 Question is from Gretch, what are some strategies to avoid burnout as a trainer and tips for making time to train yourself? You guys remember the first time you burned out as a trainer? When I first became a trainer. We did like 12 appointments in a row. Yeah, I was so... It was early for me, man. I fell in love with the job and I quickly fell more in love with coaching trainers over actually training clients. Training clients is fucking draining. Dude, it's hard. Treasuries, you make it. When I first became a trainer, I was so excited to be a trainer, to be working in a gym, that I just took all clients. Any clients, any time, as many as possible. Which I think there's a lot of value in that. There is at first, and I remember it was like, I remember my schedule was something like, I'd get in at 8 a.m. and I'd work till one, then I'd have like a break for like an hour or two, then I'd get back to work and I'd work till like 9 p.m. Then I'd go home, then I'd come back at 3 a.m. because I had like these clients that nobody wanted to train. I worked at a 24-hour fitness gym, so someone wants to buy training, but they only couldn't work out at 3 a.m. I'll do it, so I'd come back and I'd go back home and I'd say, and I did that and I was young and I was 18, I had lots of energy, but I remember it starting to like burn me out where your eyes burn and your body tingles because you're tired and you're just like, my workouts are starting to suck. So I think number one, for most trainers, the most amount of clients you probably, on a long-term basis, I'm not talking about for short bursts, but on a long-term basis, on a day-to-day basis, you probably want to be around six to seven clients most, long-term. Now that doesn't mean you can't train more than like eight, nine or 10 here and there, but I haven't known very many trainers that can train 40 sessions consistently, week in and week out, long-term, without experiencing some type of burnout. I think a better tip is that, because I do think that they're, I think everybody when you first start, you should take everything you can. I think that's a sign of a good trainer and I think you learn a lot training at all hours and all types of people, but once you get to a place where you're making a comfortable enough income that you're not living paycheck to paycheck or stressed out how you're gonna eat the next week, then I think it's really smart to start only taking the type of client that you like to train and being okay with, okay, I'm gonna turn down this client and I could make more money, I have the availability to do it, but quite frankly, I know I don't enjoy doing that and for me that was like, I told, I wasn't a big fan of advanced age and kids. It wasn't my expertise, I thought the training sessions were boring for me and it wasn't that I couldn't or I wouldn't, it was that I wasn't as excited to train those types of clients, so I stopped taking them. I would look for my ideal client or the clients that I really enjoyed helping and that makes a big difference on how that day feels like when you're training the type of client that you want versus taking clients just cause you need the money and you're filling your schedule up. I can do eight, nine hours in a day of training clients if they're all clients I really enjoy. I could have only five or seven if half of them I don't like it will feel like, it'll feel like twice as long of a day, so I think that matters more than anything else. Yeah, it makes a big difference. The other thing is this, as a trainer you end up having to learn this because if you don't, it'll kill you, don't take it personally when you're clients, don't do what you say. When you first become a trainer you take it all personal. Like I told her, oh she's gonna do exactly what I said and then she comes back and train her for months. Why aren't you doing the meal plan? Why aren't you following what I said? Why aren't you exercising on your own? And then you start to take a personal and if you do that you start to hate what you do. What you end up having to realize at some point is this is a hard long journey, take nothing personal and just be happy that they're there making the commitment to at least show up and work out with you and do the workout because otherwise you start to take those things personal and you start to have these battles with your clients. You'll either lose clients or you'll get to the point where you start to hate people because they're just not doing it. You start to feel like you provide no value. I learned this the hard way by blowing people out the door for not following all my advice and then realizing that I've done them no good at all. Now did you guys ever have a hard time with making time for yourself and did you have things that you did too? Like working out sometimes. Yeah, that's part of the question, right? So it's not just to carve that out. Burn out for being a trainer. It was in my schedule book. So I would, oh, if I had a gap that was an hour and a half or two hours, which I always made sure to have, I would write down workout. So I for sure made a time. I think there also is, I mean, there's problems I see with your average trainer that's kind of, and I know like you're just starting out. I totally agree with you guys. I think you should take on as many as possible. You're going to learn so much that way more than you would anywhere else. And then also you'll find like which ones you gel with the best and what direction to go with that. And then there's also charging more. And I feel like there's a problem where trainers really undervalue a lot of what, they provide their clients. And I think that they feel guilt. I think they feel a lot of guilt because a lot of the times what draws them into the fitness industry is their passion and their drive to help everybody. We want to just help everybody. And I was, I had a little bit of that when I first started. I just want to help people. And I would take people at, reduced discount prices and these things just to try and keep making it work because I really cared about them like getting to a place they wanted to go. So there was a part where I had to make a decision. Like am I going to treat this like a business? Am I going to like, I actually have to make a living with this. I'm getting burned out because I'm just trying to cater to everybody else's demands. I need to start really focusing on what like fills me up and then I can pour that into my clients more effectively. Once I started doing that I actually got better clients as a result. And then also I was providing better service and I was getting paid more. So it was just like this, this like sort of a ha thing that I went through. That's the irony I was going to say you just pointed out is with that is you end up getting the clients that are less of a headache, right? It's always the clients that. Yeah, the client that buys the three for 99. Yeah, that wants a deal or is a friend of a friend and they're getting hooked up or some bullshit. Those are always the ones that are less likely wears on you. Yeah, follow what you're saying and they're the ones that are the biggest headache. Shit, we see that even in this business. We ever get a complaint or an email. It's always somebody who didn't buy anything. So I was like, I was working with Anne the other day and she's like reading me this like, if we ever get any complaints, I want to see all of them just so we can continue to improve the business. And you know, she reads me this person that's like complaining about something and we obviously have access to be able to look at all what they've read, what blogs, and this person has gone through like six blogs, three YouTube videos, downloaded two of our free guides, purchased nothing but complaining. Of course it's that person, you know what I'm saying? The people that get things for free, it's funny how that is. And the gym business is the people with the free passes. They're gonna complain the most every single time. The last thing I'll add from my end is have fun. Have fun with your training sessions, have fun with your clients. Not only is it good for you, but it's also good for them. You'll find that when your clients enjoy coming to see you because you guys have a good time, you laugh, you joke around, you have fun with your workouts, it also makes it enjoyable for you. When you're always serious with your sessions, like this is fitness, we're working out, we're doing our sets, that's all we're doing. Oh my God, you do that day in and day out. Watch how tough it is to continue doing your job. Dude, that is such a good point. And you just reminded me of a tip that this person could use it. So, and I did it for this exact reason. It's totally selfish. There wasn't a ton of value for them in their training program for this, but it was for entertainment for myself and it doesn't hurt, right? I would compete my clients. Like so I'd go through like a phase where it's planks. And so the end of every workout, we would do a plank hold for as long as they could and I would time it. And then I would let them know where they ranked up against the rest of my clients. And so it made something fun that we could do and it could be a squat hold. It could be, you know, vertical jump. It could be a sprint on the treadmill for a mile. You could do a lot of different things that are fitness related that's challenging for them. And I used to end workouts that way and they would love to see their improvement on that themselves and then also compare themselves to other clients and then they gave me something kind of to have fun with. And that was a, I totally forgot all about that till you mentioned that. I think that's a great point.