It’s time to talk about something fun, but at the same time probably the most important topic in your career – and it doesn’t have anything to do with your career at all:
Your Lifestyle
When it comes down to it, this is the reason behind everything we do professionally: that’s why it’s called “making a living“. In Personal Training this is even more important because a lot of our marketability has to do with our lifestyles as well.
In getting the kind of life you want, you’ve got to have goals and be assertive. Don’t think for a second that it’s selfish for you to think about creating your ideal lifestyle, because no one else is going to do it for you. The truth is most people are going to have absolutely no regard for your quality of life. In fact, they’ll try to exploit you to help them achieve their own ends, regardless of what you want for yourself, what’s good for you, or what makes you happy. And this goes for everyone in your life; I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but now that you know you can take back control.
Many of the problems we see today in our society are due to the fact that people pay absolutely no attention to the lives they want. As the saying goes, they get working in their lives and not on their lives. They don’t think about the type of life they want or what they want out of it, and don’t make the effort to achieve it. Instead they chose their careers, friends, and personal activities arbitrarily and allow things to continue on autopilot for years on end.
Well just like all irresponsibility, one day you wake up and realize things aren’t the way you wanted them. It then takes drugs, alcohol, prescription medication, or illicit activities to help cope. It’s really sad but for probably the majority of people, this is reality.
I’ve already written that Personal Training is the world’s greatest job so I’m not going into that again. But I will point out that this career affords you the real ability to carefully plan your own destiny. You can shape it into the type of career that’ll work for you. Do you only want to work evenings, mornings, or weekends? There’s an easily executable business model that will make each of those scenarios possible.
Lifestyle is what we’re working for as trainers. The primary allure for a career in Personal Training is not income per se. Personal Training will not make you rich, at least not in the beginning. For example what I talk about in The Whistleblower Report is a blueprint for earning a $100,000 income in about 25 hours a week. Compared to other programs or business seminars out there promising hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars on autopilot, 100K doesn’t sound like much at all (I personally have never made made more than 200k in a year.)
It’s the way you can earn the money that’s the difference. You can earn it faster, in fewer hours, and through simpler marketing than any career I’ve ever heard of. It doesn’t have to be from owning a gym or a training facility. Just your “average” trainer, when he does his job right, can live like a millionaire without the responsibilities or restrictions of one.
Lifestyle is what clients are looking for from trainers.Although your clients are coming to you for help on their fitness, the underlying desire behind it is to live better, more enriching, and fulfilling lives – how are you going to give this to them if you aren’t living it yourself. Getting in to the mind of your client and their motivations is one of the things this career teaches you. You have to think about the underlying reasons of why they’re doing what they’re doing. Most likely they want to go out more, look good on vacation, attract a mate – in general, get more out of life. Believe it or not, from their trainers they’re looking for leadership in this area. They’re looking for a role model of what’s possible when you achieve outstanding fitness and lead the fitness lifestyle.
I think clients in fact want to hear about what their trainer does on vacation. Whether conscious or subconscious, they are looking for a certain “sex-appeal” (if that’s the right word) when choosing a trainer. If you don’t thinks so, you’re really missing something – just turn on the TV and you’ll know how Personal Training is being portrayed and marketed today. When you break it down, in the general fitness market clients are looking to achieve greater sex-appeal themselves (especially the single ones). If you look at it this way, a trip to a hot-spot like Las Vegas, South Beach, or LA is a strange but important form of continuing ed and career development.
I hope that makes sense to you, or else you’re not going to buy my reasons for going to Las Vegas later this month. I’m heading over to Vegas over Memorial Day weekend for 5 days of sun and partying, but there’s another reason. Checking out the scene over there is an important part of what I do. I need to know what the bodies look like in the real world, at the highest level. I need to know exactly what clients are coming to me to get ready for.
In general I don’t crave vacations the way most of the working population does. I’ve chosen my clients and planned my schedule to make almost every day a vacation already ( I know that sounds nauseating, but it’s true!). So don’t expect a weekend of drunken mayhem from me. But I still appreciate the lifestyle this career has given me, and do enjoy the opportunity to take advantage of it.
While I’m out in Vegas, I’ll also be sitting down with Dan Eiden, a big time trainer out there. Dan’s a text-book example of proactive life-style design in Personal Training. He relocated to Las Vegas from Chicago, and has created a great practice out there. I’m going to sit down with him and find out how he made it happen, and also some of his tremendous personal marketing techniques. So look-out for the details about what me and Dan talk about when I get back.
But don’t look for for any details on the trip. Like they say, what happens in Vegas … yeah, you know the rest.