 I am a personal trainer. I am responsible for my client's success and failures. I will never make false promises. I will prioritize my client's health above aesthetics. I will always meet my clients where they are, and I will always aim for sustainability over speed with my client's progress. If you're a personal trainer, these should be your commandments, and doing so will make you successful, and will make your clients successful. Ooh, I like those. Let's get into those. Well, look, it's not a secret that our favorite people in the space are personal trainers. We're all personal trainers. This is how we started in the industry. No bias there whatsoever. Right. We still identify this way. But look, here's a deal. Of everybody that works in the health and fitness space, personal trainers have the greatest capacity for meaningful impact, okay? Fact. That's a fact right there. Gym owners don't have this capability. We don't have this capability as having the leading fitness and health podcast of the world approaching close to a billion downloads, right? We cannot impact people the way a good personal trainer can. Like they are the lifeblood of the industry. We are the front, the true frontline of defense in the space because we have the opportunity to actually keep people from getting into doctors' offices. So not only can we help people that are already there and are trying to solve the root cause, not medicate or band-aid, you know, whatever it is that they have going on, but actually address the root cause or cut it off before it gets there. And who else is able to do that other than trainers? Now what you listed off is definitely something we've learned over the years through each one of our own experiences and just that wisdom that you acquire from all of those hours that we trained and spent time with people in terms of like, what are those simple things that we should focus on from the very beginning? I wish I could go back in time and then apply these principles. It would have made me much more effective. Well, look, here's why this is such a big deal and why we're saying this stuff is there isn't anything in your life, nothing in your life that won't improve if you don't improve or won't improve if you improve your health and fitness. If you become healthier, everything gets better, everything, everything from your consumption habits to your mental state, of course, your physical health, your mobility, your attitude, you become a better parent when you're healthier versus when you're less healthy, you become a better business owner or employee, you innovate better. Moon, sex, libido, skin, I mean, it goes on and on and on. And health and fitness has profound impacts. So what's the challenge? The challenge is you're changing lifestyles, you're going counter to what's considered a normal life. I've said this before about living a regular life, the default is poor health. You have to counter all that. So as a personal trainer, you're not just prescriptive. This is why trainers are so effective or can be so effective, right? You go to a doctor or you read a book or you listen to the podcast and you get lots of information and advice. But the person who's going to walk with you along this journey, who's going to guide you along this journey is a good personal trainer. This is somebody that you would see one or two or three days a week. You're going to meet with them on a regular basis. I mean, I used to see clients two days a week for a full hour uninterrupted. They would see me more than they would see most of their family members aside from their immediate family. So I had this unique opportunity to have this incredible impact on people. And it is a journey. Like somebody who starts on this, it's a journey that never ends, right? The journey of improving yourself through health and fitness never ends. There's always something you can learn about yourself and about how you feel, your life changes. So now the information changes. So it's like, I'm going on this journey and I have a guide that can go with me along the way. And that guide has the most impact on me. They're the ones that can definitely make this happen for me in a way that lasts forever. Nobody else has this potential, no one else. So personal trainers, you got, and look, this is why personal trainers do this out of passion. Trainers don't become trainers because they want to make a lot of money. That's a fact. They do it because they have a tremendous amount of passion probably because they saw what it did for them. It's transformative. But also because they want to help other people. And so what I read off, and we'll go through each of them are like the commandments of what makes you successful both in your business, but also especially, you know, with your clients. Today's program giveaway is maps and a Bollock advanced. Here's how you can win. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop it. Subscribe to our channel and turn on notifications. If you do all those things and we like your comment, we'll let you know in the comment section that you won that program. Also three days left for our big sale this month. So map symmetry is half off and the RGB bundle of programs is half off, both 50% off. That will end in 72 hours. If you're interested, click on the link at the top of the description below. All right, back to the show. I don't know if you put much thought into the order of these, but I do agree that the first one you listed off should be the first one. I mean, it's the first law of leadership. 100%. And so, and also an area that I remember being challenged with with trainers. A lot of my trainers when I would be questioning the results of the client or if I'd be questioning about their attendance, their consistency, their adherence to the program, or even the resigning with them for a sale because I had to do their goals and budget every month, right? Always an excuse. Always, oh, well, they don't care about this or oh, like they always do- You're not that serious. They would, yeah, they would default to what the client did to not be successful, to not show up or to not resign with them. And it used to just frustrate the shit out of me because they wouldn't lead with, I could have been better with the diet plan for some reason, I couldn't get them to one. And you got to reframe the way you think about these challenges and it should always come from you for you failed. I failed, okay? I failed the client, okay? I believe that everybody has the potential to reach their health and fitness goals and if they're unsuccessful and they hired me, no matter the excuses that they gave me, it falls back on me as a leader because I'm leading them. Yes, and this is a position of empowerment. You have to accept that you are responsible for their successes and their failures. Now that doesn't mean you have the answers. It could also and often mean that they're not doing this thing and I don't know how to get them to do this thing. But I do know that there is a way somewhere and I'm gonna keep trying. By the way, this doesn't mean you should beat yourself up go home and cry because your client didn't lose 20 pounds. No, no, no, it just means that there is a way to get them where they wanna go to get them to move forward and maybe you just haven't figured it out yet or maybe you're doing it the wrong way. If you have this attitude, by the way, that you are responsible for your client's successes and their failures, what it's gonna do is it's always gonna drive you to improve and get better. If you say to yourself, oh, well, they, you know, yeah, of course they didn't get results. They don't wanna do what I told them. Well, why didn't they wanna do what you told them? Or they didn't wanna show up to their workouts. Well, why? Oh, of course they didn't get in shape. They kept eating garbage. Okay, maybe there was something you could have done to help them move in the right way. Maybe you just haven't figured it out, but that doesn't matter. It's your responsibility. This is what good teachers and leaders adopt and this is what makes them effective and this is what drove me to continue to improve because I would always ask myself, okay, what am I doing wrong? I just can't get this through. It's just not working. What's happening? And little by little, I'd figure this out and I never became 100% successful my clients. I don't even know if that's possible, but I always got better every single year. It's the only way you get closer to success. Otherwise, if you can't be honest and have those conversations of how could I have done things better? How could I have presented it in a different way? And you're just dismissive of the fact that my client would do X. My client did this and so that's out of your, whatever is in your control is where we need to focus. And so that's what I'm presenting, what I'm bringing in. So now I have to reevaluate that whole system of what I've created of how I can present information and how I can get more buy-in and adherence from the way that I'm delivering information. I had a client for seven of the nine years that I was a personal trainer at 24 FITNESS. I won't mention her name because I'm not trying to put her on blast by any means but to highlight the point that we're making with this first point. And I trained her for that entire time even when I became a manager and I really, you know, I only would only keep three or four clients. Most FITNESS managers, when you get to that role you pick your three favorite. Or you train no one. Or you train no one, you train no one. You pick your three favorite or the three easiest people you could really help. I mean really, because your focus now is on the club, right? And so you don't want to be distracted by really challenging clients, just being straight up. And this lady that I train was the most difficult woman I ever trained my entire life. And I know Justin knows who she is with Merkin already because I've let my trainers train and they all would be like, I don't ever want to, don't you ever make me train her a few times. She's an absolute bitch. She's rude. She doesn't listen to what I have to say. She was a brilliant executive at the Mercury News and she would, and I remember when I was younger, it would baffle me that she'd resign every time. She'd resign for more. You thought she hated you? Yeah, I thought she hated me, but yet she kept buying, training for me, buying and always this way, right? And so trainers would be like, I don't understand, why do you keep her? It's not like you need the money, you can get a client to reflect. I don't understand, why do you keep her? I said, you know why? Because I haven't figured it all out. Like it drives me to know that like I haven't, I haven't made this woman happy. I haven't got her all the results that she wants. And so it was this constant reminder for me to always be getting better and always taking responsibility for the lack of results that the client is getting. And I wouldn't give up. I wouldn't give up. And she was my ultimate challenge. And so I kept her forever. I have a similar story to that. I don't know if you remember this, but I was out on the floor training a client and I saw you were presenting personal training to a potential new client that was coming in. And she was our, you could just tell the signs of a difficult personality right away, just like, okay, what about this? And what about that? And first of all, we were doing a closeout so there's balloons everywhere. And she had an allergy to latex. So that was the start of this like whole debacle. And so Adam's kind of like trying to calm her down and present, you know, all the potential benefits of personal training and what the club has off for all this kind of stuff. And I see him looking around and he, you know, grabs me. And so that was like, I'm like, oh God, here we go. But that was, I was always up for that kind of a challenge. And it was a very challenging client who already started off the process on the wrong foot and was very like angry about, you know, so I had to diffuse that energy and then shuttle it in a more positive direction. But I learned so much from those opportunities to improve my ability to communicate better but also to be able to deal with people and their behaviors and their own quirks. Yeah, look, this is, it's chess and it's not checkers. You have to play the long game. So people might hear what we're saying and they're like, oh, okay, it's my responsibility always. I'm gonna hammer my client until they listen. No, now they're gonna leave and never come back. You lost the game, right? So I had clients for years, years. And then it changed a single thing about the nutrition. I had to play the long game because every time I bring it up, I could tell, uh-oh, they're turning off, uh-oh, I'm gonna risk losing this opportunity. So let me focus on what they're open to. And I'm gonna find ways to sprinkle these in conversations or open the door at the very least. And then, you know, I had one guy lose 35 pounds in three years. You know when he lost that weight? The last four months of that three year period up until he lost, he didn't lose a single pound because he didn't wanna touch anything. But it was this process of me being patient and doing what I could. And sometimes it was literally just me giving him a good experience. That's all. We're not gonna talk anything about health and fitness. You're just gonna come in and work out and we're gonna joke around and talk about your family and I'm gonna create this amazing experience for you so you always have this great relationship with exercise. Well, I'll never forget, you know, when the light switch went off and he came in and he goes, oh, you know what? It's time. I think it's time we start looking at nutrition. And I said, okay, let's start with this one step. And it was this snowball effect. But you're also gonna get situations that you can't figure out. That's not the point. The point is if they're in front of you, like Adam's client, this woman you thought hated you, right? But she's still in front of you. That means the door is open. If you really wanna help people, then you gotta help them. That doesn't mean you piss them off. It doesn't mean you kick them out the door. It doesn't mean you try to preach to them when they're not open. It means you have to be effective. That's what it means. You have to be effective. But know that the answer is out there and you're responsible for it. That attitude will drive you to becoming the most effective trainer that you could possibly be. You know, the biggest lesson that I got from her was that some clients are testing you. And what they wanna see is if you're gonna give up on them. And- Well, a lot of people probably have given up on them. That's right. There's a bit of a self-selection bias with people that have struggled with weight their whole entire life. And a lot of other people have dismissed them, given up on them, and many times they've given up on themselves. And this person is hurt and broken inside. And there's a lot more going on that's causing all these other things. And they are going so hard the opposite direction or making your job so difficult because they just wanna see are you gonna be like everybody else? I had this one surgeon that I trained. He'll probably hear this, but it's all right. He knows. And he, I was warned by my other clients who worked with him. And they said, oh, you're gonna train so-and-so. Good luck. You're gonna have a tough time. Like whatever. And his wife even warned me. If he doesn't show up, you let me know and I'll make him come. She was a nurse. So I was like, okay. Well, anyway, I trained him and little by little the shell started to come off to the point where, this is true story now, the other doctors I trained would come in and go, what are you doing with so-and-so? And I'm like, why? I'm like, he's telling jokes in the OR. Like he's smiling. People like him now. What was happening was his health was improving and he was changing as a person. Anyway, he ended up becoming one of my most long-term clients and actually became somebody who referred to me most of my so many clients, more clients than almost anybody else. Really cool. All right, the next one, this one's a big one because it's so tempting to do the opposite. But if you do the opposite of what I'm about to say, you're 100% gonna set yourself up for failure. Okay? The second one is I will never make false promises. Okay. Why is this one so hard? Because you're trying to get someone to hire you. You're trying to get someone excited. You wanna sell the dream. And you wanna sell them the dream. I wanna lose 30 pounds. We could totally do that. It's gonna take us 15 weeks, two pounds a week, 15 weeks you could lose 30 pounds. Or man, I just wanna, man, I really wanna feel a lot better. Oh yeah, you hire me. You do what I tell you. Yeah, look at this person that looked just like you and looking and looked at this. You're gonna look like this. Do not make, one of the best things you could ever do as a personal trainer is under promise. That's right. And over deliver. Under promise. I remember when this first snap, this was like my first year of personal training when I figured this out. Because my first year, I'm just trying to get people to hire me. And I thought, well, that's how you got people hire. You sell the ultimate dream. And then I'd run into problems with people who wasn't meeting their expectations. Now, definitely was the fact that they weren't doing what I said and a lot of stuff. And I could have made excuses, right? I could have been like, well, they did what I said. They would have got what I told them. But I remember thinking like, most people aren't gonna do everything I say. Like, what am I doing here? I gotta start being super realistic with my recommendations. And so I used to say stuff like this after that. People would say, I wanna hire you because I wanna lose 30 pounds. Ooh, that's really tough. You know what? You might not lose 30 pounds. But here's what you're gonna experience and here's what it's gonna be like. Now, can you? You definitely can, but it's really tough. The statistics show that most people don't. And then when they do, they gain it back. But one thing that I specialize in is helping people get to the right way and helping them keep it off. And it not only did it not lose me sales, I got more sales because people were like, oh, he's honest. And then when I told them, don't expect to lose a single pound for the first 60 days because we're trying to build strength and muscle and I'm gonna try and boost your metabolism. And then they would lose four or five pounds on the scale. It was just incredible surprise. You know what is a classic example of this that our audience has to be very familiar with from us? Is how we undersell personal training. We tell people how difficult and hard it is to be a trainer, to be a trainer, to be successful, to scale, to make any sort of money doing it. Yet every day we have somebody message us saying that I quit my job to become a personal trainer because of you guys. So you absolutely could. And really what that is is people will appreciate the honesty. Hey, it's hard. It's hard to do that. And you know, it's even harder is keeping it off. You know, there's a lot of people that might be able to lose 30 pounds. I mean, let's be honest. That's actually, that is a little simple. Just stop eating, get on a treadmill, run every single day. And eventually that'll come off. You know, you might die along the way, but hey, there's a lot of people that push the needle in these extremes just to get to that number. But you know what? They all put it back on. They all put it back on and they put more of it back on. What you're really hiring me for is to make sure that not only we get there, we get there the right way so that you keep it for the rest of your life. That's the part that's really challenging. And there's a lot of missteps that the average person makes on the way there. Yeah, well, I mean, I think that's a lot of the temptation is because of what the client's coming in with their expectation. And a lot of them have been through the process before and will divulge into that. And tell you like how, you know, they applied all this, it didn't really work out that great. What are you gonna do that's any different? And you know, how am I gonna get to this very specific goal and lose all this body fat and lose all this weight in a quick amount of time? And so to be able to have that conversation in an honest fashion and tell them what is exactly sustainable and what's not sustainable is a hard conversation to have. I used to love statements like this. Do you want me to sell you or do you want me to be honest? Yeah, there you go. And everybody almost say, yeah, be honest, okay. Cause I could sell you and I could break down the math on how, you know, you can lose healthy anywhere from a pound to two pounds a week. And so in this many weeks with this, but what I know from my experience is it takes long on that. Why? Because it's not just simply X's and O's. There's behavioral stuff that's going on. We don't know where you're at metabolically yet. There's a lot of, there's a learning curve to getting good at movements. There's a consistency aspect to it. There's the undoubtedly what's going to happen is we're going to take five steps forward, take one step back eventually. But really this is, it's not about that. It's about once we get there, that I'm going to help you maintain this for yourself. So don't be afraid to be upfront about those things. It makes you more effective. For sure. For sure. It doesn't make you, that's the, I think the challenge is that people think that it makes them more effective to paint this crazy dream. But the reality is honesty is far more effective and it sets you up for success. False promises set you up for failure. If you did in fact convince that client that they're going to get these crazy results in 30 days or 60 days, now you're on the hook to deliver. And either A, you're going to do things that are not ideal for your client and they're going to just copy and follow exactly what you say, in which case they'll gain it back later anyway. Or what usually happens is it doesn't happen. And then you're going to have this conversation. Well, Mrs. Johnson, the reason why you didn't get those crazy results that I promised. You didn't do XYZ. You went on vacation and then you ate all that, whatever. And that's like, oh, why am I even, why am I even here? Why am I doing this? Don't make false promises. By the way, this is why we do not use before and after. Or do 30 day challenges. Both those things are proven to be very successful in marketing and selling people. There's nothing more effective at selling. We sell workout programs, okay? The most effective way to sell a workout program is to show before and afters. By the way, we have thousands of before and afters that people have sent us. We've used zero of them to sell programs because yes, it's effective, but what it's really doing, whether we say it or not, because we can even say on the bottom, this is not the average client. Results may vary. Yeah, don't expect to get results like this. But the picture tells you something different and it's false promises. And we just don't want to, we don't want to promote that. We don't want to show people that this is how you build a business in the fitness space. If you do it, that's fine. You want to be honest about it and you want to tell people this is not normal results, but that's why we don't do it. And there is nothing, it's not that it's not possible that somebody can make radical change in 30 days or 72 days hard. You can make all kinds of changes in that time. We just think it's the opposite message of what we're trying to present to people. So we choose not to use that, even though it's extremely effective when it comes to marketing and making money. But let us be an example, if you're a coach and trainer of someone that can do this and be wildly successful and never have to use either one of those two things. That's right. All right, the next one is that I will, I as a trainer, will prioritize my client's health above aesthetics. Okay, here's why this one's so important because your client will not prioritize their health above aesthetics. They're going to prioritize aesthetics over health. Fine, that's okay. That's where you're going to go, no problem. I just have to find effective ways of communicating to get you to focus on health. And sometimes that means I trick you. Sometimes I mean I say, oh yeah, you really want that? No problem, we're going to move in that direction, but I'm going to do it in a healthy way. It's my job to do this and to help you do this the right way. Now why? Because it's the only way, okay? There is no, you know, chase aesthetics and you'll get healthy and you'll get aesthetic. It doesn't work that way. You chase aesthetics, you lose your health and then aesthetics fall over and they're gone anyway. The truth is the health leads to the aesthetics. By the way, that's how I used to sell it. It's a reflection of it. That's how I used to sell it to people. But you as a trainer, if my client comes in and says, I know you said Sally got to work out, but I just want to burn as many calories as possible. I want to be super sore. Just, I've had clients actually tell me this. Look, I'm paying you, do what I tell you because I'm paying you. I'm like, I don't think you understand how our relationship works. It doesn't work that way. I'm not going to just do what you tell me because you pay me if I know that it's wrong and you may think it's right. Unfortunately, I'm the expert here. Well, we have to explain why this doesn't work. It doesn't work because when you come in and you're chasing aesthetics and that's your main priority while you hire your trainer, that most often than not, and when I say most often, I'm 99% of the time is rooted in insecurity and or vanity. And both of those are fleeting. And both of those will eventually lead to poor unhealthy decisions. Even if temporarily it gets you to a short-term goal, it will not be a long-term solution to the problem that you have. So we know that even if in the short-term it could work to sell that idea or be okay with that, we know that we're not really addressing the root cause of why this person got to being unhealthy. And if we truly want to help them, like we say we want to, we will focus on health. And of course, aesthetics follow. Yeah, also, I mean, it's very subjective. And so what's the problem with that? If we're basing how we're looking as we're going through the process, that opinion of that person's self is gonna change along the way and it might not be good enough even when results are happening. So the goalpost just is gonna keep moving and moving and to the point where we get into the unhealthy range where we're pursuing that looks at such a degree that all that's left is to really intensify everything that we have in front of us. Look, if health was good and aesthetics was evil, okay? Chasing aesthetics is literally going down the evil path. What do I mean by that? Well, let me use a great example. Data is very clear on this. The age at which people are the most satisfied and accepting of their bodies, okay? The age at which people look in the mirror and say, I accept this and I'm happy with this, okay? It's not 20 years old. It's in their 60s, huh, 60s? Like objectively 20 year olds have more beauty in youth, obviously, than some of the 60s. How is it that body acceptance reaches its peak? When you're probably in your worst shape. In your 60s, because it's subjective. This is based off of something you will never, ever accomplish. If you always chase aesthetics, you will always lose your health. Eventually you ignore all the signs your body's telling you. I'm tired, ignore it. My body hurts, ignore it. My digestion's off, ignore it. Just keep chasing this unattainable goal where you look in the mirror. It's like a fun mirror. What you see is not really what is happening. So you have to always focus on health. Now here's the beauty of it. Healthy looks good. Healthy looks good. So if you do this for your clients and you do this right and you convince them through intelligent, effective, slow, sometimes communication, then they will be pleasantly surprised with the aesthetic results. I used to love that. I used to love, you know, I'd get a female client and we'd have these battles back and forth over the scale and we would have these conversations and every time they'd leave, like I think I got to them and they come back and we'd have these struggles. And I understand because I had my own body image issues and so I get it and I'll never forget. I used to love this. They'd come see me and they'd be so happy and be like, what happened? They're like, well, I know the scale hasn't moved, but I just saw four people I hadn't run into in a long time. So I hadn't seen these people for like six months. Every single one of them asked me how much weight I lost. But I haven't lost any weight on the scale. I'm like, do you think maybe your view of yourself is a little distorted? They're like, yeah, like, all right, let's not trust that anymore. Let's just keep moving this direction because we're moving in the right direction. All right, here's the next one. This one's a big one because as trainers we get so excited, we have all the information, we have all the answers. This one can be really hard and this one is this. I will always meet my clients where they are, okay? That means that they're gonna take small steps sometimes when they could take bigger steps and you know they could take bigger steps, but that's okay, I'm gonna take every single little win that I can, I'm gonna meet them where they're at. Took me a long time to get this one. Ooh, this one took me the longest. Yes, took me a long time. I use this example all the time because this is just kind of a clear one, but I have probably a million examples, but it was like, you know, lady sits down with me and says, look, I can only work out once a week. I mean, I was very convincing and motivating and I can talk really well and sometimes I convince the person, no, no, you gotta come in three days a week and- Here's why. Here's why and it's gonna make you a better mom and I know you don't have time, but you actually get more energy so you can create more time and I'd paint this whole picture and sometimes I'd convince them, sometimes I would and then when I would convince them, of course, it was too much of a commitment for them at first, like they had told me and then they ended up falling off or I'd blow them out of the water because they're looking at me and they're like, what does this guy know? He doesn't know my life. Before you landed the anomaly and you confirmed your bias and now you keep saying that same bullshit. No, what reality would I used to do when I really figured this out is say I can only work out once a week, no problem. We're gonna start once a week. Sal, don't touch my nutrition. No problem, we won't talk about your diet. Sal, I don't wanna do that exercise. It's a good exercise, it's got benefits but if you don't wanna do it, that's fine. Let's try some alternatives and then my job was to find a way to get them to move somewhere else so I can meet them there. That was my job, but I always met them where they were. If you're here, well, that's the only way I'm gonna be effective is I'm gonna meet you exactly where you're at. Well, and this is especially difficult if you're a new trainer and you're basing most of how you think everything's gonna go off of how you've been able to tackle some of these issues and how you've been able to figure out how to exercise properly or be able to adjust your diet and create these types of disciplines. For me, this was very difficult because just seeing how the general population can even see me move as a trainer and try to then mirror what I just did. It was a complete opposite sort of version of what I was doing and for me to kind of step back and have to really reassess, okay, well, what do I present and how can I take smaller steps to get them to get to the desired outcome? It's that like across the board if you're asking them to change behavioral things and lifestyle things, this is a lot of times it's gonna take very, very small steps. Well, there's rules to negotiating like this and that's one of the rules. Like the worst thing you could do is to argue or debate somebody when they say something. There's a good, there's a really good book. I know Doug and I both have read it. It comes to mind right now in the title sub in me. So maybe Doug, you could, it was a negotiator who wrote the book. I know you read it this past. Never split the difference. Thank you. Never split the difference. I think it's a great read for this topic and that's like one of the first things that even when somebody says something that I disagree with or I know is wrong, yeah, I nod my head, yes. Okay, yeah, and then I explain to them, well, you know, here's what has happened. Sometimes people see that like the worst thing you could do is to go, no, or that's wrong or argue because even if you're right in that situation that automatically puts a wall up. And if your desired outcome is to convince this person that there's a better way to approach their health and fitness and maybe that's two days or three days a week or maybe that means doing that exercise that they don't like doing or maybe that means eating a certain way that they said they wouldn't do, you arguing with them or telling them how they're wrong is never going to get you there. So the first step of that is acknowledging and agreeing with their thought on it. Yeah, oh yeah, no, I see, I get where you're coming from. I have had clients before that, you know, refuse to do squatting and stuff like that no matter how beneficial it could be to them. So don't worry, we'll do something else. And then over time, while we're in this relationship where I'm seeing them for hours, I'm subtly dropping hints to the benefits of seeing it from a different perspective and you've got to pull them into thinking the same way that you do. So that's probably, Sal, one of the biggest mistakes, especially highly intelligent, well-read educated trainers do is they're so hung up on being right or having the answers and being smart that they're so quick to point out anything that someone says wrong and that yet they have no understanding of what that does psychologically to the person across from you that you just did that to. And if the desired outcome is get them to follow you, that is the worst thing that you could possibly do. I had a client that one of my doctor clients referred to me and she warned me. She said, I'm sending someone over and she's really reluctant, doesn't want to work out in a gym, doesn't want to work out with a trainer but I've been talking to her and she needs to see someone. So I said, okay. So then she walks this woman and literally the first things out of her mouth, okay. I shake her hand, she's got this look on her face like, you know, angry. And she said, all right, before we get going, before we tell me about what this is all about, I'm not going to touch my diet. I'm only going to come here once a week and I'm not doing any exercise on my own. List of demands, right? Okay, that's the first things out of her mouth. I said, no problem. Here's what we'll do with the one day a week that you're here and here's what we can affect positively with the one day a week. And then she said, literally, right after I said that, she goes, wait a minute. Why aren't you going to try and convince me to talk about nutrition? I said, well, no, it's all beneficial. I said, but I want to work with whatever you want to give me and you give me once a week and there's a lot we could do with once a week. We don't need to do all those other things to see some positive improvements. And she said, okay. And she hired me and I trained her once a week and the reason why I like using her as an example is because over time she went from once a week to twice a week to, hey, what exercises can I do my own to, you know what, I think I ate too much sugar. What do you think? You think I should cut sugar down on my diet to, wow, this is really cool. Are there any books on this kind of stuff I can read to? I'd like to become certified just for my own information. Here's what's awesome and sad about that story. Had that, this was towards the back half of my career. I'd already been a trainer for probably 12 or 13 years when this happened. Had she come to me, year two, three, four or five. Blown her out. Gone. And she would have gotten no help. She would have gotten no help. And maybe turned off forever. Forever. I know it. Because now I would have labeled you as the fitness space. I tried. Trainers in general, for sure. I would have blown her out and she would have never come back. You know, I'd shared on the show recently that this has been one of the biggest epiphanies or changes in my career as I've gotten older, like looking at the overall health journey for somebody. It's so much bigger than macros and lifting weights. Like there's so many things that are encompassed in the health sphere. Like everything from sleep to relationships with family to how you view yourself, to walking, to water, to, I mean, the list goes on and on. And if I'm leading this person to having a healthier life and I can't get them to follow my macros, I can't get them to do the exercises as many times or as many days a week. It doesn't mean that I can't impact them in 15 other ways that's gonna make them a healthier version than what they were when they met me. And so I'm far better off accepting that they're not willing to do X, Y, and Z yet and helping them where they are and starting to show them improvements because that's how you're gonna get buy in. And that story that you shared, that lady came to you for day two, came to you for day three. Not you going, okay, are you ready for day two? Or like, okay, it's now it's time, no, you didn't have to. Because you proved through what she gave you that you could impact her life significantly. And so now she was open to hearing what other ideas you might have. And then that leads you to getting them where you really ultimately wanna have them. And I have a lot of stories like that that I would have never, ever positively impacted had I not figured that out. Literally, I would have failed so many people had I not figured that one part out. All right, lastly, this one's also important. I will always aim for sustainability over speed with my clients' progress. Look, here's how you define your success with your clients. It's not the results they get, it's the results they keep. Period and a story. The data is clear on this. Every year, millions of Americans lose weight and every year, almost all of them gain it back. Fail, fail, fail, fail. When you have a client come up to you and say, ooh, I did this diet that really worked well for me before or I did this workout program that worked really well for me, it actually didn't work for you. Because here you are, again, we gotta figure out a way to make this work. Now, why is sustainability what we need to focus on? Because all they're gonna want is speed. Your job as a leader and a guide in this relationship is to help them do this in a way that's sustainable. And that means a lot. What it means is there's gonna be conversations, there's gonna be battles, there's gonna be where you're gonna have to give up a pawn so you can capture the queen later. Remember I said this is chess. You're gonna have to play the long game with this. But your responsibility, all the way back to the first one, it's your responsibility. And you know this as a trainer. You know when you're watching your client, this isn't gonna, this is not sustainable. Like she just cut all carbs out of her diet and she went from not working out to now she's running every single day. This isn't gonna, there's no, like it's great losing weight, you feel better, but this is not sustainable. I need to work with this person to help them do this in a sustainable way. This is the most important thing you can focus on as a personal trainer. Because if you don't do this, you fail. It seems clear. But for people that achieve success in terms of their idea of reaching and achieving their goal, but there's no way they can stay there. You didn't succeed. You failed. And that's a hard pill to swallow because there's a lot of methods to get into that direction where you're gonna achieve a certain body fat percentage or you're gonna achieve a certain physique. And you can get there, you know, multitude of ways. There's only one right way to do it. The only way we can measure that is whether or not it was sustainable, what you got there. This commandment or rule is what radically changed the way I recommended diet and nutrition to a client. Totally, yep. You know, that has to be one of the most challenging things, right, of all the things that we teach and help people with getting consistency, adherence around making good food choices has to be the Achilles heel or the greatest hurdle that we ever had to do. If you were with me for an hour, I'm controlling your workout. And so that's easy, but I'm not with you for the other 23 hours of what you put in your mouth. And so that is really, really difficult. And when most people are struggling with weight, they've gone through the diets already. They've yo-yo'd up and down. And so how am I any different if I assess and then go right into the game of, okay, this is what you're eating. Here's, you know, 1,300 calories. We're gonna lose weight and just come and show up. And like, that was such a losing battle. And that was when I began to look at it differently and go, what if I, when I assess their diet, instead of going, oh, this is not my total calories, they are, let's cut and restrict. What if I focused on adding things to their diet? What if I focused on giving them what they need versus taking away from them? What would that do to adherence? What would that do to building muscle, building their metabolism and how much more likely would they be to be able to sustain that and keep that weight off for the rest of life? It completely changed my success rate. It was like mind-blowing for clients. I, let me just to communicate how important this is. This is how I modeled my business towards the end of my career, okay? What'll end up happening as a trainer when you have clients that really like you is they're going to sometimes find ways to train with you more often. I know we work out twice a week, so I wanna hire you for four days a week. I wanna work out five days a week. And usually I would say no, no, no, no, no. Actually there's a lot we can do in the two days a week that we train. And I wanna focus on that before you add extra days. Now I could have had them buy more sessions and seen me more often, but I knew that that was an unsustainable approach for them. The way that it typically looked for me with new clients was they would start with me two or three days a week. Eventually I would have the conversation with them where I'd move them down to two or one day a week, then I'd move them down to once every other week, then I'd move them down to once a month. And I had a number of clients like this. What was my goal? Sustainability. What is sustainability? At some point you're not gonna be with me. At some point you have to do this on your own. And I did this and you know what's funny? People listening to that, it's dumb, you're making less money. No, my business exploded because of this approach. I hate the false, strange idea that if I get my clients results and then they can do it for the rest of the lives on their own, somehow I'm losing clients and I'm gonna lose my business. This is a terrible, stupid mentality. If you really wanna help people, then help them. By the way, that's what's gonna make you successful. So clients would tell me I wanna train with you more often and I would say no, it's not necessary. In fact, we're gonna train less often and I'll give you some workouts you can do on your own. And I moved a lot of clients in this direction to where they were training less often with me but then able to maintain on their own. By the way, this is now, I don't know, I haven't trained people for a long, eight years maybe. I still am friends with some of these people. They all continue to work out on their own. They all continue to work out on their own. That's real success, that's real success. And look, if you're a trainer and you're listening to this, share this with your clients. Share it with your clients because it's gonna give them some insight. And your peers. Definitely with your peers, that's obvious. But share it with your clients and be like, man, this is why I became a trainer and I really enjoy working with you. And thank you for the opportunity for allowing me to potentially make a positive impact in your life. I want you to know, by the way, you've made a positive impact in my life. Look, if you love the show, head over to mindpumpfree.com, check out all of our free fitness guides. We have a lot and they're free. You can also find all of us on Instagram. Justin is at Mind Pump Justin. I'm at Mind Pump DeStefano. And Adam is at Mind Pump Adam.