The Show Up Fitness Podcast

Ep. 236 Anaheim Fit Expo GIVEAWAY w/ Coach360 CEO Kathleen Ferguson

• Chris Hitchko, CEO Show Up Fitness • Season 3 • Episode 236

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Share in your story to be eligible for 1 of 10 FREE Coach360 Career Lab LIVE at the Anaheim FIT Expo in CA. Tickets get you access to Friday's class and the 2 day Fit Expo on Saturday & Sunday August 1-3rd. 

Have you ever wondered why so many certified personal trainers struggle to build sustainable careers despite their passion and skills? The answer might surprise you.

Kathleen, CEO and co-founder of Coach360, joins the Show Up Fitness Podcast to share her 17-year journey from newly certified trainer to fitness industry leader. After experiencing a traumatic life event, she found healing through fitness and decided to help others do the same—only to discover that certification was just the beginning of a challenging career path. "I remember being thrown on the gym floor and told to start selling," she recalls, highlighting the gap between education and business skills that causes 80% of trainers to leave the profession within two years.

The conversation takes a fascinating turn when Kathleen explains why today's digital-first approach to fitness education is actually holding new trainers back. "Everyone's getting their CECs online, and it's convenient not to gather," she observes, "but the gathering piece is critical." Through compelling examples from her own career—including how she met her Coach360 co-founder at an industry event—Kathleen makes a powerful case for in-person networking as the secret ingredient to fitness career longevity. As she puts it, "Your network is your net worth."

Looking to transform your fitness career or just getting started? Career Lab by Coach360 is bringing industry legends like Todd Durkin to the Fit Expo Anaheim on August 1st to help fitness professionals develop crucial business skills. The first 10 listeners who reach out will receive free passes to this career-changing event! Whether you're struggling with client retention, wondering how to balance digital and in-person offerings, or seeking to div

Want to ask us a question? Email email info@showupfitness.com with the subject line PODCAST QUESTION to get your question answered live on the show!

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Show Up Fitness Podcast, where great personal trainers are made. We are changing the fitness industry one qualified trainer at a time, with our in-person and online personal training certification. If you want to become an elite personal trainer, head on over to showupfitnesscom. Also, make sure to check out my book how to Become a Successful Personal Trainer. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. Have a great day and keep showing up. Howdy everybody. Welcome back to the Show Up Fitness Podcast. Today we have Ms Kathleen. She is the CEO and co-founder of Coach360.

Speaker 2:

Excited to pick your brain, all the experience you have and talk a little bit about the Fit Expo that's coming up here in a couple of weeks.

Speaker 1:

Awesome, so happy to be here. Thank you for having me. So let's just start kind of going into your background. You have quite the resume and you're doing some really awesome stuff right now, so tell us a little bit more.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely so. I started about 17 years ago as a fitness professional personal trainer came out of a kind of traumatic event in my life and made me reevaluate what I was doing professionally. I felt a bit devoid of purpose in what I was currently doing and I wanted to get into the business of helping others and making impact. Because fitness for me had a really profound impact on my own personal healing and my journey movement and I wanted to share that with others. So I got my initial certification. You know, just fell in love with the education piece of it and I think like so many other coaches and trainers, I really struggled when it came to, like, figuring out all right, I've become certified, so now what do I do?

Speaker 2:

How do I make money? I've become certified, so now what do I do? How do I make money? You know how do I build a career that's, you know, both financially sustainable but also allows me to, you know, make that impact that I want to have on others. And you know I really struggled.

Speaker 2:

I remember my first job. I was thrown on the gym floor and they said go ahead and sell right, start selling personal trainer programs and packages. So you know that can be, you know, really intimidating and, you know, kind of mystifying to a lot of coaches and trainers because that's not really a part of, like, their initial curriculum or it wasn't, you know, back when I started. So I ended up meeting the original founders of Idea, peter and Kathy Davis just really incredible people if you know them, and they were really, you know, providing me a springboard into fitness media and I instantly loved it. I went to the show, went to my first fitness conference, and I was like, wow, this is so cool. Everyone's hugging, people are high-fiving, we're all wearing spandex. This is awesome and ended up doing well. There Started, you know, leading the sales team did that for about 10 years and then COVID hit and, of course, like our lives all changed right.

Speaker 2:

And you know all these clubs and studios, sadly, were shutting down and you know many fitness professionals were out of jobs so there were no more shows. I felt compelled to go off on my own and consult, started consulting for some health and fitness startups, did a little work for a couple other media companies, cut my teeth on B2B and cut my teeth on direct-to-consumer. January 2024 rolled around. I'd been going through some life coaching, so I was having all these epiphanies and revelations about myself and how I should evolve and ended up having a vision for Coach360. And it started off as you know. How can I build a media platform to support the business of health and fitness professionals in a meaningful way? You know content that's relevant to building their business, because that's what's really needed in order to avoid that.

Speaker 2:

You know 80% two-year turnout rate and ultimately, you know the turnout of the coaches abandoning the profession affects the um staffing and clubs and studios. So, um, those are really the two problems I set out to solve. It's like let's keep fitness professionals in the industry because they are critical to the health of our communities. They are the guides, they are the people at the front lines of the obesity epidemic and preventable chronic disease. Um, and you know how do we figure out how to do that? So I launched that media platform Coach360, about a year ago and launched the staffing piece to help find jobs and career paths for them. With about 1,500 clubs and studios nationwide, that went live in October. So I'm just hustling right now trying to build a company, and that's where I'm at right now and I'm excited to bring this career lab event to the Fit Expo next month.

Speaker 1:

But I know we'll dive into that. Like you were saying, 30% of trainers they don't even start. They're so scared because they're not really given the tools for success. And so for that new trainer who maybe just got certified, no-transcript.

Speaker 2:

So a couple of things, and you and I touched on this a little before we went live, but I think you know one of the biggest issues is right now. We're living in this digital age and a lot of the new incoming coaches and trainers they don't understand the impact and the importance of collaboration and in-person education live education, hands-on education Everyone's getting it online. They're getting their CECs, ceus online and it's just much more convenient for them not to gather. And the gathering piece is critical. Not only do you have the opportunity to potentially be sitting next to your next business partner or your next investor or your next person. That's going to give you a collaborative opportunity which you would never be able to find online, but that's your opportunity to build the community and potentially even find a mentor as a new personal trainer or coach.

Speaker 2:

I think that the value of in-person education far surpasses CECs. You know pieces of advice. It's much more about. You know how do we support and uplift one another, and the relationship piece for me has been the cornerstone and the foundation of my career. You know it's always been that way. I've had relationships that are a decade plus long.

Speaker 2:

So my piece of advice to the coaches and trainers or incoming fitness professionals, go to the shows, be in the room, as my friend Todd Durkin likes to say, and you know, really. You know, engage and talk to people outside of, you know, just your digital creator space. You know, get in front of these people and, you know, ask them. You know, for the most part, like a lot of fitness professionals are like, hey, you know, I'll be a mentor. Sure, you need someone to give you advice. I would love to be that person for you. So, if you find that person at one of these in-person events, ask them and, you know, start that conversation. And, you know, let us all come together and be able to support one another. And that only happens, you know, from the magic of, you know, in-person gatherings.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. There's that famous saying your network is your net worth.

Speaker 2:

And also, too, just friends that have hopped, you know, you know, into different organizations and different roles or evolved and up-leveled in their career. We still keep in touch, we still try and figure out how we can support one another. So you know, it really is important. I mean, this is. I think this relationship, more than you know other, or this industry more than other industries, is really very much so relationship based.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. Trainers are definitely constantly looking for that community feel and you can get very isolated in the gym where you go in there and you train early in the morning. You go home and who are your friends? And we're not going on Bumble friend, trying to swipe right on friends. You got to go to live events and meet people and get out of your comfort zone and you're going to see all sorts of people and you absolutely are going to connect with a few people and be able to plant seeds you never even thought were capable prior.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Yeah, I mean even my co -founder. That's somebody I met at an event you know in a previous life and you know it's just one of those things where you're, you know brainstorming and you know suddenly like ideas start to formulate and you're like, hey, you can actually make that like a real thing. I mean, that's really how Coach 360 started. So you know, you just never know, you know who you're going to meet at one of these gatherings. That's going to really change your life and the trajectory of you know, your professional life and your personal life. Really.

Speaker 1:

So we do these hands-on learning, we go to Lifetime and Equinoxes and I'll always name drop and a lot of trainers don't know some of the iconic names, and you talked about Mr Durkin earlier, who's out of San Diego, and so he's going to be at Coach 360. Can you give us a little bit more about what's going to be going on there and what the day is going to look like?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So essentially, what we're doing is we are coming into the Fit Expo Anaheim with a new brand under Coach 360 called Career Lab by Coach 360. And Career Lab is exactly how it sounds educators or professionals in our industry that want to have a hands-on learning experience from coaches and trainers that have actually evolved their career in a really incredible and successful way. So we are going to be a very small, curated group of about 150 to 200 individuals and we're going to be going through different sessions that are all about building your brand practical tips in terms of how to retain clients, especially as a newbie. It's like well, how do I get clients and also how do I keep them? You know everything that you really need to know in terms of building a business, marketing, you know, bridging the gap between digital and in person. I think this is exactly what we're talking about right now, like what is the right balance? Right, we can't get out there all the time. There's only one of us, so how do we scale this? So you'll be hearing from people you know like Todd Durkin, who has built an incredible career, you know, not only as a celebrity trainer, but also, you know, as a renowned speaker. He's, you know, just a master motivator. He also, you know, has certifications surrounding life coaching, and what we've really found is a lot of these different arms of training that we're seeing coming through right now. This is from the demand of the client. The client wants to be trained now from a 360-degree approach. They want a comprehensive solution. So the more educated these coaches and trainers can become in diversifying their offerings, the more successful they're going to be ultimately to keeping and, you know, really engaging their clientele. So people who you know attend Career Lab at Coach360, they're going to have a really engaging day, inspiring day. They're going to hear from celebrity trainers who have overcome incredible challenges and obstacles and worked extremely hard to get to where they are today.

Speaker 2:

And I always tell people, you know, everyone's path looks a little bit different, right, so it's so great to hear from others you know, who have, you know, had these diverse, you know kind of journeys in their personal and professional lives, because we all have a story right, there'll be plenty of time for networking. So we built in you know, kind of all these different little networking opportunities. We built in a creator corner so people who are, you know, selling, you know online programs or education can come in and really amplify their online presence by collaborating with the other creators in the room, as well as Coach 360. So it's gonna be a lot of fun. We even have a little kind of Coach of the Year ceremony at the end where we're going to be a lot of fun.

Speaker 2:

We even have a little kind of coach of the year ceremony at the end where we're going to be announcing our top three coaches of the year who win all these cool prizes and just have an opportunity to really come together with people who are as passionate about making an impact in this industry as I am and as we are and as this group collectively will be. So, hopefully, it will be a fantastic gathering and it gives people the opportunity. They also have access into the Fit Expo on the 2nd and the 3rd of August, and so not only can they get the education component, but they can cruise into the Fit Expo and experience you know, the 30,000 people that will be walking the halls there and, you know, get to check out all the exhibitors. So it's a really cool opportunity for someone that's, you know, really looking to level up in their career.

Speaker 1:

I love that. And for the future, how would someone try to get involved in that trainer of the year that you're talking about?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so it's actually still active right now. It closes at the end of next week. It's actually still active right now. It closes at the end of next week and there are three categories. There's Holistic Hero, rising Star and Fitness Visionary. So it's active right now on our website, coach360newscom, and you go under programs and click coach of the year and we ask a couple of questions, because we're all about the storytelling piece and we want to hear what your story is.

Speaker 1:

And again, applications close next week. I love that, so maybe we'll definitely share this to all of our platforms and get people involved. And if they want to get a ticket, where would they go for that?

Speaker 2:

So also coach360newscom. You'll click the events tab and you'll go to Career Lab live from the Fit Expo, and it takes you directly to our landing page where you can buy tickets.

Speaker 1:

I love it. We're going to be there, looking forward to meeting you in person. That's going to be Friday, august 2nd, is that correct?

Speaker 2:

Friday August 1st is our event, and then August 2nd, 3rd is Fit Expo.

Speaker 1:

And this is the last one of the year. They typically will do them, I believe, in Long Beach, la and Anaheim, and so if you've never been to a Fit Expo, you got to get to them and this is a great opportunity to meet other fitness professionals. But really fill those buckets where you're lacking. And if you ever hit that plateau and you're thinking, how do I grow my business? More streams of revenue it sounds like exactly what someone needs to get to.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, someone needs to get to. Absolutely yes, and I would love to give away to your audience 10 passes to Career Lab For anyone that writes in and says they want them. The first 10 people, please send me their email addresses and I'll make sure that they get set up.

Speaker 1:

Love that, so we're going to give away 10 free passes. Make sure to throw the podcast in your story and we will be giving out some awesome prizes right there. That's so nice of you. Thank you, kathleen.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you got it.

Speaker 1:

All right, everybody, have a great rest of the day and keep showing up.