Leveling Up Your Coaching Career: What’s Next?

coaching, gym, people, clients, personal trainer, crossfit, fitness, evolve, pivot, put, certification, tyler, owners, brand, career, pathway, marketing, age

Tyler 00:00

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome this week's episode of the gym owners podcast. I'm your host. Tyler Stone, over there's John Fairbanks. How are we doing? John?



Chris Pintado 00:07

I'm doing fabulous. Tyler, the kids are going back to school, which means you're gonna stop eating all my fucking food in my house. It's outrageous. It's outrageous. How much those little fucks eat all goddamn day long.



Tyler 00:18

I believe it, my 16 because I really don't know what he eats. To be honest with you, he doesn't even hardly eat with us, so I have no clue anymore.



00:26

Yes,



Tyler 00:29

alright guys, this week we're going to talk about, we've talked a lot about gym ownership. We talk a ton about the business, marketing, and sales side. We also want to talk to a lot of you as gym owners. I think gym owners that make their way from personal training or coaching people to ownership of their own fitness studio gym, whatever that may be, I think that's a pathway. That's the pathway for types of gyms that we kind of prefer to work with. There's a lot of other types that work great, but for us, it's the passion, connection to the clients, the understanding of what really needs to go on in on the ground, wanting to work with people, wanting to make a difference, wanting to have a hands on impact in your community, that's kind of the shit that gets us fired up. And there's a lot of gym owners out there that don't, don't have that bone in their body. It's just not a part of the math for them. And so this process we're going to go through today is kind of the lifetime fitness journey, not of the clients, which is something we talk about a lot, but the lifetime journey of the coach, where you where you're going to start out, at how you should start, what you should do to get started, and what you should do in the middle phases of your career to equip yourself for later on. And so there's going to be an evolution, and there we like to make sure there's a lot of open doors and possibilities so that you can pivot, because there's nothing wrong with pivoting and staying in the pocket of the things you're interested in. So that's what we're going to touch on today, how to take your personal training from a passion to a profession to a long term career, and how to not fuck it up, and how not to leave a ton of money on the table, because that's the biggest one. We see. Lots of lost and missed opportunities for people from people being complacent. So we're gonna get to this right away before we start. Make sure you follow the show at the gym owners podcast on Instagram. Follow. Make sure, if you're listening, wherever you're listening, that you hit subscribe, whether it's on YouTube, whether it's on Spotify Apple, please be subscribed to the show that helps us out a ton. And if you want to work with us directly, you can go to gym owners revolution com. You also can join the gym owners revolution Facebook group. The link is going to be in our show notes for that. So let's get started.



Chris Pintado 02:39

The one thing Tyler is, I would say, jumping out the gate. The reason why we want to always phrase it from from being a personal trainer, and from that personal training perspective, is, yes, like the care is there and the coaching is there, but understanding that being a gym owner, at least, like you said, the gyms that we want to be working with, it's at the end of the day, you can run your business as a personal trainer. Running a gym is just you're now, overall these people and now you no longer have to go use someone else's facility. It just gets to be your facility. Yeah, so if you're talking about services and offerings and things that you can do, what makes a great gym owner and how you work with clients is what's going to make you a great personal trainer. And I think that that's why there's so many off ramps to where you're like, I don't want to deal with the bullshit of a building and land acquisition and managing other people. We've, like, we talked with DJ Murakami so many episodes ago, but it's this idea where it's like, I never was interested in wanting to be able to be a gym owner, because of all the bullshit that goes along with being a gym owner. So he just stays right in the pocket of being an outstanding personal trainer. Could DJ be a great gym owner? Absolutely. I guarantee that he would crush it, because having that type of a guy being able to mentor and support coaches and trainers that would want to work under him to engage with clients the same way that he engages with clients like it would be, it would be huge. But if you don't want to do it, then don't fucking do that, because



Tyler 04:15

you'll suck at it. Good at it. You will suck at it if you don't want to do it, because there's more to it than just, you know, doing all the good shit. So yeah, where do we start? So where most personal trainers start as a coach personal trainer, whether I'm going to kind of cover a lot of bases, but it's going to be one on one, you're going to be possibly, maybe doing some group fitness, whether it's start coaching functional fitness CrossFit or some sort of studio group fitness class. But those are kind of like, I would guess, the three main ways you can be one on one, or you're going to be in a group, most of those pathways are going to require, depending on the business you're working in or who you're working for, are probably going to require some sort of certification, for sure. So if you're going to. Start, might as well start with that. That's easy, if you're waiting on getting that and you have any interest in being a coach, listen, there's two ways you can start getting your certification and start getting clients, or start getting clients and whatever works. I don't care, but like you should, they both probably got to happen. I don't push for gyms to require certifications, but someone's got to be a fitness professional, is the way I look at it. Meaning they got to really, if I'm going to hire somebody, I don't require that. They have a fucking some NASM certification that I don't personally respect it, but it's better than zero, and it is much like a college education, a way for me to tell that they've put a little bit of legwork in, and I can maybe, as a gym owner, facilitate somebody getting a certification. But the first thing I'm going to want to see as someone's going to make this a career, is going to be a little bit of goddamn initiative here. So being somewhat invested in your education more than the certification, that's what's important to me. So if you're interested in learning, start learning right? Certification is just a box you can check while you're learning some stuff. But for a new coach, I get that box checked, I guess, unless, like I said, unless you got the smoke to where you can just start coaching people right away, then it fucking keep then move forward, and you can check that box as you go, or, or you cannot.



Chris Pintado 06:20

Well, and what I don't like is the barrier to entry piece where I think it is important if you own your own shit, you need to protect yourself from fucking weirdos that are just gonna show up and be like, well, I lifted weights once, or I think I'd be a good coach. He's like, what do you do now? It's like, Why drive a 16 Wheeler? It's like, kind of need to have a little bit higher of a barrier than just letting like, anybody walk in. They can't



Tyler 06:41

just be like a gym doofus, who's like, I just like to get real hands on with the chicks at the gym now. So you gotta keep your eye on that. There needs to be at least some sort of a again, if there's nothing wrong with a coach wanting to be a part time fitness coach, I think for a side job. I think that fucking rules, because you can make 50 to 100 and 150 bucks an hour, if you want, depending on how you're packaging your stuff, you can build new products. You can lay a lot of groundwork as a part time personal trainer or coach to either it being a very lucrative, worth your time side project, or you can then pivot into a full time thing. I believe most coaching jobs start out as part time. I don't. I wouldn't hire a full time coach at any gym that there's not a gym, John, that you and I work with directly unless there is a client base that demands it, where their hours are full that we recommend anybody just bring somebody on full time.



Chris Pintado 07:36

No, because it is speaking again now from the gym owner's perspective, and if you're a personal trainer, right? We're taking this from your perspective. You do need to understand this is how they're seeing you. Every gym owner understands that when someone comes in they want to be a personal trainer at your spot, they just want to be fed. They want to say, I want you to hire me. I want you to pay me to then also have you give me all the clients. So it's understood that that's not a sexy proposition. If you're a personal trainer coming to somebody be like,



Tyler 08:11

decide how it works. And you know, when I go, I waffle on about this a little bit, fundamentally, but I think that what we do is different from other businesses. So this other business, what's the word? Other types of business? Um, that is how it works. Like, if I want to, if I'm going to go get hired as an electrical engineer as an employee at an electrical contractor, like they're not expecting me to bring in clients, right? They do. They got the work and work, and there's some there is, I guess there is something to be said about that, but just know that for you as the coach, as the personal trainer, you don't want that. I know you may think you do, but the types of places that are going to feed you clients that are going to give you, you're going to have no real sales responsibility whatsoever. You're not going to have to market yourself. You're not going to have to do any of your own social media. You're not going to be really responsible for much in regards to outcomes to the clients. They're just going to sell, sell, sell on the front end and then fill your calendar. That's fine, but you're going to make 1520 bucks an hour.



09:12

I guess that's the fair thing, right?



Tyler 09:13

The gym is going to keep all of it, and you're not going to have any of these clients be loyal to you. They're just, they're not, they weren't sold by you. They weren't sold on you. They were sold and handed off to you, and you're just now a fulfillment machine, as opposed to, like, the whole thing. And I guess that that's the reason I prefer my coaches, if I bring somebody in, or if I'm walking through a young trainer through the early phases of their career that it's like, I need you to be the professional the whole time. And there's plenty of checks along the way where you're when you're working with a gym and in a gym, and you're selling your own clients, and you're attracting people and marketing yourself, the gym is going to give you leads, trust me, and I hope that you end up in this situation, like, I'm here. We're like, I. It, my demand and my schedule transcends most of the leads that are I'm ever going to get from within the gym that the chip, any of the gyms that I work out of the two or three, it's just, it's they give me leads, but they're not that good, and they're not they're not really aligned. And I'm too busy for the most part, and I'd rather have the people that chose me to work with me, who sought me out who are already connected with everything I do on social media. All the messaging has been planted in their fucking brain. It's all done like the groundwork is all done, but by the time someone ends up with me, then they don't know, oh, you the red gym, the purple gym or the blue gym, and that's, that's all their association is, is with it. It's like, no, no, this is Tyler. He's good shit. They connect working with me with the results that my clients have got. They connect working with me with my own personality, my own philosophy, which I publicly put out there on lots of things, that makes it much easier for me to attract the right kind of people who want to spend the money, who also are not going to be off put by the way that I talk, the way that I look, or the way that I think. So



Chris Pintado 11:00

I want to hit on that then is that it's, we said the first piece, which is like, the the barrier to entry is, is get a certification. But I also don't like that being a barrier that you put in front of yourself for why you can't start training people. True, you call that out, right? It's either you, you get your certification, or you can start training people. And I just don't like the idea where it's like, well, I can't do anything until I pass this certification. It's like, okay, don't beat so much of a bitch, right? Like, I get it, you can't go work out at one of the large Globo gyms, or at a gym where it's like, Dude, you gotta have a certification. Like, I don't know you from Adam. Like, you're not just gonna be able to come in here, and I don't know anything about you. You don't have any background, per se. But that doesn't stop you from being able to like unless you are truly a transplant to where you live. No one knows who you are. You have no trust, no following, no nothing. Then all right, you're gonna have to borrow, right? You're gonna have to borrow. Audience, but otherwise, you should have people you Tyler, how,



12:01

At least five gym owners that we've worked with over the last decade have started in the park. Yep, just in the park. We had one, we had one that didn't have any equipment. So him and his fucking cousin went to the lake and found the biggest rocks they could find, loaded them in the back of their truck, and then brought those to the park, and they did a rock lifting six week program to get people before but it was those people that ultimately leads them to opening his own spot.



Tyler 12:36

Yep.



12:37

Do you think he was certified? Start



Tyler 12:39

with clients, as long as you care, start with clients. I I think that that is I think that there's a lot of truth in that. Now at that moment you have some clients, you're starting coaching. Let's say John. Where are we at this point? Let's say you have a certification. You got one just because the box has been checked, or you're right around the moment, you've just got it sent to you in the mail. What do you do? Well, if I had a time machine, I would have gone back about a year first off, and I would have been posting about fitness. Yep. So it is a little too late to all of a sudden become a fitness professional and have your public perception around people, amongst people that are in and around your community, you fucking know that this is something you do want to do or care about. As a person who before I started coaching people, I was getting asked about coaching people because I was posting about working out, posting about weight loss, you have to be publicly about fitness. Yeah, and those of you that don't, we'd have gym owners and coaches like that who don't do that. They don't post about it, they don't post workouts. If you follow their personal social media accounts, there's nothing really about fitness at all, or there's just nothing at all. And there's nothing wrong with not being a Facebook or Instagram fucking or influencer. Yeah, those terms are pretty interchangeable, I think as the years go by, yeah, um, I don't think you got to be like some sort of fucking Gary V content wizard. You know, you don't gotta start making a bunch of hormone type videos to be a good personal trainer. But people should know that you work out. Yeah, they should know that you care about it, and from there, they should know that you know about what you're doing, and they're not going to do that the moment you get your certification and stay Okay, who wants to start paying me? There's a lot of groundwork that has to be done, and this is that's the issue. You gotta be an artist. So start now. If you have aspirations of being a fitness professional, you better start to be publicly fit. You better publicly be posting about workouts. You better publicly, even if it's just you showing up to the gym. I'm fine with that. Hey, I made it in today, working out today. That's it. But people need to know that you're about that life, otherwise they're going to think you're a poser. Or even worse, by the way, another one. Of those predatory fucking mom fit. What's the word? Multi Level? Mom level marketing, MLM, where it's just like these people that don't ever lose any weight, they don't ever get in any shape, all of a sudden, they're announcing a weight loss challenge. Everybody get in. We're going to get fit this month.



Chris Pintado 15:20

Yeah, they also might have some shakes or some oil to sell, yeah. And the



Tyler 15:24

The problem is that people smell that out finally, like, right away when you see this stuff, because you're like, oh, wait a minute, yeah, lost me. Waiting 10 years like you look worse than you did a year ago. Now you're about to embark on this journey, and we're supposed to follow you. It seems like a waste of everybody's time, but the reason people can smell that out is because they know that person isn't about that. They just know they're not. They just know and so that you cannot just turn on, give me money, and I'll help you lose weight. It's like bitch. Who the fuck are you get the fuck out of here with this. It's



Chris Pintado 15:54

also really important, because starting with what you 've just proposed, what you just talked about, which is kind of starting with yourself. This is going to be the model that you're going to use for everything you're going to do moving forward, whether it's in your personal training business and then eventually in your gym business, which we always call it, your inside out approach. So the idea is you have to work inside out, and this is one of the things where it's like, well, I'm brand new. I just got my certification, or my certification, I'm waiting to take the test. I don't have any clients. I don't have social proof. We talk about things like, you need to have social proof, you need to have testimonials, you need to have reviews so you can pass the sniff test. You're not passing the sniff test in the beginning. And it's that chicken or the egg scenario, it's going to be like, Well, how am I going to be able to get clients if I don't have clients? And how do I show social proof? If I don't have the ability, like it's at the beginning, I don't have the experience, you are your social proof. You are your best testimonial right out the gate. So anything that you're and this keeps you honest, because once you start coming into this game and you start trying to do better. So you read marketing, and you do these things you want to improve, you are going to get captivated by snake oil salesmen, yep, and they are going to take you down very dark and scary roads that's going to cause you to lose your soul really, really quick, because you're just going to start copying and pasting and just doing random shit that you've never done before, and if you aren't anchored in like, truth of like, I've done this, I can show it's possible. This is what can be done. It. It will allow you to naturally establish, like, your own voice, your own ethos, what's important to you. And I think it's going to get us further into our discussion too, Tyler, because it evolves. Yeah, what you're about when you're 22 and what you're about when you're 42 are radically different things.



Tyler 17:46

And let's start with what that means right in the beginning. I think you should start with what you do and what you like. First off, you know what? The first coaching I did was CrossFit. Was it? I did some private one on ones in my garage. It was very much CrossFit and strength training style. And then it was simply, oh, my bought gym, and we're in it to win it. And so that's the nature of how this kind of goes. Well, at some point, did I, not only probably, actually, by the time I owned the gym, I was not doing CrossFit. That's, you know what I mean, I wasn't even, most of the time you finally get that I was competing in strongman, I was doing very different things. Different things, but it didn't change what I wanted to do with that business. You know, you understand what I mean that while I was doing something different, personally, in my training, my interest in coaching, that stuff was, was just fine. I didn't lose interest in coaching it, but I did want more of coaching me. I saw the limitations of group classes. I saw a lot of this stuff. And that's when I started to seek out better information, better strategies, better ways. And sure enough, guys the business models are even better if you had private and semi private stuff, then it is coaching big, huge swaths of people. So if you're looking to add more juice to your business, well, yeah, you should probably start doing some private things instead. It's just group fitness. So you group fitness. So you're going to start to evolve. But in the beginning, you're also going to get, if you're not in somebody else's facility, underneath a known brand, where people know what they're going to get when they go into that building, who are you going to connect to? And that's what's tough. That's why I think you need to spend a long time marketing yourself, marketing what you do, marketing, what you like, talking about it, just give it. You do have to kind of give value, and I don't believe you need to become a full time content creator. But if you got a recipe that you like, or a thought that you've maybe had to explain to 15 of your clients over and over and over again, you think you got a nice, concise or precise way to word it, turn to the internet and throw that out there that way. This is how I think I've really boiled this down. This is based on the clients I've worked with. It checks all the boxes, and people go, Oh, okay, this guy's no nonsense. And the people that disagree with that or want to be crusty about it, like, Well, part of marketing is removing people who you don't want to work with from



19:56

the pool. It's the same thing, almost as important for meetings. Wrong



Tyler 20:00

people. It's the same thing. Yeah, and so that, I think, is very important in the beginning. Because who are you going to work with? John, I didn't start at a young age, so I don't really know this, but I do know if I am in a gym, I have a desire to get coaches of all ages. I want a coach who's around 25 years old, I would like a coach who's in their late 20s, early 30s. I'd like a coach in their late 30s. I like a coach in their 40s, and I like a coach in their 50s. In reality, they all need to be fit. They all need to have, in a perfect world, some crossover in ideology, the way they like to train philosophically, they should all be rooted in some sort of reasonable ethos, but they also should connect to very different people. You know, if you're very young, it's tough. It's tough. If you're very young, you're going to get some older people who will be captivated by your youthfulness, and they'll enjoy it. But that's only going to go so far. Yeah, I'm 55 years old. I'm not dealing I'm not taking advice from a 25 year old about fucking anything, not anything, not a single thing. But if I'm 35 and it's like, I feel like I've just slipped, you know, it's just I got another one. This person's younger, but they still got together, and they're enthusiastic, and that enter, it's close enough you can connect to that energy and be inspired, and you can work with that person. And it's, it's that, that I think, is value. Can cover a lot of range, right? If you're in your 20s, early 30s, as far as a coach, but also, it's a big value when you're young, and start coaching youth. If you like kids, yeah, kids, kids, right? I've learned my threshold, it's 14 or 15,



21:42

but you only get to learn that by doing it by trying



Tyler 21:44

13. And it's good when it's good. But then there's still some shit where, man, I'll fucking deal with it. If an adult gave me any of this shit, it'd be done. And I don't give a shit, and you don't pay me. So fuck off. Like, you know, there's some of that stuff where you'll learn eventually, but if you're coaching youth sports in the offseason, it's such a great starting point, because that is your access point to the parents. And if you're coaching late, if you're later on, and you're more a parent's age, right? You're in your late 30s, mid 30s, and you end up coaching and coaching moms, dads, you know, Dad Bod stuff, or fit mom stuff or or weight loss. You know, young parents, that kind of age, that's your access point to work backwards. You can coach them, and then you can start to coach the kids, but you need to start coaching people, families, groups that are going to evolve with you. And I think that's the difference between having a business that people come to and bail out on versus being a person who can really connect with your clients and be there for them, for their long term goals. Every man who I coach, who's in his 40s or 50s, who I help lose 2030 pounds, we immediately pivot into, how can we make sure that your kids don't have to learn these same lessons in 40 years that you learned when it's almost too late and it's really hard, and that we don't want to have to have them go down that road. There's a reason you save money for them to go to fucking College. There's a reason you got money set aside. They can have a decent, reliable vehicle when they're older. Like, there's a lot of that stuff that I think is important as a parent, and it's very easy to explain to somebody who's gone down that road themselves. Like, let's make sure your kids don't have to do this slate in life. They don't spend 2030, years being miserable and hating the way they look and feel. And so now you have this making real connections when you start is important, but identifying where these opportunities can lead based on the trust, based on the results that you get from those people that will open the door to tons and tons and tons of stuff. So now what you have is lots of opportunities, and you can pursue those opportunities based on your evolving interest, and that is what's going to change is, by God, John, what if I just I hated CrossFit so much, and I just want to just be a strong man strength coach? Well, I probably could have, because we probably could take the people who like the strength aspect of CrossFit and we can pivot that into a secondary product, either a specialty class, specialty program, or private coaching. And then you launch a little club, and we go and do some competing and and you start to build a whole second brand underneath that stuff that would have worked, except I also didn't really care to do that, you know. So as these needs evolve, they're going to evolve with you, your age, your interests and everything. Now, John, I'm now, I'm the guy who people my age. See, I'm 40 years old. And they go, oh, man, you're in pretty good shape. Man, I'm not. What should I do? Right? You know, but that's the truth. So now, you know, most of my clients are aged 35 to 55 and they all tend to have more money than most



Chris Pintado 24:44

people. Well, that's, that's the cheat code, right? As we age, you get more money.



Tyler 24:50

Yeah, I don't. I don't want to. I don't want to be, I don't want to be coaching a bunch of, frankly, probably one of my least pleasant coaching experiences since moving back to the States was like, someone who's like. 21 Yeah, it was just like, entitlement and boredom and mom was paying for his shit. It's like, that's when I wanted to move, move my age limit from 14 to 30. It's like, fuck off all you. But there is some of that where I think that as you age up, as you evolve, it doesn't mean that different people are going to connect to you. It means the same people are going to finally connect to you, right? Because they're going to keep drifting, and you're going to stay solid, you're going to stay a pillar. You're going to be actually kind of the lighthouse. You're the North Star for a lot of these people, that if you've been fitness, and you've been about fitness and publicly about fitness, and you've been a professional for a decade. Then once people are like, I finally need a fucking trainer. John buck, man, it's gone too far. I've just been 10 pounds a year. Last year I was 20 pounds. John, it's just fucking gross. I need to fix this. And you go, alright, Tyler's been Tyler's the guy. He's right down the road. You know him. He's your age. He's been doing this forever. You see him around like, you know he does this professionally. You know what he's about? You know, he can help guys your age do this. Like, like, you need to make that known. And that takes groundwork, and it takes a lot of on ramp to



Chris Pintado 26:14

do it. The on ramp is so important, and it gets back to, like, getting back to you that if this is speaking to you because you're new and you're wanting to be able to get into this, it's there is more on ramp than you realize. And I'll call this a runway as well. And for me, it's always in our job, from our perspectives, always to make sure that we're giving you enough tools to be able to efficiently build and use the runway that's necessary. That's why we're starting right here, where it's like, where are you right now, Tyler, you at 40. You Now know exactly how to be able to speak to the group that you are wanting to actively train, and you can speak easily because it's where you are. Interesting



Tyler 26:55

thought experiment, too. Of my clients right now, how many of them would I have been able to sell in 2016 or 17 when I first started coaching? Probably not. Maybe I wouldn't be everyone. I certainly wouldn't be able to call my shots the way I do now, and I wouldn't be able to be as no nonsense as I am about it now. And it's not because of my wisdom. It's because there's not a foundation of, there's not fucking sucks to say. There's not a brand build, right? And at this point, whatever you call it, and it sounds super corny, the way that I do and talk about fitness is my brand. That is the reality of it. And as gay, as awful as that sounds, and corny as that sounds, okay, well, what's your brand? Well, what's your personal brand? I hate those conversations. I think they suck in marketing, but that is the reality as a personal trainer, as a coach, you are your own brand. Because over the course of my career, I could have been completely tethered to CrossFit from the beginning, and I'm glad I'm not, because CrossFit kept getting weirder and Dumber, and what went on in the affiliates kept getting further and further from what CrossFit was actually about. And then the global brand got real stupid and fucking short sighted, and then all of a sudden, there's just price price hikes and nonsense. And I'd be like, god damn if I had hitched my wagon to that horse and just decided I was going to ride it into the rocks. How limiting is that for me? You know? I mean, especially if I would have just taken what a lot of these CrossFit gyms tend to do, which is, go, it is simply Metcons for time, for reps at speed. That's it. Just group class, group class, Metcons, Olympic weightlifting speed, like just all of those components that, like, the most poorly executed CrossFit methodology, where they just do, like, Hero workouts three days a week, you know, all of that shit I cannot have, like, a logical approach to fitness and have that be 100% of what I am. So I'm glad I kept separate from all those things. I'm just willing to evolve. I like strength sports. I'm going to do that. We're going to talk about that. I because I started with losing weight. That's what it was for me. So my own journey starts to give me the pathway to that. And now, over all these years of trying to teach people the way I did it, which isn't necessarily the way, and then the way I've refined it over helping lots of other people lose weight, is now I have a pathway that's like protected. It's the quickest route. Might be the best route. It might be the safest route. It's a route that's going to, for sure, get you there, and it's going to put you in a position to keep going. And that's what I've built over the years of the work that I've done with clients now that again, that sits as that's my brand, that's the service that I can offer. I've been there. I've helped people get there. I've learned the hard way for all this, it just works easy and it sells. But what is this going to do for me in 10 years? That's the question now, because every bit that I am a personal trainer now, when I'm 40, I go, Okay, what about when I'm 5055? Five. First off, my number one responsibility is to not get fat, right? For real, for real, you can't. I can't be the personal trainer who's jacked at 40 and then the fucking wheels just came off at 55 and then wonder why I can't get clients, especially younger clients. You know, that's a tough one or older clients at this point, because then I'm trying to say, okay, you can really be fit late in life, so as long as I can keep my together, however, you continue to be the lighthouse, you continue to be the North Star. And every decade that goes on, people slip further and further and further. Not only as people age, do they need help more, but they have money to pay for help more. They're not. They're not the guys that are broke fucking power lifters spend most of their time on bodybuilding.com reading forums, arguing on the internet, on Elite FTS and and all those old school forums. There was just bunches of fucking bros who didn't spend any money on anything but a singular gym membership and steroids. So teen nation, and we're just Yes, the old teen nation stuff, a teen nation was the one I was looking for right away. Yeah, yeah, the old T nation forums. But those are, but that's like those people were never going to spend any money on coaching or whatever, till one of those guys finds himself 60 years old with a shitload of disposable income, and he hasn't been fucking lifting heavy or lifting anything in 20 years, and needs help and knows it's just fucking time smarter, wiser, with more resources, and the want is more urgent. It's a great way for me to evolve coaching people that are about the same age as me, while also being able to still leverage my experience and being able to coach what I would also prefer, which is youth, offseason sports and like my pocket is that is is going to be guys around my age, a decade older, a decade younger, for weight loss and general fitness, and then also high school students, because that's fucking awesome, and they rule, and they work hard, and I can't give all my old guys steroids, but all those high school students are just chock full of fucking testosterone at this point where it's just makes training easy and fun, and they make progressive fucking rules, dude. Yeah, rules and what a great way to plant a seed in like, a young man's brain, which is like the gym fucking rules got the biggest dude around, walking me through the gym, giving me confidence, rooting me on, showing me how it's done. And we're getting big results that fucking rules, that rules, but that that, I think I can keep that going as long as I age, because if I'm a parent, I have no respect for the 24 year old kids that come out of exercise science program that then get plugged into the hospital, and then they just tell the kids, now you're, this is the person who's in charge of your high school offseason sports at the weight room. You're like, all right, it's fucking is this this quote, unquote, man, 175 pound man can't bench press his own body weight. Can't Jump. Worthy of shit who I never saw do anything good in sports. I've also never seen him do anything physically impressive, and they don't look physically impressive. He's the person that's guiding my son to, like, peak athletic performance. Fuck this dork. Fuck that dork. It's crazy. So to me, in my head, maybe, and maybe that's just me, maybe that's how I'm selling myself to all these parents too. Is you want this little fucking dweed teaching your kid how to what be small and weak and uninteresting and untalented. Go for it seems like he's got that in fucking spades. But if you want to get big and strong, I've been doing this for a lot of years, and I got my shit together still, and I got decades and decades of results and referrals I can point you to point you towards, like, Let's go that route. And I think it does make it easier for me to sell. But again, that has to evolve. What if, John, I become interested in endurance running? Gazhov,



33:46

sober, you're gonna say endurance running.



Tyler 33:48

I become, if I become the guy that went from big rahu strong, I just really love, just love a double marathon. Just love me, the 48.4 milers, pocket. What should I do? Well, you gotta stop weight loss, because I have to lose some weight. I think Coach weight loss, and I think you still coach strength training as long as I've been building a brand the whole time. Yep, if I find if I've been just kind of going by the seat of my pants and coaching based on gym leads or leads that gyms give me and shit. And now later on, I decide to pivot well, and nobody knows me as a strength training guy, and now everybody just sees me running. It's pretty tough now for me to convince you that I should be coaching your kid to get huge and strong when I'm just that old guy who spends all day out running laps.



Chris Pintado 34:40

And I think overall this this, and if you are the 24 year out of 24 year old Exercise Science dweeb that we're talking about, stay in your fucking lane. This is really what we're talking about. Is that it's go after the go after the lowest hanging fruit, right? For me, when I was an athlete, I was never going to be the fastest, and to be fair, I never was going to be the strongest either. I was strong and respectfully so and could play sports to get to a high enough level, but I knew I could be the craziest. You know what I mean? I knew I could throw the most caution into the wind and sacrifice myself to the task at hand more than anyone else was willing. And that became really apparent, right? Well, that was the lowest hanging fruit for me then. So if I was going to make a name for myself, it wasn't going to be like, Oh, I'm going to outrun this guy or I'm going to outlive this guy. It's like, No, I'm going to just smash them in the face as much as humanly possible, and I'll I won't quit before they will take that same mentality and now bring it over to training, where it's like, if you're small and weak and that's not your thing is big and strong, then don't fucking sell big and strong. And that stays right in line with, like, who relates to you? What is of interest to you? What can you teach? It's when those Exercise Science dorks lovingly to you all that you come out and you act like you're going to be able to put together some amazing program that you've learned in college to help someone gain it's like, Get the out of here, man, go be the speed guy, because I know a lot



Tyler 36:21

more than that. Well, it's also like, there's, it's very difficult for me to believe that you hold the keys to building strength and muscle mass and size, the things that are necessary for, by the way, like, if I don't know a single high school athlete whose weight room goal should be anything other than to put on size and get stronger, injury prevention is a part of that you're training through good range, but like, literally, the goal is, if you can carry an extra 20 pounds of muscle that time you're 18, then versus then not, you're going to be a fucking specimen and a handful in any sport. By the way, if you're a six foot eight basketball player, good that extra 20 pounds now means you're a fucking man amongst boys. Okay, that's the real difference here. And so when I see these guys come out of these programs, and bless their hearts, they care, and I say that not believing it, because the problem is, I don't know a lot to care about. I hold that I reserve the right to believe that some of them care. But a lot of people go to college just to go to fucking college. And this is just, oh god, I guess I'm this guy. And thank God there are hospital programs. You can sit here and watch old people fucking sit on bicycles all day and be a be a pro. But I want more, right? I want more. I want more connections. I want my own brand. I want people to know what I do because what I do, I want some say in what that is. And then if someone comes up to me and goes, Geez, how do you do? How do I put on muscle like you? I'm like, well, the first thing is steroids. Okay, you're gonna eat a lot. You're gonna take steroids while you live strong man for a couple years, and then from the but that's the reality. I also don't hide those things out of my own career, because it's like, this is the reality, one of how I got this big was drugs. Why not know how I stayed this big, clean living, clean eating, testosterone replacement therapy, but know the pathway, and I don't teach people based on what I did. I teach them based on what needs to be done, where they are to where they need to go. And I just can't look at a 165 pound guy who was literally going to tell a bunch of kids how to get stronger and put on size. I just feel like, if you could do that, if you knew anything about that at all. You would have done it yourself, because you look like shit



Chris Pintado 38:23

and that's it. It's the same idea where you're not going to be endured, wouldn't you, because it's but you can, if you want to be that guy, guess what? Start eating more goddamn food and start lifting actual weight, and then you can be that guy, because you can be king of how many hobbits do we know in the CrossFit world? Yeah, our cock fucking diesel, but And, all right, great for everybody under five six, you can be their God, yeah. And you will have those guys that want, they want to be you. Now,



Tyler 38:55

I will say too is, I think there's also an opportunity for these, if that's your personal brand is do things with your clients. Mean it. If you are fresh out of exercise science, you want a gimmick. It's going to deer you to your students, to your student. Athletes, perfect. We are going to get fucking checked this summer, guys, we are going to eat this I'm going to eat with you. I'm going to put on 15 pounds this year. You are too. Let's do that with them. Look the part and everybody's body on you next year, but you gotta be it. That's the big thing. You can't be a poser. That's almost where all this is. Be what you're going to be, be what you are, work with, who you're passionate about. You need to be that unapologetically the whole way. And if your interest pivot, pivot, it's okay, but you need to that pivot needs to be public. Your interest needs to be public. The things that you do, you need to be doing them and telling people about them so that they could pay you. Because this is the whole thing, guys, they gotta pay you, that you're trying to get people to pay you to do the things that you love. So and you don't ever talk about the things that you love. It's it's just nuts. Nobody. Mad for like musicians. No one ever gets mad at a musician for like, Hey, here's live footage from the show last night. Oh, here's our music video. Oh, our new album is coming out. Nobody's like, just fucking get over yourself. Nobody is you know why? Because they're a fucking musician, they're trying to get people to like their music.



Chris Pintado 40:17

But do you know what people do get fussy about at musicians is if they released an album 10 years ago, we haven't heard from them, and then they release a pop version 10 years later, when they used to not be popping, pop be like you pivoted, you, you fucked. We hate you. This is not what we liked.



Tyler 40:36

Yeah, or seven retirement tours. There's only so many. There's only so much you can ask of us,



Chris Pintado 40:40

yeah. Kiss is on their 25th reunion tour, and it's oh yeah, all



Tyler 40:45

of that stuff. Now, as I again, I think that if you start, where you start, keep moving. The marketing is on you. And I think crafting your products, and the things that you can do when you are actively coaching clients and marketing, the things that you do, people will ask you questions. They'll ask you to work with you. They'll maybe want something specific. And if you're doing it publicly, you're going to get enough of that interest coming back your way. Well, you'll understand now what you can package for somebody else. John, I've been running just weight loss for dudes for a while on my online coaching, and it's been going great. And then, yeah, it's like, you know, let me just put a little feeler out there. And it sold, like, four or five, eight weeks, just muscle building programs. It was perfect. Okay, now I gotta build a muscle building program for these guys, and so that got me paid to build it. And now I can kind of have two different pathways to go. I'm literally torn. The problem is, within the dialog between the two now it's like, it is a bit confusing, brutally. I kind of think that it would be best if I settled in Let's lose fat, at least where my market is here. You know, the guys that want to put on size, I don't know that you already have the discipline or or the guys that want to put on size are already fat, which then I don't do. That's the worst part. I have my own morals. So someone's already overweight and they want to ask me about a muscle building program, bro, I'm not going to give you an excuse to dirty bulk for two months, not what we're doing. You could do that. You and McDonald's could set that arrangement up, but that's not what I'm about to do. And so, but even that little bit of you know, the muscle building was almost like a throwback to the credibility I had built from my strength training stuff. Yeah, people always seek me for it. So, yeah, sure, people are interested enough. I'll make it. I'll do it. Make some money off it. Now I have something I can sell recurring. But my passion still does lie in the actual transformations and actual weight loss, getting people on the right path, changing lives, changing family's life, changing the trajectory of a family for generations. That's what's important to me, much less so than like a guy putting on 10 pounds this year. Oh, with, without



Chris Pintado 42:47

a doubt, and I know we're almost at time, but it is when you're new and we're talking about these things that are interesting to you. Do not try and do fitness for everyone, right? Right? Because if you do it for everyone, you're doing it for no one, and you don't connect. It just is true, because you have to have faith and trust that what you offer as a fitness professional is going to evolve over your lifetime. You're not married to whatever you decide to do this year for the next five years, maybe what you've done the last 10 years, it doesn't matter. You will. You are allowed to evolve. So just own that lane. Like, like you said, Tyler, I like high school athletes and dudes that are fighting the dad bod fight. If that's my two spots, and that's my two spots for right now, you've got to pick as the listener and the watcher. You gotta pick what your two things are, and it's called a niche, and it's called your avatar, and all these stupid fucking names. But whatever you want, it's two things. What are your focus areas? And just live there. Talk to those people, think about those people, make sure it connects you close enough, because it'll make everything easier and everything you want to do next. And then you evolve. Guess what? Probably more than likely, evolve with those people, because those people won't stay those people, they'll evolve too. And now you're able to be there to help. Yeah. And now notice



Tyler 44:11

we didn't cover anything specific about the gyms you'd be training out of, or any of that stuff. This is about you, your brand, your interests and your audience. And I think it's about building and refining all of those things over the course of a career. That is what's important. Where you do that at whether it's your facility, someone else's multiple facilities in a park, on the moon, on a bicycle in your garage, whatever that's going to be, if you do the things that we talked about in this episode, well, you're going to be set up to do those other things almost don't matter. And that's what's important. Then your career is your career, and that's the biggest thing. I think that separates a good if I'm going to hire a personal trainer to work in my gym, I want them to want to have a career in this just because I can't feed them full time clients, trust me, if they're here and they're like, Listen, I got 20 clients. I've been doing all my own marketing. I sell this, I do this, and you can give me some. Like, Oh, hired. They're a go-getter, they're a professional, they're a self-starter. That's what I want. If I got some dipshit coming in, go, Well, you can give me clients and all the you know, just have them do only the exercises I like to do, you know, I'll just have them do my workouts, and it's all about me, not them. It becomes a very different conversation. So, yeah, that's got us covered. We are at time. Thanks for listening. Go to gym owners revolution.com go to follow the show at the gym owners podcast on Instagram. Follow John at Jay banks at Bell on Instagram. You can find me at Tyler F and so, and that's Tyler EFF. I thank you for listening, and we'll see you next week. Bye.

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