COACH'D
Join us on COACH’D, a podcast where the some of the world's top athletes, coaches, and performance experts come together to share their stories, insights and secrets to what has made them successful in their own right.
Think of it as a "locker room" chat — unfiltered, raw, and real. We dive deep into all things athletic performance, wellness, science and culture.
COACH'D
BRAIN DUMP: Why Personal Trainers Make More Than S&C Coaches
The financial and professional gap between personal trainers and strength and conditioning coaches reveals fundamental differences in how they approach attention, branding, and business development. This thought-provoking analysis explores why personal trainers frequently achieve millionaire status while S&C coaches struggle despite their expertise.
• Knowledge ego in S&C leads to endless pursuit of education without application
• Personal trainers understand attention is currency and build their personal brands
• S&C coaches often remain invisible, limiting their audience and opportunity
• Top personal trainers sell solutions while S&C coaches typically sell time
• Entrepreneurial mindset vs employee mindset creates vastly different outcomes
• Building trust through content and client transformations expands reach
• Personal trainers leverage their knowledge into scalable products beyond 1:1 coaching
• COVID-19 revealed the vulnerability of coaches without established audiences
• Focus on serving athletes with clear communication rather than impressing peers
• Using current positions and credibility to build your brand before transitions occur
Join my upcoming second mentorship program focused on the business side of coaching and brand development. Message me on Instagram if you're interested in learning more about applying these concepts to your coaching business.
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https://open.spotify.com/show/1YJMztpYSgnPusEXB3fWcc?si=FJsWITv7QdSCSgCt3lkElw
Join us on Coached, a podcast where some of the world's top athletes, coaches and performance experts come together to share their stories, insights and secrets to what has made them successful in their own right. Think of this as a locker room chat unfiltered, raw and real. We dive deep into all things athletic performance, wellness, science and sporting culture and sporting culture. Hear from those who have played, coached and built their way to the top with athletes from the field, coaches and medical in the performance setting, or owners, managers and brands in the front office, while also getting an insider's view on my own personal experiences in this high-performance world. If you're passionate about sports, curious about the minds of champion athletes or looking for information and inspiration on your own journey, coach is the place for you. Welcome back to another episode of Brain Dump. An interesting thought I had not too long ago after having a few conversations around this is we continue to see personal trainers make millions and millions of dollars across the board. Now, obviously, that's not every personal trainer, that's the, the upper echelon, that's the, the one percent. But when we look across into the snc world, when you're taking, let's say, even the top 30 percent of personal trainers and, in regards to their income, the brands that they've built, the influence that they have. It absolutely destroys 99% of the strength and conditioning world and it's a really interesting place to start and think about.
Speaker 1:Essency is crucial in so many ways, yet it's so hamstrung and stuck in some of its way of thinking as a profession and I truly believe that the biggest thing is it's so ingrained in education. It's about climbing the ladder of education versus about climbing the ladder of actually applying your craft and actually transferring that education and that knowledge into practice and I'll dive into that a little bit deeper, but that's part one is the knowledge ego. I'm calling it so it's not ego, it's knowledge ego. And then part two of that is the attention side of things. Personal trainers understand how important attention is, and attention is, as the great Gary Vee says, the number one attribute that we should be chasing. And personal trainers know how to leverage it, gain it and then also hold onto it to then essentially build not only their personal training business but then build the brands off the back of that. Whereas in the strength and conditioning world, if you share what you're doing or you're giving away insights, you're a bit of a. You're either a show pony or you're sharing too much, or it's a complete opposite. And it's a really interesting way of just thinking about and thinking why so many S&C coaches struggle versus, at the exact same time, so many personal trainers absolutely thrive. So we'll start on probably the branding and marketing side.
Speaker 1:Personal trainers understand that being a person of influence or an influencer as such is simply the easiest, most effective, efficient and best way to grow their business, whereas often S&C coaches are invisible. They don't want to share what they're doing, they don't want to be front and center, they don't want to be known as that person that shares their work. And I get it. There's plenty of reasons why that may be the case, but then you can't have your cake and eat it too and understand why so many personal trainers are just dominating and making millions and so many S&C coaches are barely scraping together a couple of dollars at times. Like S&C coaches, they're so proud to work behind the scenes and not show face, and you know they'll ride with so critical to athlete success, but no one knows about it. And when no one knows about it, no one can ever find out about you, and your skills alone can't attract attention, especially if you're not within an organization, whether that be a professional sport or whatever else it may be, if you're working privately, your skills don't get you athletes. They might keep them, but they're not going to get them alone.
Speaker 1:So you have to understand that building that brand, or building that personal brand in particular, alongside of that, at the exact same time, is really really important, because people relate to people and the top personal trainers some that come to mind lately, like the James Smoos, the Adam Sullivans, the Kayla Easteens they become brands themselves and then whatever they attach their name to is just going to go well because they've got the credibility, they've got the proven track record that no matter what they connect their name to, it's going to be successful. And that can be within the same say vertical of health and fitness, or that could be a little bit to the left, like, say, for example, adam sullivan with front runner, which is a clothing brand, and some of the clubs that he has there kayla instynes, when she had her sweat out before she sold that for hundreds of millions of dollars like it's still within the space, but they are slightly verticals to the side outside of just the one-on-one, uh, small group, whatever it may be training side of things. The other thing that they realize is that personal trainers have the better ability to sell solutions where S&C coaches really are selling time. Now, I know that can sound a bit counterintuitive, because both are really, really important, especially as a younger PT and as a young S&C. You need to do your apprenticeship, you need to be on the gym floor, you need to be coaching, you need to be looking at ways how to master the craft itself. If you don't have that, you're building a shit foundation of not having the actual knowledge to then utilize that knowledge in any way, shape or form because you don't know what problems you're solving. You're kind of just you know, spraying and praying a little bit. But off the back of that, once you understand the problems that your clients athletes, whatever they have, you can then start to create solutions for them, and they are scalable products that could be online programs, that could be apps, whatever that may be which then create that passive income which disconnect that time for money trade of where personal trainers seem to be a really, really good job with that. They seem to have that entrepreneur mindset where they can understand a problem, identify it and then figure out ways based on previously before understanding and building their personal brand so key that they then have an audience to then leverage and potentially sell that to Versus.
Speaker 1:A lot of time S&C coaches, as I said mentioned before capped by usually on a salary within a club or a specific team or whatever else it may be, or even if they're working for a private organization, which is absolutely amazing as another sort of, I guess, split path you could take, being pro and private. You're on a contract basis or you're capped by the constraints of that business there, where you don't have the ability to ever break free of that mold. And you wonder why, again, time after time after time, again you can't leverage what you're doing at that point in time. And then you realize it's too late once you have left that job and you have no leverage at all because during that time you haven't built anything. So then when you leave you have no ability to then grow. So then you start back at square one, but square one's actually square, negative one, because you have so many steps to build before you even get to that point of being able to even potentially have an audience to then sell anything to. So it's a conundrum and I don't have the solution for it.
Speaker 1:I'm just trying to offer some insights or a different way of maybe viewing things and maybe how other coaches that are involved in sport or are in organizations or whatever else may start to think about how they can build their brand or understand how important it is to build a brand whilst they have that credibility, whilst they have that logo on their shirt, because at some point in time it's going to stop, and then once it stops, you realize it's too late. I think during covid was a prime example of that. Every snc coach started flogging online programs and I know a lot of them didn't make a single cent because they didn't have an audience to sell to. They just panicked and didn't know what to do, and that was the easiest thing to do, so they did that. So it's happened before. Um, yet again, once the dust settled and everyone started wearing their mask, uh, stopped wearing their mask, they just went back to doing the the same thing again.
Speaker 1:Um, so, and it's such a volatile market you can get let go at any single time uh, during those sort of things there, the other thing that what personal trainers do off the back of building that brand credibility is they also build trust, um, they do that through the client transformations. They post in content, whether that be tips, tricks, all that sort of stuff and they use their content channels as proof of expertise. They're constantly getting feedback from clients and they know how to take those results and then show them to other people. And when you're talking about personal trainers as well, they've got large, broad audiences. You know the general public, um, or general population, and it's a big, oh, it's a big market to draw from typically, versus, say, when we're going back to the snc that we don't or they don't quite typically get that uh, big point of view or that big visit. They don't quite typically get that big point of view or that big. They don't quite often get the same visibility.
Speaker 1:You know there's not very often that athletes will publicly talk about their S&C coaches, especially in the professional setting. Many reasons why that can't happen and quite often the stories don't make it to the public eye. So again, you're just doubling down on. Okay, well, if I can't get any recognition publicly, which is not necessarily what I'm after then I just need to double down. I need to get more skills, I need to get more skills, I need to get more skills. And, again, you're never actually growing your potential to build anything because you're just focusing on your skills. Again, s&c coaches typically work with athletes. So, as we know, the athlete market is much smaller, especially when you consider the number of pro jobs that are actually available compared to the general fitness market. Um, and then your earning potential is obviously tied to the size of the team, um, the role, all those sorts of things there as well, versus, again, if you're a personal trainer, you've got clients everywhere. Every single person walking past you is a potential client, and especially if they know who you are.
Speaker 1:Going back to that previous one, again, when you're looking at the personal trainers, the top ones think like entrepreneurs, and S&C coaches really think like employees and let me double down on this point, because it's probably one of the most important ones that we sort of have gone through. And you're looking at those top people that I mentioned there before. They've learned that their knowledge and training is a business. So what do they do? They build apps, they build books, they build these global communities that then allow them to bring in this revenue, this untapped revenue, when they're not training people physically. Now, training people physically may be a part of that. So you're looking at okay, well, if I am training someone or I am trading my time for money, how can I leverage that more to get better value out of that? Now, is that a high ticket? Do you charge a whole lot? Is that where you don't charge as much but you have your ideal avatar or your ideal population you're working with? But you can use that for content? What do that may look like? They understand that that is the key.
Speaker 1:Versus when you're in the S&C space, it's kind of like, well, especially if you're in the team, that's not possible and really you're working these crazy, crazy hours and the salary really is dependent on the employer, um, and not your ability to grow as a brand. So you're never growing yourself as a brand. You're never putting that emphasis on what is them, what are the verticals that I can chase? What are the things that I can build around me versus? I just need to think about I need to get more skills, more skills, more skills. I need to get you know this athlete better here. So I need to focus on programming, programming, programming yeah, that's really really important to build and again, in those early years is very critical.
Speaker 1:There seems to be the thing where snc coaches just want to appeal that they know more, that that they have the greater knowledge than someone else or whatever else. And that's awesome, especially if you're talking at conferences and seminars and things like that. But when you're talking to the general public, it doesn't matter if you can speak smarter or sound smarter or appear smarter than other people, because in the day, it's about serving the athletes, so the athletes can't understand some of that verbiage or that terminology. Anyway. So, being able to dial that down, being able to understand who your avatar or who your audience is, that you're speaking to, yeah, it might look really basic or really simple to a very educated or highly reputable coach, but they're not paying your bills. At the end of the day, the athletes are, and if they are paying your bills then you can speak to them, but if they're not, then you're probably better off on focusing on giving value to the athlete, not trying to worry about catering to speaking to, whatever it may be, to the people above you or the people that you want to be or respect within the industry, because, again, like I said, they're not the ones that are paying your bills. So don't worry about how you may come across or how you may look in that regard. Just try and have a go and see how you go with it, because whenever you put them first, or your athletes, whenever you put them first, then by doing that as a bit of a intern or a flow, you will then be able to help yourself, whether that be with revenue, whether that be with exposure, whatever. That may be Something to think about why there are so many more millionaire personal trainers and there are millionaire S&C coaches Very excited as well that I this this week will be launching my second mentorship.
Speaker 1:Now this conversation was brought up a few weeks ago in the mentorship as well, but again few, few conversations. So probably with a recency bias here around the the whole topic itself. But if the business side of it, in particular, if you're a coach listening to this and you're going, okay, okay, that makes a lot of sense, but I don't know where to start. There is a business component to it how important brand is, how to build it, and then the most important thing is like how to leverage it and use it in a way that's actually, you know, applicable to whatever you need to do and use that audience for. So if that's something you're interested in, just contact me on social media and then I can happy to pass on some information there around what the mentorship looks like there and how it may be helpful for you. I'm not lying when I say this.
Speaker 1:In the first intake I had a lot of inquiries and I probably turned away more than I accepted because I felt like going back to this whole conversation circling full 360, that a lot of the people that were applying bounce from mentorship to mentorship to mentorship, trying to learn more, but never actually apply anything. And if you're doing that, you're never going to get ahead. You're never going to do anything because you're stuck in that constant. I need to learn more, I need to learn more, I need to learn more cycle versus actually learning and applying, learning and applying, learning and applying. So if you're someone like that, that's absolutely cool. I will just not. I'll be really open and honest with you and say that I don't think it's the right thing for you right now and you need to actually go on and apply those things. Alternatively as well, this is the mentorship specifically for people that are in the private space. So if you are in in pro sport, I'm happy to talk to you around. That, particularly the branding, might be an interesting piece for you.
Speaker 1:But outside of that, the performance side of things I personally don't think I would have. I don't think adds a whole lot of value to how you operate and what you do, and I would probably feel a little bit of what's the word I'm looking for? I can't think of the word I'm looking for. I can't think of the word I'm looking for, but the word I'm looking for is I still can't think of it. It's when you think that you're not good enough to say that and present that to someone. That is essentially what it is.
Speaker 1:Anyway. I don't think that either the content around the performance is good enough for someone in pro sport, for a younger coach or a younger facility who's trying to systemize and streamline a few things. I think it's very, very, very valuable, but for a very high level coach that's had a lot of experience in pro sport, I don't think it's. For you, however, the business side of it could be quite helpful. So again, let me know if there is any interest there. Just drop me a message on Instagram and we can go from there. Have a great week.
