire most all of them I only had to keep the top two to three because they were responsible for 80% of the revenue for the club And then I would try and find in a new batch of trainers that would come in Hopefully that I could develop into being like some of those top performers. Now, on the other end of that,

the ones that do make a good living, make a damn good living. It's just really hard to do and it takes a while and it's a hard process. And part of that process, and this is the next point, is initially, you work a lot of hours and you take whoever one of the higher. And that's what I mean by a lot of hours. you take whoever. Shitty hours too.

And that's what I mean by a lot of hours. So people are like, oh, you train. Non-convenient hours. You train eight clients in a day, so you worked eight hours. Now, I worked four hours in the morning, and then maybe one in the afternoon and then four in the evening, because you know when I got back to back with clients, 10 years in when I got so good that I could pick clients based on the times

I wanna work out, but- You guys know how awful I am in the morning. Okay, I was in there like six. I'm whenever, wherever. Like that was just the energy and that I was trying to bring in to be able to get a good grasp of like, how can I get a handle in this business?

How can I understand how to attract clients? Like I was like, all in. If you're not all in, you're limiting yourself and your potential. I remember, I remember like distinctly like laughing trainers out of the gym when they'd be like, yeah, I was thinking I'd work nine to five. Yeah, I know.

Nine to five. You have three clients. Yeah, if you're lucky, like tell it. You have like two people at lunch, if you're lucky. Three hours a meal a day. Yeah, like the most prime hours are five a.m. to 9 a.m. and then 5 p.m. to 9 p.m.

So literally a nine to five is the opposite window of like when the prime hours of training clients are. And so then you either want to be, you have to choose to be, oh, am I gonna be this late night person who tries to get all the night people? Or am I gonna be this early night person or usually am I gonna be night people? Or am I gonna be this early night person or? Usually, am I gonna be flexible?

Usually, that's what it is. And split and I'm gonna come in the morning and I'm gonna come in tonight and those are normally the most successful trainers that were open to doing that. And then later, maybe building your schedule to be more ideal. I hear a good way out of it. See, when I look back, when I first became a trainer, here's why I keep saying you need to be so damn passionate about this. My schedule literally looked like this.

I would get in at 6 a.m. and I'd go 6 a.m. to noon, then you get that lull. I wouldn't really train. So that's when I would work out, hang out, eat lunch, do my thing. About 3, 4 p.m., new clients would come in and I'd train to like 9 or 10 p.m. And then sometimes a client, because I used to work at a 24 hour gym, would say, hey, you know, I want to buy a training, but nobody wants to train me at 3 a.m. I'll raise my hand. I'll do it. I'll show work at a 24 hour gym, would say, hey, I want to buy a training, but nobody wants to train me at 3 a.m. I'll raise my hand.

I'll do it. I'll show up at 3 a.m. And I did. I had people that would show up in the middle of the night. Now, why did I do it? I loved it. It was so rewarding to me, because I was so passionate that any, if I could get paid just to be in the gym,

that was like a plus. If I didn't have that passion, I would have sucked. You couldn't get me to do any other job. What fuel are you going to run on at that point? That's right. It was just, I loved it so much. It didn't have that passion, I would have sucked. You couldn't get me to do any other job. What fuel are you gonna run on at that point? That's right. It was just, I loved it so much. It didn't matter. And I took anybody and everybody, and I worked as much as I could.

So even though maybe you don't work in the middle of the day and you're counting four hours in the morning, four hours a night, so it's eight hours total. Reality is, it's like 12 hours, 14 hours in a day, because what do you do in the middle of the day? Go home and do what? Take a nap and, you know? Well, and the point you're making right now leads really well

on the next one. This is what makes the next one so hard, is that you have to be on all the time. Yes. And so try being on all the time when you're not a morning person, but yet you're going to get up at five o'clock in the morning. Try being on all the time, but you're disrupting. You're nightly sleep to go train one person at three o'clock

in the morning, then you're going to turn right back around and get up in the morning, then you're gonna turn right back around and get up in the morning or then you're gonna wait. We get the difficult person now as you know are coming in. It takes a special breed of a human to be able to turn it on like that, be it a chameleon for all these different clients and also be flexible to work all these crazy out.

Well, name another job where you have to be on all the time. What I mean by that is, here's what we mean by that. When you're with the client, you're on. There is no break in the hour that I'm training you. Because by the way, if there is one for you right now, you're going to suck as a trainer. And those exist, right? The trainer who's sipping on a Starbucks coffee

while he's leaning on the machine and stuff like that. Like, that's not on. No, they don't make it. Everybody else in the gym is watching you too. That's a perspective. Clients are not gonna hire you based on the behavior of the day watching and observing. Yeah, most jobs, you know, you have your break,

you go to the wall, you know, whether you water cooler, you hang out, you talk to your staff, your co-worker, you go on a walk, you know, you're not like super energized because you're doing some projects so you can kind of just be chill or kind of tired, or whatever. When you have a client in front of you,

your job is to be on. I can't, my client can't show up and me be like, I'm kind of tired today, so you know, whatever, if you do a few. I'm not gonna talk to you for an hour. Figure this one out. Fire, you're fired. They're not gonna wanna work with you anymore.

So if you are on, I've said this to trainers before 30 hours of personal training a week meaning where you're training 30 sessions a week a 50 or 60 hours. That's like a 50 or 60 hour job a week because you're it's it requires so much energy because when you're with a client You are on and that's it and then if you're in the gym when you're not training a client And I used to tell my trainers this as well if you're gonna sit there with that look on your face and look like you're in the gym when you're not training a client, and I used to tell my trainers this as well, if you're gonna sit there with that look on your face and look like you're half asleep, get out of the gym. Because when you're in here, you're still on, even though you're not training a client,

because you are the trainer. You have your uniform on, they recognize you, you represent fitness and health. No one's gonna want to hire a trainer that looks like they're half dead or like they don't want to be there, just doesn't work that way. So it's one of those jobs. It's like, you know, it's almost like media.

Like if the camera's on you, you gotta be on, right? You gotta be on when you do it. But imagine doing that for 40 hours. Well Justin brought up a really good point. And I can't, I believe it was the average client shops a trainer for six months before they make the decision to buy. So, which is really powerful when you think about it.

That means that person has been watching you train, workout, take your lunch break, sit at the desk. Like, they've been watching you in the gym for six months before they get the courage to come up and ask a question, a buying question potentially. I'll never forget when I, when I, that really struck me. This was probably, I want to say my, I was early trainer. So I was kid, right? 18 years old. And this woman comes up to me and she goes, I want to hire you as I was early trainer, so I was kid, right? 18 years old. And this woman comes up to me and she goes, I want to hire you as a personal trainer, which is strange, by the way. People typically don't walk up to you

and say, I just want to hire you. Again, until you've got a reputation that takes a long time. But she did say that to me and I said, what makes you want to hire me? She goes, well, I've been watching you and there was this older woman that needed help and you were the only one that walked over to her

and helped her and you really spent a lot of time with her. She watched me and I had no idea that she watched me but that's what convinced her that she wanted to hire me as a trainer. I had to run in with my peers when I was 20, like really early on because I was so different than the rest of the trainers as far as the energy and stuff that I brought to the gym when I was trained clients.

Oh, they're hating on you. That their clients would come to the, this was before I was a manager, whereas just a trainer would come to my manager and ask to switch from their trainer. Because they'd see the way I was with them, my client. So I was so interactive, we were having fun, I was engaged, I was loud, I was just like,

I brought that to every single client. And that wasn't my intention. My intention was I'm trying to shark my peers, I was just like, I brought that to every single client. And that wasn't my intention. My intention was I'm trying to shark my peers clients or anything like that, but it naturally happened because I was like that. And then of course, I had other people that just came off the floor and said, I saw the way you are with clients. And so that happened. That impacted me really early on.

So it was a consistent message that I would present to my trainers that when they work for me, it's like, man, you guys have no idea how important it is that when you walk through those doors, whether you don't have a client for two hours or you're on a break or you're just coming to work out, you're on. I didn't see that, too, even though you're, you're going to work out somewhere else. If you want to be all depressed and down and negative and not a smile on your face and be that person, like, go work out another gym or something like that because people, they're watching their paying attention. They know who you are.

You represent, you're the representative of fitness and health. This next one is such a tough one for trainers, especially because I said this earlier, a lot of people mistaken their passion for working out as meaning that they're going to have this passion for training. So like, I love training myself, I love working out. You have to have a passion for people as well, but they don't necessarily know that they're gonna have this passion for training. So like, I love training myself, I love working out. You have to have a passion for people as well, but they don't necessarily know, if they have that or not, but they like fitness so much. They become trainers and they're so idealistic,

it just doesn't work. And what does that mean? It means that they assume everybody is gonna be a fitness fanatic like them. Like, client hires you, I wanna lose 30 pounds, perfect Mrs. Johnson. You're gonna work out with me three days a week. Two days a week, you can do cardio.

Here's your meal plan. Here's how many steps I want you to take every day. We're gonna go through your house. I'm gonna throw away all the garbage, junk food. We're gonna go grocery shopping. I'm gonna do all of this stuff. Not gonna happen. The vat, look at.

One percent of that, maybe. At a hundred clients, you may run into one or probably zero that will ever become fitness fanatics. Most people work out because it improves the quality of the life that want to be more fit, more healthy, but really to just improve their life as it is. They're not going to make fitness in their life. They know it's good for them, but they want to do it as minimal as possible.

Right? So I'm here, I did the work, I'm here, you tell me what to do. Yeah. And you get a lot of clients like that that just, some of them really just didn't wanna be there. And how do I deal with that? Because I'm a, I love fitness, yeah, I love working out and I have all this passion towards it, but how do I deal with somebody

that doesn't even want to be there? I also made the mistake of letting them kind of dictate my plan when I, when I probably knew what was best for them, meaning like a client would come in and say they want they want to lose 20 pounds and they want to lose as fast as possible what we need to do. And so I would have the idealistic plan, you know, okay, if we want to lose the most amount of weight in this amount, that's what you said. So here it is.

Exactly. So that so then I write that older, wiser, more experienced me realize that even though they're telling me that, I know where this person is coming from and I'm actually going to do like a takeaway on them. I'm not going to let them do all, even though I know that I can send them up for failure. Right. Because I know they're going to either get burnt out, they're going to be too sore, they're going to not commit to it.

Or they're going to think that it's unrealistic for them to stay with it. Or they're gonna go above and beyond that and even burn out even faster. And so quickly I learn, like, okay, like I know this is ideal, but I need to be more of a realist about this. This person hasn't trained at all the most of their life. And they're thinking they're gonna come in five, six days a week and do that. Like, sure they may be able to do it for a month or two, but that's not realistic to keep them long term doing this.

And so I'd have to kind of back out. And even though I know that there would be a faster route to where we're going, I had to start to consider like all the other factors, the behaviors of people when it comes to exercise. Faster is not better. Better is better. I say, I've said this before on other podcasts

when I get interviewed and it's, and this is true. true and this is just this is what it took me a long time to figure this out but if you do a damn good job you're a really good trainer or coach and you've got deep passion for it and you've got good experience and you really coach and guide the person the right way. For most people the most you could hope for, okay, is about that you'll get them to be able to exercise two or three days a week consistently for the rest of life. That's it. Two or three days a week. So if you look outside, you look at the average person like, man, I could change all these

lives. The most you could do if you're damped, if you do a get damped job is to get them to be consistent with two, maybe three days of structured exercise and maybe a 50% improvement in the relationship they have with their diet. That's about it. Now you might run into the occasional, rare fitness fanatic, but guess what that person ends up doing? They eventually become a trainer or getting into fitness space, which has happened to me before

with clients, but it's super rare. So you cannot be idealistic. You can't as a trainer or as a fitness, somebody who loves fitness, think to yourself, oh, I'm gonna get this person to just, they're gonna love it the way I do. Like I fell in love with lifting weights. I loved it right out the gates. Most people that's not gonna happen.

If they're just gonna do it, and I can help them develop a good relationship with it, but they'll never develop the love for it and the enjoyment of the process. Or else they'll become trainers. That's right. That's right. That's what they're not trained.

Here's another one. And this one really used to annoy me. It still does. And that is as a trainer, you will often be judged by how sore you make someone, how much you hurt them, and how much you make them sweat. And the reason why this sucks is because this, especially if you're a new trainer, or you're not very experienced,

it'll feed into your ego, and you're gonna make them more sore and more sweaty because they say they like it. Oh my God, what a great workout. I could barely walk. Or, oh, you gotta, I saw John train so much. See nothing yet. And she was sweating so hard.

Oh man, I want you to really beat me up. I mean, how many times you get a client that hires you and says, oh, I want a, I saw John train, so and so and so. And she was sweating so hard. Oh, man, I want you to really beat me up. I mean, how many times you get a client that hires you and says, oh, I want you to kick my ass. Yeah. Like, really, that's what you want from me, huh? That's not what's going to work. It's hard because there's, I mean, there is this fine line of us being in, you know, being, you know, almost like,

we're health professionals and then the same time too, we're in the service business, right? These people are paying for a service from you. So there's a part of you that like, okay, this is what they want and this is what they're paying for and they're telling me this is what they want. So you feel this like I should give them what they want but then I also know this is probably what's not best for them.

So this was a hard one for me for a long time. I remember for a long time going like, I know it's best for them but they are paying me and this is what they want so I'll give it to them. But knowing that I should have them do other things. And then you decide, you know what, I'm gonna stick to my guns, I'm gonna start training people the way I know they need

to be trained and you train them and then you're getting pushed back of like, are we gonna just do these movements? Yeah, are we really gonna stay on the floor for this long? Yeah, and then he goes like, all right, I'll show you. Yeah, yeah, and then you abandon that, even though you know that's probably what's best for them to help them out, you abandon it just to show them,

like I'll show you a cool exercise. You want to try something really hard? You'll say, here you go. Yeah, it's this weird like, masochistic kind of energy coming in. Like it's like, toning for their sense of like, you know, eating poorly or like not moving.

And it's just weird, because I totally fit into that. Like, wow, okay, I'll try and do what you want, because this is obviously something you're paying for, and you have these expectations coming in. And as a young trainer, you want to fulfill those needs. And so my athletic background, I'm like, oh, I could show you a really tough workout. I can make us, you don't work with that.

Yeah, you know, there's two things that are challenging about this. One is the root of this is the person is trying to change their body because of self hate, right? They hate their body, they hate how they look. So pain must be a part of it. I must suffer because like you said, a tone for my sins, you know, type of deal.

So that's number one, and that's a hard thing to get them to change. And then number two, this is why it's hard. It's the actual, it's actually the opposite. If I, let me put it this way, if my mom said, hey, Sal, I wanna go hire a trainer, and I want you to let me know if, you know, I'm gonna tell you kind of what happens,

and then you let me know if they were good. And my mom comes back and goes, oh my God, I'm so sore. I could barely move. I was sweating so hard. I'd be like, they're a terrible trainer. It's the exact opposite of how you should feel after a workout.

Now I'm not saying you shouldn't have hard workouts. I'm not saying you shouldn't sweat. I'm not saying soreness isn't a part of it. But you should feel better after your workout. You should move better. You should have more energy. So it's exact opposite. So people are judging you on what they're thinking is a good trainer, is actually what's a bad trainer. And that makes it really hard because you actually want

to do the opposite. And they should feel like they learn something every time. Yes. You want to keep providing them with knowledge. So that way they can apply this later on for themselves. This isn't this reliance sort of model that trainers fall into all the time, where they're only gonna experience this here with me. No, you wanna set them up for success long-term. So all these things come with experience, obviously, as you get through.

Now, this next one is the reason why we started Mind Pump. I can't think of an industry, maybe besides politics, where most of the information is bad and wrong, like the fitness industry. The fitness health, weight loss, diet, industry, lump it all together. The information is so wrong and so terrible. And then when you're training someone, especially when you know what you're doing and you're good, you're constantly battling this. And I don't mean like with new clients, clients have been with for years. I'd have clients that trained for five years and they'd show up and be like, hey, I heard

of this new HCG diet, where I inject HCG and eat 500 calories a day, or, hey, my doctor said I could just drink these shakes and lose weight. Or, hey, I have a friend that did keto, or I had a friend that did this, or what do you think? and lose weight or hey I have a friend that did keto or I had a friend that did this or what do you think and and You have to constantly counter the wrong information and you also have to do it in a way to where you're not condescending in a dick Because you want to be I'm wearing magnets now for my pain Very hard to do that's cuz diet and exercise culture is very much so like religious. Yeah.

It's very, very dogmatic and there's so many camps in our space. It's not black and white, like many other industries and spaces where it's just like, you know, two plus two is always four, even in the medical space. Like, it's pretty, it's pretty black and white there. Here it's so nuanced. There's such an individual variance. There's so many different ways of skin and cat. Like, so many different people that have different

nutritional needs. And so, so many different things can be applied to so many different types of people. And what ends up happening is you get all these different camps. And then all these studies that come out tend to have a bias already behind them to support one community's argument for why their way is better,

whether it be their way of eating or their way of exercising. And so it's such a challenging job as a trainer is that you are constantly taking an onslaught of all these studies and all these people that are trying to tell you that, oh, I read this, that I should do this for that. Or how many times have you had a client debate you

over some crappy diet? Oh, really? It's like, oh, and I mean, not, again, not your client debate you or some crappy diet. Oh wait, wait to me, times. Oh, and I mean, not, again, not being condescending or annoyed by it is really hard to do. Because they always have anecdotes that they'll bring in. Yes. They always have somebody they can think of in their family

or a friend that has said crazy good success, even though it's only been for a couple of weeks or whatever the case, right? It's not long-term, but they lost a ton of weight. And I want to do exactly that. And I'm like, well, now you have to take that all that extra time that you're going to have working out, explaining exactly why that's probably a terrible idea. Yeah. Now, this next one is kind of a part of it, and that's that when people hire you, partially because of the false advertising and crap of the industry, and also

partially because people just think this is the way it works when you start working out or whatever is that they expect instant results. And if you're a good trainer, you're sitting there and you're trying to tell this person who has read article after article saying you lose 30 pounds in 40 days or you could take this pill and it'll do this for you. And you're going to have to tell them, hey, for the first few months, I actually don't want you to lose any weight at all. And losing 30 pounds, if we do it the right way,

it's probably gonna take us, it could take us eight months to a year to do this the right way. Like that is, you're literally telling the person, sorry, I know this is what you want, this is what you think, but I'm not gonna do it. And then they go to a shitty trainer, or they read an article and like,

but this says I can do that. Like that is a really tough thing to... Yeah, no, again, because you're in a service business. I just have this extreme analogy that I would give to somebody that would say that to me. Like, Adam, I just wanna lose 30 pounds as fast as I possibly can. What you just tell me to do, I'll do whatever it takes and then I would say back to them, like, okay, cool.

What I want you to do is I want you to stop eating for the next 30 days. You're gonna come in here and spend three hours on the treadmill every day. And you're gonna, you're gonna definitely lose your 30 pounds by that time. You'll probably die too, but we'll lose the 30 pounds on the way there, right?

And then they would chuckle and laugh. And I say, well, you know, I use that crazy analogy because obviously I'm not gonna tell you don't eat for 30 days. Obviously we're not gonna run on the treadmill for three hours a day, but it's a spectrum. And this is what people gravitate towards that in, that extreme in, where they want to just overdo it, restrict as much as possible, run like crazy, because they want to lose

as fast as they possibly can. But what you don't realize is what we're doing to the body by doing that. I'm not sending you what for a long time. Sure, we'll lose the 30 pounds in a few weeks, but the likelihood that you'll be able to maintain that and the likelihood that you won't put on exponentially more than where you're currently at right now, right after that, is really, really high. So if that's all you care about is, oh, I just want to lose weight as fast as we possibly get. Well, yeah, well, we'll just stop eating and we'll move like crazy. And that will cause the dramatic weight loss, but I'm also going

to screw you up along the way. Totally. And that brings us to the last one, which is it's a long process. And it's because it's not the results that take a long time because I could get somebody results very quickly. It's because we have to develop behaviors that are permanent that stick around in relationships to exercise and your body and nutrition, we have to develop those in those take time.

Your activity levels, and especially your relationship to food and your relationship to your body, when you hire a trainer or a coach, they're pretty solidified. You've developed these over years and years and years. Most clients are not 10 years old, most clients are 30 years old, or older, and this is how they've been living their whole life,

and now they're hiring you, and you're like, we're gonna change how you feel about all this stuff. That doesn't happen in one month or two months or three months. Like I like to tell the story, I had a client who hired me, who his whole life dealt with being overweight, and he would gain weight and lose weight, gain weight and lose weight, had hired weight and lose weight had hired trainers before or bad trainers in the past and that kind of stuff.

And he hired me and his goal is like, okay, well my goal is 35 pound weight loss, but luckily by this point, he'd already gone through so much failure that he was like, I don't care how long it takes. He was like, I just wanna do it the right way and I said, oh, that's great to hear because that's how I train people.

And it took us, I think like two and a half years to lose 35 pounds. Here's what happened. The vast majority of that 35 pound weight loss happened in that last five month period. For two years, you lost almost nothing. Why? Because we had to work on developing these behaviors and relationships and things. There was no judgment, and it was a slow process. Then when things started to click, they started to click real fast.

And I know you guys have seen this with clients as well. Towards the end, the weight started coming off. By the way, this was, I want to say 12 years ago. And I know the guy, I still talked to him on social media and stuff. He still exercises. He's still consistent. You know, he works out three days a week. He's never gained the way back.

Never gained the way back. Just 12 years later. Now I could have technically gotten to lose 35 pounds in eight to 12 weeks, but it wouldn't work out the same way. So it's a very long process. Yeah, I mean, I hate to use bad analogies, but it's like the lead, the horse, the water, you can't force some drink,

but I mean, you can't force them to drink in this situation, but it's not gonna be sustainable. And so at that point, you want to you want to be sort of the vessel there and keep providing them with information on how to do it, how to change the behaviors, but really it's going to amount to them deciding one day, like, oh, it just like clicks sometimes for certain people at different areas along the journey, where it's just like, wow, this, okay, this makes sense and then it's just boom, it just starts to really accelerate.

Yeah, now I do wanna say this, and I don't wanna talk about why you shouldn't be a trainer. I do wanna say this, okay. If you do have that deep burning desire to help people and the vehicle is fitness and health because you love doing that as well, almost nothing is more rewarding than being a personal trainer. And all the stuff I just listed won't even matter to you.

It didn't matter to me. I went through all of it and I didn't care. And this is a true story. At one point, I left the industry and got into finance and investment. And I literally got a salary that was higher than what I would make as a personal trainer. And I lasted, I think it was seven months, hated it. I sat in a bank and I talked like this and I had air conditioning in the background, no music and there was no gym and it wasn't the same thing and the staff wasn't the same. And I remember I couldn't, it was not rewarding. Helping people

really improve the quality, because almost nothing you can do will improve every aspect of the quality of your life like improving your health in a real way. It's like having a kid, dude. It's one of the most fun. It's like having a kid. It's one of those things that it's hard as shit, but it's one of the most rewarding things ever.

Totally. My sister right now who's been working for the company for almost five years, so she's accumulated quite a bit of knowledge from all of us. she's gone through a certification. She's helping out a family friend of hers and she's personal training them. And she's been texting me the last couple of weeks and she's like, oh my God, it's so amazing.

She's like really, the girl she's helping is really overweight and decondition. And she's seen like great progress right now. And just in different things, mobility, her energy, you know what I'm saying, like her confidence, like, she, my sister's reporting back all this stuff. And you can hear in her voice, how excited she is. So this is why this is what kept me doing this for this long.

It's extremely rewarding when you do it. You may only hit the ball, you know, three, three out of 10 times. But when you do, man, and it's a good hit and you make it, and you make an impact on someone's life. It's incredibly rewarding. It's really really, and part of why I think it is so rewarding is because I'll fucking heart it. It's funny, so I'm gonna put you on the spotlight here a little bit, Adam. I come in this morning to work out, right?

So I get an early 6.30, 7 o'clock workout. Adam's here, training a client. Doesn't need to train a client. None of us need to train clients. I don't think she pays you anymore at this point, but she'd been working with you for so long, and you feel like a responsibility to connect to this one. How long have you trained her? Years now. We're like four, I actually don't fuck before the podcast. Seven now? God, I can't wait

to spend seven years. Seven or eight years now. Right. And again, that kind of reflects on the passion, you know, that you had for it. There's almost nothing more rewarding. And fitness and health is incredibly powerful, yet unassuming vehicle for personal growth. And you'll see these people through the years become better people. So if you do have a passion for this and you do feel compelled, that's the right work, I felt compelled to do it. There's nothing more rewarding. And I wouldn't leave the industry for anything. And I've gone through periods of making

very little money doing this. So on the flip side, if all the stuff that we're saying doesn't scare you away, and if anything, you're getting excited over it, well then, it's probably for you. It's probably for you. But if I just scared you away, good, don't do it. Because it's going to suck.

You just saved you some time. So look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpafree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin, Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam and you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Cell. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.

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