HOW DO I GET STARTED IN PERSONAL TRAINING?That’s the number one question getting thrown around these days. Instead of skating around the subject, let’s get right to the heart of it.

It seems everyone wants to get started in Personal Training for some reason. It’s the question every guy and gal that’s ever gotten passionate about fitness has thought to themselves at some time. They know fitness is something that comes easy to them, and they know they’d be good at it.

So once and for all, here’s the answer – HOW TO GET STARTED IN PERSONAL TRAINING, all covered in one post! I hope you’re ready for this one, because it’s got a few parts and might get a little complicated (chuckle), but I’m going to guide you through it right now – please perform each step in order:

1. wherever you are right now, stand up
2. raise your right hand
3. put it over your heart
4. yell in a very loud voice “I AM NOW A PERSONAL TRAINER!”

Congratulations! You’re now officially a trainer! How did that feel? Do you feel any different? Well you should, because that’s all it takes. Unlike most other professions, there isn’t a national regulating body monitoring the standards and qualifications in Personal Training. Although we hear that a certification is a prerequisite, in most cases that’s not even true. You just have to decide and that’s it – that felt good didn’t it?!

Ok, that was the easy part, but part 2 is a little more difficult:

You’ve now got to TAKE ACTION!

Ahhhh, you didn’t like that part did you? it’s not as easy is it? Maybe you were expecting a job offer by now, a guaranteed check, sick days, dental insurance, and a nice retirement plan – no one told you you’d have take action did they? That wasn’t part of the rules!

That’s why training is different – you have to get off of your butt and do something. Nothing happens until you do. The trainers that do take action are shocked by how quickly things progress and the world that opens up to them. Some of these trainers even start writing blogs about it (some better than others).

The ones that can’t get committed and take action bitch and moan about how it sucks – they go for a “safe job”. They represent the majority of the population, unwilling to believe in themselves or take even the slightest amount of risk (btw, these are the people we as trainers are trying to help).

The decision is all you need to get started. From there, as any trainer will tell you, you’re always a work in progress. Personal Training is that vehicle for you to grow as a person – for you to find yourself – to challenge yourself. It’s a path to get you to a higher level as a person and a professional. Is that important? hmmm – let’s think about it:

* Are you planning to become a divorce statistic?
* Are you going to feed the credit debt and bankruptcy statistics?
* Are you planning to feed downsizing and unemployment numbers?

Training isn’t a cure all and I’m not trying to convince you to become a trainer. I’m actually telling you the opposite – make sure you find that career that’s right for YOU.

But if right now you spend 5-7 days a week at the gym; if staying in shape is something that’s always come very easy and naturally to you; if almost everyone you know is in outstanding shape; you get at least 2 fitness magazine delivered to your home; you love reading the journal articles that these magazines often reference for more information …. if any of that describes you, or that’s how you ideally want to describe yourself when it’s all said and done, then you’re probably on the right road.

You’re on the road to be a mentor to other people looking to achieve outstanding fitness. It’ll be easy for you to attract 12-15 high-level clients paying close to $100 per session. You’ll probably enjoy every minute of it and not ever feel like you’re working.

Don’t ask me how a career started allowing us to make very good money off of supervising complete novices on how to exercise. Sometimes it just seems too easy – could this really be a viable career?

If you’re afraid to make the jump into training, that’s probably the question going through your head – is it really a viable career? To explore the subject, you should take a walk.

Your first stop is the closest major chain health-club – you know, a Bally’s, 24Hour Fitness, Equinox – places like that. First find out what they’re charging for training there. Then find out how many trainers they have. Then take a look at the trainers that work there. Ask yourself “Could I do that? Maybe even a little better?”

Then take a walk to the major trainer’s gym in your city. If you don’t live in a major city, you might not have one of these – but if you do, take a look at how many trainers are training out of there during peak hours. Find out how much they’re charging. Ask yourself “Could I do that? Maybe even a little better?”

Next go home and turn on your computer – search “Personal Training” in your neighborhood and look at the trainers and the websites that appear near the top. Look at most of their websites and what they’re offering – again, ask yourself if you think that you could do a little better than that.

The answer in every case should be yes, you can! Once I understood that part, things totally changed for me – that’ll happen to you too. Wherever you are now, just take action – the rest will take care of itself. Here’s the blueprint:

• get training experience
• develop a training style and a specialty
• create an excellent website
• make a few deals with local gyms
• dominate your free classified advertising
• place one local ad (could cost up to $1000)
• dress well
• show up on time
• workout yourself
• keep learning

Wash rinse and repeat – it’s so freaking easy. Then why doesn’t everyone do it? It’s because they just don’t believe it’s possible. They’re convinced you have to do things the hard way – that you have to go to college for the privilege to work at a shitty job, for a shitty boss, for shitty pay, drive a shitty car, watch yourself get fat, and desperately cling to the first person that can stand you for more than five minutes for the rest of your life (that’s until you get divorced).

That’s not for me and I hope it’s not for you either. Yeah, we’re not talking training anymore – we’re talking about life here. This training thing is so much bigger than that. That’s what our clients are coming to us for. They’re coming to you for life help – they want help to live richer and fuller lives – get yours straightened out first, and you’ll have too many clients to count.

Even though I specialize in training the elite population a lot of times they have the biggest problems:

“I’m a Harvard law grad that allowed my body to turn to shit while I was in school – no amount of money can help me with that. Kaiser teach me to respect my body again and show me what to do!”

“Kaiser – I’m a high level business exec and everywhere I go and everyone I interact with is in outstanding shape – what do they know that I don’t?”

“I’m a doctor and my hours are so crazy that I don’t have the time to stay in shape. And now my body’s a mess and it makes me miserable – help me!”

“Kaiser – I’m a top business exec but I’m getting older and I’m still single. That might be okay for other people but not for me – I demand to look amazing and be at my best so that I can bring the person I want into my life.”

“Kaiser – I’m taking massive action in my life right now to change everything I’m unhappy with, and my body is one of those things. This is my one and only life and I’m not willing to accept things as they’ve been until now.”

These are just some of the underlying messages of my current and recent clients. Of course no client every uses these exact words, but these are their problems. You’ve got to learn to listen to what’s being said under the surface, and then go hard and tackle THAT problem. Use your knowledge as leverage to make change in their lives. Once you know what button to push, it makes guiding and motivating your client much easier.

You know what they’re not saying? No one’s coming to me and saying “hey Kaiser, I’d like to pay you $89 an hour to walk around with me and do exercises at a level that I could do on my own, listen to my problems but not help me with them, and just remind me when it comes to pay you – oh, and I don’t really care if you give a shit or not.”

No one ever says that, but that’s what most trainers hear. You’ve got to learn to get the message behind the words, and get to the heart of what your clients are looking for.

Then you can really be a trainer. This is where most of the people giving and selling advice on fitness get it completely wrong. They encourage you to get out of Personal Training as fast as possible because it’s the worst job in the world. It sucked for them, and that’s why they left and instead went into the advice giving business. And it does suck for most health-club trainers. But instead of quitting, did you every think about trying to get it right? Did you ever think about what allows some people to do really well at it and try to do that yourself? If not, I’ve got news for you – you’re never going to be able to stick it out through the hard times in anything else you try either. There’s really not going to be anything else you’ll find that’s easier than Personal Training, so you might as well get this part right first. You’ll then have the knowledge, confidence, experience, and cash flow to try anything you want – the world is your oyster.

You might not end up a trainer at the end of your journey – but on the road to becoming a successful trainer, you’ll have learned a few lessons along the way. You might end up a gym owner, which really just makes you a business owner. So for that matter you might end up starting a successful business in some other totally different area. You might end up a marketer like so many trainers end up doing these days – and since marketing has almost nothing to do with fitness at all, you might end up marketing in a totally different area. There’s nothing wrong with that.You might chose to specialize even further in fitness and work with high-level athletes, or you might start the next great training facility or franchise, or invent the next fitness product that takes the world by storm.

Wherever this takes you, there’s definitely room for you in this business. Fitness and training isn’t going anywhere – if anything it’s getting bigger and becoming more a part of our culture.

You’ll learn to do what you want, and not be afraid to do it at a high level. You’ll learn to think for yourself and chose a course in life because it’s what you want to do, not because it’s what your parent’s told you to do or that it was the safe choice.

• You’ll have learned to respect yourself over any other employer
• You’ll have learned to interact with high level people
• You’ll understand how successful people think and operate, and what got them to where they are
• You’ll learn to be part of a real profession and part of a tremendous industry
• You’ll learn to be responsible and manage and motivate yourself
• You’ll learn personal marketing skills
• You’ll learn how to direct others and be a leader

That’s what being a trainer at a high level teaches you. Anyone that’s successful learned these skills somewhere – despite what you think, the people on top aren’t born like this.

Some learned it from their parents – most learned it from their social circle. Others learned it from the demands placed on them – a tough job with a good boss, a good university with good professors, the military, a challenging sport with a good coach, or a mentor.

Wherever they learned it, they learned it somewhere. I didn’t gain this knowledge and these skills until I was well into my twenties. Until then I was working shitty jobs in shitty careers and studying boring, go-nowhere subjects in school. I never pushed out of my comfort zone. I was one of the sheep.

Then on a whim I got into Personal Training. It forced me to talk to people. And because I loved it, I got good at it. And because I cared about my clients, I looked for answers to their problems and learned more. I realized I could do this on my own without the help of a gym. Because I viewed myself as my own boss and as a professional, I sought to make deals with other gyms and businesses, and eventually found my “sweet spot” and established my training practice. I continued to refine the process and raise my rates. And through every phase, I learned to make friends, become a better person, and end up in the situation I’m in now, where I have an amazing lifestyle and never really have to work anymore. I then started a fancy blog to brag about how cool I am (that last part is optional).

So that was my progression. I realize that most of you are starting from a higher position than I was in. A lot of you already have friends which I didn’t. You’re probably already responsible, which I wasn’t. A lot of you are probably already computer savvy, which I wasn’t. You’ve probably know how to interact with other people, which I didn’t. You’re probably already in good shape, which I wasn’t. You probably already have self-respect, which I didn’t.

So things will probably be much easier for you. I’ve seen trainers start HUGE businesses in the same number of years that I’ve been a trainer. Most likely, they were already quality people, got into Personal Training, and were shocked to find “wow, people are really paying big money for this shit!” And boom, in a few years you see them on top earning hundreds of thousands dollars. I’ve interviewed several of these trainers on Super-Trainer and it’s just a tiny sampling of the large number of people making it in fitness.

So that’s how you get started in Personal Training. You get your mind right first, then you take action, and you keep going. You stayed focused no matter how many bad days, bad experiences, or bad people you come across. Because you’re now a part of something – you’re part of something with every other trainer out there. You’re part of the 500 billion dollar health and wellness industry. Where you chose to go from here is up to you.
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