S01E09 - Belief, Acumen and The Storm

In this episode Niko finds the belief to take his PT career to the next level, admits to actually lacking in something and the storm we've been waiting for finally arrives...

Transcript

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Hello everyone and welcome back to the PT Chronicles podcast, the story of a small town Welsh boy and his rise to the very middle of the fitness industry. As always, I'm your host, Nico Algieri, and I'm also the main protagonist in this story. So now let's get into episode 9. Belief, Acumen, and the Storm. So at this point, we're about 13 months into my personal training career. And after joining Bootcamp Palates and doing so well, my client base had grown and the demand had now surpassed my need to actually teach classes. What I mean by that is I was making £30 an hour at Bootcamp Palates, £60 to £80 per PT, and the demand for people who wanted personal training now outweighed the amount that I could be making at Bootcamp Pilates. So I needed to change. So just like I knew when I had to move away from the small town in Wales, I knew I had bigger and better things to do with my career. So I handed my notice in with Bootcamp Pilates. And honestly, thank God I did because I'm sick of saying bootcamp Pilates in this podcast. I gave them a few months' notice, but that would actually free up 15 hours for me to add into my personal training. The point of all this is that I believed in myself. Walking the floor of the Pilates studio, commanding a room, creating new movements, changing the way classes were taught, and teaching new trainers new tricks within a year of qualifying, it just came naturally. So I knew I could push a little bit harder and make my own business. I think there's a very small jump between confidence and arrogance, and I believe that belief is part of that. I come from a family of fitness trainers and professionals, and when you know you're good at what you do, it screams at you. When you love it, it becomes a passion. And mine was pouring over the side. So I think it's time to take a pause in the story here, and I just want to give a little bit of advice to any new personal trainers listening. And my advice is find a boutique class, go learn their method, and teach groups of people. You work on your cueing mastery. What I mean by cueing is the actual words you use to get people to get into positions and perform the movements that you want them to perform. And once you hone that skill, people get excited by it, they get enthusiastic for your training and they understand what they're doing correctly. And that in turn builds trust. And that's how I built my personal training business. I made the classes fun, I made the programming excellent, and my queuing was on point every time. So they always felt comfortable and confident in what they were doing, and that's key in exercise. You build people's confidence, that's the magic, and that's how you develop your client base. Anyway, back to the story. So I built the skills, I had the complete belief in myself, but the one thing I was lacking was business acumen. Now remember that I had met Sophie in the Pilates class. We were getting on like a house on fire, we were fully together and we were loving life. We've been together a year. Now she knew of my motivation to create a studio for myself. She was into fitness, very passionate about it, so she offered to partner up and help invest. A lovely gesture, but I can feel you all rolling your eyes at me right now, saying, Nico, don't do that. But of course I did. I accepted. Business acumen level zero. I started serving my notice at the Palate Studio, and I was all the while still hanging my TRX off a tree in the park. Sophie and I set out about making a business plan and looking for properties to create my studio. I couldn't have been more excited. We found a property almost immediately. It was in an area called Clarendon Cross, next to a very popular London beauty brand cowshed. Now that's the perfect area surrounded by the perfect Tardic audience for this type of studio. Now for any of you who have looked at any properties in fitness, you know full well my enthusiasm was about to get tested. Two words planning permission. Now this is boring, but it's essential. Properties have a certain classification. You can't just make a successful offer on a property and turn it into anything you like immediately. You have to apply to the local planning authority or council for permission. A planner costs money. Money causes stress, and Sophie and I were feeling it. A successful or failed bid takes six weeks to return, so there was time to wait, get more stressed, and ignore the divide the business was causing in our relationship. The storm had arrived. We lost the planning permission because twelve local residents objected to the fact that more people meant less parking available for them. I heard later that one resident in particular was the rabble rouser. Otherwise, we'd have been accepted. That one person got the 12 people together and got them to sign the form that prevented my studio. And what this did was make me selfishly resent the relationship because it was the first failure of the hotshot PT career that I thought I was going to have. Looking back now, it was incredibly egotistical and selfish, and I let Sophie down. It was disrespecting the amazing woman that she was and still is, actually. Now the spotlight of Boot Campulates was no longer shining on me. Sophie and I were on the rocks, and that coincided perfectly with winter arriving. Clients were not enjoying the cold in the park, and to be honest, neither was I. Standing there in the rain and the snow and the wind, it was just wasn't where I envisioned myself being after doing so well for 13 months. The reality of the situation was this. I had to do what I said I'd never do as a PT and rent space from a gym owner. We actually need to take a pause here right at the end of this episode because I need to go back to a story I forgot to tell at the start of the PT Chronicles. At the end of my personal trainer course, remember I said I went to apply for a job at But Camp Pilates. We also had to go and we were actually urged by the course to go and practice taking interviews. So I went to interview, it was in Piccadilly Circus with a gym. It was either Virgin Active or it was David Lloyd Fitness. I cannot remember which one it is, but I went in and the gym owner, the general manager of the gym, was so arrogant, so cocky, so aggressive and abrasive. He was like, Yeah, well, what I want you to do is go upstairs onto the gym floor right now and prove to me that you can get three numbers from clients in the gyms and three leads to turn into personal training clients. Bearing in mind, I was dressed in a shirt and tie and trousers. I'd never been in the gym before, and he just wanted me to walk with a shirt and tie onto the gym floor, approach people and get numbers for PTs. I couldn't believe it. Honestly, he was so aggressive with it. Uh I hated him, obviously, but I did it. I went upstairs to the gym floor and I got those numbers. And I remember him saying, Yeah, when can you start? And I almost felt like telling him to go fuck himself. But of course, I didn't. I ended it quite courteously and uh I moved on. But I promised myself I'd never work in a gym. And now I had to go rent gym space. It's okay though, because I was about to do something even more stupid. Well, two things.