A Great Personal Fitness Trainer? And Prosperous Too?

We’ve all heard about personal trainers who “smashed the six figure mark.”  We’ve also all known personal trainers who barely keep their finances afloat despite an ever-growing workload.  If we’re really asked to tap into our capacity for rational thought, I think we’d all agree, those “mark smashers” are few and far between.  This raises a question.  Is “personal trainer earning” a contradiction in terms for most who aspire to find their livelihood linked with their love for fitness?

Recent articles, all released in the same week in various online publications aimed at the fitness industry, included the headlines, “personal training is dead,” and “the explosive potential of personal training.”  How can these conflicting headlines each have credence?  Perhaps the field did “explode” and as a result “the trainers are dead.”  Nah, that can’t be it.  It’s something else.  It’s spin.

The internet generation is both informed and confused, and just as in the realm of nutrition and exercise, just as in the field of medicine, just as in the legal arena, personal training career “information” runs across the board, much of it contradictory.  If you seek information on personal training business, personal trainer potential, or personal trainer wages, you can find absurd over-exaggerations on the high end and bleak and dismal income reports on the low end.

The tide turns in what feels like a moment, and while, in one breath, some television anchor person attributes some celeb’s physical change to a personal trainer, another reports of negligence and wrongful death in our field.  I’ve seen personal trainers represented on TV shows as con artists, womanizers, and I daresay muscle-heads.  We’ve all seen what the reality shows present as “sensible” motivation for individuals seeking weight loss.

It’s all spin.

Planet Fitness, a major health club chain took an interesting spin when they terminated their relationships with contracted personal training entities.  The CEO announced, “most people hiring personal trainers are just renting friends,” and he used the words “fraud” and “condescending” in describing the practices of a business model that includes the promotion of personal trainers.  I won’t address his comments.  Many in our industry already have. I will, however, point out that “spin” is a part of marketing, and until personal trainers are recognized as true professionals, they can be spun right out of any picture!

I’m one of the few who can say I’ve been a personal trainer for near 30 years.  It took a few missteps early on to come to understand that my avocation wasn’t as frivolous as I thought it might be, it had to become “my fitness business” before I found genuine security.  That recognition led to two vital insights, insights that lifted me from impending burnout and allowed me an invaluable reframe:

1. I am not my business (although I love what I do when I’m at work)
2. My business must serve as the source of my prosperity (allowing me to enjoy every aspect and element of my life)

I’ve always taken my fitness career seriously, and have always used my passion as my guidepost, and once I learned to separate “who I am” from “what I do,” once I created some important borders that separated my “work” from “the person I am,” I learned to cultivate my business without a perceived need to always be working.

Today I can take pride in my accomplishments, and I can share that pride among any audience.  That pride didn’t come easy.  It took effort, it took continued education, both conventional and unconventional, it took some serious battles, some massive mistakes, some wrong turns, some mentors, some important learning experiences, and thankfully a resilience and a strong moral compass that has kept me committed to the mission.

Read that and it might change your mind about wanting to be a personal trainer.  You might not want to go through all of that energy output.

That leaves you with two paths you can take.  One path will discourage you from ever pursuing a fitness career, the second will compel you to waste money and have false hopes and expectations.

Oh, wait, there’s one more option . . . challenging what is perceived as conventional, accepting response-ability, and mastering some key strategies that allow you to build a business very much as a professional in any field.  It isn’t through “marketing tricks” or “client acquisition.”  It’s through age-old principles that underlie the success of every medical group, every successful restaurant chain, every thriving retail store, and every entertainment complex.  It has very little to do with the way the health club industry prospers.  It follows the medical model far more than the “fitness industry” (health club) model, although our product remains, “the delivery of health and fitness betterment through personal fitness instruction and exercise prescription.”

True excellence in our field requires not only a documented level of expertise, but also an extraordinary ability to communicate.  The best in our field come to understand nutrition and psychology, they come to master human influence and coaching, and I believe that’s all a part of being a 21^st Century Personal  Fitness Professional.

Why do I suggest that one line of acquiring information might lead you to false hopes? Because there are trade schools that will drive their own revenues by making promises of respectable earnings despite the fact that few of their graduates ever earn back the cost of their education.  There are now product lines that are positioned to sell to trainers, and “success program” offerings from internet marketers who found a ripe and vulnerable market.

I am a personal trainer.  I’ve been a personal trainer for the better part of my life and, with all of its natural extensions (media, corporate fitness, consulting, etc.) it’s the only career I’ve ever known.  I’ve traveled the country, traveled the world, and met tens of thousands of wonderful people thanks to my commitment to this field.  I’ve had the privilege, in that three decade span, to help select personal trainers find their own excellence and I continue to incorporate that into my personal vision..

In seeking a new crop of trainers to raise up, to empower, I am not looking to attract trainers who want “a quick and easy” career. I am, however, reaching out a hand to personal trainers of any level who feel that they want career longevity, true pride in what they do on a daily basis, financial confidence, an unbreakable want to thrill clients, and a genuine love of life.  Read that short list carefully.  In my experience that does NOT describe MOST personal trainers.

To provide resources for those with the potential for excellence, those who haven’t yet found their pinnacle but seek career growth, I have created a number of courses, both live and remote, and they are built 100% upon the foundation of my personal experience.  I will not teach or share anything as a “strategy” unless I’ve employed it and found benefit.  My A.L.I.V.E. Trainer Training program teaches what I believe is “the next level’ in personal training, sharing both new and buried science in presenting  a technology that allows for absolute reversal of the trends toward our population’s leading diseases. It’s the real deal.  It isn’t for everyone, and we’ll have to have a few preliminary conversations to see if it’s right for you at this point in your career.  I only accept 10 trainers every 12 weeks, so if you have interest, click here and just send me an email telling me why you have interest (include name and phone number)

There are incredible opportunities right now that the rest of the fitness industry is not aware of or equipped for.  There are immense corporate fitness opportunities that can lead to record personal training earning as it saves large companies millions.  The most opportune segment of our market is the most neglected by health clubs and mainstream medicine.

In addition to the A.L.I.V.E. course, I have been running my Be Better Academy for near five years.  It’s a real-life hard-hitting 8 – 10 month journey through personal growth as a fitness professional.  It’s powerful, but it requires real commitment and stick-to-it-iveness.  Like the A.L.I.V.E. Trainer Training program, it isn’t for everyone, but it is rocket fuel for those who have the desire and willingness to stretch outside of their comfort zones.  I will only conduct one live Be Better interactive per year, the next one beginning in March of 2012, but Be Better Academy is a self-learning remote program that provides greater economy and time flexibility.  Interested, but unsure what’s best for you?  Contact me.  Tell me a little about your interest, your situation, and your personal wants for the future, and I’ll respond, in most cases offering a 10 – 15 minute telephone chat.

Here’s my promise.  Personal trainer prosperity Is a real outcome that can be achieved through a discipline, and by following a proven course, one that, in many ways runs counter to convention.  Progressing along the course is thrilling, emotional, and incredibly rewarding.  It will stretch you.  It will change you for the better, helping you move toward your greatest potential.

I’ll conclude with a prosperity definition that has allowed me to understand (and teach) the difference between pursuing money and pursuing a condition where you love that your business is the source of your prosperity, a condition where you prosper only by bettering the lives of others.  Here’s the definition:

Prosperity is the condition of being able to have what you want to have and do what you want to do.

Period.

Is that appealing to you?  If it is, if you have the heart of a personal fitness trainer, if you honestly aspire to grow through your personal trainer career, fill out a questionnaire or drop me a note and let’s see if I can point you in the right direction for your next leap toward finding true prosperity as a personal fitness trainer.