Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2262: Six Reasons Trainers Fail

Episode Date: February 1, 2024

Why is there a high turnover rate? (1:22) Why hiring a good trainer or coach DRAMATICALLY improves the odds of long-term success. (3:43) Six Reasons Trainers Fail. #1 - They can’t sell. (7:07) #2 - They don’t speak the client’s language. (15:46) #3 - They don’t understand the macros of business. (20:43) #4- They don’t meet their clients where they are. (25:06) #5 - They do what their clients want (and not what they need). (30:54) #6 - They try to Razzle dazzle every workout. (35:05) Related Links/Products Mentioned Special Launch: Mind Pump Fitness Coaching Course ** Promo code 200OFF at checkout for $200 off ** The Most Important Skill For Personal Trainers – Mind Pump Blog 5 Characteristics of Successful Personal Trainers – Mind Pump Blog How to Determine if Personal Trainers Know What They are Doing – Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump #2252: Mind Pump Fitness Coaching Course 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 pump with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded Fitness Health Entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, here's the six reasons why trainers

and their clients fail. By the way, this is the last day for our trainer course. We have released a course for trainers and coaches that teaches them how to build their own business, how to build a career, how to get clients incredible results, and how to get your clients permanent results. You will not learn any of this stuff in any certification.

This is incredibly valuable stuff. And because today is still the launch season, this is the last day, you'll get $200 off. Plus you get a free maps program, maps prime program, a free maps prime pro program. You get a lead generation masterclass included. You get all 11 maps mods for free, all 13 maps guides for free.

I mentioned the $200 off and you get access to a private group for trainers and coaches who only did this course. This all, by the way, all that bonus stuff is worth 27 her bucks. The program itself, the course itself isn't even close to that much. Go check it out. Go to mind pump fitness coaching.com. Use the code 200 off for the discount and all that free stuff. All right. Here comes the show.

Personal training has one of the highest turnover rates, but it doesn't have to. In today's episode, we're going to talk about the six reasons why trainers fail. Don't do these things and you're going to be fine. Yeah. Let's talk about it. You know what's crazy about it is that, uh, it is true training. Personal trainers have a very high turnover rate, but however, because what you don't see in the stats are the ones that do well build an incredible career. It's just

So rewarding career too. I don't exactly. I just don't think I know this we know this we all ran gyms They're just not taught how to do it. They're not taught how to do it right now Do you think they rate they rank up there with some of the highest turnover rates within businesses like we in Doug? What are the top 10 highest jobs? Yeah, turnover. Yeah, what do you think it's gonna be up there with some of the highest turnover rates in businesses. Like we dug over the top 10 highest jobs, turnover, yeah. Turnover rates. What do you think it's up there? It's going to be up there as like fast restaurant industry. Really?

Yeah. Yeah. He would, I would have seen people at work, you know, like, you know, frying fries and doing that kind of stuff. Oh, I didn't, I wouldn't think that I would think jobs that are like high sales type stuff that require you to, I would think real estate, I would think real estate is up there. I would think, yeah, I would think real estate is up there. That's a good point. Yeah, I would think mortgage originators, I would think car sales,

I would think jobs that require... Maybe look at the top 10 careers with the highest turnover rate, because I think jobs would go up. I don't even think tech might be up for grabs. Yeah, interesting. Well, I mean, we saw this in gyms and the gyms that we ran is that you'd have your good trainers and then you'd have a bunch that would just cycle in and out until you learned how to train and develop them well. And then the stick rate became quite good. I mean, part of it is that the success rate around fitness period is dismal. If you look at the data on weight loss and then weight gain,

it's like 90 plus percent of people gain all the weight back and then some when they lose it. So that's like a terrible, terrible, in fact, there's some really crappy people online right now that are using statistics like that and trying to make the case that it's a waste of time to either. Trying to deter you from actually improving because of that fact.

And they're using that data as one of the reasons, like look, it's a waste of time to lose weight. You're not going to get healthier. Cause here's what the data shows a year later, your, your blood markers go back to where they were, what if they don't even try? So just give up. Yeah. So that's, that's gotta be part of the reason. All right. Number one, what is the number one reason why a trainer fails? I know it comes to mind for me. Yeah. Um, it's gotta be, you know,

I do want to say before we get to some of the reasons that I just, I just talked about the, the fail rate in fitness. Hiring a good trainer or coach, we have to say this part, dramatically improves the odds of long-term success, dramatically. Like when someone hired you guys back half your career, when you really knew what you were doing. It wasn't a 90 plus percent fail rate. It was, you know, probably 70 percent success rate or something like that. Like a majority of your clients that came with you, not only got their results, but then kept them for the rest of their lives. So we got to make sure we say that because I don't want people to be crapped out. Like really good trainers. Good trainers are knowledgeable, great trainers are wise,

and great trainers have an incredible success record with the ones that at least I've known. Well, yeah, there's a way to increase your odds of success. And that's kind of like, I mean, there's, there's things we'll bring up in here that'll, you know, even increase your odds as a trainer and being successful. Well, I think that also has a lot to do too with the consumer, right? Who's hiring the trainer going in with the right mindset.

If you go in with this mindset of I'm hiring a trainer because I want to pay someone to get this 30 pounds off of me and I don't want to think about it. I don't even care if you have a great trainer, your success rate, even if you get to the goal, you'll have maintaining is very low. But if you go into hiring a personal trainer as similar as taking a course or going to get your college degree or think of it as an educational tool. Uh, and that if you go in with that, like I'm here to learn as much as I can about my body, nutrition, exercise, science, like you go in with that attitude, you'll, you'll leave successful.

Even if you don't, let's say reach your 30 pounds of fat loss goal, initially with that person, if you go in with the attitude of you're trying to learn about your body and how, how it, how it works, how your metabolism works, all those things. Then I think it's a, you're going to have a tremendous amount of success. Yeah. And it's like, okay, look hiring a trainer, expecting them to, in saying things like just tell me what to do, I'll do it. And then, you know, whatever you say, and that'll work.

And I'm not going to really try to figure out how to do this on my own with you or whatever. That's the equivalent of going on a journey and getting on the back of a guide and wearing a blindfold and saying, wake me up when we get there. And then, oh, I got to do that journey again on my own afterwards. Now you're screwed. Now you get to your destination. Your guide is gone and you're like, I'm lost versus lead me with my eyes open, show me how to make my way through this journey. Cause I'm going to be having to make this journey on my own for the rest of my life. That's the difference.

It's funny cause you say it like that and it makes it sound so ridiculous for someone. Yet I would say a big percentage of people say that. That's right. I mean, do you remember? Most of the people hired me. I'm a lot of people tell me exactly what to eat. Just tell me exactly what you put in my schedule. I'll show up.

Yeah. I'll just do it. I don't want to learn. I don't want to. That's why I'm hiring you or whatever. And unfortunately, the young trainer, the, you know, the 20 year old version of me was like, all right, fine, job security. You know what I'm saying?

They're going to need me forever to take them through this journey. It wasn't until later did I realize, like, man, I'm doing you such a disservice by just getting you to your goal. If you don't learn anything about the process. Isn't the irony about that, which is interesting. The irony is, cause I did the same thing, all of us did when we first started, you had more turnover with clients doing that than you did later. Yeah.

When you really figured out how to do it the right way and teach people how to do it the right way, then the people stuck with you and you had incredible success and you have to constantly try and find clients. Okay, so what's one of the number one reasons why trainers fail? I think point blank, this is the top, top reason is that they can't sell. They simply can't sell. Now, on the surface, it is what I'm saying, which is they don't know how to sell training. They don't know how to sell packages.

They don't know how to get people to buy or hire them, right? They don't know how to sell themselves. But that's a fraction of what I'm saying, which is they don't know how to sell training. They don't know how to sell packages. They don't know how to get people to buy or hire them, right? They're going to sell themselves. But that's, that's a fraction of what I'm talking about. That's part of it. But that's a fraction because if you think about the relationship you have with your client as a trainer, you're constantly having to sell them on why they need to change, hard to change or what feel like impossible to change behaviors. Constantly, when you're working with someone for three months, six months,

a year, five years, whatever, the conversations and the guidance is constantly how can I sell this idea to this person on how they can change these behaviors so that they can do this on their own so they can achieve long-term success. If you don't have those communication skills, if you don't have those sales skills, you're done because a trainer in Essence is a salesperson because that's what they're trying to do They're trying to teach you and coach you and sell you on how to make these profound These these difficult to make profound changes in your behaviors

The irony is you're you're selling them every single time you meet them That's right But then the majority of trainers get paralyzed when they actually have to sell them and exchange, you know, money. Money, I know. And it's just interesting to me because it's like you are constantly having to kind of communicate in a way that's effective and relates to the person in front of you. So that way you get by and get them to agree, you get them to show back up. Like just getting in and come back requires a constant inundation of sales.

Do you think part of that there's a bit of a self selection bias of like people that gravitate towards health, wellness, fitness tend to be more like health conscious, empathetic, caring, caretaker like. I think they have a false vision of what. Yeah. So my point is that you, they have kind of, so you get that kind of person who is attracted

to the profession and then they find out that selling is actually a big part of it. And those same people tend to be the people that, oh my God, car sales? Yeah, car sales, slimy. Like there's always like weird associations with sales which I'm sure maybe in their own experience, they've gone through some, I don't know,

maybe a time share or something where it's like your health hostage. No, it's a distorted view where it's completely distorted where you think sales is talking people into doing something that they don't want to do, or that's not good for them to take advantage of them. That is not what we're talking about. In fact, the best sales people in the world,

even people that sell products that are the best sales people in the world, they know that that's not good sales. In fact, if you listen to our podcast, you know what we're doing on every podcast? We're selling you ideas. We're selling you and you have to learn how to communicate so effectively that people adopt them. Like if you've heard me say on this podcast that if you chase aesthetics,

you'll lose your health and then lose your aesthetics. But if you chase health, you'll get a great deal of both. That's just an effective way to say what we've known for a long time, which is, Hey, try to get healthy and don't worry about how you look. But I just figured out, or we figured out a way to say it to where the average, where many people hear it and go, Oh, that makes sense. Okay, I get that. That's what effective sales is.

It's funny because, you know, we have our trainer course, that's out, and we did the three day launch. And so we showed some, a few things that are in the course in there. And the one that we get the most comments on is when I went through the sales process, trainers are blown away because they're like, first off, they don't like sales and they watch and they go, Oh, that's what he means. Then they apply it and it's like, mind blown. Oh my God, this is so crazy how effective this is. And it's because they've never been taught.

First off, they have a bad view of sales. They think it's again, taking advantage of people, which is it, which it isn't. If you do a good job. And number two, they've never been trained on it. They don't understand it. Once you understand it and you know that, oh, I'm helping someone, I just have to get that person out of their way. It's like the most effective coaches, the most effective teachers,

the most effective parents. What makes them effective is that they get you to adopt things and you believe it's your idea. You ever notice that? That's the most effective method. 100%. Yeah, you guys ever do that? You ever have a coach or a teacher or dugs like that

with us sometimes we'll do something and then I realize like the soul time. What are we talking about? And I realized I realized every day. No, I mean, I mean, I mean, all, I mean truth be told, right? It's like you're guiding the client to the answer so that they can come out and be like, Oh, you know what? This is, this really makes sense. Then they adopt it, but that takes a skill and trainers are typically not taught that.

Yeah. They don't learn that anyway. Well, the first day of training were the, the section where I did the whiteboard and broke down, you know, how do you, you know, set out to make $10,000 in a month. And the whole thing is about closing lead generation, average dollar per sale, all this like salesy stuff. But my goal always was to distill that down to the trainer who just despises sales and go like, Listen, it's literally me just giving you a plan on how many people do you need to meet every day and communicate and learn about them and talk to them. And that

will lead to all these sales. And if I could get you to not think about the dollar amount and you're responsible for this much, or in order to hit your goal, you need to make all the, not look at it like that and look at it as purely like, listen, my job is to help people. How many people do I need to talk to in order to help X amount of people? There's actually a formula to do. And just the reframing of what you're doing, which is just asking a lot of the right questions and then communicating effectively the things to help these people. Yes. And that leads to sales.

Yes, yes. It's literally sales can be summed up as effective communication. How can I communicate what I know about health and fitness? I don't mean know as a knowledge on paper, but like there's a, there's a knowing that you have that you only know when you experience it. Like if you've been on this journey and if you're a trainer or coach, you've, you have been on this journey yourself.

When you go on this journey and you do it the right way, it's life changing. It's like, wow, this is, this is way different than I thought. This feels amazing. Not only is what not only is it amazing, but I like it. I love it. And I don't think I ever want to go back to the old way again. That knowing you unfortunately can't transmit it to somebody automatically. The only way we have to communicate is words.

So you have to learn how to communicate effectively. Think about it. Like how many times people listening right now who've worked with a trainer who's told them the same thing over and over again, and the person may be like, all right, I'll try it. Oh, it didn't work for me. Then they'll meet another trainer or coach, they'll hear someone else and it clicks. Yeah. Well, I was just thinking to, in terms of like those actionables and things that you guys kind of coach through that series, I think there's this misconception

that like, if I'm a certain personality and so I'm only going to sell because I'm charismatic and you know, only those kind of people can sell really well and all this stuff. Uh, as there's's like very simple practical things you can apply that you just need to practice and you need people in front of you and you need to go over this and routinely sort of drill this you know on a day-to-day basis and then it just starts to come naturally but it takes just like anything else, doing reps in order to get stronger. That's the same thing.

It's so true, Justin, what you're saying right now, and I know I'm gonna offend some trainers that think this or say stuff like, I don't like sales. And a lot of times you just, it's a weak mindset. It's not that you don't like sales, it's that you're not good at it, which most of us aren't when we first start.

Very few people have this gift of like, oh, the first day I was just selling and doing so well. That's a very small percentage. Most anybody else that got good at that craft, they had to practice it and they went through a period of sucking. And most people that hate it are hated in fear of the work and fear of, I've got to put the practice in and it's going to be tough and I am going to fail and I'm going to get embarrassed and I'm going to say the wrong thing.

It's like you got to get past all that and you got to put the reps in. And then over time, I promise that if you put the work in, even if you're not this, you know, like huge personality and charismatic, like that you can get to a place where you can use a lot of these effective tools to be very good at what you do. I was just going to say, Justin's an example of that. I mean, you and I are kind of loud, boisterous, you know, whatever fit that typical mold. Justin's not like that.

Justin wasn't like that at all and became one of the top most successful trainers in the Silicon Valley because he could communicate effectively, but he doesn't communicate the way I do where Adam does. So no, you don't have to be, you know, Tony Robbins on stage type of deal. Effective communication is effective communication

and it can come in many different forms. The next thing that trainers do that screw up, and these are the, typically I see this with trainers, either A, after they get a high level certification, or B, the most educated trainers, right? The ones with master's degrees or PhDs, is that they don't speak the client's language. And I think, you know, I'm gonna say that,

that probably a lot of us comes from being insecure and wanted to show the client how smart you are. So instead of saying, you know, to give example, instead of saying something like lift your arm out to your side, they'll say something like, let's, let's vertically abduct your humorous, you know, or this stabilizes the scapula with internal rotation or whatever it's like, the client's listening to you.

What are you trying to do? Trying to show them that, you know, words, or are you trying to communicate to them what you want them to do? And I hear this. In fact, I hear this a lot with, I said, like I said, PhDs and masters degree type trainers, when they come in, I hear them talking to the client and I've done this before, or I'll hear them talking and then the client will leave. And I'll go, was that, was that a doctor that you were working with? Like, no, why?

What are you talking about? Why are you talking to that way? The only people you should be talking to that way are people that understand that language. That person has no idea what you just said. All they know is you know a lot of stuff, but you haven't connected with them. Use language that makes sense with them so that you can be effective with what you're saying. Yeah. I used to teach my trainers always to ask themselves desired outcome, right?

When you get in a situation like that, what is your desired outcome? Is your desired outcome that you want this client to know how smart you are, or is your desired outcome for them to change behaviors or to improve the movement or to get better at whatever it said thing you're talking about? And really ask yourself that. And if your goal is for them to change behaviors or properly move or whatever it may be that you're communicating, overly communicating, then then you're going to communicate it in their terms or what's easiest for them to put together. And that may be as based

like you're talking to a child sometimes, it's okay to do that. If that's what it takes to get the person to move into good form or get them to change behaviors around nutrition versus the overly educated trainer that is more concerned about being recognized for how smart and intelligent they are. And that's actually their desired outcome. The desired outcome is they need, they want to feel good. And this is, it's, it's, it's almost always driven through insecurities. And we all have bits of this, right? I'm guilty of feeling insecure in these moments and like, Oh my God, I'm talking to this really smart person and I want them to think that I know my stuff.

And so, you know, I'm guilty of doing things like that. Or it's like, and then I asked myself like, what the fuck, why did I do that? Like why, why did I say that? Why did I bring that up? Like it literally had nothing to do with truly helping them and everything to do with, I needed to assert myself as somebody

who should be in this conversation. You know, that's just not, that's not for the right. I found too with that, like a lot of times trainers, because you're working in the same environment with other trainers that may have more experience than you, that they're just like constantly trying to adjust their language to impress the other coaches and you know, the training staff and trying to, to look a certain way in order to garner attention from them. And they lose sight of what's right in front of them, which is their client, which is totally going over there. You even see this in social media. You'll see these fitness influencers

continue to refer to muscle growth as hypertrophy. Okay. Now that's becoming more well known as a term, but really they're saying it because they want to sound smart or contractile tissue instead of like muscle. You know, it's like, okay, but I know what you're doing. You're trying to sound smart and you might fool some people, but what's happened is you're missing. You're missing on a lot of people who could, who could be hearing what you're, or they'll get into the weeds on something that doesn't need to be communicated, that only all it did was serve as to, is to confuse people. So this, the success of this, this podcast and business is a testament to this exact point

that we're making right now. We saw this massive opportunity in this space, not because there was no smart people out there talking, it's cause the smart people that were communicating on podcasts or on social media were over communicating. They're full of a bunch of fucking word salads. They're just trying to sound as smart as they possibly can. So people respect them. They weren't really trying to get help and reach a ton of people because if they were,

they wouldn't be communicating that information like that. I used to, at one point I trained a lot of, you know, doctors, I used to have my studio was next to the hospital. So at one point I had all these doctors come in, they referred to each other. And then with them I could get very technical and it worked. It worked because they understood the human body or whatever.

Anyway, one of them referred a family member to me. And I'll never forget, she brings her in and I'm communicating to this family member of hers in a very different way. And at the end of it, I remember my client looked at me and goes, you do a good job talking to different people. I'm like, what do you mean? She said, when you talk to me, you get all into the anatomy and the science and the technical aspect, because you know, I understand that when you were talking

to my niece, you were communicating totally different. She's like, that was really, and I took it as such a compliment because for me, that was such an important thing, was like, can I connect with people in a way to where they look at me and they say, I know what you're trying to say, and I can adopt that versus, wow, you know a lot of stuff.

But what's the desired outcome, like you said, Adam? Now, the next one, you actually mentioned this earlier, Adam, which is, you know, trainers know a lot about macros when it comes to diet, right? Proteins, fats, carbohydrates and calories. And when they're teaching diet, they'll talk about how you have to at some point learn about macros in order to figure out where you get your proteins, fats and carbs and calories and how to manipulate them. And obviously this isn't everything about diet, but this is like one of the core things that you want to know when it comes to, you know, nutrition itself. But these and how to manipulate them. And obviously this isn't everything about diet, but this is like one of the core things that you want to know when it comes to nutrition itself.

But these trainers don't know macros of business at all. And there's some very simple macros when it comes to a personal trainer. Here's something that a lot of trainers experience. They experience these wild fluctuations in revenue and they don't really know, what they know is that, oh, it can work harder or it can work less hard.

And then sometimes it doesn't show up right away. There tends to be a lag with personal training because people tend to buy packages. So you'll get a bunch of resigns. You'll get this huge month of sales. You'll take your foot off the throttle a little bit. Uh-oh. Two slow months. Gotta put my foot on the throttle again. And then I get a big month and then it evens out to not a very successful year or career. And they really don't know what are the, what are the macro?

It's like somebody dieting, trying to get shredded. And they just kind of eat less and try to figure it out without really understanding macros, right? Very difficult. You know, Adam did a, did a course. This is in our course, but he taught this for free on our, when we did this live on the macros of your business, which is like how many people you're talking to,

how many people make an appointment, what percentage of them show up, what percentage of them hire you, and then what's the average dollar per sale. When you know those macros, then you can literally figure out, you can reverse engineer, I wanna make $10,000 a month,

I wanna make $6,000 a month this month, I wanna make $20,000 a month, you can reverse engineer. I want to make $10,000 a month. I want to make $6,000 a month this month. I want to make $20,000 a month. You can reverse engineer and know exactly how many people you need to talk to. What it's going to take. That's it. Or I need to improve my closing percentage or bump my per average, my dollar per average by 50 bucks to get my number or whatever. If you know these numbers, no, it's no guesswork. Otherwise, it becomes this like, I don't know. I just kind of work harder and then it shows up and then I take my foot off and then it kind of slows down. It's a hundred percent what made me a successful trainer of the three of us. I'm, I'm the worst trainer by far, like as far as my ability to help clients,

my nutritional knowledge, my biomechanics knowledge, like all those things. You guys are far superior in those categories. What I did really well was teach business. And I saw that opportunity when, when I first got my first club and was managing at a very young age and everybody was older, wiser, more experienced, more knowledgeable, higher education, everything. They had me beaten every category. But where, what I did have was this ability to help these trainers build

a business. And what I noticed right out the gates was like, oh my God, we have all these trainers that are trying to diet and they don't understand their macros. They don't, they have no idea proteins, carbs, fat. They don't understand the formula to make a certain amount of money. And yet they're just blindly going out there and running. How would you, how would you do this? Would you go up to them and be something like, say something like, how many points do you need to make to get go up to them and be something like, say something like, how many points do you need to make to get in order to make that? Yeah. And they wouldn't know, right? Yeah.

I mean, I mean, you've seen it firsthand because we've toured around gyms together when we used to kind of donate our time and help trainers out around these facilities. And it's always when I get up to talk, it's the first thing I ask by a show of hands who can share their show clothes show clothes and a average dollar per sale and nobody ever raises their hand. There's never one train, never once and all the tours and all the groups of people. I've been able to now, if you've heard me, if you've worked for me or you've, or you've heard me talk about this and then I see you, you might raise your hand and sometimes we go places where people have heard me talk about this.

But anytime I meet a trainer that's new, it's never met me before and I bring that up. They never have that answer. And it's, to me, it's like, that's so wild because if you were to talk to a client about dieting and nutrition and you said, do you know proteins, carbs and fats? And you know how many calories you're eating? Yeah. And they, and they can't answer any of those and they have no idea. It's like, well, let's first figure that all out before we decide if that's a good idea for you. Because then for me to say, oh, eat 1500 calories in this minute, it's like, wait a second, we don't even know if that's a good idea for you. Let's go track, let's go see what you're currently doing. And then from there, we'll make these

minor adjustments. Yeah, otherwise, it's just like spaghetti on the wall. You know, like 100%. You figure out those numbers and you really can move the needle Yeah, 100% the next one this one's more of a training thing, which is this is very common very common Especially with new trainers. I was notorious for failing with this one, which is not meeting your clients where they are So what does this look like you get a brand new client? They have not exercised in years They don't know what they're eating. Their diet is all over the place. So they just kind of eat whatever they feel

like most people and they come to you and they're very motivated because they just decided to hire you and then they say to you, okay, I'm ready to go. Let's do this. I'll do whatever you say. So then what the trainer does is they get excited and they go, okay, cool.

You're gonna work out five days a week. Here's your meal plan. You're gonna buy these exact foods. Breakfast is a quarter cup of cheese with three eggs scrambled a half a cup of broccoli with, you know, and they give them this like, just everything's laid out and perfect. And literally what they did is the client was over here doing nothing, tracking nothing, understanding nothing about their diet. And they wanted to bring them all the way over here where everything is

meticulously planned out. And they're at the gym five days a week. Zero margin for error. You are setting your clients up 100% to fail if you don't meet them where they're at. Now what does it look like when I say meet them where they're at? Well, the same person comes to me who's not exercising, has no idea what they're eating,

just eats whatever they want, whatever they feel like. They say, Sal, I'm ready to go. Let's train. I'm gonna start them off with one or two days a week of workouts. We're not even gonna get a touch diet in fact right now. We're not gonna get a touch diet. I'm just gonna have you write down what you're eating. Let's train. I'm gonna start them off with one or two days a week of workouts. We're not even gonna get touch diet in fact right now. We're not gonna get touch diet. I'm just gonna have you write down what you're eating.

Let's just write down what you're eating so we get a good idea. And then we'll take one little step after I can see that you're consistent two days a week, which may look like I'm gonna have you add a little fiber to your diet, or I'm gonna have you add protein to your diet or something like that, right? That's meeting your client where they are

and slowly stepping them to the point where they're, you know, whatever, four days a week, five days a week or whatever. If that even becomes a reality for them. But so many trainers take that motivated client and say, let's throw everything at you, but the kitchen sink, cause we're going to get those results. You're going, they are going to fail. They may, in fact, they may follow what you say, get results, but they'll 100% go backwards. This is, this is like, I can't think of a more guaranteed way to get your clients to fail

than to not meet them where they're at. Well, it has to be one of the most common things too that you see with trainers. I think part of that too is the fear that if they don't see results fast enough that they won't continue buying training for me. Like I think that at least when I think back to like, because of course I'm guilty of this also, I think probably what was going through think back to like, cause of course I'm, I'm guilty of this also. I think probably what was going through my head is like, oh, I got 10 sessions, you know,

they only bought 10 sessions from me. I better show them some crazy results. I better show them something so that they feel like, oh, okay, good, we're gonna do this together. Versus me telling them like, like really laying out what this, and by the way, this is the type of stuff that we teach in the course, right?

Is like, how you do that? Like how do I take somebody who wants to lose 30 pounds, only buys 10 sessions from me, but I need to manage the expectations. Right. And a lot of that is, is effective communication from the very beginning. It's like explaining to them, like, absolutely, we're going to lose that 30 pounds, but this is what it's going to look like. The first month we're going to be doing X, Y and Z.

During this time we're focusing on building muscle, building your metabolism. That way that when we lose this 30 pounds, you're going to be able to sustain it for the rest of your life. I think we both know that you don't want to lose 30 pounds and then just put 35 back on by next year, right? The idea is to lose that and keep it off forever. Well, if we're going to do that, then we're going to do it the right way. If you just cared about speed and getting off as fast as possible, I'd say,

don't eat, get on the treadmill every single day. You're going to lose your 35 pounds. But I think we both know that you wouldn't sustain that same thing goes here. That's just an extreme analogy of what we need to do, which is we need to do this slowly, correctly, so that you keep it off for the rest of your life, managing those expectations, explaining the entire journey for the client. so they understand there's going to be these moments in time when we are training towards losing 30 pounds that you're not going to see any weight loss. In fact, you might see some weight gain on the scale and communicating to them that this

is not a bad thing. This is part of the journey. This is part of the plan. I think if I did a better job at that when I was 22 years old and I had only 10 sessions with a client, I think I would have been far more successful. I was just thinking like honesty and integrity go the furthest with this whole process. And I think why I bring up that is that the client coming in a lot of times

they're not even being honest with themselves in terms of like what they can actually do for a long period of time and not just in a short window where they're very highly motivated. And so as a trainer and experienced trainer, you get better at this in terms of being able to see that. You know, what, what really is the right sort of prescription for this client in front of me based off of what they tell me and they, and I can dig deeper and ask the right sort of prescription for this client in front of me based off of what they tell me and they, and I can dig deeper and ask the right questions to extract out,

like with their lifestyle really looks like. Yeah, every once in a while. And you don't, by the way, when you do it, you guys are saying people listen is if you do it right, they listen, but every once in a while, there's a real small percentage of time, they'll argue with you. And I would say this to that person when the person says, no, no, no, I, I, I want to go like full bore or whatever. And I'll say, okay, well, when was the last time in your life you exercise five days a week consistently? Cause let's say that's what they wanted.

And then they'd say something like, Oh, uh, 10 years ago, how long did you do that consistently for? Oh, about a year. Well, why'd you stop? Oh, well, I got busy, I got bored, whatever. Okay. Well, what's different now? How do, what, what makes you think it's going to be consistent this time? And you'll see the gears in their head turning as you're talking to them.

And they'll start to realize like, and this always happens. This is happening a few times. I'll say this and they'll, they'll say, I get, I can see your point. Okay. I see your point. And I'll say, look, it's not like you're not going to get results starting slow. You're, it's the only way to get the results you're looking for. So I'm not saying get slower results. I'm saying this is it. The other option is to not get where you want to go or get where you want to go

and gain the way back. That's all that's going to happen. So I'm just trying to steer you in the right direction, which takes us to the next one, which is this is a tough one for new trainers as well, especially when you're not confident, which is you do what your client wants and not what they need. So a good example of this is a client will come to you and say, Hey, you know, I didn't really get sore after the last workout. I could do way harder. You could push me way harder.

And the young version of me was like, you know, I knew that was too much or whatever, but I'd be like, okay, like, I'll make you sore. Like we could do that, right? Or they come to me and say, you know, I know I'm losing a little bit of weight, but I want to lose it faster. I'm going to go, I'm going to go and cut more calories. And instead of being like, that's not a good idea. Like, okay, let's, let's go in. I'll just give you what you want type of deal.

Um, clients don't know what they need. This is why you're the guide. You're the guide because you know what they need. They think they know what they want, but really what they want doesn't exist. What does the client want? Fast results tomorrow that lasts forever, that they don't have to do anything to maintain, right? Does that exist?

It doesn't. They're going to tell you otherwise, but that's actually what they want. So this is where effective again, communication comes into play. You're the one that has to, you have to guide them and show them that, no, this is, this is what you need. This is not what you're telling me that you want. If we do what you want, you're not going to get it. I would argue that this is probably more difficult today than it even was when

we were trainers. I think that we're inundated with social media, which means that we have an overwhelming amount of BS and content and marketing and advertising that we're getting bombarded with. They're more worried about alkaline water than they are like, you know. Yeah, they're just, I mean, and that's an example, right? There's just, there's so much bullshit out there.

There's so many 30 day challenges before and after photos. There's, I mean, sure, we had some of that when you saw some, the random EAS commercial or you saw, like, but that like, like our magazine article or in a flex magazine or something, but that night, like, or magazine article in a flex magazine or something, but not like today. I mean, today, you're, most people are on social media for hours a day, every day. And they start to think that's normal. Yeah. You start to, exactly. You see so much of this, that this has to be one of the biggest challenges, I think, for people that lead

teams of trainers is getting them to communicate what your client needs and not necessarily what they think they want. And I think part of that is the ability to be able to explain to them why they don't really want that. I think that was, there's, there's an art to that. There's an art to being able to teach somebody who says, well, my friend, she lost 30 pounds in 30 days. Why can't I do that same thing? Or I do want to do that. And then being able to explain to them, well, my friend, she lost 30 pounds in 30 days. Why can't I do that same thing?

Or I do want to do that. And then being able to explain to them, well, yeah, we could lose 30 pounds in 30 days. We absolutely could do that, but you don't want that. And let me tell you why you don't want that. I think that's the part that's so important, not just like, Oh, you don't want to do that. You're going to do this, whether you like it or not, is the ability to communicate

to them and convince them here, back to the sales thing, convince them that what they think they want is not really what they want. And what they really want is the right way, but someone hasn't told them that the shit that they're reading or seeing is not ideal. Now, a lot of people, some trainers and people might be listening and saying, well, that's going to be hard. How do you say that? The key to it isn't necessarily what you say.

It's more about how you say it. Be confident. When people hire a trainer, what they really want is a leader to guide them. They want to feel a little sense of authority. And I've done this with clients before where I'll say this, they debate me and I say, look, you're hiring me for a reason. I'm an expert. I know what I'm talking about.

I'm going to ask you to trust me this one time and I promise I'll never have to ask you for your trust again. Do I have it? And people like they hear that and they go, yeah, I know what I'm talking about. I'm gonna ask you to trust me this one time, and I promise I'll never have to ask you for your trust again. Do I have it? And people, like they hear that and they go, yeah, I trust you, let's do this. Cause they wanna offset the fear of the journey and what this looks like.

And it doesn't come necessarily from the words, it comes from how you say them. You have to present that confidence and be okay. Now, if you present it in a way that's not confident, I know you wanna do it that way, but maybe we should do it to like, imagine an airline pilot getting on the intercom when it's bumpy saying, you know, I think we're going to be okay. We might be,

everybody's going to panic instead of them getting on a totally fine doctor. This is normal. Trying to prescribe your medicine and you don't like, I don't want to do that. I want to take this instead of him like, okay, we could try that. Yeah. I don't know. We'll see how it goes. They want to know that you're confident. So that's the most important thing. All right. Lastly,

this was another big one that I did all the time is trainers, try to razzle, dazzle their clients, every workout for some reason. This definitely exists. Oh my God. They think that the workouts have to be so different and weird and I have to introduce new exercises to you every week. Otherwise you're going to think this is what I used to think. The clients going to think that they don't need me anymore.

First off, they're, you know, and this is a misconception used to think the clients going to think that they don't need me anymore. First off, they're, you know, and this is a misconception. A lot of people call him the entertainer. Yeah. People think it, you know, incorrectly that a trainer just knows exercise. No, a good trainer is a guide. Knowing exercise is a little part of it, but that's not, that's not even, that's not even 10% of it.

Right. So the exercises themselves is not that important. It's how you program them. It's the guidance. It's all the other things that go into it. Trying to always razzle, dazzle them. This is what screws you up with that. You don't stick to the basics.

You don't stick to the things that actually work. You end up combining exercises and doing workouts that are far less effective in the attempt of surprising your client with this new thing that they haven't done yet. Like the most effective exercises on earth are the ones that the clients probably seen before. Squats, rows, presses, overhead presses, like all those basic movements,

it's not the one foot press curl, back step lunge, rotation, whatever. Those are not nearly as effective. In fact, they're far less effective. So. Well, yeah, even, you know, it being ineffective, like you just, you don't even have the ability to go back and show them like what was working for them.

Like you don't have the ability to go back and have true metrics that you can follow and see progression because you've been shaking it up so much and like adding all of these razzle-dazzle moves and things that there aren't a consistent move that they're continually improving upon. And I think we get away with that because people do like to be entertained,

they like to have fun. And you could get all that through your personality and through your conversations just as effectively but have them still do the disciplines, which is really what training is. It's a discipline that you're constantly, perfecting it and trying to improve. Well, the truth is, when you see this, you just immediately know that the trainer's

exercise science knowledge is limited. Yeah. I mean, that was where it came from for me. It first came from, I didn't truly grasp exercise science. I didn't truly grasp proper programming at that level. I knew exercises. I knew how to teach form and technique. I truly didn't understand the science because if I did, I would know that X, Y and Z is the best thing for them.

That will give us the biggest bank for your buck. I wanted my clients to have the best results because that would serve them and me. So that was a no brainer. What I didn't really understand was what you said, Sal, was just that, man, I was shooting myself in the foot by trying to create these creative workouts that they couldn't come up on their own, or they needed me to teach them how to do. In reality, I was giving

them a less effective program to get them to the results, which again, would shoot me in the foot, not realizing that and it is it all came from this place of insecurity of, oh, I, if I want them to resign with me, what's an easy way for me to do that? Oh, I'll teach them this crazy exercise they've never seen before, and they're going to have a hard time doing it.

And then I'm going to be able to teach them the form and technique of it. And they're going to go like, oh, wow, that's difficult. And if I throw a new one at them every couple of weeks, they're going to feel like, oh man, this guy's got something new for me to learn every single week, I'm going to resign with them. Not to mention what a terrible long-term strategy to train.

You know what ends up happening? If you do have a client that sticks with you long enough, which probably won't, if you do this razzle dazzle every time, but if you do, you end up with, like, at this point where like six months into training, you're like, I don't know what other exercise to create. I've done all the weird stuff and, you know, good trainers, good coaches, understand exercise program. They understand that the exercises are not irrelevant.

That it's not just the way to move and burn calories. The exercises you choose, the order that you choose them and how you practice them before them is paramount to somebody's success. It's not just leg exercises, arm exercises, shoulder exercises, full body exercises. It's not just that. And there's a reason why the best strength coaches in the world stick to like the same 10 movements, right? So that's the most important thing.

And again, this comes from effective communication. Look, if you're a trainer or a coach, you wanna build a successful business. Mind Pump has just released its first ever trainer coaching course. This is a course for trainers and coaches. It teaches you how to build a successful business, teaches you how to get your clients incredible results,

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