 Question is from Jeremy Longprey. What are the positives and negatives of being a trainer? Do you have any advice that you wish you knew when you first started? Hard to get rich. Yeah, I was gonna say. It's not a money grab. If you're super driven by money and you just wanna make a lot of money. Which I was. Yeah, get into finance or investments. Work with money, that's how you're gonna make money. Either that or my defense, because I am this person, I was driven first by money before I was the passion to become a personal trainer. But because I was so driven by money and I fell in love with personal training. You figured out a way. I've exactly, it forced me to get better and better at my craft because just being a good trainer, you're not gonna get rich at all. And even being great, probably you're not. So it really forced me to continue to reinvent myself, to grow, to learn, to push, to be at a whole other level, to get to that small percent that make it to that kind of revenue. So yeah, that would be a negative, right? A negative would be it's a. Potentially, right? If you're trying to be a trainer. It's a struggle in the beginning. If you're trying to be a trainer and you're not passion driven by fitness, you're gonna have a tough time because that's what takes you through everything. Here's another negative. It's exhausting. It's a very exhausting job. Now you might think, well, why? You're not doing construction or not doing it. Carry the emotions of other people. Not just that, that's a big part of it. The other part of it is let's say you work an eight hour shift. Yeah, you gotta split, you gotta split. Yeah. Very few trainers work a nine to five. Not only that, but let me take it a step further. Let's say you work an eight hour shift at an office. You have, there's a lot of time in that eight hours where you could take a break. You don't need to talk to anybody. You can relax, you could go on the internet, talk to your friend. If you're training eight clients in a day, first off, like what Adam said, never are they back to back. If you're training eight clients in a day, you're there for 12 hours because there's always gaps. But number two, you're on all eight hours. There's no break. Client shows up, I'm working. There is no break in between and that can be really, really exhausting. You determine the energy. And I think that's what you're getting at. It is like a suck in a sense where like, you gotta really like amp yourself up so you can portray the best version of yourself constantly. Now some of the positives are if you make it this, this is why too, right away when I meet like another trainer and I ask him like how long you've been doing it. And if they've been doing it for beyond five years, I know they've already, they're probably pretty good at what they do because it's really tough if you're not a good trainer to have made it past five years because the things that we're talking about, even if you're really good, you're gonna struggle with this. Your schedule is gonna be tough. You're gonna go through clients you don't like training. You're not gonna make a lot of money. And so if you've persevered through that, you're probably a pretty damn good trainer if you've made five years or longer. But one of the positives are once you do establish yourself and you build a good reputation for what you do and you're known for being a great trainer and the referrals begin to come in, then you can start to get very picky about who you train. And it took me a long time. Can you get to hang out with cool people? Yeah, I mean, it definitely got to a point where towards the back half for sure of my 20 years is I definitely got really picky with who I train. And then my clients got really exciting because I couldn't wait to see them because not only was I getting paid good because I had also moved my rates up by that time, but I was also gonna learn something. I always knew I was gonna get something from them. Like that would continue to, and that is the same thing that makes us very passionate about the podcasting is, that's even more accelerating than what training was. Training I love because I've got some CEO or I've got some author, I've got some brilliant tech person. And I love to communicate between sets and ask questions. And so I get this like front row seat to these brilliant minds that I can pick whatever questions I wanna ask them because we're on each other's time. That is extremely valuable. And you develop a close relationship because these people see you for one to three undivided attention hours a week for years. So they spend more undivided time with you than they do with most of their family members. So you actually develop a really close relationship and it's great when they're successful smart people. I mean, one of the reasons why I love trained doctors, you guys know I love science and I love medicine and I love health. I would ask them all kinds of insane questions and because we're friends, they would talk to me about them and they valued the time as well. So it was really cool. The other part is this, is that there's a lot of jobs that are out there where you don't really feel your value. You don't really feel the meaning behind what you're doing because you're either pushing buttons or you're making a small part of a big product. And so you don't necessarily see the impact that you have in society. When you're training people and you're doing a good job and they lose weight, get better shape, they feel no more pain, their health improves, you see it directly and so you have this incredible sense of meaning. The reward is right in front of you. Totally. I think that, I mean, that's initially what people get into, I think, personal training if they're really passionate about it. They wanna impact other people's lives and you can do that on a one-to-one basis and it's literally right in front of you. And I totally agree. I had some of the best conversations I've ever had is with some of my, you know, main clients that I see on a regular basis and I just can't, you're not gonna get that from a regular job because you're not gonna be able to go that deep with somebody else because, you know, you're on this, it's like you're on this journey together. You become like, you know, like it's a deep bond that you share. Well, it's, Sal's point about the meaning thing of all the professions, it's probably, it's not the only one. There's plenty of other ones that I think like doctors would say they probably feel similar with this too is that it reveals your purpose really quick. Like if this was what you were meant to be doing, like the first time that you do something where you like fundamentally change somebody's life, like somebody came to you, they're, you know, 45 years old, they've struggled with weight loss forever, they're obese, they've tried this diet, they've done this and you unlock something for that person that like fundamentally changes them forever. It gets me emotional just talking about it because it reminds me of all those feelings that I've had when I've had a client like this. When you get that, holy shit, does that provide such a larger purpose in what you're doing? And if you just remember that as a trainer, that that's your true North, then everything that you do before that to lead to that will really help guide you in your career and that's extremely rewarding. Yeah, it's, to me, it's like, it's truth. It's like, it's like finding truth. You know, it's like, I feel like it's like, it's deep like that. Like you're, you're on this journey to find like answers like that. If you have one little key for them, that's a truth that they didn't have before. You know, and it's like something that you can help them find and you're like sort of this oracle, like you're here, here's where it is, but you have to find it yourself. And the reward in it is that, you know, they understand it and then they apply it themselves. That's the real reward. Yeah, and it's just, it's positive. It's always, it's always positive. And it can be with people who are totally different from you. You know, I've had clients that are completely differing political views and religions and whatever, but they're there to get healthy. I help them get healthy. And the, it's incredible. You know, some of them, I remember phone calls I would get from clients. I had one, I've told this story before. I had an old, older client who came in on her day off to tell me she was so excited. She was 80 years old. She had lost her independence. Her daughter came in and hired me to train her. And after about seven or eight months of training, this woman regained her independence and she came into my gym on her off day to tell me that she was able to go grocery shopping for the first time in two years by herself. She was able to close the trunk of her car all by herself and she made the trip to come into my gym, walked in, gave me a hug and said, I'm independent again because of the training that you've given me. And that right there was worth, it's worth more than money to me. It was worth way more than money. It's what kept me a personal train for a long time, believed me, I had clients offer me jobs and wanted to pay me more. And I was like, you know, I need to feel like I have some meaning behind what I do. You know, not to end this on a negative note, but we're all getting emotional and positive. I'm gonna crap you out for a second. But it just reminded me of something that really bothers me and it was something that I spoke to a lot as a leader of trainers for many, many years is the scarcity mindset. And if you really understand your purpose of helping and serving people and you've fallen in love with personal training and you claim that you love it so much and that is your purpose and what you're doing and you're listening and you're nodding your head and you're like, yes, that's a feeling's amazing and you're a trainer. But then you're also scared to direct your people towards information that it could be provided in a better way through them than yourself in fear of losing financial gain. It's such a scarcity mindset and we'll put a ceiling on your cap of how great you become. One of the things that made me very successful as a trainer is I never feared that because I truly believe that if my true north was that my ultimate goal was to unlock that key for this person is to provide that life-changing feeling or moment for them or forever change their behaviors. And if everything I was giving towards them wasn't doing that or even if I was doing things for them but I knew there was somebody else that could provide even more value for that person, I was okay with potentially losing them as a client to give them the answer or to help them better. If you come from that place, it always comes back to infold. I might have lost a hundred percent. I might have lost $150 an hour because I sent her over to Dr. Ruscio who really needs to dive into her gut. And even though I understand that stuff really, really well and I've read lots of stuff, he's fucking 10 times better than I am at that. Even though that I lost the $150 an hour client, I pass it over to somebody who I think is really gonna change that person's life. What ends up happening is two, three years down the road that person has not only talked about the great things that Mike did but she'll always remember that it was me who sent her over there to help her. I get just as much credit for that and it may not directly affect my pocket right then and there but I always end up getting three, five, 10 other people reaching out to me because of that. And you know what's funny? I've never lost the client because of that. It's never happened to me. If anything, they come to me more because I guided them in the right direction. As far as advice that I'd have for myself when I first started, I wish Mind Pump existed. I wish because my personal training knowledge came from certifications, bodybuilding magazines, my own research and my own experience. If Mind Pump had existed back then, I would have shaved. I mean, you can't ever replace experience but I would have shaved a good, five years off the amount of time it took me to go from sucky trainer to not bad trainer. You know?