Due to my astounding success I am always being asked: How can one be a successful personal trainer/ fitness professional?
As I am thinking about this it appears that there are two layers to it.
1. The more technical aspect on how to build a career that will enable you to enjoy a decent living.
2. How to have said career and be happy with it.
Let’s cover part one first!
In order to be a success in the field of fitness and personal training you need have a good knowledge base in terms of training and diet. Sure, you can fake your way for a while but people will inevitably wise up and leave you.
So you need to constantly educate yourself and seek knowledge from people better than you.
As a next step you need to be value added. This sounds obvious but most personal trainers are not. Their workouts are generic and the execution is sloppy, thereby setting their clients and themselves up for failure.
Then you need to add more value! Send articles to your clients, encouraging text messages, cool training videos and the like.
Always overdeliver! If someone sends us a simple inquiry about training, he receives one book and five videos for free. Find ways to make your clients and prospects think that they are getting a bargain.
Be consistent over a long period of time! Takes years to build a brand the key is to keep showing up. Write the blog posts, tape the videos, send emails etc.
So let’s assume you mastered all this , have a great clientele , a grand loft gym and free protein shakes.
How do you prevent burn out?
You need to have a personality that is more than just a body. If you just rely on your physique , you become a rep counter not a trainer. The only reason people take that journey with you , is because of your knowledge and personality.
You need a desire to make that person better, be it in a one on one session, through your videos, newsletter you name it.
A few years, we are hiring and shifting through many candidates. One guy, we shall call him Greg, whom we interviewed did not have the most outstanding resume but we had him come in regardless.
To be honest, I was not hell bent on hiring him as I thought we had better candidates.
However, he kept calling and emailing, offering to work for free for a month and the like that I figured why not give him a shot. Best decision I made in a long time.
He is one of the people that is genuinely interested in the clients well being and it shows during every session. Needless to say, his finances also improved since he has a great retention rate.
There you have it, my blue print. If you prefer the video, here you are https://youtu.be/U7K4GBbmpZc
Maik