Getting Good at Failure: The Skill Every Personal Trainer Needs

What does it really take to become a great personal trainer?
According to Chris Smith, CEO of Fitness World, it starts with getting good at failure.

Before leading one of Canada’s largest gym companies, Chris was chasing a very different dream — becoming a professional football player. He trained three times a day. Ate nearly 12,000 calories. Met with scouts weekly. Hired an agent. Did the IQ testing, the physical testing, the blood, sweat and tears.
He did everything right.

And it still didn’t work out.

In this episode of Smittyville, we talk about what happens when the plan falls apart — and why that moment might be the most important turning point in your career.

If you’re a personal trainer trying to build a book of business, grow your income, or step into leadership, you’re going to face rejection. Missed sales. Clients who quit. Opportunities that don’t materialize.

That’s not a sign you’re failing. It’s part of the job.
If failure isn’t happening regularly, you’re probably not putting yourself out there enough.

This episode is about resilience, perspective, and why the trainers who last are the ones who learn to reframe setbacks and keep moving forward.
This is the stuff no one teaches you on the gym floor.

Welcome to Smittyville the smartest small town in fitness.
A podcast for personal trainers. 

Transcript

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psychology around how to be a great personal trainer which again is just really getting good at failure cause it happens every day and if it's not happening every day then I would actually argue you're probably not putting yourself out there welcome to Smithville the smartest Small Town in fitness real talk for real trainers hosted by Chris Smith CEO of Fitness World and fitness business journalist Chrissy Van this is the show for personal trainers we talk business leadership money and the stuff no one teaches you on the gym floor welcome to Smithville Population Trainers let's start in Town Hall this is where we talk about the things that actually shape a career in fitness I've sat with you in a room of your personal trainers that go to the Personal Training Institute which is your school and it's a story that comes up a lot because I think a lot of young individuals that have goals for themselves can really relate when they hear somebody that's willing to share hey I had this vision I had this dream for myself and it didn't quite work out the way I planned so for those that aren't familiar with the Christmas story what happened there in terms of training as a collegiate athlete trying to make the you know professional football those were my goals ambitions and dreams at the time and you know training three times a day eating nearly 12,000 calories a day um you know kind of blood sweat tears you name it all going into one thing to try to get there and uh you know I was fortunate I was getting seeing scouts every week and you know doing different types of mental aptitude and IQ testing and physical testing and people watching practices scouts being at games and I really felt like I hey I had a chance um so much so that you know I was having numerous agents contacted me wanted to be my representation and whatnot um so then I eventually even hired an agent and was working real hard to become a professional athlete and doing everything necessary and needed that I could hope for or want to do and then just really kind of one day I had one of the bigger scouts that at this point I probably had three or four different conversations with him like he'd been out to see me a few times and this is really I think in probably March of that year the NFL draft is in April and he came out to say hey I don't think you're actually gonna get drafted I'm like what are you talking about and he's like well the more work we've done the more that I've come to understand like you're not as coachable as we would want and he was actually with the Buffalo Bills I believe was like the team you represented and I was like well I'm not sure I'm understanding like I mean I was a 4.0 student I was like an academic all American strength conditioning you know super strong all all kinds of good stuff but then to have someone says yeah but what we're hearing is that you might not be as coachable as we need and we don't have time for that in the NFL we don't have time for guys with the even the littlest of an attitude problem at that stage right and I was like I was pretty confused right really so I went to my head coach and my defensive coordinator and even my position coach say what did you guys share and they said we just told him the truth and I'm like well what's the truth and I like Chris you're amazingly talented and you're this and this that but like do you not remember this and do you not remember this like we have to maintain relationships with these scouts when you go like and they trust us on these types of decisions or when our credibility matters too so you know those things all happened right and I was like yeah and they were wrong it was issues of like me having a bad attitude at a practice or being a bad teammate at a particular time you know even if it's a moment in time and it might have just been like an example but that's what they're asking has there ever been a time where Chris lost his temper on a teammate is there ever been a time where you felt like Chris wasn't coachable or didn't receive coaching in a good way like whatever questions they asked but it LED them to a path to go yeah why don't they go and draft this kid which ultimately is what happened I ended up not getting drafted I had some free agent tryouts workouts different things but it just didn't didn't happen for me that way I ended up going to play arena football trying to chase the dream of the NFL still ended up with a couple more tryouts but it just it never happened and so ultimately you know cause I was a freak athlete big dude and so ultimately you know was my attitude um in in just the way that I was approaching things and I was probably just too big for my britches in the sense of I had way too much ego and pride tied up into what I was doing so yeah ultimately it was me who probably kept me out of fulfilling my own dreams right which is was a tough pill to swallow as a you know young man or you know kind of growing up and trying to figure things out without question especially the level of dedication that you have to put into pursuing something like that it would have been devastating but naturally and through the episodes of the podcast we'll talk about the pivot that leads to personal training moving up the ranks exceptionally quickly what was it by 30 VP yeah I was a vice president yeah for fitness one is 30 years old and then obviously now CEO running successful gym chains really in an exciting time period of expansion so I'm curious that early failure how do you feel going through that has given you an edge as a leader yeah I mean I think it's about resilience right it's just about you know what does your resilience look like and how do you learn and everything's a learning opportunity or a growth opportunity and or can be if you allow it to be or you can extract the lessons necessary and figure out like what do I do and how do I pivot or you know for every step I'm taking back can I take two forward and trying to figure that out and so yeah that was part of my journey in doing that and that was probably one I wouldn't even say the first evolution of that I mean my parents were divorced when I was 12 years old um my oldest brother went to live with my father I stayed at home with the other siblings and you know my mom um was trying to go back to school and do some things so I was at home at night doing homework and making dinner and so I was forced to mature and grow you know from kind of an early age and kind of already I had maybe some early lessons that helped me maybe even as I then got older in terms of some of the other experiences I had in my own life and my story that prepared me to kind of be resilient if you will um you know in terms of you know not getting maybe what you want but figuring out how to make the best of it mmm hmm resilient but then it also makes sense why maybe some of the quote unquote uncoachable qualities would come to the surface because anyone that's young that's going through those types of things you create most will create a shell of some sort I mean we had a conversation before we started the podcast here where you're like I don't want to feel angry and I'm sure that it still comes up at times in life so why is that something that you're looking at tackling now in your life well I have five children and they're all grown and I've been married for you know 31 years now and so I'm just in a new chapter a new phase of my life with you know my wife and what not so it's just trying to figure out how to continue to be happy and the Tim Tim Mcgraw songs like in your first 30 years uh and for people that don't know that song it's a country song I listen to country music song was your first 30 years I'm more focused I guess at this point in what I would call my last 30 years and you know hopefully I'll live past 81 years old or whatever that might be but yeah just how can I be the most productive person um in in in in every way possible so that's you know as a husband as a father as a you know boss as an entrepreneur as a partner whatever it is and whatever capacity I just want to be the best version of myself that I can be and so yeah I've been doing a lot of me work uh with even other professionals to kind of help me identify like where I'm weak if you will and where I can be stronger what I can learn from what I can reflect on and so yeah that's just kind of LED me down a path of like again just getting perspective and gaining perspective to kind of continue to move forward the way that I want to I asked that with intention only because we know I mean people can choose to become a personal trainer at any age you see that in your school but there's a huge population that are coming through your school that are Gen Z and getting started and I know how I felt at that age was that everyone older than me had it figured it out like they just you think that there's the adults and then there's you scrambling to try and put it all together sure and so what would be your advice to that age group regards to that self improvement pursuit I think the biggest thing I would say is that that this instantness of whatever the right vocabulary we can make up our own words here it's our party everything too fast right the instantaneous nature of like I want everything now and back to like the TikToks and Instagram I can get information now I can go on formally Twitter now X and get the news right now and like whatever everybody wants everything so quickly which I can appreciate but like anything worth having generally speaking takes time so if you want a lot of money not that many people win the lottery where instantaneously they're wealthy it's making sound decisions making good investments living a frugal like you know within your means so on and so forth the compounding interest starts to work in your favor so on and so on and so on and then eventually you're like oh I'm doing okay here right so I just think the instantaneous nature of what everybody wants versus the reality of like what it is so like example we teach s W s W s W N some will some won't so what next some will some won't so what next cause our industry really is about failing forward it's about every every failure is a step actually in the right direction meaning every no leads me to my next yes but unfortunately a lot of people just in anything it's not just personal training really but anything in life if you're told no enough times it's like oh gosh this is really hard I don't know if the juice is worth the squeeze no one really likes being told no cause it just doesn't feel good but so then you you stop and it's the energy to stop and so this generation in particular I think is not you know even less equipped if you will to to deal with failure and so it's understanding and so a lot of what we're doing is teaching them that you know it's about how to yes write good programs and be attentive to your client provide world class customer service and like all the things that go into like a great session but as important yes we're we're having to and it's okay because it's it's worthy to teach the psychology around like how to be a great personal trainer which again is just really getting good at failure cause it happens every day and if it's not happening every day then I would actually argue you're probably not putting yourself out there you're not talking to enough people making enough introductions you're not servicing or helping change lives in a way where you're experiencing that you're just kind of sitting back waiting for something to happen but if you're putting yourself out there and constantly like talking to people and trying to find people to help and whatever then you're gonna experience failure like daily let's head to the trainer circuit real questions real situations Chris shows up listens and mentors from experience failures when you started with Fitness World and like what did that kind of look like for you when you were in the beginning of things I mean I think we're buying the business you know I think we got a lot of things right I mean we're in the middle of a pandemic at that time right five years ago when I bought it uh you know I bought it out of a bankruptcy um through an asset purchase agreement we got lucky right so luck is when hard work meets opportunity that's my definition of luck and you know we were fortunate to get a lot of great people to come work for us uh and come back to work for us I can actually tell you there's a lot of people on my team right now today that told me they took the job cause they just needed a job and they actually didn't think the business had any chance of being successful and so in many ways I would actually say this is part of for all of you even your own trainer journey so what made the business work the people had to do the work but it it someone has to have a vision someone has to be a source of inspiration and aspiration and I I fucking believed so much so I borrowed $11 million I borrowed $11 million to do it and do you think I didn't believe do you think I borrowed $11 million and ran around going I don't know guys we'll just flip a coin and see what happens today hopefully it works out no it was like this is what we're gonna do this is how we're gonna do it we're gonna be pumped we're gonna be excited we're gonna talk to more people we're gonna do this we're gonna clean this we're gonna do that we're gonna spend money on this we're gonna refurbish this we're gonna get all this equipment we're gonna redistribute across all the clubs we're gonna repaint every single club we're gonna rebrand every club we're gonna come up with a new logo a new concept to this we're gonna light them differently we're gonna put in recovery of half a million dollar and you know every single club we're gonna put in you know tanning and hydro massage somebody's gotta do it and that was me that was I was that guy and so to me it was less about what mistakes I made truthfully and as a lot of things I got right and I'm not saying that to be like boisterous or braggadocious or whatever else I'm saying that that was 25 years in the making of my 30 year career right I made plenty of mistakes along the way and I Learned from a bunch of those mistakes so now it was what have I Learned along those 25 years that now I don't need to make those same mistakes and if I was to apply that to you as a trainer it's look it doesn't matter what your fitness manager thinks of you you can be like I don't really like my fitness manager and I don't think they like me doesn't matter if you're gonna let that dictate your success in the club as a personal trainer if you actually like mentally you think that that might be an issue for you I'm telling you're you're gonna fail now I'll tell you right now like well I like my manager but I don't like my district manager I don't like DARP I don't I don't feel like Darby and I are vibing doesn't matter doesn't matter what matters is you and your passion for like helping people and changing lives and making a difference like if you're if you can't show up to work every day and be pumped and excited getting out of the car then something's wrong with you so if I don't have a positive attitude then my ability to achieve great things is massively diminished and so I was able to learn that early on in my life and I've just applied it throughout and it's like compounding interest as far as I'm concerned before we wrap we'll leave you with a Smithism a lesson Chris has picked up along the way today's lesson we're gonna give it kind of two fold so I'm gonna give you kind of two I'm gonna kind of throw you off a little bit so people always say is knowledge power and people everyone will raise their hands when I talk to young trainers as an example say yeah knowledge is power and I go wrong wrong wrong right the application of knowledge is power knowledge in itself is not power it's what you do with that information that is relevant and that actually matters and so I share that back to the story that we shared earlier today around the resiliency and the failure whatever and so it was actually taught to me I think when I was 14 years old I Learned a phrase of your attitude will determine your altitude and so again in that that story the narrative there is unfortunately I didn't have the best control of my attitude at all times and that probably ultimately cost me one of my big goals and dreams whereas then I would say then as I got into my professional career and the corrections that I was able to make around keeping my you know yourself in the best place possible being positive as often as possible back to having a positive attitude right and again an attitude of gratitude I go on and on but your your attitude determines your altitude like how far you can go and I would even say how fast you can get there right because now you start to show people like wow that person's always positive they've always got like an answer to like kind of keep things moving they're never really complaining about things cause it's it's like it was like who can complain anyone can complain you can complain every day if you want to but what good does it do right what what direction is that taking you mentally so today's one I would say is your attitude determines your altitude that's today's Smithism Chris Smith is the mayor of Smithville and I'm Chrissy Van your town correspondent this is the smartest small town in fitness we'll see you back here every other week