It took almost three weeks of back and forth, speaking through assistants and balancing time-zones. I didn’t have any friends in common with the man, so it was a shot in the dark, but one day while sitting in a Starbucks, I got what I was looking for: my phone rang and the person on the other end said “Hello Kaiser, this is Gunnar Peterson!”.

I know every single person reading this blog knows who I’m talking about; for all purposes, Gunnar’s the face of the Personal Training industry. He lives in a Hollywood Hills Mansion and is as much a celebrity as many of the stars he trains. Besides speaking to someone with such notoriety in this business, for me the thrill was even more significant: I was talking to the man who basically got me started and serious about Personal Training in the first place. I remember a few years ago I was at a crossroads in my life: I was struggling in college in a subject I really disliked, and could hardly find any clients for my Personal Training practice as well. I don’t know if anyone can relate, but this was a time when I was essentially lost, not a good place to be.

But my view of the world and my prospects took a major change after I read the book G-Force (they later changed the name to The Workout) by Gunnar Peterson. It became clear to me that there was potential to make a great career out of Personal Training and that there was more to this business than the way I was doing things. Reading about Gunnar’s success story gave me the confidence I needed to commit myself to training 100%; for me, the rest is history.

What I was surprised by most in speaking to Gunnar was how down to earth he was. His devotion to the integrity of this business came across in everything we talked about. Hearing it from him, you’d think he got to the top of the business by complete accident. As a matter of fact, let’s hear it from him – here’s the audio to our interview:

Part 1:
[youtube eb1I6YkaiRM nolink]

And here’s part 2:

[youtube Usx9-AAFDQU nolink]

Just like most of you, I knew of Gunnar’s fame and credentials beforehand and had a lot of respect for him, but that was just doubled after our conversation. It’s few people that you actually respect more the better you get to know them, and with him this was exactly the case. Just like I said in the interview, Gunnar’s story is something all of us can relate to, more so than any other celebrity trainer. He doesn’t run a training studio, nor is he so media driven that he spends all of his time in entertainment; his business is predominantly hourly training sessions with clients. I talk a lot about branching into other areas of the fitness field, but Gunnar is proof that this doesn’t have to be the case. As you can see, he rode his bread and butter straight to the top!