Hiring and Developing Quality Personal Trainers

gym, side hustle, coach, work, job, opportunities, owners, certification, career, community, personal trainers, john, military, clients, training, professional, personal, hire

Tyler 00:00

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this week's episode of the gym owners podcast. I'm your host Tyler Stone or John Fairbanks. I don't know Tyler, we're just brainstorming this last couple of weeks about getting personal trainers started in gyms. Just fundamentally we have gyms that are always looking to find new personal trainers. If you're all choked like chock full of staff, every goddamn hour of your business had been of your gyms day had better be full of people doing stuff. We've mentioned in the podcast in the past that yet your gym should be busy, and it should be busy for as many fucking hours as is absolutely possible. And we see a lot of gyms struggling to hire new coaches, whether it's covering classes to do otherwise, we also have a hard time getting gyms and have a hard time finding qualified personal trainers. And I think there's big opportunities in this hunt, if we do it right. And if we know who, maybe we really, really want to get in personal training and who we want to develop, because, frankly, there are lots of jobs that pay pretty well. And I was just watching a show on Stewart bras and Mr. Brower stuff. Yeah, he had said to me, he's like, dude, like, you guys want professional login coaches, like a professional service with like, an educated level of expertise, and you want to pay him $18 an hour. I'm sorry, it's just not it's just not gonna fucking cut it in the long run.



John Fairbanks 01:23

I was arguing with my wife the other day about it. I'm like, the fucking gas station will pay you almost $20 an hour. Yeah. Like what the fuck, like, it's got to be something else, that it's just not I don't know, like there needs to be more of an allure than just, you're just not going to get people that are worth their salt. And



Tyler 01:40

the goal here was what we're talking about today is how, how to get and develop good personal trainers from your community, not just your community in your gym, but that your local community and how do you like assess a system to how can you find somebody because the truth is, if someone is an awesome personal trainer, and is able to sell and has the ability has has a good reputation, they're already probably paid or doing it. Right. So like they kind of don't need you sort of any other relationships. So you do need to be developing talent. This is just the way it's going to be right if you're going to hire an expert. They're already hired somewhere. So learning to develop people from up underneath and in your, your local town. How do you find people? This is what we're gonna talk about today, because there are some tremendous opportunities. Before we get started, make sure you follow the gym owners podcast at the gym owners podcast on Instagram. Follow me at Tyler reference. Don't miss Tyler, eff ironstone. And John,



John Fairbanks 02:37

you can follow me on Instagram at Jay banks F guys, we work with



Tyler 02:41

gyms directly into gear Academy, we can work with you one on one for a little more of a commitment. Or we can go where we work with you week to week, we help you lay out your tasks, keep you accountable to the progress of your business and let your business grow into whatever you want it to be not what we want it to be and not definitely what somebody else who's just running Facebook ads on your behalf wants it to be. So if you want to work with us directly in the gear Academy, you can go to gym owners revolution.com We also the gym owners revolution Facebook group, go to the link in the show notes to get access to that. Any questions just contact John I or the official Instagram page? John, the biggest struggle that I see gyms have is there's just not enough people. There's not enough people, they do a piecemeal thing, lots of part time staff, lots of part time this part time. And I'm kind of okay with it a lot. Because I do believe especially in regards to personal training, that people need to really kind of want to do it and they need to be fully involved, they need to be fully committed. I think you also want them to carry their own weight right away. Not a lot of gyms can have just five or six people on staff during all of your staff hours, whether they're coaching or not, it's just not a viable option. So everybody kind of needs to kill what they eat. Like right away. I am a big advocate in regards to personal training, whether or not front desk staff or anything like this. But in regards to coaches, I really like an almost commission exclusive arrangement financially, it's just the thing that makes sense, especially when onboarding new coaches. And when you're bringing in a brand new coach like you, you have to have something in front of them for them to be doing to be coached to be productive right away, or else they may never turn that corner. And that's something we've seen. Well,



John Fairbanks 04:29

and we've seen the data. We've seen the worst case versions of this where a gym owner is just excited that somebody has expressed interest and that they give him the keys to the kingdom like we usually call it too soon, keys to the city. And then what ends up happening is that the person is a total fucking flake or ends up not being the person that they thought they were and then it becomes disingenuous, and now you've caused a problem for yourself. And I think we've all heard as gym owners, you've heard these problems, obviously not enough because we've dealt with this Now several times of people making this mistake, but I think this is that fear element where oftentimes, a gym owner will just choose to hire an existing client. So to think that that somehow is going to be better, well, they understand the culture. And they've been with us for a while, and like, I'm all for those things, but then the element of establishing that expectation that they are a professional, like a professional, they,



Tyler 05:29

they have to wonder when you're brought up from underneath, it's tough. Yeah, like, they're



John Fairbanks 05:34

just not gonna. And so what you've just done is, yeah, you've hired yourself another coach. But that's a very one dimensional individual, where if you get the right people that are coming with the right attitude, and like you said, you establish those expectations, first of you eat with you with what you kill, you have a very dynamic individual there is gonna go way beyond just coaching your group or coaching or just being on the floor.



Tyler 05:59

Personal training as a career, I will coach him to be honest with you, but personal training, specifically, the best ways for the or originate as a side hustle, I think that's absolutely the best way. And frankly, if a person has any ambitions of being a personal trainer, it's the best fucking side job you're ever gonna get. Because you can charge what you want to charge, you're gonna keep most of the money. It's fucking easy. But I mean, relatively speaking, it's not hard work. It's definitely not what you're doing for your day job. And I have a, I have a young kid who's just getting started in personal training, we're talking about that exact same thing where he's like, he didn't really know what he wanted to do with his life or career. And he's got a day job. And he's, he's busy. But he really likes the gym, and he thinks he'd like to get into coaching. And I said, perfect, start doing it, find somebody convinced them and start this, it really is that simple. Now, if you have a gym, and you can fully fold that person and say, Come on, in, let me help you sit down, we get some leads in front of you, I want you to market yourself. That's your role as gym owners to help facilitate this next step for them. But you've identified that person who kind of has that want to is a fitness or who maybe doesn't have anything else, which isn't my best, by the way, like, if you're just not good at anything else, you hate everything else, you do have to actually care about coaching a little bit. So that's, that is your big red flag is to get a gym rat, who just wants to bail on the rest of their life maybe isn't the best way. But that is kind of a good starting point, to be honest with you, somebody who just likes going to the gym and seems to know what they're doing. And if they can take that knowledge and help and want to share it with other people. That's the criteria, do they want to share that with other people? Yeah, and once you have that going, even if you can get a job, like, you know, 18 $20 an hour job, I don't know, $15 an hour as a cashier at a gas station or something like that a few hours a week as a side hustle, it sucks. You're going to work like an entire night, like an entire evening shift four or five hours to take home. What you take home coaching is one hour personal training.



John Fairbanks 08:02

And, and that's what like, I don't know what side hustles you've had, that



Tyler 08:05

better be a lot of damn money, because there's no job I'm going to, this is the biggest thing for people looking for side jobs. If you're taking a side job that pays you the same or less than your regular job. That's crazy. Because if your regular job asks you to work longer than you already are, they gotta at least pay for your time and a half. Like this is overtime in your world it is. And so your side job had better be lucrative. And it better be a very solid return on your time investment. Because it's the least amount of time you have. It's all your leftover time that leftover time as a human is the most valuable. And I do not like seeing people traded in for pennies.



John Fairbanks 08:46

Or, or just to push back on that almost a little bit. It's like or you have to be really passionate about it. Like you don't I mean, like it has to be the thing that gets you up in the morning and you will clock in and clock out for your day job. But man the side hustles like you're really it could be something. But I do believe some of the sites like when I was a teacher, and where we were in Florida, it was so prohibitively expensive, where we lived that as a teacher, we couldn't pay the bills, just teaching. So I would personally train, but because of the schedule, I would only do it on the weekends , as it wasn't a consistent nightly thing. And because that didn't also pay the bills. I then drove for Uber in the morning. So I would pick up people and luckily we were where we were close enough to Tampa International Airport. So I just met a lot of professionals. I realized that if you drive from 9pm to 1am, you deal with a lot of shit. Yeah, like a lot of throw up was in your backseat. But if you drove from 4am to 7am You just got professionals needing to go to the airport, people coming and going. So that was a much better game. Big. But if I was going to compare, right, so like, the thing when it comes to side gigs is I was not passionate about driving, about driving professionals to and from the airport. And at the end of the day, it paid me dick. And you're not going to go. I know, there's some folks out there that do go professional, Uber and Lyft drivers, but I'm letting you know, on average, you're not going to do that. And the one thing I quickly realized is we and this was pre you and I getting to know each other and starting to work on different companies and different things. But it's, as soon as I started to put the steps together, where it's like personal training, personal training is a side hustle that could also become a career. Absolutely. Uber is not that if you're driving for fucking DoorDash and delivering pizza delivered shit to people, it's like, that's not going to become a career to you and I and that's where that for me, that's a fundamental difference.



Tyler 10:59

You miss out by taking on a side project or a side hustle, that is not a big opportunity that doesn't have upside. It sucks to me, it's like man, and I get it people have to make ends meet, we've all been there. John is sure I spent most of my life Puar like a real serious level. So it's like I know, I totally know it's fine. But if I'm going to give away my extra time, it's got to either be something now it's worth it, the juice has to be worth the squeeze. Whether that's short term or long term, there's got to be something there. And if there's not a real opportunity long term, I won't even start, it's kind of the way I do with anything. But this becomes now a really solid opportunity that you guys as gym owners can extend to the right people. Yeah, this is a big one. And there are some criteria you want to have when you're looking for people and the big one that I see is in trying to hire people nowadays. People are on hireable John with a nonprofit we worked with. We've been working here . You went through a conversation with a pretty big employer in your area and then they say the same thing like the average person. Is this inevitable or unemployable?



John Fairbanks 12:10

Yeah, it's chronically absent chronically late like it is, it just doesn't matter. The majority of the people that have come in just on their desk they can't hire because they can't pass it back. Like it's there's so many things to where it is like we need to hire people but like you said, they're completely on an island. They're all



Tyler 12:29

morons. Yeah, and you know, I have a friend who just a friend and a client who just opened a restaurant here it's been now like their second or third week and before they opened the first time the main guy that he brought in to help him disappeared for like two or three days while they had a big catering project just disappeared. Then they get to the soft opening and everything kind of works out okay. Then the grand opening weekend, the same guy disappears for two or three days with no call no show. cocaine's the other person is and just goes like it's just weird and doesn't want to work and is confrontational about it's like this is a nice restaurant so we do things this way. Well, I don't think it needs to be done well fortunately for us you're not in fucking charge here and it kept going and then I guess the same person drops a fucking John on their third day of business says I'm just a silly thing has given me anxiety and I just came back from this is like my first job back and I just I need a mental health day just abandoned them with a mental health day while the other guys disappeared. And John, this is like a really small little like, kind of boutique joint and so like, this is now just the owner doing all of the cooking all the front of house his family's wife's family is now in has to help them all the regular problems of and gets flooded and has to be placed. Fucking mix of brand new mixer breaks. This is all of your like, first week in business, I thought Fuck, if you've opened a gym, I'm sure you've had the gym equivalent of this stuff, my toilets backed up and flooded all over the entire place my first week, soon as we got equipment, and we realized the floors themselves like bounced and heave that move too much. So then I had to have structural beams put in the basement quickly, quickly before my clients realized that because otherwise they would come into us with some janky shit, you know, they didn't want it to be this big. Like, like you put it in a living room. You know, right? These are all problems that you guys have. Aside from your toilets, staffing is going to be a very difficult task. It just really is going to be and how do you find people to bring in Well fortunately for you, you're not looking for full time right away. I hope just standard really brings in people and in my opinion you need to onboard everybody in part time and really make sure they are working with people being profitable right away, which is a perfect opportunity for someone who already has a job and has the ambition and energy to do something else and hopefully is passionate about fitness. So seeking people as part time for personal training as a starting point, that is your starting point, you want them to already have another gig, which means you're not really poaching. Now, yes, you can go snag some ace from another gym and bring them over and bring them on full time and pay him. But what about the other people, the people who maybe have clients at your gym. But there are clients at your gym, and you know what they do? Exactly. The fact that they already have another gig and are still at would maybe be interesting as that's a great starting point. Now, if you're a boutique spa, you don't have a ton of members to like, kind of choose from, but you need to be a member out in your community. Or you need to be a person out in your town. However this is, and you can find people who have an enthusiasm for fitness, whether they work out at your gym, members of other gyms are great candidates for this as well. Honestly, somebody who lifts, works out exercises and knows what they're doing. Start there.



John Fairbanks 15:52

And I love that you propose the idea from a boutique gym standpoint of just like, if you got 50 members, right or you got it, that's a tough sell. But I like the idea of posing it like, Get your ass out into the community. Because if you're passionate, passion identifies other passions. Like it's like it is one of those things where and you and I have talked about this for years of how difficult it is to exist in places where everyone are a bunch of passionless, mindless Fox, that just go throughout their lives, hate their fucking shit, hope that the liquor stores always open on Friday, and then they drink the rest of the way through the weekend. And then they come back and they keep their shitty lives moving. But when you get to interact with someone that is passionate about the same shit that you're passionate about, and honestly, like, it's just passion sees passion, like game recognizes game. It's one of those things where it's like, oh, it's because you're passionate about your stuff, it will attract those people. And those people are like, hey, like you really into this. And I'm kind of really and, and those connections of just normal human interaction. It's like magic. I mean, I was telling you this other day, I participated in a community event. I'm passionately talking about what fitness can look like and how it can change us and change programs or whatever. And sure enough, at the end of the event, I have somebody come up and be like, Well, hey, do you do personal training? Do you? Is this what you did? It's like, well, yeah, absolutely. And it's just like that. It's that dude isn't going to fucking find me on Facebook. Oh, let you but just like that, because that passion is felt and seen and heard. You immediately make those connections and make no mistake. It works not only for clients, but works for staff as well.



Tyler 17:38

Yeah. You know, when I brought that, that young man and to get started to it was simply my here's how I vet the situation. All of our personal trainers that are spot on right now are full, full or nearly full. Right? I might take on one, maybe two other clients Megan pretty booked. A new lady came in and got started and her schedule was completely booked. That's awesome. Everybody's fault. And it doesn't mean by the way, these aren't, you know, they're not all full timers, right. But it doesn't matter if a liability is available. If everybody's booked, you now can't sell. That's a fucking problem, right? And so when I started looking at that's the prop. So watch, what do you do? You open your goddamn eyes, then you cannot sit back and go, Okay, well, I am still trying to like you, you just need to open your eyes and start looking. And I'm looking around. What I did is I said that the kids were nice. I see his training is consistent, not the type of consistency we see for a few months and fall off. But he's really here, he's jacked. That's a start. It helps to be real. He's young, which means that's maybe a bit of a disadvantage. But the fact is, five years, if you have somebody that starts personal training in any capacity at 19 years old, and isn't like a dipshit about it, that is just really there for the people, five years, six years, seven years, if you have like a, you can have someone in their mid 20s, who's fucking jacked as well and has a reputation. Like, if you do this career, right? Starting young, you will own your fucking area. And that's why I think it's important to invest in frankly, younger people in this line of work. Everybody, man, I don't know, everybody is in their mid 30s over 30 doing personal training. That



John Fairbanks 19:22

finish your thought because I'll take us in and so and so



Tyler 19:25

but with this kid it's like, okay, I see him I go you know what, this would be a good opportunity for him. i What did I find out? He didn't really know what he wanted to do for a career. So he didn't didn't jump into college. Right? Why? No, he likes this thing. And the biggest eye opener for me in my life. And every little project that I've done or hobby that I've started most of the hobbies that I start I go, how can I just do this? You know, your goal, oftentimes is my goal in my life has been to become to be professionally Tyler. That's what I want to do. Yeah, whatever that is, right. And so it's the things that I want to do. Perfect. Let's let that feed me so that I don't have to do some shit I don't want to do to eat. That seems terrible. So that way, you're always moving through with passion and always doing the things you want to do. And then that's how you eat. And for this kiddo sooner, he didn't know what I wanted to do, as I pointed ears perk up, pop up, pop up. Okay, really good. What's his job works at a spot and Thomas, okay, this is even better. And whether or not by the way, this is the kid or this person is going to have a great career, whether he has it, has it or doesn't isn't really the subject that I'm getting at here is that this is your target demographic, right? This is the thought process you need to go through. And there are other opportunities beyond that, as well, where there are people who, you know, are reliable, based on some other sense, John, you just had a conversation the other day with somebody in the military about this as well, right? This is just people who are proven to be reliable, they'll show up, they'll do what they told you. You know, they're not going to not show Ania. And they are proven to be responsible.



John Fairbanks 20:55

Well, it's where they're coming from, right. Like, there's so so many elements in this where I was going to take us to and this works is that it's, I can hear you, I can hear the listeners being like, Yeah, but fuck young people. Have you spoken to a young person lately? The fucking worst? And it's like, Oh, I agree, I don't disagree with that. But not every young person is the same. And so where are they coming from? And that's where a resume helps. And again, this comes back to the veteran conversation as well. It's, you can not, you know, ignore the fringes of our outliers. But if the majority of the people, like you said, it's if they have a job, that means they can show up, that means they've shown up multiple times, they're not fired, they're doing the right things, they're doing some baseline things, if you want to hedge your bets, I mean, this is fucking why College, a requirement of a college fucking degree has been made in the first place. It's an arbitrary bullshit rule, that pretty much means fuck all. But what it tells the person that is looking to hire you is that they have achieved this level of a thing. And that is the foundation and baseline of their reliability, and what their life experiences. The problem is, is that college can be a fucking joke. Who, which is why everyone's like, I don't know if this matters anymore. So it actually becomes more important, which is like, where are these people coming from? And how can you vet them? Where you can hedge a lot of fucking bets that if you have people that are in the military, and this is what I learned, I didn't know this. So I was ignorant to this. I didn't realize that if you are still on active duty, they can have side hustles. Yeah, I feel like living on base. And I didn't, I didn't realize that, or I didn't fully appreciate that. And so I said, Well, what is the guy I was talking to? I go, what are the jobs that these dudes are doing? He's got a lot of young guys, right? This guy is at the end of his career, like a career in the military. 20 years plus, has a family, has kids, hasn't liked it, hasn't worked like a whole nine. But most guys, right, as we all know, is your 1819 20. Like, you're going to be under 30. If you're going to be working in the military,



Tyler 23:06

The average age of American soldiers is simply 23 years old.



John Fairbanks 23:10

How did you look that up the other day?



Tyler 23:13

That, yeah, the average age of a Ukrainian soldier is like, 43 Oh, no, everybody's



John Fairbanks 23:18

dead. So they're young cats. The number twice? Well, what's the job that you're seeing from young guys on bass? And he said, Well,



Tyler 23:28

is the set I'm getting right now. 25 in the Marine Corps, so



John Fairbanks 23:32

He was a Marine. So let's go with this. So Marine Corps, young guys, he says the number one job that these guys are doing? He goes DoorDash you've gotta be fucking kidding. That's where he goes. But he brought up a really good point. The point he brought up was, you can download the app for DoorDash. And you can be driving and making money by the weekend, just like that. Right. And he says the issue that he has realized over the last 20 years is he sees young guys coming in. Because if there are roadblocks or perceived roadblocks towards that side hustle or towards something they could do as a career. If it seems like it's too hard, they won't do it. And that could be a generational thing. Right? I've heard this now a couple of different times.



Tyler 24:19

That is human nature though, John that right? Because you guys, you guys out there. You guys are fitness professionals. Like how many people don't join a gym, they stay frozen, and don't start exercising just because they don't really know. Just like, I'm gonna do nothing, then the solution is to do something that will help this better than nothing. And then figure out what that something is. That's better. Shit. No, I should get in shape before I join a gym. Right? I mean, that question is insane. But it's been asked of me a lot. It's been asked of me a lot and so I think it is just similar. Like, people go I don't know what this thing is. And by the way, if they lift at all, this is the other country right? They got to work out. They do have to live to know some exercise. So but it's not that fucking hard. And the hardest thing that I see, when people have like their barrier to if a person, let's say you're in the military, right, this is, and this is a good target demographic, in my opinion, in our opinion, collectively for you guys to look for, it's like, you know what, what is going on fitness wise on these bases, what is going on fitness wise in the, in the military, these guys lives, I have training partners down at masonite mix, there's guys down there who work out there in them full timers, you know, so there's, there are plenty of people there who are enthusiastic about fitness. Now, if they need other work, they can go swing a hammer on the weekend so that they can go, you know, do a little electrical jobs here and there, and that's fine. But there are people in that community that just would be a really perfect fit for you. That I think I think for the fitness community, John and I, we started looking through opportunities to develop our larger mission, right, which is we want people using the systems that we use, the concepts that we use the client success, first metric we want, we want 1 million clients operating underneath kind of our umbrella, our conceptual umbrella here, right? I think a big thing is we need more personal trainers, like good personal trainers that are doing that, that aren't just dogmatic about everything that are just there to help the people. And in doing that John and I have identified a huge gap is that there's not enough you guys think there's too many, there's not enough, not enough good ones. So if you think there's so much internet Fine, get a good one, and you'll see, get a real good one. And you'll see because you're never going to be at school. It's never going to be open, they're always going to be full. So I think it's really we then start going further and further through this, which is trying to set up speaking engagements with universities, right? How can we get these people from these exercise science programs, to not just go do some bullshit shit that they're going to do out of the fucking hospitals, strengthen conditioning programs for high schools, or just be just the guy standing in a weight room and a fucking strength program. The fifth, the intern at the bottom of a division three school and shit like this, it's the people that get hired for a lot of those jobs are the bad ones, frankly. So we really want to go through and find these exercise science programs, have people develop human careers out of there, instead of getting plugged into some big large, frankly, medical, or educational fucking structure. Because that's most of what's coming out of college to administer for exercise science people, or they're just going and getting some completely unrelated job, frankly. So we started with that. Those universities are very much kind of protecting their structures. They need you to go and they need you to work for free as an intern, so that the university can, you know, get that part of their system. And then you need to be placed in one of the programs. It's from the people that are paying the university. All that stuff is a snake eating its own tail. So it was tough to kind of break through into those things. Then we started looking even further. Like who else? Neil goose, who else needs to have their eyes open to like, Hey, if you care about making a difference in the health in your area, and having fun and having a fun job is based around fitness and getting people healthy. Like, so we're like, Well, what about jails? Well, you can go to a jail like you can get out of prison and they're gonna get you a GED, they're going to help you get electrical, your certifications, you get a welder certification, that's great. And John, I'm still like, I still don't hate that idea. The problem and we went through this a lot is like, man, that sucks to say that, like we're just trying to make sure that inmates can be in the booty short and leggings community when they get out of jail. That's a tough sell, even for a gym to be, hey, these guys are great and certified with this guy. And it's like you just I feel like that's more trouble than it's worth is where we went to



John Fairbanks 28:53

Well, and it's identifying populations of people, right, that are hidden away inside something that's not real life for such a long period of time that when they then go into the general population, they go into regular life, they're at a significant disadvantage. And that's why first one was students, but then it was yeah, it's inmates, it's, you can be given and this is the other issue. You're overly certified with no clear path on what to do with that certification or how to be a professional. So if you handle your shit and do all the right things, if you're on the inside, you can do a lot of those things, but then you get out and there's no real support system to move forward. But it is harder. I



Tyler 29:42

still think that the university pathway is it is solid, I would really like to help so look out there if you guys know anybody we'd happily come in and speak or, or at least work with some young Exercise Science students, sports science students that are they want to actually help like people that don't just want to say I have a job This college like, it like to really be in there working with people, you're gonna make the most fucking money and you're gonna have the most control over your life, you have nobody telling you what to do. For the most part, like it's a it's it's the ultimate side job. It's the ultimate starter job and it is a fucking awesome career when you're behind the helm of it completely by yourself. So then we go what? Well, okay, yeah, universities where they're fucking the correctional the department. It's still there, but it's on the bottom of my list. Yeah. And then we said it was like the military would be perfect. really wouldn't be perfect. And so if anyone out there has, you know, a connection or an insight No, ask, just ask around, you know, you may if you have some people in your community who know that maybe this would be a thing, they would just send them to us, we'll talk to them. I would love to just encourage somebody to get started and explain to them why. And that's where we want to start this conversation. Whether it is with specific branches, the military specific communities, or specific organizations working within them. That conversation needs to be sorted that this is an option, and it's a fucking good one. If you want to go and get a welder certification and go, well, that great make $30 to $50 to $60 an hour, like, yeah, for sure. But like, if you already kind of know how to work out and like people eat and like, shit, you can make that same money. Like you really, really, really can. And there's just a few things, we don't want you to be in it for the money. And that's the stuff that we're kind of there for is to make sure it is done right to make sure it is centered upon client success and giving people choices, and then being good at your job. But God Damn, what a great way to start. If someone would have told me Hey Tyler, you're 18 instead of just doing restaurant job after restaurant job after restaurant job, how about you just start working out? Learn as much as you can get good at it in a couple of years, get a certification like study, you're good at that and then get yourself a client if at 20 I'm making take home 50 bucks an hour. Like take home, Falk? That would have been the best step, by the way, way back then that would have been the best damn thing in the world. Great offers you I wouldn't. Frankly, I didn't, you know, per hour wage, like personal training is the most lucrative thing I do.



John Fairbanks 32:15

Yeah, without a doubt. But the and it, what I liked the most about it is even when you're young person, you really don't require you don't require revenue, you don't require money beyond what if you got responsibility and a fucking family, what a side hustle can do. So like side hustle, it's right in the pocket of where you need to be. And that's why I get the most excited about the veteran piece. And you were the one that kind of said, this is one of the directions we need to go. Because they have like, by the circumstance the government has already done a laundry list of qualifiers and filters. Yeah. So now what you have are these folks that do have I mean, imagine because this is not even like young Tyler's 18 getting certified. They'll pay for the certification. Yeah. So like one of the biggest hurdles is that I don't know if I got five $800. Just kind of laying around for me to get a certification when there's not a clear plan. And that's the other piece that we've thought a lot about too, which is if you get your NASM certification, right, the NASM. If you go through them, you can get certified, you can be a CPT, you can get your nutrition, you can do lots of things under them. If that was my certification, John, how much business kit is in there? Tyler zero on one call? Yeah. And that's the bigger problem now you've just got this. It's like having a shiny diploma. It's like having a certain ability I couldn't imagine going through trade school, or going through a program that allowed me to be a heavy machine operator, that then set me up for success to then have jobs lined up. So when I walked away, I could go use that somewhere. And that's what's happening right now.



Tyler 34:05

That is exactly the case. And I think the personal training certifications and the public university systems, right, the Exercise Science, Sports Science departments, I think those things are there to feed you out of that system so that you can be a cog in somebody else's machine. And I don't think they like the idea of these young potential coaches and trainers, having their eyes open to the fact that you don't have to come out and be a cog in someone else's machine. You come out and build your own machine. You are the fucking machine. Okay, let's go like you can really do it you can keep it keep the money coming and going. You can negotiate your own arrangements with the places that you train it that are good forever, but you can come out and do business right away. Fucking right away. Right and it's just it's, they don't think it's malicious. I really just think it's like it's just the flow of fucking the way that people go when they come out of it. things but it's just, I'm not seeing a ton of people come out and actually ambitiously start working with people, like truly, like be ambitious, market themselves, sell themselves, work with their clients, share with their clients who says, your first target should be can I get 10 people? And can I get those 10 people to really be successful? From that, you will be able to leverage those 10 people, if you really do right by 10 people, this is a reality. You really do right? by 10 people, you're fucking good for the nearly the rest of your life unless you start fucking up, like you will always have leads, you will always have new potential clients and those people are going to give you, they want you to work their kids, they want you to work with their parents, they want to like, if you do right, by 10 separate people, you're not gonna have to work that hard to find your work again, it's fun, and the money is fucking good. If you really do right by them, you're gonna start charging more, right? Because if the likelihood of success is higher, the value is higher. And so you build a reputation certain of that should be the first target not sure hope my college sticks me in the weight room. Fucking. And that you know? Yeah. So



John Fairbanks 36:06

waste a bunch of fucking time at Planet Fitness. Yeah, I think that's reality, right? Most dudes are gonna get done. And then it's like, well, I want to be a personal trainer. And so what are you gonna do, you're gonna go work at the fucking why for $15 an hour.



Tyler 36:18

Why isn't anytime there's places that pay just absolute dogshit. And then they wonder why they don't have professional trainers. And none of their trainers have a decent reputation. And that most of their businesses are based on stapling people down to long term contracts while they default on them. And that's the nature of the industry that we're in, you know, it's either that or frankly, the medical apparatus. And it's weird that the medical apparatus, the hospital specifically are starting to like, Fuck it that that is now a part of this system, because he, it's very frustrating. So this is an easy opportunity for you as a gym owner. This is a good target for you to get out there and start asking around, feel that around and John is going to do our due diligence here. And that our goal, again, is to grow the system that we're working with a larger perspective. So we hope that as we start to have some of these conversations ourselves behind the scenes that these opportunities are growing and that they fall at your feet. But I need to get out there to look for it. This is it, it's too easy. You have an entire demographic, specifically the veterans are men, they could really do it, though. I know, I got a few guys that are dudes like, do you know I don't want you working with people, by the way, but they'll know they'll know. Again, it's not about taking somebody who doesn't want to do this thing and turn them into it, it's just that this is now a nice spot for you to look at. And when you find the right person there, you'll be really happy. I really think it'd be really happy. They'll be responsible to show up on time. They can be professional they can do as they're told, but they can also think for them fucking selves. And if they have that with a basic understanding of fitness, and care about the people that they're working with, fucking home run, man, a real home run and support your goddamn veterans. I don't understand this. That's such a simple, easy thing to do. We all want to support veterans, it's like, okay, well, how are we going to give them opportunities, give them opportunities, we don't need another 5k By the way, those things are all wonderful. But give them opportunities, give them opportunities, maybe money's tight, they're coming back trying to reintegrate a great job to actually come in and socialize within your community, instead of just getting to work. Right? What a great way to feel like a member of your community.



John Fairbanks 38:24

One of the most eye opening parts of my conversations I was talking with this career marine was that the percentage of dudes that are that continue to stay in the Marines stay in the military, because they do not have a clear path to get out. At least they know that they can pay the bills and stay in the military. And so they just stay in the way past when they want when they could have theoretically left. They stay. It's almost there. They're trapped inside of that apparatus, because it's known, it's comfortable. Okay, the risk is a certain pace, right? And the risk is that if I get out, I only have 190 days or less, because now they're going to lessen that window in which they can get support before they have to go into real life and handle their shit on their own. They only have that small window where now they have to be able to hunt, and only eat what they kill. And it's so scary that they just stay in a fucking profession that could get them killed. Yeah. And I'm not saying God bless every dude that's doing that. But at the same time, if you don't want to be there, what a horrible existence to be feeling like you're trapped. And you couldn't have dudes that could make that jump. They just don't have the confidence to do so.



Tyler 39:52

So for you as a gym owner, I think it's just important. Aside from the specifics, have this conversation that we've had where to look to know what you can offer somebody, if you're able to help them. If you can't develop personal trainers that you already have, you're going to be in fucking trouble. First off. So you figure this out, you need to figure it out, you need to learn to sell, you need to learn to track, some people need to learn to run good culture, you got to have a good system to plug them into what you can give them a little bit of freedom, I really think you can. But this way, you have the opportunity to present great opportunities to other people. That's what's important with this job. I think as a gym owner, it's nearly sacred, what you can do for your community by giving somebody a place, resources, knowledge, staff and help to help them find fitness, health and wellness. When they start to look for it, when they see it, you can be there for them. On the other side of that you have a great opportunity to extend opportunities for people to build careers doing that. And this is how we create this cycle, this self feeding cycle, the cycle of success. Okay, this is very important. Like, everything needs to be based on the success of your members, the success of your community. Because of that, if you can do that, well, you can bring in people from outside in. And now they can have these wonderfully, wildly fulfilling careers doing the same thing. And now this feedback loop just grows and grows and grows and grows and grows. Okay, this is what we talked about, we talk about the gym owners revolution, it needs to be done differently, it needs to be done this way. Okay, and if this is the thing you're trying to spread, and if you're just trying to sell memberships, and fucking hang out, and you're listening to the wrong podcast, okay, but if you want to make a difference is how you do it, okay, it's not as simple as hire staff bring staff in, it's like, you gotta fucking have the whole thing, you really got to have the whole thing. But you hold in your hands like really the key to great opportunity. And you're just going to keep in your pocket because you don't want to look, God if you plugged in five people that just got to start and like from, you know, as from a side job and really took to it and became like great fitness professionals that are well paid, who are out there helping your clients, your members become successful, lose weight, changing the lives and trajectories of their families, generations down the road, Jesus Christ, what a tremendous impact you've then had as a gym owner, but don't fucking hold the ship close to your chest. It's like, well, nobody coaches, people need to learn our system, they got to, they got to learn to Coach, how I coach, I got to coach the deadlift, the way I coach the deadlift. And I see a lot of subs that don't want to onboard coaches, because of what knowledge or something it's like, I hate that too.



John Fairbanks 42:36

Or you're making the mistake where all you are doing by onboarding them. And your development of them is just what I call the X's and O's, yes, you're just going over how they are as a coach. And it's like, you're fucking yourself as the gym owner? And if you don't know, you don't know. And this is what we do. So these are the things that we identify that I can't tell you how often as a listener for you all that it's when we're working with gym owners, we're very much usually working on where are your personal trainers at? How are you holding them accountable, like there's this level of accountability and support, that if you don't have the time, or the knowledge or the know how you don't even know where to start? That may be why it's a part of your business that you just don't look at, I don't I'm not, I'm not looking at what's in my pocket, because I don't know what to do with it. So I'm just going to pretend like it's not a problem. And it is why your coaches are dependent upon you, your personal trainers are just hoping that you can feed them more clients and they don't know what to do. And they don't have any go-getters. They don't just initiate conversations. They can't, they can't sell, they can't do so many of these pieces. That's that's so much of our time is dedicated to that. And it really can be isolated to just that thing, which is if you know you don't know, then fucking be a man about it and get help because it's not going away just because you choose not to look at it. Yeah.



Tyler 43:58

Alright guys, get out there. Give somebody a goddamn job. give somebody an opportunity. Get out there and find some. So that's your homework, let's give you some homework, identify some pathways. This doesn't mean extending the key to them. It doesn't mean off of these people, but find some pathways. A few people in a gym like you know, how would I ask if they wanted to do a cut on personal training they'd like to start. I could give him some clients who, who are out in your community, what other when you go out and about, you can't stop. By the way, if you can't spot someone who works out and they ain't your guy. That's the other one. You got to buy you better be able to recognize right away, oh, that person is fit starting there. Depending on your community, there's going to be a lot less. It'd be a lot less if I walked around here and I had to pin people who are fit as potential hires alone is shortlist. Okay. So but get out there to identify whether you are military, whether it is things like by the way, like fire departments are great as well in that regard, because depending on the shift work is very often there's just big days, they gotta manage their own schedule. There's a couple days, three days off where they could take a couple of clients every day, you know, from the, if they can manage the shift. It's another great option. And law enforcement is a bit tricky because the shifts are kind of constant. There's not lots of big chunks of time off, but I do think fire departments EMTs are also great opportunities. Well, if you're in a CrossFit gym, usually they should have a fair amount of them at least I always did a fair amount of your local folks. So anyway, let's drift off. We'll see you guys later. Thanks for listening. Follow the show gym owners podcast follow me at Tyler Elphinstone. John, follow me on Instagram at Jay banks. Get into gear Academy. We do have applications for new people. So if you want to get your gym involved, take a gym to the next level here. Get into gear Academy link is in the description or go to gym owners revolution.com Thanks, everybody. We'll see you next week