Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2465: How to Become a 6-Figure Trainer

Episode Date: November 11, 2024

How to Become a 6-Figure Trainer The average salary for a personal trainer in America. (1:23) Building a rewarding and successful career. (4:10) How to Become a 6-Figure Trainer #1 - Be passionate about people. (13:04) #2 - Become a master of sales. (21:02) #3 - Become a master of coaching. (25:31) #4 - Never stop your education. (32:53) #5 - Figure out how many people you need to talk to every day. (35:34) Listener Questions: How long does it take for mastery? (40:11) How many clients are considered full-time? (42:06) Is it best to start in a big box or private gym? (43:40) What is the best skill to learn fitness-wise for a trainer? (49:28) Related Links/Products Mentioned Visit Vuori Clothing for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! ** No code to receive 20% off your first order. ** EARLY ACCESS to the Black Friday Sale is open NOW! ** ALL MAPS Fitness Products 60% OFF. Coupon code BLACKFRIDAY. The code will expire on Sunday, December 1st. Each purchase enters you to win one of two 5-day stays at the Mind Pump Park City Vacation Home. Each winner will receive $1,000 cash for travel and food. Bundle purchase - 10 entries, Program purchase - 5 entries, ALL other MAPS purchases (mods, guides, etc.) - 1 entry. Winners will be announced and contacted in December. ** Tuesday Nov. 12 @ 4PM (PST) – TRAIN THE TRAINER WEBINAR SERIES : The Key for Personal Trainers to Retain Clients During the Holiday Season Mind Pump #2172: Five Commandments For Successful Personal Trainers Mind Pump #2317: Success Tips from World Class Trainers Mind Pump #2302: How to Be a Successful Trainer in 2024 With Jason Phillips Personal Trainer 3 Day Training | Mind Pump Fitness Coaching Mind Pump Fitness Coaching - YouTube Mind Pump # 1262: Why Fitness Assessments are Important Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Mind Pump Fitness Coaching (@mindpumptrainers) Instagram  

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, and entertainment podcast. This is mind pump. Today's episode is for trainers and coaches. How do you become a six figure trainer? This episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Viori. Viori makes the best at leisure wear, workout gear

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five day vacation in Park City at the Mind Pump Park City house. Again, it's mapsfitnessproducts.com, 60% off everything, the code is Black Friday. All right, here comes the show. Before we became hosts of this podcast, we were successful personal trainers. Today's episode, we're gonna talk about how to be a six-figure trainer consistently, build a career doing something you love. Some of us were successful.

We're all pretty successful. We're all right. We did all right. We did all right. No, so let's start with the statistics. We made hundreds of dollars. Yeah. Lots of hundos. The average trainer in America. So the average trainer in America will make- What is it now? 60.

Is it 60? About 60 grand a year. Did you search that before? I did. I did. So some states states the average is in the high 40s. I think Washington was the highest at 70, but the average is around 60. Interesting. Washington was the highest? Yeah, I know. Isn't that interesting? That is interesting. Now the thing about this though is this is a little misleading because this is the average trainer that sticks around and doesn't quit. The personal training industry has a tremendously high turnover rate.

If you counted the turnover, this number would be way lower. Oh yeah, if you average those people and what the amount of money they made before they exited, would be really bad. Really low, it's probably one of the highest turnover careers that exist, and a lot of that is because it's hard. It's a tough thing to do, a lot of people have a passion for fitness, get into it, and they just, they're just not trained properly themselves.

They're not coached on how to build a business properly. And as a result, they get in and all the passion of the world starts to fizzle when you can't support yourself and your family. And then you end up doing something else. I mean, there's a lot of people I know who are grown adults now who at one point tried to become trainers and just couldn't make it. So that 60k it's not a lot, even the average that sticks around isn't a lot, but it's lower than that. And I'll say this, I can pretty confidently say if you're, if you have integrity, you're somewhat competent. Um, six figure as a trainer is realistic. Uh, this isn't one of those seven figure, you know, um, uh, you know, uh,

podcasts, uh, this is realistic. I think if you do a good job and you do the things we talk about here consistently, you'll, you'll make six figures consistently as a personal trainer. I was trying to think of like any trainer I knew that was like part-time, you know, training, but then also like successfully That hadn't already started a hundred percent Investing in like immerse themselves as a personal trainer built a business and then went on to another career and then still did it on

The side there's no other I just don't know if that's possible to you know Some people have the idea that I like the gym and I like and I'm passionate about helping people and I wonder if I could do this part-time. No. I don't think it's possible. My favorite part about communicating this, and I think we've been really consistent for 10 years when we talk about this subject,

and I always love it when we hear these people that call in and they're like, hey, you know, I became a personal trainer behind you guys because we always kind of like chuckle off air and be like, it's crazy. These people become trainers and we tell them how fucking hard it is. There's no money in it. But I think that in, in this day and age of social media, uh, instant gratification and the marketing ability is there's a lot of

hype and there's a lot of businesses that sell coaches and trainers, especially now that there's online coaching is a thing that was never even a thing, say a decade and a half ago, that sell you on this idea of how to make 10 grand a month and how to make seven figures. And it's just like, we've never presented that information that way because we know how unrealistic that is for the average person. It is a hard profession. There is high turnover. It is a grind to get to even six figures. It's a grind to get to that. And it's going to take you at least a couple of years probably to reach six figures. Maybe in a year, if you're really, really good, you could get there. If you're really ambitious, you really are high skilled and you're really growth

minded, you can reach that one. But most don't, most don't reach that number. skilled and you're really growth minded. You can reach that one, but most don't most don't reach that number But if you're passionate about helping people you love the industry You don't count hours outside of you getting paid as hours working towards your craft or whatever your then you have a chance to Do well at this the cool part is that we've been doing this for such a long time a lot of us have learned a lot of the mistakes and the must-dos, the must-don'ts. And I think that's really how we've always communicated this to the average person that might be considering being a personal trainer and I'm just as excited as you guys are of finally after 10 years really diving into this side of the business of helping coaches and trainers. And the number one thing that I hear from all of our trainers that go through our course

is you guys communicate this so different than anybody else on the internet and most people by the way that have our course have paid for other courses and done things for people and most of those are structured in a way to show a quick return on their investment. So you spend five grand with me and I'll show you how to make 10 grand a month and the gimmick is to show you a quick way to hack the system on Instagram or hustle a challenge together to get the money that you paid me back so you can then turn around say well you know I paid Adam

five grand and he did show me how to make ten grand one month you only make ten grand that one month you never make it again and you're done there's no career but there's it's not building a career it's not making you a great trainer and we're just not in the business that in order with that it's not what we want to position this as our job or our goal is to try and make really good trainers that impact a lot of lives. Now here's the deal. It is an extremely rewarding career.

I mean, it really is. It's one of the most rewarding things I've ever done, to actually take and work with people and help them really in fundamental ways improve their lives. Like if you take anybody, you take anybody who isn't fit, it doesn't have good health, the typical average person who's sedentary and whatever, if you take that person and you make them fit, you

get to the point where they want to be fit, they can do it on their own, you get them to become more healthy. Their entire life has changed. Everything about what they do do from their work to being a parent to being a spouse to being a friend, their sleep, their sex life, their energy, everything improves. It's actually one of the most powerfully impactful things that somebody can experience and you get to be a part of this and you get to watch this and guide people along with this and it's so rewarding. It's one of the most-

Very satisfying. It's one of the most purpose driven things that I think, that I know I've ever done. And I'm a father, that's at the top, but this is pretty darn close, is working with people and doing that. Hey, sorry to interrupt. Look, in two days, Adam and I are teaching trainers

and coaches how to retain their clients during the holiday season. It's a free webinar, absolutely free. Sign up at trainerwebinar.com or click on this. Alright, back to the show. You know there's also a myth around training where you could do it but it's unstable and it's not a career that's consistent. That's so not true. It's so not true. If you do it right and it's not a career that's consistent. That's so not true. It's so not true. If you do it right, and it's not, by the way, we're not gonna, it's not like this crazy secret. So we're gonna talk about some stuff

that a lot of trainers make mistakes on, that if you follow and you follow our advice and you're consistent with it, the odds are you're gonna be able to do this if you're somewhat competent. You will be able to do this. And then it's consistent. It's consistent.

I mean, I trained people for, I mean, as a personal trainer for 15 years as a manager longer, but even training my own clients, and many of those clients were with me for years and years and years. It was consistent. It's like I showed up, I trained my clients, I went home, I didn't have this up and down type of business

that some people think training involves. It was a very rewarding, satisfying career. One of the reasons why we're so passionate about it, number one, is we're trainers ourselves at heart. But number two, the trainers are the ones that really make the big difference. They're the ones that really make the impact. They're the ones that drive the fitness industry in real ways. There's the marketing of the fitness industry and supplements and all this other stuff, but if you really boil

it down, who's really improving their health and able to maintain it? Who's really making those changes? It's largely people who work with excellent coaches and trainers. We're really passionate about this because it can make a huge difference and there's a very big gap. There's a huge gap between trainers that have figured this out and Everybody else and that's what we're gonna talk about is what is it about those trainers that figured it out and can it be duplicatable? Absolutely, it's absolutely duplicate I do think that it it mirrors probably most other industries in the fact that like many things There's a learning curve. It's tough at the beginning

You probably don't make a lot of money. You're not an expert at that point. But over time, you get experience. You get better at your craft. You continue to chase mastery, continue to change lives and help people. You learn, you fall down, you get back up, and it gets easier and easier. The difference of what the first year of my career of building my portfolio of clients compared to years five, six and seven was completely different. Once you've

established yourself and you build a reputation around being a very good coach, a very good trainer, somebody who gets people's results, a trainer that's likable, that people like showing up to, once you start to build that reputation, the job just gets easier and easier. And then that's when it gets really fun. When you get comfortable in it, you make it through that learning phase of your career,

and you're good at your craft, like many things, it's fun. And it can be very rewarding, and it can be financially rewarding too. It's just, it's a myth to think that it's an overnight success. And because we have these anomalies on social media where somebody gets famous overnight because of their body or because they're on a cover of a magazine or they know somebody or they're funny online and so they have a million followers. And because they have a million followers, they could write any sort of a digital program

and they can make a few hundred thousand dollars. You have all these people that are trying to emulate that and that is such a failing strategy. Even that person who got millions of followers and made a few hundred thousand dollars selling digital programs, they still didn't go through the proper steps of becoming a great trainer and it's a fleeting business.

And it's like trying to be a doctor but being one on Grey's Anatomy instead of a real doctor. Right. This is about real coaches, real trainers. And look, I don't know any six figure career that is overnight. Okay. And does it exist? You got to put the work in.

I mean, and that's like, we're not going to brush over that and just give you hacks. No, it doesn't work that way. No, we have to just reiterate the fact that it's going to take work. It's going to take time. But you know, the beautiful thing is thing is that education, I think, has really transformed the approach or the... What am I trying to say? The landscape of the whole thing.

Yeah, just like the ability you have now to really compress and not make those same mistakes and be able to stay focused and shorten the time length that will take you to achieve mastery. No, you're 100%. So, I mean, podcasts here, you have a lot of free information that we never had coming through it. So, take advantage of that, but at the same time, as you're doing that, you have to put the work in, you have to put the time in, you got to show face, you have to trial and error and work with these clients to figure this out.

All right, so the first thing is, and Adam mentioned it earlier, is you need to be very passionate about people. Now you thought I was going to say fitness, right? Obviously you like fitness, but this is not a fitness job, this is a people job. Fitness is your expertise and your modality, but this is far more a people job or a person career or a career based on people than it is based on fitness. And that's a 100% fact. You could be the most knowledgeable trainer in the world, like no nutrition, no exercise, no technique, no programming, inside and out,

and be a terrible people person, and you'll have zero success. On the flip side, you could be a total novice with diet, a total novice with exercise, technique total novice with exercise technique and programming, but be an excellent people person and you're gonna do okay. So this is what you're working with every single day. You're working with people. Now why is it so important to be passionate about people

when you do this? Well, besides the obvious, you're working with people, you are gonna be working with people every day and they're gonna show up every day and they're not gonna do what you tell them every day. I mean, they're gonna show up every single day, you are going to be working with people every day and they're going to show up every day and they're not going to do what you tell them every day. They're going to show up every single day, you're going to help coach them and they're not going to do what you tell them because this is hard. This is very hard.

Getting somebody from out of shape and unhealthy to fit and healthy for the rest of their life is a long process. You're also going to deal with different personalities. You're going to deal with some introverts and extroverts and business people and at home people. You're going to deal with older people and younger people, people with pain, people for fat loss, muscle gain, motivated people, loud people, quiet people, all kinds of different individuals from different backgrounds with different goals. And if you don't just love people in general, you're gonna have a very, and this job will suck because every hour you're gonna be with somebody the entire time. this job will suck if you don't love people.

I love this point and for context, most of my career was actually spent not training clients one-on-one, it was actually working with coaches and trainers. I spent more of my career developing other trainers, so I've had a lot of trainers, hundreds of trainers that have worked for me over the course of a decade and a half. So I've had an opportunity to see a lot of different types of trainers and it always was interesting and fascinating to me to see the super ripped trainer who had all the certs and was really smart, but then it was just an asshole. And nobody and just struggled.

Yeah. Unlikable. And, and, and probably he thought this was a good profession because he was so passionate about fitness and that's why I love you talking about it's not fitness that you need to be passionate about it's people that's more important that you need to be passionate about because this trainer or these trainers I'm thinking of boy they were very passionate about fitness I mean they lived the brand they looked the brand they looked amazing they look they were constantly reading and learning all about stuff that was related to fitness, but they were just a prick. And they were just somebody who you didn't like to be around. And they struggled so much to have a successful career in personal

training. And so, and then I would have the kid who had looked all right, he looked healthy, fit, but he didn't look ripped. He wasn't like impressive. He didn't have a degree yet. He didn't have all kinds of experience in national service, but boy, he was just, he was likable. And he liked people and he could be a chameleon and he could accept somebody with different political views and different religious views. And he could talk to the 60 year old lady and then turn around and talk to the 12 year old kid. That is, and I always knew this about myself. I didn't know that this would translate into the career. I think this is part of my journey

of realizing how much I love this job. I always liked people. We've shared, if you've listened to this podcast for a long time, when we talk about our personal stories. When I was in high school, I was friends with kind of everybody. I had skater friends, stoner friends, athlete friends, nerdy friends. Like I kind friends with kind of everybody. I had skater friends, stoner friends, athlete friends, nerdy friends.

Like I kind of hung out with everybody. I had friends in all the clicks and I think I genuinely just liked all people. And I really liked people for their character. And I didn't, I didn't fall in the things of like clicks and groups. And, and so I think it's just because I've always been intrigued by people in general, I didn't realize how much that would translate into a superpower in personal training because that's so much of personal training. Because people will feel that energy when they show up to their appointment with you and if you're the type of person who just because

someone has a different political view than you or have a different religious view than you or sees the world socially different than you that you can't enjoy the conversation in them you can't enjoy getting to know them. Because they're gonna express their opinions and views. Yes. And if you're not. They are. Yeah, and if you're, look, what this does automatically, first off, it makes you likable.

When someone's passionate about people, then when people are around them, I mean, imagine being around someone that's curious about you, that's passionate about your life and what you're doing, and is interested and is curious and just likes to talk to you. You're gonna like them.

That's what this is all about. And by the way, this has to be genuine because look, there's a lot of jobs that you do your job but then you get breaks. When you're training people, there is no break. You have a client for one hour, that entire hour you are on. Another person comes in, you are on for another hour. Another comes in, you are on for another hour.

Another person in, you are on for an hour. You cannot fake being passionate for people because eventually it's gonna come out. So this has to be something genuine about yourself. And what I'm doing with this first one is weeding out the people. This is not genuine. You can't learn this in my opinion.

I think you have it or you don't. You have the personality of a lab scientist or like an engineer or like an accountant or somebody that's just like, I just want to focus on the numbers and this and like, this is just not the career for you. You need to know this and you know, to give people some ways to learn this about themselves or you know, can you apply this? I remember when I would get somebody who was on the total opposite aisle, politically,

socially, religiously, any of these areas that tend to be really touchy subjects for people. And I was genuinely curious if somebody I did not agree with or I did not see eye to eye with in a topic, instead of me shying away from that topic because I'm like, oh God, I disagree with her or him and I don't want to bring that up because it's going to get awkward because I don't, I think this way and they think that way. I would actually, I would go in and I would ask more questions and then if they said things like, oh do you, do you agree with that? I'd be like, no actually I'm on the other side but I'm so curious to what makes, and if you come off that way where you're genuinely curious about why they think differently than you and you want and you approach it with the, I want to learn,

I want to understand why somebody else would think different about these ways. I know how I was raised, I know what I was taught, I know why I think this way. This person thinks totally opposite. Instead of me putting up a wall or trying to avoid those conversations, I would go towards them. And I enjoyed that, I enjoyed being challenged

with my own ideology. I don't know how many times in my 20 years that I changed my views on things because I was raised a certain way. I was taught a certain way. I thought that was the right way. And then somebody else who was far more intelligent, me said the opposite argument. And I actually went into listening. I thought, man, that's a really good point. I've never thought of it that way. You have to want to do that.

And people know this, they can feel it. And you know, it's, it's, you also look forward. You know, there was a point in my career later on when I started to feel guilty for charging people to train them because I looked so forward to asking them questions. I'd have a surgeon come in who's my client. It's like, oh my God, I can't wait to see so and so. I'm going to ask them all these questions or whatever. And someone else would come in who's been married for 40 years. Oh, I can't wait to ask them again about their marriage or what was it like in this area when you know when they

were growing up or what it's like to live from in this other country like I looked forward to seeing these people because I genuinely like people and people know that may feel that this makes you so likeable and this is why this is so important it makes you more effective as a trainer it makes you more likeable and it makes people want to show up to see you because I hate to break this to you if you're trying to become a trainer or coach right now. People are not going to show up for you week in and week out year in and year out because they love fitness. It's not going to happen for fitness. They're going to show up for you.

That's how they keep coming. It's because they like you. Alright next you have to become a master of sales. Now this is a dirty word for trainers and coaches. Every time I had a new trainer work for me and I would talk about sales, I would see their face like, what? Sales, I hate sales, I just wanna help people. Look, I'm gonna break the news to you here.

I'm not just talking about selling your services. When you're a trainer or a coach, you know what you do every time you train a client? You have to sell them on changing their minds and their ideas and their behaviors. You're constantly selling them on why they need to start exercising a particular way, why they need to change their diet, why they need to look at this when it comes to sleep. You have to become a master of sales and of course yes you also have to learn how to sell your services. And sales skills, which I like to refer to as effective communication skills,

these skills are going to serve you tremendously as a personal trainer. It makes you more successful just as a coach or trainer. And of course it makes you much more successful at selling your products and your services. I would make the case that it's the most important thing because of what you just said, because I think that's the disconnect that trainers would have is when they hear the word sales,

they think of just the selling the money part and the getting the credit card and then making people write you a check and they think of it as this dirty word, but when you understand and you know that you understand that sales is all it is is effective communication and that a huge part of your job is somebody hired you who is out of shape and unhealthy which means they have created behaviors and habits in their life that have given them that

outcome. They did not get fat that way overnight, they did not get that way with all of a sudden one bad decision, They have created habits and behaviors in their life that has led to that and it is your job to help them change that and you better be fucking good at selling them on those ideas because if you cannot convince them to change those behaviors, to change those habits, to want to change those things, you're never gonna get them the results that they're paying you to do. So that is step one of being a good trainer. And then once you learn to do that and you deliver on the product, then guess what?

There comes a time when they run out of their 10 sessions and you got to renew them. And so being able to do that is an important point. So this trait is so important. In fact, I'd say most of my time as a leader of trainers- This is what you were teaching. Was what I was teaching. Yes. Because most trainers get in because they like people,

they're passionate about fitness, they understand exercise physiology or nutrition. That's pretty easy to find. I mean, obviously you get a bias if you're applying to be a trainer, you probably have those things. And so that's not hard to find with any trainer. But what is hard to find or hard to teach is getting that trainer to

understand how important the ability to sell is. Yeah, I mean, the whole time you're painting the vision every single session and you're getting them on board with the plan that you're executing. And it's no different than we're just like continuing the plan I've been talking about this entire time. It's just, you know, in order for this to keep happening, you gotta, you know, we, we have to be funded. We have to, you know, and that's, that's a respect thing too. Like one thing I learned when I was, uh, uh,

when I was in the restaurant business and I thought, first of all, I was going to get better tips because I was like, I would go to the manager and I would get them to like put a discount on, you know, the appetizer. I would get their drinks for free. I would get all this, I would try and like lower the price point on their overall meal. And I thought, oh, this is gonna get me great tips.

Terrible tips. That's not what people go to restaurants for. They go for the experience. They wanna know what's the best. And then I present them the best. And then I present them the best. And then I show them the best. And they thank me later when the bill's double what it was to begin with. And it tripped me out. But it makes sense to me because if I'm in here, I want a professional leading me towards the goal, keeping me on track. And they want to

trust you and believe in what you have to say. Which means you have to sell it. You have to sell it. Which means you absolutely have to sell it. No, if I were to inherit, if I had a gym right now and I had 30 brand new trainers that just started working for me and I was able to invest in one course for them, it would be a sales course. It wouldn't be a personal training certification course.

Those are all valuable, not saying they're not valuable, but if I had this bunch of new trainers, for sure, and I could pick a sales course, that's what I would put them in because it would give them the most return on their business. All right, next, you have to become a master of coaching. So training people is not checkers. It's chess. It's the long game. So we talked about selling them on how to change behaviors. This is a long sales process. You are not gonna get Suzy or Mark or Mr. Johnson to lose 30 pounds in 60 days and then figure it out

for the rest of their life just like that. Ain't gonna happen. These are habits that have been built over long periods of time. They're ingrained. What you eat isn't just food, it's also emotions and celebrations and culture, lots're ingrained. What you eat isn't just food, it's also emotions and celebrations and culture, lots of different things. Your activity, I mean that's a part of your life, this is what I

do on a daily basis. How am I going to get this person over time to slowly move to becoming somebody who wants to exercise and eat right forever and ever and ever and this means you have to become a master of coaching. One of the biggest mistakes that trainers make, new trainers make, is they'll take some, this is how you know that they don't understand coaching. They'll take a new client, the client will give them the goal, I want to lose 30 pounds, no problem,

and then they'll give them everything they need to do right now, okay cool, here's your diet, here's your workout, this will totally give you all the answers, and then this is going to fix you right here, and I know right away when I see that, this will totally give you that goal. And then this is gonna fix you right here. And I know right away when I see that, this is gonna be a failing situation. A good coach, somebody who has experience,

who understands, knows when they come in and the client tells me, I wanna lose 30 pounds in 60 days, I'm saying no, no, no, no, no. We're not gonna lose 30 pounds in 60 days, it's gonna take longer than that. Here's what it's gonna look like and we're gonna start right here.

I know you wanna do all this, but I'm gonna start you right here and here's why. And then the sailing process, of course, goes into the process itself. But being a really good coach, you understand human behavior and you understand behavior modification. You're patient, you're calm,

you have grace with your clients when they fail, because they will, but you're also very honest and you deliver that honesty in a way where it's not a bad impact. It's like, oh, you're right. All right, let's do this again. The best example of this that comes to mind for me is, for the audience that doesn't know this, we took a group of 50 people through a GLP-1 course, right? So basically, we let 50 people come into a private community where we are helping them go through

GLP-1 and coaching them weekly. Basically, we get on a Zoom call and we help them out with all their questions. And, you know, these are 50 strangers. We don't know any of these people and we're getting to know them for the first time. We also have 10 trainers that we allow to be a fly on the wall and watch us coach these 50 strangers through this whole process. The number one thing that they have given us as feedback of is this part right here is man it's so

wild to watch the way you guys communicate to these people. We were just talking about this last week on our private call with these trainers that this is this part right here this understanding behavior modification understanding how to meet people where they're currently at, read the room, the social awareness, like this is the part I loved about personal training and this is the part that I really believed there was an art to it. There is an art to knowing what you can say at what time to a person, meaning when you have to understand that there's going to be times when you are coaching a client

and you know there's stuff that they're doing that is not ideal, maybe the way they're training, maybe the way they're dieting, maybe the way they're treating their body, and you're going, man, inside of you wants to just jump out and be like, that's not a good idea, that's wrong, you need to stop doing this and doing that. But unfortunately, you haven't built the relationship yet,

you haven't built the credibility yet, You haven't built the credibility yet. You haven't brought the wall all the way down to be able to get that person to receive that information yet. And it's probably the number one mistake I see young, ambitious, happy, positive, motivated trainers do is they got all this information, and they're fresh out of college, or they got all these certs, and they're like,

I got all this information. I'm gonna go help all these people. And then they hear the people, what they're doing wrong, and then certs, and they're like, I got all this information, I'm gonna go help all these people. And then they hear the people what they're doing wrong, and then they tell them everything they're doing wrong. And they don't understand why that person doesn't follow through, or they don't show up to another employment, or doesn't resign after the contract is over. And the reason why that is, is they haven't learned the art of this social awareness, reading the room, and meeting a person where you're currently at in that relationship.

This is such an important skill to harness and learn how to do because we have to first, and these people are watching us do this real time with these people where week one we're talking to them and they're voicing what they're doing on it. And I know what all of us are thinking, you know, like, oh boy, she's really over training. And oh wow, she needs to do this and she needs to, but we can't say that

yet. Why? Because she just met us. And if I come out and I start telling her everything she's doing wrong, I'm going to insult her and I'm going to put a wall up right away. I have to build that trust. It's the right delivery. It's the right way to say that in order to move them towards the desired outcome. And that's the thing, you have to consider all those factors.

That's going to be the most well received and it's going to move them closer towards your objective. Yeah, step one is you get them to show up and want to be there. That has to happen. So once they're there, that's great. You don't want to compromise that because if you blow someone out the water, like I've done early in my career where I'm Like I'm gonna tell you how you're messing up

And here's what you gotta do and you have you come to Jesus talk or whatever and I you know feel like I Succeeded in telling the person what they're doing wrong, and then they didn't come back like I lost right I lost I lost the client They're not getting help so number one They're showing up if they're showing up you have time number two you have to build influence You have to build influence with them. You have to gain their trust. Then little by little, the coaching becomes more and more effective. You're able to coach more and more.

You don't want to push too fast. You never want to push too fast. You want to bring them on right at the right speed. Again, grace is very important with coaching because your clients will fail. I've never had a client in my entire life and I don't think there's a training in the world that existed as a client ever where the client right out the gates

does everything perfect, changes their life, now they're fit forever. Never works that way. There's always a step forward, two steps back, two steps forward, one step back. It's like this constant process of up, down, up, down. And they have to feel okay with that. Your client has to feel okay coming to you to tell you, I screwed up,

here's what's happened to my diet or whatever. If they fear you or they're embarrassed or ashamed to tell their trainer, which by the way, this happens a lot. There's a lot of trainers that create a relationship with their clients where the client feels ashamed to tell their trainer that they didn't do the right thing. Great. You have zero influence now. The person now is not going to tell you what's happening.

Now you can't help them at all. They're hiding from you. What use is that? You have to create that environment and that relationship where you can actually work with them and influence them. And this is what we mean by becoming a master of coaching. One good way to learn this, by way is to is To get a mentor Experienced trainers are typically really good at this and if you could work with for a trainer for free and watch them communicate with their clients

You'll learn how to do this much faster than through trial and error Well, just one more point to that is like you got to be vulnerable and you got to be relatable And so that's how you really pull them in To trust, you know that you have their best interest in mind. And, you know, you can create stories in that regard to then, you know, help kind of paint that vision for them and get them on board. Yeah. Now, the next thing is to never stop learning or never stop your education in fitness. Now, there's two reasons why this is important.

The first one's the obvious. You want to be up to date with your information. You want to be up to date with your information. You want to be up to date with exercise, uh, programming with nutrition. You want to learn different modalities. Now I can work with mobility. Now I understand correctional exercise. Now I understand, uh, performance based workouts and traditional strength training, et cetera, et cetera.

So that's the obvious, but here's the second part that's less obvious. I always noticed that when my trainers took a new course, they would come back with a new excitement and motivation that always translated into better sessions with the clients, even if the information they learn wasn't something they could apply to this, to their clients, they would always just keep them excited. It kept them motivated because they kept learning. So this will continue to stoke your passion for fitness and even if the information you learn isn't transferable to your client,

like if you have a 74 year old client and you just took a course on maximizing athletic performance, you're probably not gonna be able to apply much of that to your new client. But it's gonna reignite your your passion for fitness and your client's going to feel that. So two reasons why I think education should never stop. Listen, there's a saying in business that goes, a business is always either growing or dying. There's no such thing as cruising along or coasting and just kind of maintaining. It is always growing or it is always dying.

And in the business of personal training, you are that business. So if you are not constantly pursuing growth and educating and learning yourself, you are most likely going back. You're most likely dying. Your business is most likely dying. And so approaching your business,

approaching your growth with that mindset of, I've got to constantly be stretching myself, I've got to be constantly educating myself. This is the way that you're going to continue to be successful as a personal trainer and grow your business. Yeah, 100%. And you know, today there's more available in terms of education than there ever was. Today there's more available and free education than there was in paid education when I was

an early trainer. I mean, you could get more stuff for free now than we could ever pay for when we became trainers. So this part right here is like, it's incredible. I mean, you can go on YouTube and you can learn from some of the best athletic trainers in the world. You can listen to podcasts with some of the best people on nutrition, on supplements, on so you know, on so many different things. So this right here is easier than ever.

Just never stop doing this because it'll keep you fresh and sharp as a trainer, as your career continues to grow. All right. Lastly, I'll say what it is and then we'll explain it, but figure out how many people you need to talk to every single day. Okay. So here's where that comes from. Okay. One of the big mistakes or challenges that trainers run into is they have a how many people you need to talk to every single day. Okay, so here's where that comes from, okay?

One of the big mistakes or challenges that trainers run into is they have a challenging time forecasting or predicting or understanding how to hit a particular income on a monthly basis. Predictable income. Yeah, it typically looks like this, like okay, I did $6,000 this month, I wanna make $8,000 next month, so I'm just gonna try harder.

But they don't really know what's moving the needle, they just try harder, which is not, there's nothing wrong with that. But what if you could break it down into smaller pieces so that all you need to know is how many people do I need to talk to every single day because you figured that number out? This is something that, when I first got into management,

I was only 21 years old. So at that point, I've only got a little over a year under my belt as a personal trainer. At that time, I think I only had like two national certifications, and obviously not a lot of experience. So I didn't bring a lot to the table when it came to physiology, nutrition, exercise science.

That wasn't my forte. But I was always passionate about business. And I've been an entrepreneur since I was a kid. Very young, young kid starting his business all the way back in high school. And so I've always been passionate about that. And one of the things that I understood was like how to break down like my business

all the way down to tactical daily goals and things to do. And when I got into the fitness business, it was one of the things that I saw lacking. Like everybody was talking about being a better coach when it came to program design, everybody talked about exercise and stretching and nutrition. And like, there was so much effort into the science of being a great coach and trainer, but very little conversation was being had around the business of being a great coach and trainer, but very little conversation was being had around the business of it. And so I leaned heavily in this direction because it's like,

OK, here's where I can help my team. A lot of my team is more experienced, more knowledgeable than me. I'm not going to teach them about nutrition and exercise science, but I could teach them more about business. And so all of my trainers, when we would sit down and go over their monthly goals, and I would ask them, how much money do you want to make this month?

And I would let them throw those arbitrary numbers out that Sal just said, I want to make six grand. I want to make eight grand. Then I would go, okay, how are you going to do that? I'm going to try harder or I'm going to talk to more people. Well, how many people, what does that look like? And it was really great that, you know, I worked for a big company that tracked a lot of these analytics. So I could actually sit down with a trainer and say, okay, it looks like Steve, when you walk out and you talk to 10 people on the floor, you can book nine of those people for

a free appointment. You're pretty good at convincing those people to come see you for a free appointment. Those nine people that show up for a free appointment, half of those people end up actually showing up. Of those half of those people that actually show up, half of those people end up actually showing up. Of those half of those people that actually show up, two of those people actually invest and buy in personal training you at an average dollar amount of 250. And so of course, I just threw out all these random numbers, but you have the ability as a coach and trainer to track that for yourself. Once you've tracked that for yourself and you know how many people you have to talk to

to try and convince to come see you for free, to how many of those people show up, to how many of those people enroll with you, you now have the analytics you need to be able to reverse engineer out whatever dollar amount you want. So if you want to make $100,000, how many people do you have to talk to? And then you break that down by the month, by the goal, by the week, by the day. And instead of saying, oh, I'm going to try and make $6,000 this month, you go, oh, I need to talk to 75 people this month. If I talk to 75 people and try and book 75 people on a free appointment with me, that will translate to $8,000 and this is so important to knowing this and when we used to tour around to all these gyms that we go around and do free talks to

this is always the first question when I get up on stage and I ask I always ask trainers what's your show percentage what's your closing percentage what's your average dollar you sell and never does anyone ever raise their hand and can tell me those numbers and I always tell these trainers that this is the first mistake you're making. If you have a goal and you're showing up to a webinar, you're listening to a podcast that's telling you how to make six figures, and you can't tell me those analytics because you've never tracked that,

you're running blind. And you're not breaking it down to simplify it to how many people I need to talk to per day. And once you do that, it's very easy to reverse engineer how much money you want to make. It's no different than tracking your macros when you're trying to figure out what if you're gaining or losing body fat. Same thing. Yep.

Got some questions here. Okay. How long does it take for mastery? Well, you know. I like the 10,000 hours. Yeah, you know, I think as a trainer. You have to be generic. I'm trying to think of a trainer.

Like, how long would a trainer have to be a trainer before you like to do it? So they said, so in our field, it was 5,000 training sessions before you became a master trainer. That was what we, so we used to give away that badge of honor. What does that look like on a,

how many years would that take? Well, 5,000 hours of training is a lot. Think about if you're averaging 40 a week, do the math. So, which is a lot, by the way, 40 clients a week or 40 hours. So that's like three years, two and a half years. Three years. Of full time.

Of full time. Which is most likely five to seven years. I would agree with that. Yeah, I would agree with that, because I was about to say probably around five years. I would say if somebody was really. Somebody could string that out to five years. Yeah, if someone was really pursuing this

and learning and trying to do a good job and they want to make this a career, I would say five years of experience like, okay, now you're, you're like a really good trainer. And this is why I like the 10,000 hours to mastery point is because that's 5,000 hours of training in person, which means if you're any good at your job, you've spent probably each one of those hours,

you're spending time outside of that researching, learning. So you've probably racked up. Not even counting that. Yeah, you're spending time outside of that researching, learning. So you've probably racked up. Not even counting that. Yeah, you're not counting that. So you're probably racked up 10,000 hours on your craft. So chasing mastery, the 10,000 hour mark, which I know is a generic number, but I think it's a really good one, is pretty accurate when you think about it. Because if you've put 5,000 hours into clients and you've done your due diligence of reading your certifications and learning about the new science, you've probably spent 5,000 hours into clients and you've done your due diligence of reading your certifications and learning about the new science you've probably spent five

thousand hours of reading and doing things outside of that so that's a good number is to chase that I mean I know like I've thought about this I know I have a son that's only five years old but this will be something that we talk about in whatever he becomes passionate about whether it's in sports whether it's in business it's like you want to become a master at this son we got to put ten thousand hours and we start keeping track of that right now. How many clients is considered full-time? This is a good question because most jobs,

40 hours a week, is considered full-time. But for personal training, it's more like 30. 30 to 35. 40 sessions a week is, now I did it, I did more than that, but it's a lot, right? Yeah, that's full full- on. You are on, right? Remember, if you go 40 hours a week at a regular job, you're not really working 40 hours, let's be honest.

There's a lot of off- You're farting around. Yeah, there's a lot of like downtime. When you're training 40 sessions a week, that means there's 40 hours where someone is standing in front of you, you're training them, and you're working them. And that's not including for every client that you train.

You're spending time with their paperwork, their nutrition and their diet, their programming. Prepping for the next day. So if you're, it's more like 25 to 30 hours a week is considered full-time personal training because you're putting another five to 10 hours minimum in client folders just to keep them updated. So if you're wrong.

Most gyms are like 30. I think 30 is what they say full-time is, right? Well, that's legally when they have to pay taxes on it. That's exactly what it is. Is that what? Yeah, it's 30. So once you have, so that's exactly what it is. Keep them moving.

Is 30. But I would argue that even 25 hours a week of training actual clients is close to- And you do a good job, you're doing pretty good. Yeah, it's 40 hours of a week. And if you're training- Yeah, cause 40 sessions or 40 hours a week, it also, here's the thing about it. It doesn't, it's not nine to five.

Usually your clients, you have a block in the morning, a block at night. You're training 40 hours a week. You're at the gym all day. 10, 12 hours. Yeah. So, so it's, so, so I, it's like, yeah, 25 to 30 was probably full time. Is it best to start in a big box or private gym? Hands down, big box. Yeah, yeah. There's no question about it for a couple different reasons. The biggest one is you have a big gym of leads all the time.

Like the hardest thing about building a career as a personal trainer is getting clients. You work in a big box, the clients are out in the gym. I used to do this with new trainers all the time. I'd get these trainers and I'd start talking about getting clients and they'd all be like, oh my god this is so hard. And then I would do this challenge and say, okay I'm going to go out there right now. I'm going to get a new client in 30 minutes and I would do it almost every single time. It was a way to flex but

really it was to show them like there's people on the floor all the time that could use personal training. So that's one. The second is big box gyms typically have systems in place that you can learn from that you might not have learned on your own. Things like paperwork and how to track sessions and how to, you know, systems in terms of no shows and et cetera, et cetera. Big box gyms just have a larger, they have more money invested in these kinds of things.

So it's a great place to learn. I think it's crazy that this is ever even a question. Yeah, it's undebatable. It is, it's undebatable in so many ways, to the point you made, like, one of the hardest things, when you become a trainer, and let's just pretend you've put all the work into being brilliant, you're great at your craft,

having people in front of you is hard. It's hard to, and it is a huge luxury to have a big box gym that averages a thousand to 3,000 workouts. It's a thousand to 3,000 people coming through the door where you're stationed at, coming in front of you. That also, by the way, are also a bias, right? They're all people trying to get in shape.

So it's not even like, you could go walk in the mall and go see 2,000 people, but of those 2,000 people, how many of them even care about fitness or trying to work out, right? Probably a very small percentage. There is nowhere in the world you're probably going to find that many people that consistently that are your potential leads and that is a huge luxury when you are trying to build your business. And then the other thing, let's pretend that you want one day to build your own gym or have your own private business. That big box gym at one point was a small brand. It was probably one gym at one time and it got scaled to tens to hundreds to it. And they did that through good systems, through good business practices.

And you have the ability to learn that from there. That is such a, I mean, I credit much of my success in the business space because I had the luxury of working for a billion dollar fitness company. And that was such a luxury because that company figured out at one point that company had one gym and one guy started it and built it all the way up to 400 plus clubs and worth billions of dollars. and one guy started it and built it all the way up to 400 plus clubs and worth billions of dollars. And what it took to do that are all kinds of incredible business practices that I got a front row seat of. And you know how much that has served me in business later on. So the idea that not working for a big box gym is not the best idea is crazy to me.

Yeah. It's systems, it's marketing, it's sales, it's timing, it's professionalism. It's all that in a really condensed environment. Bear with me, but I thought of this analogy of if I'm going to learn how to fish and I go to a trout farm and I have everything, all the tools and everything, I can tinker around, I'm going to see almost within a few minutes if I'm successful or not. Yes Versus like me going out into the ocean and who the hell knows. It's reps You know you're also you're also gonna be working with a lot of other trainers in a private studio Not so many working with a lot of trainers is great. It's great to learn from other trainers It's great to see how other trainers are becoming successful or not becoming successful

You also have a wide variety of potential clients. And you need a lot of reps as a new trainer. You do. You need to train a lot of people. By the way, get this out of your mind. If you are a new trainer, you're like, I'm only going to train this kind of client. Forget it. Right out with the very, that's when you're like- Let it reveal itself to you. That's like year 10 when you're really kicking ass. But in the beginning, you train everybody and big box gyms give you that opportunity to train lots of people. You get lots of reps That's like year 10 when you're really kicking ass. But in the beginning, you train everybody,

and big box gyms give you that opportunity to train lots of people. You get lots of reps to become better on someone else's dime. Yes, it's true they take a large percentage of what you'll make per session. That's what's alluring about the private gyms, that oh, I make more per hour.

Yeah, but you train so many less hours and you have no clients. So 100% is zero, is zero. I'd rather make 30% of 100% of them. And when you go out on your own, one of the first things you learn is the value, how much you would pay. Justin knows this, I remember when he went out

and built his business on the internet when that was still kind of a new thing. And how much do you pay for leads? Yeah, how much money do you have to spend to get 10 leads on the internet? You gotta shell out to do that. And when I just told you that an average big box gym sees 1000 to 3000 leads every day, that's free for you. So there is a,

so that your cost of giving up half of your money to the big box gym is worth every penny. Okay. So you have like an influx of clients, like your, your whole schedule is loaded. What you're learning is how to handle that. Yes. Now imagine that you're off in this private gym and all of a sudden you get overwhelmed with clientele. You've never experienced that before. You're not going to provide them good service because you don't have the reps.

No. So it's a great... And also by the way, some of these big box gyms pay very well. I mean, I know UFC Gym now allows trainers to charge as much as they want. So technically you can make quite a bit. So it's pretty amazing. And you know, a lot of trainers become trainers in big box gyms, do a good job,

and then realize that they actually prefer management, and they prefer managing trainers. I know Adam was like that. There's a lot of opportunities in the big, so definitely if you're gonna get started, start in the big box, it's the best place. What is the best skill to learn fitness-wise for a trainer? Okay, when it comes to learning skills

around programming, diet, health, et cetera, et cetera, the one thing that I learned that gave me the most return in terms of success, both with getting clients, keeping clients, getting referrals, just building a bigger business in terms of what I saw in terms of my clients' quality of life improving, nothing came close to learning correctional exercise. Nothing. Nothing came close. Diet doesn't come close.

We'll do it in the same direction. Yeah. Diet doesn't come close. Strength, building strength didn't come close. Stamina didn't come close. We'll do it in the same direction. Yeah, diet doesn't come close. You know, strength, building strength didn't come close. Stamina didn't come close. Alleviating pain. If correctional exercise was like, man, when I figured that out, I became so valuable, and I could see their quality of life dramatically improve just because I was able to do correctional

exercise with them twice a week. I could solve many of their pain problems. By the way, you could also solve a pain problem or show somebody that you have a solution in a goal assessment, which you can't do with weight loss or muscle building. Someone comes in for a goal assessment, you show them some knee pain relief, the knee that's bothered them for 15 years,

they're going to hire you. So there's nothing that, if you're gonna invest in a certification or a course that's gonna make you better in terms of your skills, like correctional exercise. I thought you were gonna say sales. So did I. Because that would go right up there, I would say, because.

No, I'm talking, this is fitness-wise, right? Yeah, no, if we're sticking to that, then I think we're all on the same page with this. It was the, I regret not doing my corrective exercise specialist certification earlier. It was way late in my career, and when I saw what it did for me with clients was, it was a game changer because I guess at that point in my career I had not early on not realized that a

majority of all my clients, regardless if they have a weight loss goal, a health goal, a building muscle goal, all of them, almost all of them had some sort of chronic pain or dysfunction that they wanted to alleviate, eliminate, improve. And I didn't have the tools. I didn't have the tools at that point in my career. That's not what my specialty, I knew how to count calories and mess with their macros and show them good exercise programming. I didn't have the tools for someone to walk in and be like, Adam, my hip hurts right here.

How do you, can you help me? And then I've, uh, you know, outsourcing. Yeah, right? I just didn't have, I didn't have the vocabulary, I didn't have the tools, and after I went through my corrective exercise specialist certification, I had that, and boy, did that really build value in me as a coach and trainer.

This also got me the most referrals. I learned a lot from shadowing and working with a extremely talented physical therapist, which physical therapists are like the best when it comes to correctional exercise. And working alongside her and watching what she did, I picked up quite a bit and it brought me so many referrals because I didn't have, clients would sometimes

bring me people, oh my friend wants to lose weight, my friend wants to get in shape for summer. But when they realized that I could help with pain, it was like, oh my God, my dad's neck hurts or I have a friend who just hurt her hip. Can you help her out? And they would bring me referrals left and right. The amount of value that that brought me. It was funny.

I felt like I was all alone because all these trainers asked me why they would always see me do these assessments with clients and potential clients or I'd, you know, do in to kind of check up and see how things were progressing. But it was such a valuable tool and not just, not just obviously it's going to help them out in terms of alleviating pain and like improving their movement and strength. But two, it just reiterated my value and I didn't have to really sell myself anymore because they just knew what they were going to experience. Yeah, it's amazing. By the way, what we're going to do, what we've been doing for trainers now for a little while

is we've been doing these webinars where we get on, it's live, and we coach and teach trainers and coaches. It's free. We're not charging anything at all and it's always going to be free. And the reason why we're doing this is we love doing it. We love teaching trainers. We love teaching coaches.

The next one coming up is on November 12th. That's at 4pm Pacific standard time. And it's about how to retain clients during the holiday season. That's a challenge for a lot of trainers. Holidays come up very, very difficult. They lose clients. How do you keep them consistent? So literally, if you're watching this when it airs, in two days we have this webinar

and Adam and I will be teaching it, but you have to sign up. You can go to trainerwebinar.com and again, it's for personal trainers and coaches. It's free. How to retain clients during the holiday season and it's totally, totally free. Also if you love our show, come find us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin, me at Mind Pump DeStefano, and Adam at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump.

If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Super Bundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Super Bundle includes maps anabolic, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically

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until next time, this is MindPump.