How to Become THE BEST Personal Trainer in 2026 | Common mistakes new trainers make

“Get certified and start making $100K” sounds great until you are standing on a gym floor with five clients back to back and no real plan. We get blunt about why the personal training industry chews up new coaches, and why the biggest problem is not motivation, it is the lack of supervised experience, real systems, and honest expectations. If you are thinking about becoming a personal trainer, or you are already certified but feel stuck, this conversation is your reset.

We talk about the trap of choosing a fitness certification like a fast-food combo meal, then trying to coach using only a textbook and confidence. We lay out what actually builds a sustainable personal training career: hands-on learning seminars, internships, shadowing, and mentorship that forces you to explain your choices. Assessment and program design are not buzzwords here. We dig into how to think through exercise selection, how to handle clients who show up with knee pain or shoulder issues, and why “I like this exercise” is not a coaching process.

We also get practical about money, marketing, and longevity. We walk through the real math behind making $100,000 as a trainer, how gym splits change the equation, and why your schedule can burn you out long before your passion does. We share how to pick the right gym environment, what questions to ask managers, and why people skills and communication often beat another weekend certificate. If this helps, subscribe, share it with a trainer who needs the truth, and leave a review with the skill you think every new coach should master first.

How to Become A Successful Personal Trainer Vol. 2: Becoming a personal trainer in 2026 takes more than just a certification—it requires real-world skills, business awareness, and the ability to avoid the mistakes that hold most new trainers back. In this episode, we break down exactly how to get started in the fitness industry and what it really takes to succeed early on.

We cover the step-by-step path to becoming a certified trainer, how to gain experience, and how to build confidence on the gym floor. Most importantly, we dive into the most common mistakes new trainers make—like poor client communication, lack of programming structure, and neglecting the business side of fitness—and how to avoid them.

If you want to fast-track your success and stand out in a competitive industry, this episode will give you the clarity and direction you need.

Want to become a SUCCESSFUL personal trainer? SUF-CPT is the FASTEST growing personal training certification in the world!

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

Website: https://www.showupfitness.com/
Become a Successful Personal Trainer Book Vol. 2 (Amazon): https://a.co/d/1aoRnqA
NASM / ACE / ISSA study guide: https://www.showupfitness.com

Transcript

Intro And The OnlyFans Comparison

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Howdy y'all. Welcome back to the Show Up Finance podcast. Today we're going to talk about the career as a personal trainer. I want to start the show off by sharing a little clip from Instagram.

SPEAKER_00 0:10

99% of trainers are just absolute garbage. Trainers, as you would imagine, this rant is for you.

Why Most Certifications Fail Trainers

The Long Game Career Mindset

My Education And Early Gym Years

Mentorship And Real World Assessments

The Real Math Of $100K

Hunger And People Skills That Matter

Scheduling Confidence And Angst

Picking Gyms That Level You Up

Passion Standards And Closing Challenge

SPEAKER_01 0:19

That rant from a degree in kinesiology coach of 20 years might rub you a little wrong, but personal training is a lot like starting an OnlyFans. Everyone thinks, hey, I look good. I got some abs, some TNA. I'm going to make great money. I just need to post a couple of times. But then the reality hits. No clients, no systems. You don't know how to get people out of pain, assess, program, or sell. Certifications don't pay you. The skill does, the experience that you gain under proper supervision. Consistency will beat hype anytime, any day. Professionals beat hobbyists. And that's exactly why 90% quit. If you're thinking about starting a career as a personal trainer, let's just start off on how you begin. Most people will go to the Google machine, how to become a personal trainer. You click on one of the first ads, NASA, ACE, ISSA, the fast food marketing companies of fitness. You get one of their bundles. Right now, NASA has, I think, four certs for$3,000. You get all this material that's online. You do not get to speak to anyone, call centers, overseas, you don't get to speak to fitness professionals. It's AI. You go through the material, you have no idea what the hell you're learning. So then you go to Google and you type in how to pass this. You find some study guides, you find some notes, and then you pass the test after maybe a month or two, maybe a year, because you're confused, you're frustrated, and you don't know what the heck you're doing. You take a photo and you say, hey, I'm certified. Can't wait to start training people. But then you look at other careers, doctors, lawyers, professors. How do they get that status, which is a respected status? They have to get into the trenches and learn as much as possible. And then they learn even more under supervision. In my book, I interviewed thousands of trainers. I took the most respected ones. And the common denominator was the mindset and the expectations for a career in this. We get into it to help people, but then we want the shortcut to make$100,000 in the first five weeks. We want to be an online trainer, but you haven't even trained people. So the coaches that I highlight in my book, first off, if you look at their bios, they don't list off all these acronyms. I got my FRC and PES and my NISM and all this other stuff. They're trainers because they understand what it took to get where there are. There's no one specific cert that got them there. It was being in the trenches for numerous years and going to hands-on learning seminars. They leveled their skills up and then they got back in the trenches and rinsed and repeat. The average trainer quits within 12 months. It's interesting to also look at those numbers because the average trainer doesn't do any hands-on learning. Now, the best thing that you can take is that mindset from these coaches, where it's the first 10 years of your career, focus on learning. The second 10 years is really when you're going to make the most amount of money. And then a lot of people in that last 10 years want to give back. So they get into teaching and they're talking at events. They're giving back. My career as a trainer, the first five years, I was in school. I'm not saying you have to take this route, but I think it's really good for you to hear my path and you can compare it on the path that you think that you want to do. When I got a degree in kinesiology, mind you, the it's not five years of just learning kinesiology. I'm going to take a class on program design, then I'll have philosophy, psychology, and another random film class. But then when you get into the second half of getting your degree, especially when it's in sciences, you are learning the chemistry and the anatomy and the programming. I did a year internship at the University of Connecticut, and I learned from the best minds in the world. Every single day I was being challenged to level up. And the cool thing about that process, which I think is really important to understand your journey and comparing it to mine, is that I would learn something and then talk about it. I would come to school the next day and have a conversation about it. And anything I didn't understand, I would get clarity from that expert. And then I would be in the laboratory working with the science. And then I would go out there and learn more. While I'm learning all this, I worked at a physical therapy clinic for seven years as a technician. So I got a really good idea of how pain management worked. I also did an internship with cardiac rehab. I worked a lot with athletes. The first job that I ever got was after five years of learning. I worked at a gym in Alameda called Bladium, and I worked with the lower end population, meaning that the pricing wasn't that much. And then I also worked at another gym, Renaissance Club Sport, which was high-end. So I really got to gain my reps and look at the market of what I enjoyed with my background in movement, working with special populations, and then working with general pop. After three years of doing that, I didn't take any time off. You're going to hear that a lot. I want to have five weeks off every year. In the beginning, you're not going to get that. You have to earn your stripes. I don't recall taking any vacations. I worked all the time. Any opportunity I had, I would train. So three years of doing that, I saw an opportunity to teach at a school, NPTI. And the next two years of teaching, I would go every quarter to a seminar. I'm learning from Tony Genilcourt, Dean Somerset. I'm going to the ISSM, perform betters. And I come back, I dissect the material and better my teaching. When I first started teaching, I sucked. Fast forward five years later, I was significantly better because of all the courses that I was taking. Every hands-on course that I went to, I would come back leveled up, and my career would be so much further along. And I would reflect, oh my God, I can't believe I was teaching that stuff six months ago. After 15 years of training and teaching personal trainers, I started our certification. And that's what I've really been focusing on these last five years. 2025, we're the fastest growing certification in the world. Trainers go through our program and they're learning not just my anecdotes, it's a team of professors, sports scientists, physical therapists, registered dietitians, psychologists, people who we work and collaborate with on a weekly, monthly, yearly basis to better the program. So we're providing information for you so you don't have to make those mistakes. So then you can go out there and focus on learning while you're gaining supervised experience. But again, what most trainers do, unfortunately, is they get that cert and then they train everybody on how they train themselves. Most trainers do not have someone overseeing their sessions. They don't bring in a program and have a conversation on why they're going to do a TRX squat versus a goblet squat. Why are you doing walking lunges versus a Bulgarian? Why are you doing a step-up corona press or a stability ball squat press? You have the conversations and you critically think you're not a cog in the system. So my biggest advice for new trainers is to set very, very clear expectations that you can turn this into a career, but it's your mindset. Do you want to be like an OnlyFans model on there who thinks that they're making all this money because it's glorified from social media? Or are you a professional? And how you address this career is what's going to separate you from the quote unquote saturated training market is to not do what every other trainer does. You have guys like this who has a huge platform, a half a million people. And he says 99% of trainers are garbage. And I made a comment on there. I said, that's actually pretty low. I'm not calling you garbage. What we're saying is the process and the expectations. And when you go through years of learning this stuff with proper supervision, you're not competing against those certified trainers. And I can always tell an insecure, newer trainer because they list out all their certs. It makes them feel better. I got my NASA, I got my ISSA, I did my ACE, I did a PN1, and they list all this stuff out. But great trainers who've been doing it for 20 plus years, they just say trainer. Today's podcast isn't about what's the best certification. It's the path that you need to take to give you the skills for your confidence to better serve your clients. I remember the first client that I assessed, Paul Lett, vividly. I talked for 90 minutes. Most assessments are 60. I did 90, talking about the size principle. I remember I drew it out for. Oh, you're going to get slow Twitch recruitment first and you're going to get fast twitch and blah, blah, blah. She didn't give a rat's ass. I was fortunate. My mentor, Adam, he went to MPTI, and that's how I first heard about MPTI, because he was a rock star. He would hide on the other side of the wall and then he would give me feedback after my assessment was done. Bro, that fucking sucked. What the hell? You're talking the entire time. And you told her at the end it was expensive to train with you? What are you doing? He helped build my sales skills, but not in a sleazy way. There's all these business coaches out there that will tell you, oh, you need to pitch this$7,500 package right here, and you're the best qualified thing in the world, and this is how you're going to do it. It's like teaching a person who's selling crack on how to sell better. The average trainer doesn't need to learn sales. They need to master the fundamentals. Programming. If a client comes in with pain, what do you do? Do you have a physical therapist on your team? And time and time again, when I interview trainers, because I'm in the trenches, I see trainers, hundreds of trainers per month at different gyms, anytime, fitness, crunch, lifetime, equinox with our partnership. I'm consulting with them regularly and I'm asking them questions. Where are you struggling? What's your background? Can you tell me the muscles around the shoulder? What about the knee? How do you assess a client if they come in with knee pain, low back pain? What's your process? And time and time again, they don't have one. There's no systems. I like to do walking backwards through knee pain. That's not a system. You like going to a doctor and saying you have a stomachache and say, okay, let's cut you open. Let's see what's in there. There's a process. They're gonna take blood, they're gonna consult with other people. There's time that passes. And I really feel for new trainers because with the toxicity of social media, we want to skip a lot of steps. So if your mindset is, I want to become a professional, even if you want to do this as a side hustle, that's fine. But you need to learn and master the fundamentals. And if you're just reading a book by yourself and you don't get to ask questions to someone for clarity, you're gonna be lost in that sea. And I'm gonna bet against you. I'm not being a dick, but statistics will say you're not gonna make it. 90 plus percent will quit within the first couple of years. And it makes perfect sense. And it's not knocking the trainer, as I've said numerous times, it's the process. When you have billion-dollar marketing companies who can pump out all these bogos, buy one, get one free. You think you're getting a steal. Oh, this great information. Oh my God, I got my NASA. I'm respected. The number one accredited certification. What the fuck does accreditation even mean? You don't know. Have you gone through the accreditation process like we have? It took NASA 18 years. It took ACE 18 years. It's all bureaucracy. These textbooks don't care about your success. They want you to buy the next cert. And if you don't think so, go to one of their websites and say, can I speak to a representative about becoming a personal trainer? And then when you speak to that rep, ask them their background. How long have you been a trainer for? Oh, um, actually, I'm I'm just a sales rep and you should get these four certs. Have you ever trained anyone? Do you know what it's like? Like, how much money can I make? Oh, we have job place, blah, blah, blah. Where are you going to place me? Anytime fitness? No knock, but I've never met a trainer who's making well over$100,000 at Anytime Fitness. So they they lead with the flashy lures of what social media is all about. Making$100,000. And I'll be 100% honest. I play the game. We need to compete with these billion-dollar companies. So I will use hooks how to make$100,000 because that's what people will click on. But then we have to provide amazing content that gets people to think differently with the notion that we want that quick nugget. We want to make that first 10,000. But if you take a step back and you really do your research, and I want you to reflect back when you're in high school and you had those career counselors, what do you want to do? I don't fucking know. Well, go speak to this person, go speak to that person, go to this job fair, learn from people that are doing these careers and ask them questions. And then if you like something, go and intern, shadow, do it for free for a couple months. That's the great thing about college. People love to knock college. Oh, college is a waste of money. It just depends. Why are you doing it? What you learn in college is they set you up for a career. And you have to go out there and shadow an intern and get a piece of what it's like to be in that field. So you're not just blinded. I feel for trainers, once they get that textbook cert, they go to a gym and they think it's going to be this crazy hiring process. You literally show up, and if you look the part and you're on time, the bearer danger is so damn low, they're like, okay, we're going to hire you. And you're like, um, do I need to show you my cert? No, don't worry about it. Just sign this piece of paper. You're starting tomorrow. You show up and you go, What do I do? Oh, you got five clients today. And your first one, she's 50, 75 pounds overweight, wants to work on her shoulder strength. Well, what? I didn't learn how to do this. Oh, yeah, they're here in five minutes. Go out there and train them. And you have to take them through a workout. How crazy is that? And we don't call it out. Get the next certification. Get the next certification. You need a program that's going to set you up for success where you get to ask questions critically thinking. Why did we do this? Why didn't I do this? What are your thoughts on this approach? I'm going to do a straight set with a client. I'm going to do 18 minutes of foam rolling. I saw a trainer do that the other day. My mind was just thinking, why the fuck would you do 18 minutes of foam rolling? There's no person in my entire life that I've met that, oh, I like to foam roll for 18 minutes. What's your why? And so when you really dig into the trenches, you need to interview hundreds of trainers. And I'm not talking about going to Reddit where there's an avatar on there of Batwing 13 telling you that I've been a trainer for 20 years. This is what I did. I want to have a conversation with an actual human. Get on a Zoom call, do a FaceTime, and pay them for their time and ask great questions. If you were me, how would you start your career over? What were the biggest struggles? This trainer over here said they're making$100,000. How is that possible? When you do the math, making$100,000 is pretty damn hard. You need to be charging at least$100 and bringing home$100. And if you were doing 20 sessions a week, that's eight grand a month. That's roughly$100,000,$96. Not factoring in taxes or any of that stuff. Now, if you work at a gym and you charge$100, well, now you're only getting$50, maybe$30 in some cases. I know some great gyms that give salaries,$50,000 for the year, and that's a great starting opportunity. But you could be trading 12 hours a day. They're charging the premium, whatever it may be, and you're just getting that salary. And after a while, you're going to get bitter. I can do this. It's so easy. They're taking all the money from me. Okay, go out there and find the clients. Who's your brand? What's your brand? What's the name on your back? Because when you go to Equinox, people are showing up because of Equinox and the weird fucking advertisements they have in their gyms. They go there for the exclusivity, the name. They think the trainers are the best. My opinion, they're mediocre. They look the part, they get a job, and they're out there doing whatever they want to do because managers are not overseeing sessions. How are your people skills? Can you communicate well? Ask great questions. If you just talk for 90 minutes, you're not going to make it. I was very fortunate to have great managers. So if you get into a gym where there's 50 trainers there and you're just thrown to the sharks, who's your mentor? Who's going to be guiding you along? Is it someone that's been there for five years and it's just all confirmation bias, survivorship bias? They've been there for 10 years. They must know what they're doing. What's your background? What classes have you taken? When was the last seminar you went to? Oh, no, you know, my system is the right system because of my anecdotes. Imagine if that's how science worked. Oh, Lance Armstrong is now the leader of cancer research because he had testicular cancer and he beat it. Did he beat it? Or the doctors, the oncologists? That would never happen in medicine or science. That's called anecdotal evidence. In the fitness industry, we were blinded by social media. Confidence, someone in front of a microphone saying, This is how you're supposed to do it. I have 200,000 followers. My method, the WEC method. What's your background? Did you go to school for this? I'm not saying you have to go to college. I'm saying you need to learn, learn, learn. And when you're tired of learning because you're on the verge of burning out, you need to learn even more. 10 years, set that expectation. The first 10 years of your career, just learn. Learn about bodybuilders, learn about physique competitors, learn about marathon runners, eating disorders. Get into the trenches, learn about it online in books and journals, but then consult with the professionals. Pay them their hourly rate. Go to seminars. That's how you level yourself up. Your thirst for continuing education should be endless. And the hungrier that you are, the more successful you're going to be. I've met trainers that have fast tracked, what I just said, 10 years of learning within a couple of years because they're doing a seminar a month. And those are the people that I highlight because I love those stories. They did it better than I did. If I could go back and go to college, I probably wouldn't. I would find the best trainers and pay them and observe their sessions, travel the world for a couple of years. You're going to rack up a ton of debt, yes, but I'm fast tracking the process. Took me 10 years. I would do it in two or three. And I'm going to gather all that data and continually be in the trenches training. Try out different techniques. I'm going to try doing small group training. I love learning from trainers who have different systems because it gets me to think differently. I'm not just throwing one, this is the only way to train. No, there's lots of ways to do it. Lots of ways to skin a cat, as they say. But you need to constantly be learning. That's the first thing I talk about in my book, hunger. The trainer who's the most hungriest, I don't even know if that's proper English, but if you are hungry and you really want this, you will make it work. But you have to have a growth mindset. A scarcity mindset is going to set you up for failure. Because you need to be learning from the best if you want to become the best. And what does the average trainer do? They go out there and they try to gain experience without supervision. So if you're listening to this and you're a newer trainer, you're thinking about becoming a trainer, and you hear that, you know, no, no, no, trainers don't do that. There's there's an educational project to this, right? Like, oh, this is all science-based. No, you read a simple textbook, you go out there and you try to make it. 10% of trainers will make it. 10%! That's nuts. No wonder why we get compared to OnlyFans models. So if you don't want to be that stigma, you need to be the professional. You need to really master those people skills. Get out there and take classes on how to communicate. Learn from people in other fields, the best communicators. Sign up for a meetup group that just works on presenting. Get over the fear of talking. I'm not talking about talking on social media, I'm just having great conversations. One of the best pieces of advice I have when I started working at Bank of America, because when I was training at Renaissance, these are very high-end clients. I had an opportunity to work at a bank, managing$100 million in assets. I skipped the process. How is that possible? How can I get into banking? Because I trained someone. The networking skills, those people skills are so important. And it's the same with fitness. The better that you can relate to people, the more professional you are, the better questions that you ask. Especially if you're younger, it's going to be a lot more challenging for you to make it in this industry because you have your age going against you. If you're older, it's actually easier. I always chuckle when I see people online, like I'm in my 40s, I'm in my 50s, I'm thinking about becoming a trainer. You're going to crush it because you have life experience. Now do what you did for your previous career and implement the same thing with fitness, and you will make it. If you're new, the mentality is I want it fast and now. Like social media, I want to get a million followers so then I can make all this money. It's all glorified. It doesn't happen like that. Go look at that West guy who just went back to jail because he's selling a bunch of phony programs and he has all this Ferraris and stuff, going back to prison. It's all smoke and mirrors. Interview people in other professions to find out what they did for success. That would be really smart. Go interview small business owners, restaurant owners, restaurant owners. Owners and gym owners, 81% fail within the first year. So I want to be working around entrepreneurs who have that gifted mindset. The most important lessons you can take from today's podcast is if you want to be successful, you cannot interview broken trainers, trainers with a broken mindset, trainers who are not in the trenches, A, training, but B, going to seminars and learning from experts. Those are the best trainers, hands down. I'm thinking of some trainers off the top of my head that I've interviewed. Johnny from Equinox, constantly going to seminars every month. Top 15 trainer over there. Joe from Lifetime. In his first year, I think he went to like four or five seminars. Now he's running a gym at Lifetime. You don't hear about those stories. The other Joe making over$200,000, I did that podcast maybe a month or two ago. What did he do during COVID? He just learned, learned, learned, learned. If you focus on learning and helping people better, that approach is going to separate you from the toxic influencer trainers that are selling you a fake dream. I had some questions about what were some awkward moments as a new trainer. Really, if I could go back and be omnipresent, overseeing what I'm doing, time management is huge. I would be at the gym all the time. I was at the gym a lot because I worked at two of them. So I'd go to one Bladium at from six to 12. I would drive to Walnut Creek and I'd be there from two to eight. And I would do that six days a week. I would continue to be present, but I would work on better managing my schedule. And as I became more confident, I would be in control. In the beginning, I would take anything and everything, which you need to do to a certain degree. But once you start gaining that confidence, you go from one assessment that you close out of 10 to five. Then I'm going to start letting people know I have this three o'clock available and that's it. They need to change their schedule to work with me. And as a new trainer, as Megan said, I love her little comment. She said it's like her beginning schedule was like Swiss cheese, holes all over the place. That can burn you out. So the confidence that comes from, no, I know you need me. So here's the slots that are available. And you list them for the client, and then they fill in those slots. I had this trainer one time, very, very successful in the Bay Area. And she would send out her time slots on a Sunday night to all of her clients, and then they would fill them in. So she made her own schedule. That's bigger thinking right there. That's confidence. And in the beginning, we lacked that confidence. You hear about imposture syndrome all the time, technically called imposture phenomena. But that just comes from a lack of learning. So if you're always learning, you're gonna have that self-doubt. Adam was doing a seminar this last weekend in Oakland. He said, I have imposture syndrome up here teaching trainers. That's normal because you're doing something you're not comfortable with. That means it's the right thing. I just don't like the word imposture syndrome. It sounds too much like upper cross syndrome, and you know I don't fucking like those terms because they're fake. I know the feeling of being new into something as I first started teaching. I didn't think I would be capable of doing it. That's just a normal process. It's it's angst. I like that word better. Angst, the feeling of like almost like uncertainty, but you know you need to do it. Those little jitters, they're normal, but I'm not gonna classify that as imposture syndrome because that's just gonna get the answer on automatic negative thoughts. Syndrome equals bad. Most people would associate that. I don't like negative words floating around in my mind. Angst sounds pretty cool. I'm gonna use angst. We all have angst. A-N-G-S-T. It's a natural feeling. But to crush it, to lower those voices, you need to go out there and do and do and do and do and do. I didn't talk about any of the other parts of my book, which is help Nick, the successful tenants where trainers are really gonna do well. I don't talk much about the looking the part because it's taboo today. But some of the most successful trainers that I've met, they look the part and they're super professional. They're articulate. I'm not saying you need to be a runway model or have 50-inch biceps, but your potential clientele needs to be able to look at you and say, wow, I want to look like you. You're in great shape. When you go to the gym and you do a workout, you're not getting paid for, but having people come up and say, Wow, that was an impressive lift right there. Or you're doing some cool calisthenics, that kettlebell workout you did was crazy. You were doing some awesome HIT training on the treadmill. I'm going to showcase my capabilities, whatever they may be. And I need to double down on that. So as a new trainer, I want to get into a gym that's going to accept me. That's really important. Because most people will ask, what certification should I get? That's the wrong question. Where do you want to train? Because you may not have a lifetime or equinox. So go to that boutique gym, ask to intern. I'm really passionate about fitness. More times than not, that owner is going to take you under their wings and they're going to teach you so much more than some random textbook. They may say you have to get ACE. You need to get your NSCA. Whatever they say, then do that. I know numerous gym owners that have gone through our program that now have the requirement you have to have your SUF CPT. So if you wanted to train with them, you got to go through our cert. I got NASA. What do you mean? It's the number one accredited cert in the it doesn't matter. That gym owner knows what success looks like. Confidence is huge. The business skills, the people skills, the technical skills, those are things that we teach you. But if you have a gym and they say you have to have NASAM, then you got to go get your NASAM. It's super easy to pass. Play the game and then start gaining experience. But ask yourself, do you want to be in this environment? Is this environment going to level me up so I can go to that next phase? We want to gain experience, but getting experience without supervision is not setting you up for success. Because how do you know that was the right way? I like this analogy that I give in a lot of the seminars. It would be like going from LA to Denver to San Francisco. Did you get to San Francisco? Yes. Is that the best route? No fucking way. It's easy to look at destination like that. But when it comes to trainers, we just look at experience. Oh, this person has 10 years of experience. They must know what they're doing. I would not say that at all. You just survived. Maybe mom and dad are paying your bills and you can kind of coast through it. What are your credentials? When was the last time you took a course? Who's your mentor right now? Do you work with a physical therapist? Who's on your team? What are some of your struggles? And I'm going to drill that person who's going to be working with me because I don't want to be learning under someone who hasn't been taught how to do this professionally and successfully. Anecdotes don't fly with me. And if you think I'm sitting on my high horse over here, go to a gym and ask them about the hiring process. Has it been frustrating? And they will tell you some of the most difficult interviewees are ones who sit on their high horse thinking that they have all this experience and they know what they're doing. I want someone who has a growth mindset and is willing to learn, get into the trenches. If I say be there at 7 a.m., you better fucking get there at 6 a.m. with a cup of coffee and a smile. You're going above and beyond. Trainers don't do that. I would challenge you to throw into your story. I'm thinking about becoming a personal trainer. Is there anyone out there that was a trainer that quit? I would love to talk to you about it and interview them. And then I'm going to go to a lifetime, an Equinox, the best gyms in my area, based on how much they're charging. And I'm going to go to the manager and say, can I interview the five top trainers here? I'm going to go to an Anytime Fitness, an LA Fitness, talk to those trainers, the ones that just started out, the ones who've been there for the longest. And I'm going to gather, gather, gather data points. And then I'm going to come to my own conclusion. Because again, most trainers come into this with the referral from someone at a gym. They go to the gym, they're there all the freaking time. They hate their nine to five. They're talking to a trainer, and the trainer's going to tell you their survival story. Uh, you know, I got my ISSA, so you should go and get that. And they get it, and they're like, well, now what? Oh, now you just got to gain experience. Okay. And then you go out, then you try to start training. How do you train someone with a torn labrum? A client said they already did that. A rotator cuff? What is that? What am I supposed to do? Well, you know, just don't hurt them. Don't train that area. Well, that's not great advice. That's what they did. I want to survey a bunch of people and I want to build my team. The best piece of advice I can give you get to hands-on learning seminars and workshops. Have a mentor who's been in the trenches still training, not some business coach who has weird fucking hair and a mohawk telling you he's making a million dollars a month and this is what you need to do for online coaching. Where is your clientele? Who are you currently training? If they're not training actual people in person, I'm extremely hesitant. I don't want to learn from someone who was doing this 25 years ago and they have no skin in the game. I want to be around trainers, professionals, strength coaches, physical therapists who are working with people because we got into this to help people. And lastly, don't get discouraged if you don't get hired at one of those gyms that you want to go to. You could want to go to a lifetime or an equinox, but that manager at that spot has survivorship bias and they could say something like, Oh, you need five years of experience. That's just what that manager wants. So put your resume out there. Go to an Equinox, go to a crunch, and go to gyms where you can be given an opportunity, but you have to remember the interview is a process of you interviewing them as well. I don't want to be working with someone who has this narrow mindset and it's this is the only way to do things. I want someone who's diverse that is encouraging me to go out there and continue my education. I want a company that's going to give me continue education. If I start training here at this gym, what does your continue education look like? Oh, you know, we have some online videos that you can use. What about hands-on learning? Do you give me money back if I go to a seminar? No, okay. Well, that's gonna be something that's gonna factor into this. Because if I can go to a gym, like I interviewed Emilio up in Canada, and they give him like a thousand bucks a year for continued education, that's awesome. That means you can go to two courses, then not including airfare. That's where I'm gonna utilize my people skills to get my clients to pay for it. But I want compensation for my education. And the last little nugget, most people don't succeed because they're not really passionate about this. They say they're passionate, but in my opinion, they just don't like the path that they were in. They had a job nine to five. They were going to a desk and it was just like, oh, I don't like this. I like going to the gym, wearing my Lululemon and my sweatpants. I feel good. I helped one of my friends lose 10 pounds, like, oh, this is kind of cool. You need to be really passionate about this, passionate to the point of almost insanity, where you're waking up at 4 a.m. on a Saturday and a Sunday because you're excited to learn. You're gonna go to a weekend seminar on a Friday and Saturday when someone offers you tickets to the World Series. Carlos, number one trainer at Equinox here in LA, I love his story because he had an opportunity to go to a Lakers game and he denied it because he wanted to learn more. That's a special mindset. That's super, super passionate about that. That's passionate about your career. That's exactly why five years later, he's still doing it. If you have one little toe in here and you're like, oh, you know, maybe I want to be a trainer, maybe I want to be a bartender, maybe I want to be a real estate agent, oh, maybe I can do this or that. You're not truly serious about this. And that's okay if you want to do it part-time. But success really comes from being involved in a daily basis, growing your book of business and coming up with unique ways for streams of revenue, and you can absolutely turn this into a career. If you found this helpful, send it to a trainer who's thinking about getting certified and challenge them on the process that they're thinking about doing. And then ask them so do you really think reading a book is gonna set you up for success? Oh, you know, I just need to get certified ASAP because this gym said they're gonna hire me. Okay, well, who's your mentor? And are they gonna be challenging you with your programming? Are they gonna help you develop your programs and assessments, help you with sales? Or is that gym selfishly looking for a cog in their system where they just have 15 clients lined up and they want to make money off of you? More times than not, that's the case. So you want to be in an environment that's gonna level you up so you can continue that passion. The passion will burn out, that flame's gonna go away when you're not able to make ends meet doing what you love. I think that's where trainers get frustrated. It's like, oh, I had false expectations. I wanted to make$100,000 because in my last career I was making$100,000. So that's just gonna be an easy transition. No, you got to start from the bottom. If I wanted to become a lawyer or work as an accountant at a top firm, I can't go in there and say, I've been a trainer for 20 years, I got all this life experience, I should be making the same amount over there as I am gonna be here. You start at the bottom of the totem pole. And your work ethic and your passion is what's gonna bring you to the top. It's the same with fitness. You got this. I'm 100% confident you can. And if my tone comes off negative, I apologize. That's not the intent of it. It's it's frustration with the entry standards and how these billion-dollar companies are constantly put on a pedestal as, oh, just do this. It's the best way to do it. That's not the case. You were sold a fly. If you want to become successful, you need to learn, learn, learn, get into internships, get partners with physical therapists and RDs, build your team so you can charge more and make more, and you can absolutely turn your passion for fitness into career. I guarantee it because I've seen it thousands of times. That's why we've had thousands of people get the SUF CPT. They move into level two, they go to seminars, and they are fast tracking their career. And that's exactly what you can do. If you found today's podcast helpful, throw it in your store. And remember big biceps are better than small ones, and keep showing up.