 Question is from Jim Mendoza. What would each of you say is the it factor to be a personal trainer? Oh yeah, yeah. I'll go ahead and take this one since I'm the only one of us that has this. He's got the it. He's got the look. He's got the look. You know, when I think of the it factor, I'm thinking of the one thing that will, you know, most guarantee, not, there's nothing that'll guarantee success, okay? But the one characteristic that will most likely guarantee success. Yeah, because I think when I look at all the trainers that work for me, there's like four or five attributes that I think they contribute to like a really good personal trainer. And I've had a range of like, some of them having none of the other four, lots of one, a mix of all of them. So there's lots of things that make up. Oh yeah. Well, if you look at like, if you use, for example, if you compare me and Justin as two trainers, both different but equally handsome. Very, both very different. And just above average. But both very, thank you. Way above average, come on. Both very successful as personal trainers. Both of us have had clients that were with us for years and years and years, but we're both very, very different. But there is one thing that we have in common. And there's, and this is the one thing that I think is the it factor, likeability. You can be charismatic. You could be quiet. You could be extroverted. You could be introverted. You could be knowledgeable. You could be a beginner. You could be a trainer that's great with correctional exercise or athletic performance. It's the likeability. Are you somebody that someone looks forward to meeting an hour, you know, two days a week or three days a week for years? If you're likable, then the odds that you'll be successful are much higher. I can't think of anything else. If your friends don't like you, you're not gonna do very well. I can't think of anything else that would be. This is a very social type of a general. I could make a case for communication. Cause you could be, you don't need to be the smartest trainer in the room, but if you do a good job of communicating the information that they need really well, that's pretty close to the it factor for me too. Cause I feel like some of the best trainers aren't even the ones that are the most well read or the smartest trainers out there, but they have the ability to go, a client has a problem, right? Like, and this was me. This was definitely part of my journey as a trainer. Like I didn't have this major educational background. I didn't have a ton of certifications when I first started. You know, I was just up and coming and I would run into an issue. The client would have something that I'd never dealt with before. And I would say, you know, I don't know, but let me find out for you and I'll get back to you. And then I would go home and then that's what would cause me to start reading and learning. And then I would be able, and what I could do really well is I could read a bunch of dry material and get the gist of what I needed to do for that person. And then I'd be able to come back and communicate that information. That's what would make you an effective trainer. That's for sure. Definitely what would make you an effective trainer is being able to communicate. Because at the end of the day, your goal is to get the client to change behaviors. And the only way to do that is to be able to communicate your ideas well enough to where they want to really get done. But you're right. If you're not likable, no one's showing that. No, you have to be, you know. You gotta relate to them. You gotta be able to relay this information and communicate it in a way where they're actually gonna be able to absorb it. Like you can't just hammer them with information that they're not gonna apply. It has to make sense to them. Yeah, well, think about it this way, like, here's a, I mean, I had clients that were with me for 10 plus years. Okay, that would see me for two hours every single week for 10 years. That's two uninterrupted, one-on-one, you and I hanging out, working out, whatever. Two hours a week for 10 years. They would spend more concentrated quality time with me than most of their friends and family. If you think about it, if you really think about it, now imagine if you're the client, who would you wanna spend that much one-on-one, no one else, just undivided attention time with for 10 years? You better fucking, you're gonna wanna like the shit out of them. I don't care how good of a workout you're getting or how great the exercise or even how great your results are. If they're not super likable, you're not showing up for 10 years. It just ain't happening. You're gonna be like, oh man, I don't wanna, I mean, it's a good workout or anything, but fuck, it's kind of boring or the guy is not, they're not cool or I don't wanna hang out with them or whatever. So it's likeability. I could tell, when I used to interview, I could pick out, this is funny. Now, when I would hire my staff, there were certain qualities I would look for that would all but guarantee the success of that person. And the one thing, because I worked in a gym and this is true for almost everybody in the gym, except for people that didn't have to work with people too much, like if you're cleaning my gym or whatever. But if you're my front desk, if you're my salesperson and especially if you're a trainer, when I'm interviewing you and I'm asking you questions, the number one thing I'm paying attention to is do I like this person? Is this person seem like a likable person? Because when I would hire a very likable person, I knew that I could teach them all the other shit. But when they were likable, I was like, man, people are gonna wanna buy memberships from you, they're gonna wanna train with you, they're gonna wanna show up. If they check into the gym and you're a likable front desk person, they're gonna love checking in. That was always the number one. It's true, because when I look back at all the trainers that I trained too, the more likable you were too, the more often you were the more successful trainer too. Not just if you would be successful, but if you were really well liked or your peers liked you, the people that liked you. That's what I mean. If everybody liked you, like you did really well. I think that's a recipe for success in life. Totally much. Totally. I don't think it's as personal. Some people miss that. Totally. That's unfortunate. Now, here's a question. How do you become a likable person? I think that's a good question to ask because there are certain things that you see these type of people do, like behaviors that other people are new. A simple behavior that likable people do is they smile when people talk to them. They look engaged with the conversation, genuinely engaged in the conversation and interested in what you have to say. I'm not looking at my phone or looking off. I don't have a weird look on my face. I think being approachable and being interested and I think that's where I kind of lucked out as a young trainer was I was just a curious kid as it was. I smiled a lot. I was pretty happy. And if somebody was giving me their attention and talking, I was interested. Yeah. I mean, listening is a good one. Being empathetic. Actually, and I'm talking just specifically as a personal trainer, because there's things that make you likable just as a human being. But as a personal trainer, does the client actually feel like you care? Like this person, like my trainer actually cares about me. Like that's like when you're a doctor, you know when you go to your doctor, you ever have a doctor where you feel like, man, this doctor really gives a shit about me. That makes them likable as a practitioner. It's hilarious because I used to make fun of these life coaches, you know, in quotations. I was like, what is a life coach? You know, like what are you teaching them? You know, like that's gonna impact them so much. It's gonna transform their life. But that's like what we do the entire time. We're training them. We're just talking about their life and they're relaying, you know, everything that's happened, their feelings like working through all this stuff as they're working on self-improvement. And it's having somebody there to communicate with along that journey, it's so valuable to them. Yep. And the reason why I wanted to say, I wanna hammer this home is because I've had trainers that were very charismatic. Charisma is different. Charisma is, you know, we all know what charisma looks like. Then I've had trainers and staff that were not nearly as charismatic, but also extremely likable. And they were all very successful. As long as they applied all the other things to you, like, you know, being hard workers and constantly trying to grow. But that's it, man. If I had to list one thing right there and I'll tell you what, remove that, you could have all the other attributes. You could be- How many trainers did you have? How many PhDs and masters and bachelor degrees did you have that work for you that were just not like, nobody liked them? And they sucked. And they were terrible. Nobody's gonna hire you at all. You're not a robot. And your peers don't help you, you know what I'm saying? And then personal training is one of those businesses too where you wanna be liked by your peers because there's a lot to learn from everybody that you're working with inside of a facility, especially if you're working in a gym where there's multiple trainers. You don't wanna be the guy or the girl that nobody else likes to be around. It's funny too, because Jordan Peterson talks about like raising kids. And one of the things he says, which I thought was absolutely brilliant, is one of your jobs as a parent is to make sure that your child is liked by other kids. Cause if they learn that skill as a child, that they're likable, the odds of success in life are through the roof. If that reverse happens, the odds of having a bad life are much higher. So likability is an important factor.