I remember when I first became a trainer – Ahhhh – the good ole’ days …

There were some good times, I have to admit – but I was earning crap, I was always stressed out, and I started to hate myself – if you’re working in a big-box gym, maybe you can relate.

I have a belief that liking and respecting your co-workers and customers is vital to your happiness in whatever business you’re in. Well here, I couldn’t respect the HARD SELL gym managers and PT directors – they looked like the sleazy money grubbers they were …

And my fellow trainers would huddle together in the trainer’s office, munching McDonald’s french fries between clients – can you imagine?

I remember talking to my training manager about wanting to train clients in Manhattan in the future. He told me the competition was too tough and not to try it.

I don’t know where things would have ended up for me if I kept going on like this, but luckily, one day something happened that changed everything …

A friend of mine opened a tiny juice bar on the upper east side of Manhattan. (The place went under very quickly, and was my first look at the real-world side of running a business.)

Just up stairs from the juice bar was this posh private gym. Most of the people that worked-out there were meeting their private trainers.

What surprised me most was the dynamic between all of these independent trainers and their clients.

The trainers and their clients would come down to the juice bar all the time, and it was then that I learned a valuable lesson …

There was no competition between these trainers. They didn’t view their clients as their “prey”. These clients, who were paying their trainers hundreds of dollars per session in many cases, would come in and hang out with their trainers after their sessions.

And these trainers weren’t the petty, stressed out trainer I was used to from my corporate gym. They were easy-going, relaxed, in good shape, and making great money.

The gym owner used to come down often too – we used to make one really good smoothy he loved (that one smoothie made up about 75% of our sales.) He also allowed us to work out up in the gym whenever I wanted. (Although the guy was also a former navy seal, his gym failed in less than a year – another lesson for me in running a business.)

After observing the trainers and their clients, was when I realized the top clients weren’t looking for their trainers inside the big box gyms – they were seeking out the top trainers independently.

This is when things shifted for me big time.

The purpose of this story was to tell you about my first experience with top-level training – this set a clear example for me of what I wanted to be like as a trainer.

And less than two years later, I had fulfilled it on a level probably higher than any of the trainers in that swanky gym.

If you’re a trainer, and haven’t had such an experience yet that’s what I’ve always looked to do with my blog: introduce you to as many of these trainers as possible, and show you the very common success principles and views that run like a thread through all of them.

I think that experience of seeing those trainers in front of me that had what I wanted changed the course of my career as a trainer. That’s why when I learned about blogging, I wanted my blog to be the next best thing for all of the other trainers out there.

So in case your sales manager and your french fry crunching co-workers aren’t giving you any positive feedback, you can get it here!

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Want more articles on independent Personal Training? Then check these out:

Making Personal Training Deals With Private Gyms

Bootstrapping A Personal Training Business

Quitting Your Personal Training Gym Job