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Two in a row now. Wow. Two in a row, that's it. No, there's more before that. But these are two in a row. Oh, wow. Hot streak. Hot streak. Yeah. You want to talk about how to get rich and famous. I think that's a good, not rich and famous. I don't know why I said that. Rich in fitness. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. If that's even possible, right? So that's another topic. Yeah. No, I think it's a really cool conversation for a couple of reasons. One, I think there's a lot of misconceptions around how much money is in fitness. So especially since the new category which we'll address, which is the influencer, right? So like that didn't exist when I first started. That wasn't like, I wasn't an option. Like, hey, good. Would you like to be an influencer, actually? I want to influence people dirty words. Yeah, it is. So that, you know, that's now a new category slash online coach, whatever you do, right? So, but there's also this idea that there's a lot of money in owning your own gym. I mean, I used to think that was kind of like the pinnacle of a personal trainer. You become a personal trainer. That or actually becoming a trainer for pro athletes, right? Our celebrities. That one was a mind blow. That blew my mind when I realized how much they don't make. That's why I think this is a good conversation because there's a lot of things that I thought were true that were not true at all. In fact, many of the things that I thought were true were like the complete opposite. Once I was in the space long enough and, you know, met enough of these trainers that had had success in these categories. Yeah, one of the things, and we'll get into all the categories, right? The common places you can work in fitness and then what it looks like and what the strategy should be in terms of how to make a lot of money in those. But one of the things I love about fitness is that very few people actually get into fitness with the intention of making a lot of money. And I like that because I mean, there are definitely people that go into fitness to try and make a lot of money. They don't last though is what I mean. If you're in, if you're doing this and you're doing it professionally full time for longer than five years, definitely longer than 10 years. It's usually because you have a deep passion for fitness and for helping people. And that's good in my opinion. It kind of weeds out the, I'm just going to jump into this because it's a money making opportunity which would bring in a lot of people who maybe aren't, you know, is passionate about fitness. That doesn't mean that everybody in fitness knows what they're doing and is good and all that stuff. But at least, at the very least, I think when people get into fitness, it's usually because they like working out or they like helping people with fitness. Well, the good news is a lot of the phonies that got away with a lot of their techniques before the internet has really taken off. Like, I mean, you can't really pull that off anymore. You can just Google and fact check a lot of the information like people are providing these days. So you really do have to be educated and know something in terms of, you know, how to then relay that to your potential clients because they're going to, they're going to call you out on it. I don't know if I fully agree with that though. I feel like there's, it might be worse now because of the, how many people now just because of the sheer volume. Well, yeah, because there's this new category that kind of existed like, you know, like when we first started. So when we first started, there were the anomalies that made it on the cover of a magazine, you know, or maybe we were on a TV show and you were a celebrity. And just because of that, you become a famous trainer and make a lot of money, regardless of your, your education. But to me, there, that was a very small percentage where I feel like there's a much bigger percentage of people now that get famous on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or Snapchat or one of the, of YouTube, because they look amazing or they're funny or they do something cool. And then they're out. Then they sell you waste trainers. Yeah. And then they're out giving you, yeah, they're still bad, I guess. No, you're, that's a good point. Although I will say this, if you were to look at the total number of people that make money doing what you're saying versus the total number of people that work in fitness in general, still a small sliver, right? Cause it might be the perception is, oh, all these influencers, it's easy to make money this way, but really it's a small percentage of people. Oh, you think so. Oh, that'd be an interesting statistic for Doug to look up, just as he's getting comfortable. I, sorry, Doug, I know, I don't, I think it's bigger than you think. Well, I think there's a lot more. Like if you look at like all the trainers, all the people that work in gym, all the, yeah, if you compare, compared to people who make a good living just through being an influencer. Yeah. I mean, like, I mean, I guess an easy way to start to try and figure this out would be, you know, how many fitness YouTube channels exist, right? Yeah, but how many of them make money is what I'm saying. Like, how many of them could actually support someone versus how many people support themselves working in traditional fitness? Well, I mean, as we get into these, these numbers, I think that it's pretty, I think it's pretty similar across the board. I think the, the lower percentile of, of people in all these categories make 20% of the money, right? And then the bulk of the money is made in the 90% tile of people that, which is a very small percentage. I think that it's across to all regardless. Yeah, regardless. Yeah. No, this is a good topic because I remember as a kid, right? So I fell in love with working out right away. I was 14 years old working out my, my backyard, my parents backyard and just loved it and knew that I wanted to work in fitness. I didn't know much about gym, the gym industry and stuff like that, but I knew I wanted to do something with fitness. And I remember my first day as a personal trainer, it was like the first time in my life I did something that felt like so, like it's the first time I did something. I'm like, this is what I'm supposed to do. And then, and if you're like that, you know, you want to think about how can I support myself and also be successful? What a dream, right? If you love fitness, you love helping people. You love the industry of fitness and health. What a dream to be able to make a good living doing that thing. Cause I'll, I'll be honest with you since the day I worked in fitness, I've had fun every single day. I mean, there were more challenging days than others, but if I compare myself to the average person and what jobs that they do and how they feel about their work, I mean, I loved it. I loved working in gyms. I loved working in my studio. I love what we do. Like it's, it's just fun the whole time. It's very rewarding if you come into it with that mindset and you're coming in with a helping attitude and really trying to make an impact on people's lives. And you have that kind of interpersonal relationship skills, which is something that is vital to this industry. You can't really pull off, uh, you know, sitting behind the desk and not being super social. Like you got to be really into the fact that you're going to be interacting with people. Well, ironically, the money actually is what kind of pulled me in, right? So I kind of fell into the job. We have a similar story where we were going to school, we were going to finish kinesis and then we both decided, no, we're not going to finish. I think I got a tiny bit further than you did. That's it. Cause you only did one class, right? No, literally one class. I almost got my A. I sat in class and left. Adam totally beat you. Yeah, I did. I did beat you there. Second most educated. Third, if we count Doug, actually. No, but what happened was I, um, I fell into it and because before that, I actually didn't think that it was a good job for money at all. In fact, I think I've shared the story of the high school girlfriend I had, her father, who was a lawyer who made me feel like a puke when I told him that I was pursuing kinesiology. I haven't heard that word in a while. I wanted to be a personal trainer. He said, well, he didn't use puke, but he made me feel like one. You want to date my daughter and you want to be a trainer? Yeah. Well, he said, you know, he said, well, you're not, you're not going to make anything more than about 50 grand a year. I mean, that's what, uh, and you know, when you, when you Google what the average income is, he's, he's actually right. It's true. So I, I had no, uh, no thoughts of like, oh, this again, I'm going to make a ton of money. What ended up happening was I loved it like you so much. We're like, I didn't want to leave dude. I remember being there all day because it was the first job that ever happened to you for, oh yeah, by far. It was the first job that I didn't ever look at the clock. And I, and when I was off, I wanted to be there. I just, I love the atmosphere. I loved, I did know that I liked working with people. I love talking and meeting new people. So I enjoyed the communication aspect of it. I also was about improving myself and wanted to change my own physique. And so I was learning the subject that I was also trying to learn to teach people. And then I was so in love with all that. And then I was, I was watching every paycheck a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. And realized like, Oh, wow, there's potential for me to make some money in this because I love it. You know what I like about your story that I think is most interesting, Adam, is that you, you did that. You left the fitness industry in pursuit of money. Yeah. When you opened up some of the first cannabis clubs, remember this is back when now marijuana is much more mainstream and it's not so gray market. But you did it when it was gray market. When the money was flying, you took a lot of risks. You made a shit ton of money. You left anyway to go back to fitness. Yeah, yeah. That was a very important moment in my life, right? So I got into the fitness, not knowing I can make money made at that time. The most money I ever made, I was in my twenties. I had reached six figures by time. I was about 22 years old. I bought my house at that time, had all the success, but I still wanted more. I mean, that what was still driving me was this desire to make more money. And I loved personal training and thought, Oh, this is great. But I was quickly seeing that, Oh man, I don't know if I'm ever going to reach this, you know, half a million millions of dollars a year, which I had these aspirations to make this kind of money. And I remember like getting this opportunity after, I think it was like eight, nine years, maybe more in the fitness space when a client offered me this opportunity. And he slid a piece of paper over to me. And on that piece of paper, it said the minimum I would make would half a million dollars a year. And he goes, that's what I expect you to make in the first year who knows where it'll go from there. It's good five times more than you would probably make as a brand. Yeah. And so I said, yeah, I'm out. I literally was like, walked away from the 401k, the benefits, everything. And with, you know, no money yet coming in from that, just the opportunity. Well, and at that time too, you were a fitness manager, right? So there was like, within the corporate setting, you were still kind of aspiring to get, you know, like different jobs where I got like a promotion. And so there's ways you could, you could like, you know, make more income within that setting, but it was still capped at like, what would you say, like 80 to like 100,000? Yeah. Yeah. So as an FM, so I was making about 110, right? So you 80 to 120 would be like the range, actually go even lower if you were in a smaller club. And, you know, remember, you got to, you got to explain it. You were a high performer. Yeah. That wasn't what the average. So what actually did push me over was this, was they kept every year. So I was there for six different comp plan changes. So basically every other year, a new comp plan came out. And anybody that knows, you know, when a company does that, it's never to give your employees more money. It's always to figure out how to save money. Yeah, how to save money. But what they did up until the last comp plan, they always did a good job of, you know, oh, we're going to rearrange this. So the company saves money, but we still want to dangle that carrot for those top performers that they could, they can still make as much maybe more money. And so I just had to rework how I worked. I had to figure out new ways to get that new target until the last year, the last year they did a comp plan where it was, here's your ceiling. I don't care if you sell a million dollars at them and fitness this month for our company, you don't make any more dollars once you hit here. And they put a ceiling on me. And that was really what kind of pushed me out because I was still aspiring to make these numbers. Or like you said, Justin, looking at the positions, two positions ahead to where I could get there, like, okay, this guy makes a quarter million, how many more years till I get there. And then all of a sudden this guy comes to me and says, Hey, half a million dollars a year, if you come manage these clubs for me. And I was that that's what sent me out. But to your point, I did that. And I reached this, this amount of money that I thought would be, I would be so happy. And temporarily, I was, I mean, when the money first started coming in, like, I was enjoying every bit of that novelty is really, you know, awesome. Yeah, yeah, you know, it was, it was, it was incredible. I was spending money on all kinds of stuff and flying all over the place and having a blast. And probably about a year of that went by. And I did, I just had this moment of reflection where I was in the worst shape of my life. So I'd reached the highest body fat percentage I ever reached before. I just had a girl cheat on me first time that I ever happened in my life. I just lost a best friend, not like he died, just we, we, you know, stopped being friends anymore. And we were like, long, long time friends. My relationship with my siblings and family at that time was pretty poor. I wasn't making a lot of good connection. When I looked around, I was just, every other aspect of my life, I wasn't happy. And that was what made me go back to fitness. And I remember thinking there, I was sitting down, I was like, man, I've got all the money I ever thought I would need. So I don't have to do anything to work for money at the time. So I can really think about like, where do I want to be? So then when I came back in fitness, it really truly was for the love of fitness. Yeah. And that's a great story because it's a great thing to talk about here because to, if you love fitness, making good money in fitness is amazing. But really, it's not about just the money and the studies actually support this. There's lots of studies that are done on this, but when you make enough money to cover your basics and when you're not stressed out about money, anything above that brings you no additional happiness. In fact, Arthur Brooks, who's an expert on happiness, talks about this quite a bit. Now, when you work in fitness, especially if you have a passion for fitness, it's rewarding because you're, you're seeing that you're helping other people, you're doing something very positive, you know, every, if I do better in fitness, if I own a gym or if I'm a personal trainer or other things that we're going to talk about here, it's usually because I'm doing a better job with the people that I'm working with. And so the rewarding aspect from it is incredible. Now, if you throw money on top of it, boy, is that an incredibly fulfilling, you know, situation to be in. So this is a great topic, right? How to, how to get rich, but do it in a field that tends to be very and have your cake and eat it too. Absolutely. Very rewarding. So this, this is the most obvious job in fitness is personal trainer. I think that's where most people who are fitness fanatics think, right? They think, okay, I love working out. I'm already like training my friends is what it is, right? I'd already trained my friends, I already tell people how to work out. Everybody asked me how to work out. I love it. It's my favorite thing to do. I would live in the gym if I could anyway. I might as well, you know, make money doing this. Now, personal trainers, boy, there's a, there's such a range in terms of how much money you can make as a personal trainer. The average trainer in the U S makes about $40,000 a year. That's not much in most places. Now, in some places you can, you can support yourself and be okay. Probably can't support a family in most places in the U S definitely not in metropolitan areas, but there's a huge range there. And I'll tell you this as a trainer, I'd make well into six figures, but that was the top range. It's not going to be very, very common. That won't be what you think where you see things. Now, I used to think when I first became a personal trainer that this celebrity trainers or these NFL or sports team trainers were some of the highest paid trainers. That's the pinnacle of what you could ever achieve. That's what I thought. Now the truth is they don't make much at all. It's the opposite. Yeah. That was one of those areas. So when I became a personal trainer, another thing, I mean, early on, that's what I was aspiring to be. It was like, Oh man, I'm, you know, get my certifications, get my experience. And then maybe one day I'll be, you know, the trainer for an NFL team or for a basketball team. Like that's like your dream job. I actually dated a girl that went to school. I forgot what her degree was from Cal Poly, but it specializes in like, it was like sports, rec, something management or some shit like that. And she got a job. This is actually when I found this all out. She worked for Staples Center. You know, she's hanging out with Kobe Bryant. She killed O'Neill's during that, that era and stuff. I was just like, Oh my God, so amazing. Dream job. Yeah. Dream job. Right. She was making like 40 grand a year working for Staples Center. And I remember asking her like, what, that makes no sense. This, that company, they make so much money. She goes, there is a line of people waiting to do my job for free. Yeah. Exactly. Because people, there's a lot of people that would love just to be in that light so much that they would just the connections, all that kind of stuff. Yes. Yeah. The supply is so big that the price, that's, and of course it's supply of demand, right? There's a huge supply of trainers that would die to train professional athletes for free. So the pay is very low. Now that's not to say that these trainers aren't good. Many of these trains are very educated, very good. They just don't make a ton of money. Well, it was interesting too, because I was always trying to attract that professional athlete. Like I just thought that was going to be the perfect client I could possibly get. Because not only will it be, they bought into my methods and my system, but I'll be able to display that everybody's going to buy in and see, oh, hey, you know, I got Michael Jordan to do my, you know, whatever like workout that I just came up with. And, you know, I ended up getting like a few NFL players and just came to realize real quickly that they have a totally different perspective of, you know, your, your, your value and they come in like expecting a lot and not willing to pay. You're lucky to train me, right? You're lucky that I pay attention to you. That was the other thing that was so surprising to me was again, thinking that they were going to make all this money when you got them. You finally got the opportunity to do the same thing too. And because they are so used to getting everything handed to them, all these companies wanted them to sponsor or say you like my stuff. So everybody gives them this free shit. That's what they have this attitude that when they walk in that it's like, oh, worse, I got to pay for it. So no, your best bet as a personal trainer, if from a money standpoint is to train the average person, that's it. The everyday average person. And if you want to go even further, you can become specialized in training like the elderly. That is an incredible market. I'm going to tell you that right now. Towards the end of my career, that's a market I focused on. Huge markets still growing incredible market. A lot of trainers, they don't want to do it because they think it's too challenging or whatever. So the supply is actually quite low. And believe me, when someone hires you over the age of 65, they're the most consistent clients you'll ever get in your entire life. They show up every single time they resign, every single time they feel and see the value, or you could specialize in like training moms or business people. But generally speaking, that general population, that's probably the best place to focus on. I could literally wrap it and reduce it down to like one thing, which had in common with all my very best clients I've ever had. And it was all related to pain and managing that. And yes, there's the weight and there's all these health issues that you're working through. But a lot of it was definitely working through a lot of the pain and alleviating that for them. It was the lifelong clients you get from that. I would agree because I specialized in like CEO, middle age, middle age, CEO, VP, high performing person. And yeah, a lot of them came and said, oh, I want to lose weight, I want to build some muscle. But really more than anything, they just wanted to feel good, so they kick ass at their job. They were very driven at whatever it was they did for a profession, and they did not want their health slowing them down with that. So being able to relieve them of pain and just make them feel good, trumped even them saying, oh, I need to lose 15 pounds out of them, or I want to gain five pounds of muscle. No, the beauty, I mean, you take someone's pain away that they've accepted is like, this is the pain I'm going to live with, because a lot of these people just like, just identify this through the eye. I have a bad knee or am I bad? And you solve it for them, which oftentimes chronic pain is a result of muscle imbalance. So it's very solvable. You blow their mind. And here's the beauty of it. Fixing pain doesn't require oftentimes, not sometimes it does, but not oftentimes. This is required them to do the work on their own all the time without you, which losing weight does. Like I can train you twice a week, you're not going to lose weight if you don't fix your diet. Twice a week, oftentimes I can make your pain way better and my value goes through the roof. This is always why when I get a DM from a personal trainer or a message and we're talking and I ask them if they own prime and prime pro and they don't, I want to slap you in the face. Because literally what we did with those two programs, we gave you, it's all there, man. Well, and in something that we, we've collected over two decades individually, I wish I had that. We came to, yeah, came together and tried to, and tried to simplify it. So even a, like a relatively beginner trainer could come in, get that information and then be able to apply it to 95% of their clients and really, truly help them with chronic pain. If you don't own that and you're a personal trainer, you deserve to be slapped for that. Because that to me, I think that's a one common thing that we all talked about that even though we train different types of clientele, you being able to alleviate chronic pain in most regular clients is like huge difference. A huge, huge one. And so there's different places that you can work as a trainer. So we'll start with probably the most common, which is your, your big box gym. Now there's pluses and minuses. Now we'll start with the minuses. Okay. The minus of working in a big box gym is you'll probably make less per hour working in a big box gym than you will doing private or, you know, training people in their houses and stuff like that. This is true, but that often fools people. Oftentimes people look at the per hour like, oh, that's going to, that's, I'm going to make more per hour doing this, but here's a problem. You're not going to be working very many hours. Now what a big box gym provides you with is tons and tons and tons, almost an infinite number of opportunities to get clients. Now, if you're a new trainer and you find it difficult to walk the workout floor where you have 50 people working out, all of which who potentially could hire you, if you find that challenging multiplied times a trillion. That's what it's like to train privately. When you have nobody on your workout floor and you got to go walk around the streets to find clients, big box gyms are just lead machines, literally. And this, this is something I got good at real quick. And I had no problem approaching and talking to people. So it was beautiful. I would show up to work, prime time workouts are going on. And I used to be able to say, I'm going to get myself two clients today and I would every single time big box gyms allow you to do that. There's no better training grounds in my opinion, especially somebody like me too, that maybe had to work through a lot of those initial conversations and sparking that up. That was really challenging. There's something that I had to immerse myself completely in and challenge myself to approach people and, and find out, Hey, what are you doing today? What's your name? How long you've been working out here? All these types of things. It started to build a lot of momentum in my own confidence, which then I carried with me throughout the rest of my career. Well, what do they say? It's a 10,000 hours before you're considered a master in anything. Good luck getting 10,000 hours being private and trying to find clients like that. So try getting a thousand hours. So a big, a big part of the value too, this is why I think we all agree on the big box as one of the best places for a trainer to learn in is just the practice, sheer practice. Forget what you're getting paid, forget what they potentially can convert into revenue. There's just tremendous value in you getting a different person in front of you every hour every day. Yeah, you're a detective. You got to work through a lot of variables you wouldn't even have thought of. And this is, this is where you get more volume where you can like figure this out in a big box setting. Yeah. Now the potential to become a great trainer after working a couple years in a big box gym is higher than the potential training on your own or in a private studio for a couple of years, just because of sheer volume and experience. If you do a decent job within a short period of time, you're full time in a big box gym just because of the opportunities. Very hard. Not saying it's not possible, much more challenging in other scenarios. Now big box gyms are not going to pay you as much per hour. However, that's not where the opportunities stop. If you don't mind moving up into management and leadership positions, big box gym companies can provide pretty damn good pay. Now I worked a 24 hour back in the day. I don't think it's like this anymore, but I was as a general manager in the late 90s, I was making six figures. That was phenomenal money for anybody in those days and I was managing big box gyms. I know there's a lot of companies out UFC gyms, for example, the management positions and opportunities there are tremendous. So if you're okay doing that because you're still in fitness, but you're not training people one-on-one. So I understand someone may be watching and thinking, I just want to train people, in which case then this isn't apply to you. But if you don't mind managing gyms, leading other trainers, and you worked in let's say UFC gym and you got that big box experience and then you want to make more money, but you like that environment, you can move up to a fitness manager, a general manager, a district manager, and beyond and then the pay gets pretty damn good. Now you're making pretty good money working in fitness in that kind of environment. Now there is another drawback of working in a company like that is you're very limited to you building additional revenue streams for you. Very true. So this fact many of them prevent you. That's right. Most these big companies would not allow you to be working there as a personal trainer while also running a boot camp on the side or teaching at another gym so you could supplement income or coaching people online. So a lot of these companies do not allow you to do that because they look at your taking business from their business. You also to some extent have to drink the Kool-Aid if you want to succeed. If you want to move up into management and you're working for a company where you're like, I don't always agree with everything that they say. They want me to sell the supplement package or they want me to train people in this way that doesn't jive with how I like to teach fitness. Well, you're probably not going to get up into management unless you're a team player and that can be challenging. That can be challenging. If you're in a position where you don't agree with everything, then you're limited. You kind of have to follow their structure. So that's another drawback. But I like that as far as training ground. I think there's a lot of value in how do I navigate because that's real life, man. How do I navigate something that I don't fully believe in? So how do I keep my integrity but yet also appease upper management and learning? It's like level two, right? So you work your way past level one and you get all the experience, all the volume and you work your systems out. So one thing that I was doing the whole time that I was training was figuring out my own systems and figuring out what kind of marketing materials we're being used by the company. Because I was always thinking about if I'm going to do this on my own, what are they doing right and what are they providing that I would then have to do off on my own? Because just going off on my own before going through that would have been a big mistake in my opinion. Yeah, no, totally true. So there you have it with the big box dims and being a trainer. But there's other places you could become a trainer as well. You can train people in their home and do it remotely. Now the pluses of that, you typically make a lot more per hour for a couple reasons. One, people will typically pay a bit of a premium to have you come to their house. Two, you don't share that revenue with anybody else, right? So typically when you're working in a gym, if the gym charges $75 an hour for your personal training session, you're getting get $30 of it or whatever, right? So they're going to take a big chunk. You are working for yourself in home. You charge your client $100 an hour. You're going to make $100 bucks an hour. Now the drawback to that, of course, is the volume of clients. I cannot see a new trainer being successful doing this at all. You've got to have a following. Yes. In fact, that's the only way I could see this exceeding. You already have to have clients and a good amount of them who want to stay with you for a long time because here's the deal. You could have a decent client base doing in home, but if they don't refer people to you and they don't stick around as they drop off, that's it. You're done. I lost four of my clients. Now I have four less hours or eight less hours a week. You got to do your best to build a good reputation that people start to know you and know of you to then be able to create basically a brand around you going off on your own, which in a sense, if I'm going to start training people at their house or they're going to come to me at my place, my garage or whatever kind of situation you have, you have to do a really good job of being able to show a track record of success stories or other things you can pull from to really be able to market yourself in that direction. I think of this as an a la carte thing for private trainers. It's not a job by itself. It's a part of their roster. That's right. That's really, really tough to build a full clientele of all people that you show up to their house and to not expect that you have some sort of a portfolio before that or a roll of necks of people that you've trained before. I think of that as an offering that you do. You have another, you're a private trainer. You have all these clients that you train at a studio or somewhere and then, oh, you also offer this for a premium price. You do that. Here's actually one of the main reasons besides the fact that it's hard to get a lot of clients when you're training people in their houses. The other reason why a lot of trainers think this is a good idea and realize they don't want to do this is logistically, it's very hard to train more than four people in a day. You've got one client that lives over here. It heats up a lot of time. Yeah. Now you're driving to another client. Now you're driving, but it takes you 30 minutes to go from client to client or more. So it's not like when you're in a gym and one client's done and then the next one comes to you, you're taking time between. I dropped it for that exact reason. So I was charging double to come to your house and thought, oh, this is, I mean, this is premium right here. Double the fee to come to your house and it's not that far. And all I'm thinking is gas and maybe time, but really tough to coordinate back-to-back at home people. Totally. And now you're missing out on other business opportunities that would have been able to fit in your schedule if you're in one place. This is a mistake that trainers make a lot of times. They just calculate the dollar per mile they make for that one client. They think like, oh, this is the place to be. It takes me 30 minutes to get to this house. So I'm going to train at eight and the next session is at 9.30 and the next set doesn't work that way. It's way more, it takes way more time to do that. In my opinion, to be a successful trainer at in-home, you will have to have already had a very established name and reputation and people willing to pay you one and a half, two and a half times more than you would get paid anywhere else, minimum for it to make any sense to you. So I know it sounds good and you may even know somebody that does this, but I'll be honest with you. This wasn't even an opportunity for me and I was a high performing trainer. Every gym I worked in, I was a top trainer in terms of sales and clients. This wasn't even an opportunity for me until I was training for like 10 years later. Like it took me that long to get to the point where this even became something that I could do, which takes me to the next one, which would be training in a private studio. Now, a private studio, there's a lot of pluses here. Typically, you pay a fee to train your clients there. Some studios charge, these are the more common ways, right? Either a studio will charge you per session, so I'm paying this facility 15 or 20 bucks an hour to train my client, or they charge you a flat rate. So okay, I pay them $1,000 a month rent or whatever, and I can train as many clients as I want. I have a key and whatever. Now, the good thing to this is that you have, you own your own business. So you're very flexible in terms of how you want to train your clients, your programming, the kind of value that you could provide your people. You could really go above and beyond in terms of providing tremendous value to clients. Typically, you could have the higher, much charged more because it's a private setting and the person's paying a premium for that. But you do run into the, how do I get clients? Like how do I, you can't like in a gym and a big box gym, I could literally sit near the front desk and watch opportunities walk in. In a private studio, you'll get one walk in a week and ain't going to you by the way, it's going to the owner of the studio. So you have to know how to market, you got to get yourself out there. And let me tell you, selling personal training out on the street is a very difficult thing to do. It's very, very challenging. I think the trainers that I saw that actually had success in this first had success in the big box. Yes. Like I think they go there first before they make it into like a private studio. Now, one of the things I like about the private training is because it's basically your business, you're just like a like a hairstylist, as you're leasing or renting a stall, you can pretty much do whatever you want, right? So long as you, you know, follow the rules inside their facility. But as far as business wise, there's not really any rules on what you charge, like how you train two clients, three clients, you can, so it opens the door for a lot of flexibility and creativity for a trainer that may want to look at some of those a la carte options that I was talking about. So if you were to do, you could be a private trainer in a studio working four hour blocks a day, but then you have this one or two clients, you go to their home, you have this group training session you do, plus maybe you have some remote things online that you do. You could really build a business model around that. But I think you need to have the experience to be able to do that really well and manage that correctly. If you're working in a big box gym and there's like 10 or 15 trainers in there, and you're like the fifth trainer in terms of revenue and clients, and you think you're going to go to a private studio and do well, you're not, okay? You got to be, you need to be one of the top people in your gym, if not in your area. And then you might have what it takes to do, and I'm not exaggerating. I'll look, I'll tell you my story. I, when I opened my studio to do private, I didn't have a client base that I brought with me because before that I left the fitness industry and worked in finance for a second. So I left all my, my fitness contacts. I went and started from scratch. Now I, for me, I was a production machine. I could, I could sell training. I could get leads. I could make it happen. So you're, so I'm maybe the exception. It took me a year. It took me one year to get to a decent six figure amount of building clients. And I was hustling my ass off. And I know I can do that better than most people just to give you idea of the challenge. Now all those pluses that we talked about, those of course are very real. You're going to make more per hour. You've got the flexibility and it's, it's yours. You're not working for, for anybody else. But if you think it's going to be, if you think working a big box is hard to build a business, private is 10 times. Well, and you also now have to factor in like accounting and stuff, right? If you work for a big box gym, your W2 employee and your tech stuff, all that stuff is pretty much handled for the most part, right? Like write off, write off stuff is pretty basic, just keeping receipts. But now when you start managing your, all your, your own business, like tracking everything, it becomes extremely important. And if you're busting your ass to try and make 60, 80, 100 plus thousand dollars a year, and then you think you're also going to run books really well, really tough to do. So you also have to factor that in like, oh, am I going to have to farm some of this out? Unless you're somebody who just loves numbers and you're good at that. The hardest part was the marketing aspect. I hated that part. Oh, the numbers? Oh yeah, I outsourced that like crazy. Yeah, there's all kinds of stuff like that. And like creating your own contracts, you know, along with the pricing and everything else, like in really figuring out like what type of client you're, you're attracting and where to get them. Like so it's, it's really about, you know, marketing, I had to really dive into that specifically, how can I, how can I find ways to get my dollar to make me money? Because I had to now spend money on Google AdWords, I had to dive all the way into that to find out what the key words were that people were searching. How can I be the number one on that search list? And how can I, you know, vest all my time in there? It just takes a lot. It's a, it's a whole another step of education that you have to really like apply yourself towards. So if you're not ready for that big of a leap, you know, that's something where a big box, you know, might be more appropriate. Here's a tip. This is something I did. And it's just, it worked. It's a kind of gorilla style, but it actually worked for me. And what I did was is when I started with my studio, as I went to local businesses, small businesses, and I introduced myself to the owner and I offered the owner free personal training with nothing in return. And the strategy was I knew if I train them for free that they owned a business next to me and that inevitably they would talk about me and would refer people to me. And this strategy actually worked. And the business that actually, the business has actually provided me with the most leads, by the way, were hair salons by far. Like I would train hairstylists for free. And because they're cutting people's hair and working with them, they would end up talking to them and talk about fitness. And then they would send me people, but it was a long process. And I asked for nothing in return. This was just like, okay, let me see if this works. So there's a strategy for you. If you're in a private, you know, a private gym, look at your local businesses and see who can give, because that's one thing you always have is your time. See if you can give training away to get referrals. That's a massive advantage to a private studio versus a big box. You can't, you don't have that flexibility to give away free training if you're working for a company that's paying you because they have to for time and labor laws, they have to pay you if you're working. You can't just do that for free where you can when it's your own time like that. And I think this is all such a great point. So I'm glad you brought that up. I didn't know we're going to go there. Because this is a mistake that I think a lot of trainers are calculating the dollar per hour that they're making right away. And they just don't want to do the free stuff. It reminds me of even when I had trainers working for me in a big box gym, and they had to put, we used to have a like what they called fit hours where it was like four hour blocks or they only got paid minimum wage. But at minimum wage, they had the opportunity to go walk the floor and talk to people and try and give someone. It's more than I got early days. Oh yeah. And I remember me too. And I remember trainers just grumbling about the, oh, I'm going to go make $7 an hour. And then I'd see them out on the floor and they're just rewracking, rewracking weights for $7 for $7 an hour and like not trying to capture leads or talk to people or anything. And I thought, this is so crazy that this trainer is getting paid right now to go seek out leads. And they're grumbling about how much they're making. And they're just, and they're just, you know, begrudgingly putting weights away. And so that I'm thinking like, wow, if you were out in the real world right now, one, you wouldn't be getting paid for this prospecting. And two, you would probably have to offer your services for free to potentially get somebody. And there's tremendous value in that. So don't be afraid to give services for free for people. In fact, I think it's a great place to start to see if people even want what you have. That's a huge component to when you go off on your own. I mean, you have to do that. You have to network in order to survive. And I mean, I would find opportunities to go into their work setting and do a presentation or just, you know, make my services available, you know, for a weekend where I would help, you know, their employees out and get, you know, just stuff like that of just being more visible. And, you know, this is something too now we have like tools to make that easier, right? So we have social media and we have all these other types of outlets where you can get your message out a little bit more effectively. But back then it was like, it's, it's foot traffic. I have to get myself into these companies to even have them know that I'm here. Yeah, that's the most valuable thing you have as a trainer is your time. And that's one of the easiest ways to get somebody to become a lead is to offer them some free services. Now, you mentioned, you know, online and the media, this is very different now than back when I was a trainer. When I was a trainer, there were no online coaches that didn't exist. Now there are people doing pretty damn well, building an online fitness business. This is very different than when you work in a big box jam or work private. How do you get leads working through social media or trying to build an online business? Well, the tried and true way of doing this is to build a page, provide tremendous value and engage with your audience and then give it time. And don't worry about the big follower number. Just worry about how many people you're actually providing lots of value to now that the problem with this online side of the business is that people have this misconception that it's different than other types of business. They think online business, it just takes off. Oh, I'm going to do this thing. It's going to grow. It's like any other business. It's going to take a lot of time. It's quote unquote passive income. Yeah, you can take a lot of time, a lot of effort, and you'll make nothing for a while. In fact, I tell people who asked me about this and I say, you're going to give it about a year. Give it a year of building this before you ever start to make any money off of it. Yeah, there's some people that have some somewhat overnight success in the online space, but I think it's short lived. In fact, I think there's somebody here. Here's a TV show idea for somebody or a YouTube show, which is where are they now? I would love to like, you know, how they do that with like celebrities. Like I would with influencers. Yeah, I would love to see these influencers that reached millions of followers relatively quick and then started peddling fitness programs or supplements or whatever to make money, where are they at in five or 10 years from now? So I do think that it is, it's this new anomaly that we have now that we didn't have before where you do have some people that get quite a bit of people following them and have an opportunity to sell and make money. The problem with that is I don't think it's sustainable. I think they're, they're so focused on acquisition and not retention and they're chasing that, oh, more leads, more, more followers, more people coming in. It doesn't matter that I have, you know, 90% of them falling out the back end because they didn't like the service. They didn't care for it. If I keep growing exponentially, then I still get that 10% to work with and I can still build a big business. I really think this business model is fleeting and it's going to be interesting how this all turns up in the next 10 years. Yeah, now I will say this, there's a couple different ways to approach personal training. One is the volume approach and the other one is the high value, high service, high dollar approach. So the volume approach is low dollar. The high value approach is high dollar. The high dollar approaches is, in my opinion, superior. But it takes time. It takes time to develop the experience, the skill, and the value with clients. But it's the same for all these examples that we gave is be a phenomenal trainer, provide tremendous value and be consistent as a trainer. Remember consistency is key with fitness. You as a trainer need to be consistent as hell with the service that you provide. I can't tell you how many times I saw talented trainers fail because they just weren't consistently talented or consistent with how they applied it. So tremendous value and over time, you can raise your rates slowly to the point where you're making well over $100 an hour as a personal trainer. I would love to give some more hacks related to personal training. I think that we talked about the whole focusing on pain, right? I think another area that trainers skip out on paying attention to is the communication and sales aspect. And to me, I remember having trainers that were extremely successful at their job financially, but weren't always the best trainers as far as their knowledge. Maybe they didn't have the degree or as many national certifications, but they were really successful because they were good at the sales aspect. And there's a lot of trainers that enter the space that are coming in here because they love the job. They're passionate about helping people. And they almost want to be like, well, I don't want to sell. I don't want, I don't want, yeah, I don't want to do that. Or they're turned off by it. And it's such a big part of your job that if you hate it that much, you're going to have a really hard time being a very successful trainer without learning how to do sales. That's because the misconception is that that you're not selling if you're a trainer, which is false. Everything you do as a trainer is selling. Everything you do as a trainer is selling. Now you might not be selling for money always. You might not be selling products always or even services always, but you're constantly selling ideas. In fact, you need to do a damn good job of selling ideas because here you are talking to Mrs. Johnson, who has never exercised consistently, who eats terribly. She's thinking about losing weight or she wants to lose weight. And my job is to get her to completely change how she lives. That's going to take some tremendously effective sales skills in order to do that. Now it's obviously a long sell, right? So I can't take somebody and sell them and right away they change their life. It doesn't work that way. It's a gradual process. But if you think you're not constantly selling your client every single session you train them, you're totally wrong. So get out of your mind. If you're a trainer or thinking of becoming a trainer and you're thinking the sales part, I don't really care about that. That is everything that you do. You are literally selling these people these ideas about fitness, health and nutrition. And you have to figure out ways of selling them that are so effective that the person adopts them forever. I remember one of the biggest shifts in my career was learning how to prescribe training. And what a difference that made in my income as a trainer. Early on, 24 hour fitness back then used to provide this binder for you. And it was like, oh, five sessions, 10 sessions, 20 sessions. Give them the one in the middle. Right. And then our trainers would just flip it open and be like, oh, which one do you want? And sometimes if you did a really good job training them, they were already sold on your training and they liked training with you, they had the funds, they would say, okay, and they just pick the one in the middle like just Justin's point. But the where you get good is learning how to prescribe everybody like a certain session amount versus this generic, oh, this is what everybody does. So I think there's tremendous value in learning how to do this. And part of that is comes from the practice of seeing a lot of people. So once I had dealt with enough people that needed to lose 20 pounds and dealt with chronic pain, knee pain, I could say, okay, I know, you know, whoever I'm talking to, expect the first four to six weeks, we're going to focus on A, B and C. You know, the next, you know, four to six weeks, we're going to focus on D, E and F, right. And I'd have these things. And by the way, this is what's the beautiful part about this is it's your business. You make these rules up, you decide what you think is most important, free to focus on your clients within those first four weeks and the next four weeks. But you kind of phase their program or the program out just like we phase our programs out when we teach training for trainers. And you do that. And then when you tell a client, this is what we need for these reasons. And then my favorite thing to do with them was I give them the one, two or three time a week option. It's like, okay, we've already decided 12 weeks. That's right. We've already decided that these this minute, the first four weeks, we're focused on this, the next four weeks, we're focused on this, the next four weeks, we're focused on that. That's a total of 12 weeks like Sal is saying. Now the only other real option is this, do you want to see me once a week out of those three days who come in here twice or three times? And then I would give them examples of the type of person that would go for each one. So I'd say, oh, somebody who only sees me one time a week, they feel pretty confident in the gym. They feel like they know their way around their form, their technique. They just want to make sure I'm kind of there to guide them through. So that's that person, the three time a week person is somebody who's like, I don't know anything I'm doing. I'm not motivated. I want you there every step of the way. So you're there. And then the second, the two time a week person somewhere in the middle. Now, you know, Sal, which one of those three do you think you are? Yeah. And this all comes with practice and experience. And this is something that you kind of nail down once you are able to see how that all plays out. Cause what people really want is for you to be honest. And, and I think a lot of trainers get insecure with the fact that they want to tell them, I'm going to be able to get you all these results really quickly in like, you know, and it's all about this, this whole hustle to, you know, to provide them with the most amazing experience. And, you know, and then they get in that trap of, of, you know, just training them to have them feel a certain way versus like prescribing it and learning exactly, you know, what that looks like and being able to paint that completely. People will buy into that picture and you have to be able to provide them with that entire picture and you're going to get a lot bigger clothes that way. Well, yeah. And they just don't know, right? Like a client doesn't know, okay, I can hire you for 50 sessions. Okay. Why don't I just get 10 at a time? Or what's the difference? Oh, I save a little bit of money. Well, okay. You need to paint the picture because the person really has no idea. They have no idea that's going to take this long to work on correctional exercise. And we're not going to expect much weight loss here, but your metabolism is speeding up. And then things start to typically kick in here. So long as you're consistent and we're going to focus on these types of things, you have to paint the picture. And also this is the kind of confidence that somebody wants in the person that they're hiring to get them into shape, right? You want the trainer to tell you, this is what the training is going to look like. By the way, Justin made a great point. You also want to be very, very honest. In fact, one of the biggest mistakes I see trainers make and one of the main reasons why some of them fail is they overpromise. They overpromise and then they end up under delivering like five. Someone says, you want to lose 30 pounds. Yeah, I know in a perfect world that if I train them, you know, I could get the person to lose 30 pounds and maybe three months. If I really cried and they follow everything or whatever, but I'm not going to tell them that because that's rare. And if they don't, now I look like a failure. I'd rather say, well, here's the deal. It's probably going to take us about a year. Here's why here's what's going to happen, but we're looking for permanent results. Then if it happens in six months, it's, it's, it's amazing. You want to be very, very honest about what's happening, paint it, paint the picture, make your recommendations. Adam's right. I like to give people three options. I always say this one's my favorite, but it's totally up to you. Which one do you want? And then you'll allow them to pick and they get started, but that's not where the sale stops. The sales happens every single time you're training the client. So what do I mean by that? Well, it's everything from talking about movement, talking about sleep, talking about exercise, talking about nutrition, and you want to do it in a way. This is what I mean by effective sales. Effective sales is not somebody feeling pressured. It's not somebody feeling overwhelmed. That's ineffective. Who the hell have you ever bought something from someone where you feel overwhelmed or of course not, you're going to run away. Effective sales is communicating in a way that really resonates with that individual. What does that mean? You got to meet them where they are at. Start them where they're at. You know what I like to do? I like to take obstacles away from people rather than put them in front of people. If I have someone in front of me that says, Sal, look, I'm going to be honest with you. I can only work out once a week. I'm not going to create an obstacle and say that's not enough. We got to work out three days a week. You need to get motivated. This is good for you. It's for your health. It's the best thing in the world. I'm going to say, okay, once a week works perfect. Let's start with you right there, John. And that's what we're going to start with. And here's how long we should probably work out for. So that's the sales aspect. And I'm going to tell you something right now. It's the most important piece of your personal training success, not just for the business aspect, but also for the success of your clients. You're going to have to be very effective of that. So get out of your head that you're afraid of sales. In fact, change the word from sales to communication. You got to get really, really good at communication. The difference between a good closure and a great closure is this, though. A good closure can push anybody into a sale, overcome objections, try and motivate you into it. A great closure can pull you into a sale by asking all the right questions. And so we have this exercise that I do with my trainers. And I would give them oh, this is Suzy. She's 42 years old. She needs to lose 30 pounds. Sal, I want you to recommend me 72 sessions. And I would give them a number and then you had to justify that. Now, of course, it's just an exercise. So whatever they make up is totally okay. But exercising that and practicing that and communicating that way with each other is such a great exercise for when you get into the real world situation where you've got somebody in front of you, you can start to justify why they need this many sessions for this, why they need this many sessions for that. I think it doesn't matter what your personality is. Anybody can learn this. Yes, thank you. I think that's a big point I try to convey because I know a lot of people tend to ask me a little bit more questions because I seem introverted sometimes. It was just difficult for me to convey information and communicate. And that's something I had to actually put effort and work into, but it's something that you can learn. And I think it's really important that you go in that direction. I'm glad you brought the communication piece for yourself, Justin, because you're right. If you listen to me and you listen to Adam and you listen to Justin, you'll hear kind of two different types of communicators with training. You know, Adam and I probably are more similar than Justin and yet all three of us found lots of success in personal training. Effective communicating can look and sound like very different things, but at the end of the day, what do they all have in common? They're effective, right? The clients are listening. It's resonating. It's making sense. And here's something that's also very important. And I hate to have to communicate this, but it's very, very true. I've seen way too many trainers fail because of this, but you need to be very consistent when your client shows up. And what I mean by that is you, your client is showing up. Oftentimes they don't want to work out, right? So oftentimes they show up and they're like, I don't want to, I'm not in the mood to work out. This isn't my favorite thing in the world to do. I, you know, whatever you need to be the one that is they show up and they are happy to see you. Why are they happy to see you? Because you're in a good mood. You're happy to see them. I've seen lots of trainers who can't deal with that. And the client shows up and sometimes they're feeling good. Sometimes they're a little whatever. And the client kind of senses that and feels that somebody that hires you to train them to get them in shape. What they're looking for is somebody to make them feel good. They're looking for somebody that makes them want to be there. And I'm going to be quite honest. I know that oftentimes my clients showed up not because they wanted to work out, but rather they wanted to show up to see me. And it was because of the consistency that I brought to the relationship and make no mistake. This is a very important thing here. If you do a good job as a trainer, you will develop a very good and deep relationship with these people. Some of these people I saw and talked to more than most of my family, right? So you got to be that person. Remember that. And if that doesn't work for you, this might not be the career choice. There is another thing that will indirect your direct, directly connect or influence your income as a personal trainer. And that is your level of education certifications, right? I'll never forget. I was like four or five years into management. And I went to this big company meeting. And I'd never seen this statistic before. And they put up on the big projector and they showed like, okay, here's all your trainers that have one certification, two certifications, three certifications, four certifications, and what would consider a master trainer. They had their longevity in the company, their revenue that they would bring in, the hours that they would service every month. And for every certification that they had, this dramatically increased how long they stayed in the company, how much money they produced, how many hours they trained. And then I went, I'll never forget going back to my club. And then that was a major focus was everybody getting elevated as far as their education. So even though we didn't touch on that a lot at the beginning of this and talking all about ways to make more money, this is something that will directly impact how much revenue because this is where you pull from this knowledge, right? There's no way that I would be able to tell somebody in that just that I get right that has an ankle or knee or some issue that I know that I'm going to have to address. If it wasn't for my corrective exercise specialist, you know, certification, I wouldn't have the tools to know how long it's going to take to rehab. Your value increases, which then builds your confidence, which then I can raise your rates, like, Oh, a bunch of factors play into that. And so I think it's, it's definitely something to seek out as a new trainer, always get yourself enrolled in something where you can elevate your skills. Yeah, there's two reasons why I think those statistics are pretty consistent, Adam. One is obviously you know more. So if you know more, and you can apply more knowledge, then you now you have a greater value to more clients, or even a greater pool of clients that you can work with, whereas maybe before there were some clients who were afraid to train. Now you're more educated, you feel like you can train more people. But there's a second reason, and this is one of the big reasons I think people tend to do better when they get more certifications. If you're listening or watching this and you've gotten certified before, just remember the excitement in the just the how jazz you were after you just finished your course, and you were ready, and you couldn't wait to train people. It reinvigorates you to go through a course, learn something new and spark, re spark that passion in fitness. And it's funny because I could always pick out the trainers that stopped educating themselves versus the ones that could you see people train like man, that trainer is stuck in the nineties. They haven't furthered their education, their knowledge. And as a result of that, it wasn't just their skill and technique, but you could tell they weren't as like again, they didn't have a spark like other people did, because they weren't going out and learning and growing. We're in fanny packs. So that's it. That's a very, very good point is and I don't think I mean, gosh, could you think of a better time than now to get more to get this. We need it more than ever. Oh, it's crazy. There's so many certifications. There's so many ways to learn. And again, Adam brought up our, even our prime and prime pro programs, which I would place up there with certification courses in terms of tools. Obviously, you're not learning necessarily from instructors the same way, but with those tools, I mean, the values. Well, yeah, you look at the, you know, I mentioned the CES certification right from NASM. I think they cost me like $580 or some shit for that. Okay. So that's in that program. And in addition to that, you've got a kin stretch information in there. You got stuff from LDOA in there. Each one of those certifications is immediately applicable. Yeah. Each one of those certifications are going to cost you $500 to $1,000 a piece. And that's something that we've put into that program. So that's why when I hear a trainer who's asking me questions about building their business and I ask a question back that way, like, do you have prime and prime pro? Oh, no, I didn't think I needed it. This slap. Yeah. Look, if you like this episode, you like our content, you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com. We got a lot of free guides there. You can learn from and they're all totally free. You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump, Justin, me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam. When you're working out, you're developing neural pathways. You're actually training and growing your brain. That's why you learn skills and techniques. And that's why you get better at them. Not just because your muscles get stronger, but rather because your central nervous system also learns to adapt. There's literally an infinite number of exercises and ways to perform each exercise. And it's actually encouraged