The Show Up Fitness Podcast

Mindset Makeover & Goal Setting for Personal Trainers

• Chris Hitchko, CEO Show Up Fitness • Season 3 • Episode 259

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Down 21–7 in the fourth? That’s how most trainers feel when goals are vague, leads are random, and revenue wobbles. We flip that script with a practical playbook: define KPIs, run 90-day sprints, test weekly like an athlete, and hold public accountability so momentum has nowhere to hide. Think sports strategy meets small-business execution—clear metrics, tactical pivots, and simple scripts you can use today.

We walk through a SWIFT-style review cadence that turns reflection into action: strengths to double down on, weaknesses you block time to fix, and the improvements, implementations, and innovations that compound results. You’ll hear how to build a full book without waiting on algorithms—client appreciation invites that spark referrals, storefront intros that plant local roots, and discovery calls that convert because the questions are better. We even dig into pricing with confidence: tie rate increases to skill upgrades, invite clients to sponsor your growth, and communicate the plan with candor and care.

There’s a reason great coaches obsess over numbers. We break down the KPIs that matter for trainers—leads per week, show-up and close rates, ARPC, content-to-call conversion—and show how to read them like a dugout watches pitch counts. You’ll leave with a 90-day roadmap: daily story prompts with polls, a DM follow-up system, a weekly beta test, and a review cycle that makes iteration inevitable. Ready to stop “wanting more clients” and start winning the quarter? Tap play, build your plan, and tell us your first move. If this helped, subscribe, share it with a trainer who needs a push, and drop a review so more coaches can find it.

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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Website: https://www.showupfitness.com/
Become a Personal Trainer Book (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/How-Become-Personal-Trainer-Successful/dp/B08WS992F8
NASM / ACE / ISSA study guide: https://www.showupfitness.com/collections/nasm

SPEAKER_00:

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 showupfitness.com. 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. How do y'all? Welcome back to the Show Up Fitness Podcast. Today we're going to talk about mindset shift and goal setting. Let's pretend Texas is playing Florida this weekend. They're down 21 to 7. It's the fourth quarter. Do they put their tail between their legs and give up? Do they take a knee? Oh, we're going to forfeit the last quarter because we played like shit in the first half. They could have had five turnovers. Their top star could have got injured. There's a lot of stuff that's thrown into the equation, but they figure it out. They are going to win and they believe it. And the thing with goal setting today, we don't take a smart approach. That's specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely. But more importantly, the analysis to go into goal setting. What are you doing? Every month, I'll look at our Swift analysis and I'll spend one of my four-hour blocks dedicated to growth and learning, focusing just on my goals. What did I do well this last month? What were some weaknesses? When it comes to a quarter, I spend an entire week. Each day I'll have a block reflecting on our Swift. When it comes to the end of the year, I'll spend two weeks, a much more thorough analysis, looking at our strengths and weaknesses, the action items with the I's. What could we improve? What could we implement? What could we innovate? What's a fear and what's a threat? Where's our trajectory? Who are you surrounding yourself with? The I's have three, the T's have three. And I really feel for trainers today because they're not setting themselves up for success. Similar to clients, I love screwing with them on today, October 1st. It's the last quarter of the year. Ask your clients, what are your New Year's resolutions? And they will look at you and say, Chris, it's October 1st. I still have three months to figure that out. I'm not talking about 2026. I'm talking about the last quarter for 2025. How are you going to give it hell? How are you going to show up to make this the best year you've ever had? The first three quarters could have sucked ass. You were a victim. Stuff didn't go your way. That is life. That's the beauty of it. How do you show up when that happens? You take a step back and you invest your time to figure it out. Shitty goals that I hear all the time. I want to get more clients. How? What are you going to do? How are you going to move the needle today, tomorrow, next week, in November and December? We need to have metrics that we can track as they do in football, in baseball, we're in the playoffs. Do you think the manager for the Yankees knows how many pitches Freed had last night? You bet your ass he did. He knew exactly he was at 98 pitches. They had a game plan for Boston. The last time he pitched, he may have thrown 80% fastballs, but they had a different approach for this game. He threw more off-speed pitches, more curveballs. They had a different plan of attack because he wasn't successful against them in the past. Granted, they didn't win. They lost three to one. Fuck, Judge, why didn't you get a home run in the last inning? That's all right. We got game two today. Hopefully they win that one and they go into game three and they crush him. It's about looking at the entire pitcher. But they had a plan of attack going into that game. They don't just say, I want to win. They look at the metrics. And in business, as a personal trainer, those are our KPIs. What are our key performance indicators? What are you measuring yourself on? Where were you red? Where were you yellow? Where were you green? That's your strengths, your weaknesses, and opportunities. What did you do well last month, last quarter? Double down and do more. Can you do 10 times more, 20 times more? Were you really focused on moving the needle on your strengths with your weaknesses? Could you potentially delegate? Or those things that you were just distracted on? Maybe you need to get better at organizing your schedule. When I looked at my Swift for the last quarter, strengths, action-based, we will do as much as possible posting on our Instagram, TikTok, podcasts, articles, Substack. That was an innovation that we did the last quarter. Something that I really lacked with was our study guide sales for our NASAM ACE ISSA. I didn't move the needle a lot on YouTube posts. I am the victim. I look at how did I implement my time to move that needle? And I didn't. That was my main weakness. I didn't list out 50 things. I chose a couple things that I could work on. And then I move into the next category, the action items. How could I improve that? So I spent the last week going through my schedule, blocking out three to four hour times where I can just focus on moving the needle on where I didn't do well. Get our NASAM study guide out there because that's how most of you hear about us. How'd you come across show up? Typed in how to pass NASA, how to pass ACE. We have the best guides to pass those bullshit certifications. They're not hard. They're not going to make you a good trainer. So I would constantly toggle back and forth. And these are the struggles that I have. Do I want to focus more on just RSUF CPT? But when I do that, sales and other categories go down. Well, we need to pay rent. We have to drive revenue so we can continue to invest to become ubiquitous. So I have to go back to step one, create more content, move the needle in those blocks. And then I work my ass off the next 90 days, and then I review in December. This was my goal. This is what we implemented. How did we do? What move the needle? You analyze those metrics. So if you're a new trainer and you have three clients and you want to have a full book of business, what are you going to do? I just need to get more clients. That's a terrible fucking answer. You're not aligned with what you truly want because you don't have anything you can implement that's action-based. What are you going to do to get more clients? Some of the biggest struggles I hear from gym owners and trainers who are independent. They don't have a plan of attack. They're just kind of going through the motion. They show up, train a couple clients, and then go on to the next day. How are you moving the needle for your business? You may need to wake up on a Saturday or Sunday, 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. and just focus on creating things that are going to move the needle for your future. If you're a new trainer, you need to just focus on building a full book of business. So if you're at a gym, how involved are you? Are you there at five? Are you leaving at 10? Are you taking all the classes? Have you watched what the top trainers are doing? Have you found trainers in your area who you're paying to analyze why they're so successful? Is it their assessment? Is it the way that they look, how they talk? What is it? You write down the data points and then you implement them yourself. If you're an independent trainer, how are you getting leads in? If you have seven clients, have you taken every single one of them out and asked for business? Hey, Clark, are you around this weekend? I wanted to take you to a happy hour, my treat, just to thank you for being a great client. If you'd like to bring a family member, friend, coworker, it's on me. Don't worry about it. When they show up, you treat them. If you're smart, you've been training the bartender, so you don't have to pay for it. If you're working with baristas at coffee shops, whatever. You take them there and you enjoy their company. You ask them great questions. What are your goals this next month, this next quarter, in 2026, and so forth? And then you let them know your goals. Right now I have seven clients. My goal is to get to 14 by the end of the year. Right now, what I've been doing is posting online, I've been sending out articles and so forth, but I'm not moving the needle. Could you help me brainstorm on some techniques to get more clients? Maybe you know some people at your work who could benefit from working with me as you have. Can you think of anyone, Clark? You ask better questions. And then you have a conversation around it. Those ants in our head, almost those fears, automatic negative thoughts, that your clients don't want to help you. But you don't realize they're your number one fan. And when trainers are struggling and they come to me, I ask the three same questions. What books are you reading? How are your workouts? When was the last hands-on seminar that you went to to continue your education? And guess what? Every single time, no, no, and no. I'm so busy, I'm burned out, blah, blah, blah. You're not moving your mental needle. You need to be doing things that excite you. You got into this to help people. Well, guess what? You're helping people. But the big thing is you're not able to make your rent or pay off your bills. So maybe you need to charge more. What are you investing into to allow for you to charge more? You can't just say, I want to charge more and do nothing about it. Talk to your clients. One of my goals is to charge$100 per hour in 2026. Right now I'm at$5. I'm going to take this course, it's$800, and it's going to allow for me to level up my business so I can better assess clients in pain. When I complete that certification, I'm going to start charging$100. Would you like to sponsor that certification? And I'm going to keep you at that$75 rate. And if you don't, that's fine. But I want to let you know in the new year, those are going to be my new prices. You have a candid conversation. More times than not, the client will pay for it. They're going to invest into you because they want you to succeed. It's the questions that we're asking. They need to be better. Don't allow for your thoughts to affect AFF E C T, your actions. Ask better questions to your clients and your life will be significantly better. But then we really need to analyze what's worked and what hasn't worked. Go back to the football analogy. If Texas has been run heavy and they're getting stopped, they may need to pivot into a pass heavy offense for the next set of downs to see how it goes. When it comes to pitching, if they had a left-hander go up against Boston and he got smoked, maybe you need to try a right-hander. There's a plan that we're constantly implementing to test to see how we're succeeding from that. And a lot of trainers are not testing. Beta test this for a week, beta test that for a week. I'm afraid of social media. I don't care. Go out there and talk to people in person. How many storefronts have you been to in the last week to tell them you're a trainer in the area? Do they know that you're the number one trainer in Charlotte, in Boston, New York, Miami, wherever? That's a missed opportunity. For the next 90 days, every single day, go to a new store and introduce yourself. Dress the part, smile, shake hands, rub elbows. You are trying to win over your area. The market needs to understand that you are the best trainer. And if they can't find you on social media, they need to see you in life. Don't hide behind the social media curtain. But if the online space is something that you enjoy, you better be posting more. If I were to go to your page right now, do you have a story in there? Could I learn from that story what you do? Are you offering something to your members? I just took a nutrition course. We reviewed food logs. We have case examples. What are you currently struggling with when it comes to nutrition? Have a poll. Tomorrow, 20 hours in, contact every person who comments on that poll. Thank you for commenting. What are your goals with nutrition? If 10 people commented, reach out to all of them and then look at the analytics. How many of them engaged? You don't throw a pity party if no one engaged. Maybe your question sucked. Maybe this is the first time you've ever done it. And people are like, well, that's weird. I've never seen this person do it. So you do it again and again and again for a week straight. I guarantee you, opportunities will present themselves. In class today, someone had 284 followers. I don't have that many. That's not what the person said, but that victim mentality could take over that mindset. Versus imagine giving a talk to an auditorium with 284 people in there. You'd be shitting your pants. But I guarantee you, at least 10% of them would want to buy, invest in you afterwards because you're valuable. You know what you're talking about. You're a qualified trainer. You can help people move better, feel better, lose weight, get bigger biceps, grow those glutes. You are the fountain of youth. Provide that. Let them know that you are their resource. And then you reach out, you offer a 15-minute discovery call, whether it's through Zoom or a FaceTime, you're presentable. It's not loud in the background. Ask great questions, write out some things beforehand. Ask them who their trainer is, who's their nutrition coach, what are they struggling with? What are their goals for the remainder of the year? What are their expectations for 2026? Imagine if I could tell you the next 90 days, I could get you in the best shape of your life. How would you feel? 2025 wasn't your year. You're already writing it off. What if I could tell you 2026 will be your year and you're gonna get promoted? You're gonna move cities because your confidence is through the roof. I'm gonna empower you with that confidence. How would you feel then? You have the ability to change people's lives, but you need to act on it. So if it's social media, my challenge for you to post in your story more. If you've never done YouTube, do that for the next 30 days and then see what worked well, implement a new plan. But 80% of the stuff that you did do, implement that on top of the 20% new stuff. That will be the innovative aspect. And then do it for another 30 days. And then you analyze those 90 days and you see what moved the needle. If you went from 200 followers on social media and you posted every day and you got engaged for 90 days, you analyze what happened. You ask other people who are doing well on social media some pieces of advice that they could analyze your page, give you critical feedback, and then you go out there and do it. Your mentality cannot be affected by someone saying, You're not doing this well, try this. You should think of it like sport. If I'm shooting free throws and a professional coach comes over and says, hey, I notice that your free throws a little off. Try this technique. I'm not just gonna write them off and not try it. I'm gonna implement it for hundreds of shots to see what happens. If before I shot a hundred times and I made 70, and now I shot a hundred times and I made 80, holy shit, it worked. I'm gonna implement this more, more, more, more, more. Action is the name of your game. That's what you really need to have as your focus point for your strength. If it's not right now and it's a weakness, a year from now you should be able to reflect back and say, wow, I remember when my weakness was not action-based. Now it's one of my strengths. And now I'm going to improve the efficacy of my action, the quality of it. I can delegate to a team now. Well, right now I can't do that, but that's okay. So the beauty of this analysis, it's looking at what you're good at, what you can improve, and how you can take that next step so you can have the life that you've always wanted as a trainer. Make enough money where you enjoy helping people at a rate where you're really proud to tell people, I charge$150 per hour. I'm able to train 15 to 20 hours a week, work on some fun projects on the side to drive some streams of revenue. Every victim trainer out there who's bitching and complaining, it's so hard to make money. How do they get into the industry? They read a textbook and now they're twiddling their thumbs because they don't know what to do. And they go waste$5,000 on some dumbass business coach sitting in front of a Ferrari. Way to go there, Ty Lopez. Check out his stuff. Only$112 million lawsuit from the SEC because he's a douchebag. Don't fall for that bullshit. See what you can do today and then get excited about the next 90 days. What most of us do is because we're afraid to see what our true potential is, because we don't set lofty goals. We make them very ambiguous. I want to lose 10 pounds, I want to get bigger arms, but we don't follow through with it because you have no one holding you accountable. I challenge you to get in your story and show and tell your followers your goals for the next 90 days. I want to make$12,000. Right now I'm making roughly eight. My goal is to be able to get seven new clients, pay me at my hourly rate of this. Let's see what I can do. Cheer me on, team. And then you focus on getting into your story and talking about it. People are gonna follow you. It's a commercial. They want you to succeed. You think they want you to fail, but you're gonna have so much support pouring in. Way to go, man. Keep pushing. You got this. I believe in you. Holy crap, I can do this. I can turn my passion for fitness into career. I love helping people, but most important, I'm getting paid for it. You can do this. But the hard part is sitting down, recognizing why you're not where you should be, and how can you get there? Invest into this activity. This exercise can change your game if you do it and you have a healthy mindset for action-based principles. You reflect, you review, and you keep on getting after it. I believe in you. I fuck up all the time. The Swift that we did in 2020, way different than it is now. What can I do better? We have the best certification in the world. There's no doubt in my mind. We innovated other certifications because trainers would come across us after NASA Mace, ISSA, and say, I'm already certified. Why would I want to get your cert? So we went to the drawing board. What could we implement now that will move the needle in the future? Soft tissue certification. Let's create an assessment protocol. Let's help your clients get out of pain, link up with a physical therapist. There's no certification out there. Now we have Chat GPT, have conversations, ask great questions to it. And the feedback that you have coming in can go into that innovative strategy to move your needle of the future. We're nowhere near where we want to be. I want to be recognized as the number one certification in the world. Go ask 10 trainers right now. What are they going to say? NASA, MACI, SSA. Well, guess what? 90% of them are going to quit. That's just the statistics around that. And I feel for those nine because they're not set up for success. If they would have learned programming, implemented the CCA, and had a healthy mindset around the assessment and sales, they would be able to do it. And they would constantly be moving the needle towards success. But unfortunately, there's nothing out there like that. So when we reflect over the last quarter, now you look at the future. What can you do now? I challenge you. Put your big boy pants on, your big girl pants on. You can do this. It's scary. You probably have a scarcity mindset, a negative mindset, automatic negative thoughts floating around. Fuck them. It's time for you to see what you're capable of. I know you can do this. Put pen to paper, get into your story, and let's fucking go. See what you can do in these next 90 days. I guarantee you you're going to achieve things that you never thought was possible. Let's have a conversation 90 days from now and see how you do. Get after it and remember big biceps are better than small ones and keep showing up.