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The Folly of Personal Training in Las Vegas
________________________________________________
If I heard myself, back in early 2007, listing the reasons why personal fitness training was a good business to get into, I would still listen to that person, and still even be inspired by that person, but I wouldn't do it again in Las Vegas. The industry is, and will be for quite some time, a great one. Full of promise, brimming with potential profit, and reaching far into the trends of the future. However, an aspiring trainer must consider more than his love of the
job and his own skill. There are things to consider in the environment, and,
above all, inside one's self.
I am guilty of the crime of self-dishonesty. I held faith in the blind, emotion-bourne hope of the way things should have been, instead of respecting reality. Since far back in the beginning of my stint as a trainer, I saw the signs, though I convinced myself blind. I felt the distortions of the market, though I justified my instincts away. In the end, it took a long time to realize and spell out the most basic of reasons why I would fail as a trainer: I refused to hustle people. My integrity would not allow me to stoop to the level of hard-selling personal training, because I believed in the concept of the soft-sell in order to attract only the serious potential clients. The ones that would stick around, show results through their own convictions, and make my professional reputation.
The problem with this integral approach, was the over-saturation of trainers. Those potential clients that truly felt the need to change themselves and seek out a trainer for the long term were few and far between. Take my (one) steady client, for instance: he came to me, professed his intentions, and stayed with me until today. But, any one of those rare, dedicated individuals, could choose from hundreds of trainers. And if they came across a volume-hungry, fast-talking pseudo-trainer (which were quite prevalent), forget it.
So, picking up real clients was either the luck of the draw -- the right place at the right time -- or by referrals from the real clients you already had. Unfortunately, my one real client, through his social hobbies, never came across any prospects.
In the ideal environment, a theoretical vaccuum, potential clients, especially those participating in membership-included personal training sessions, would see the value of a trainer's regular direction, motivation, and scientific knowledge. Following the logical conclusion of their original intentions of getting back to the gym, it would be in these peoples' best interests to purchase the further services of the trainer, at least once a week. Of course, human beings are rarely logical, particularly when it comes to such emotionally-driven aspects of their lives as their appearance, body-fat, diet habits, etc. Human beings are also easily swayed away from following through with things, especially in Las Vegas, such a fickle and transient city.
The gym in which I worked offers a free personal training session, every month, to its members. Because of this, potential clients who are already finicky and undisciplined, would be even less likely to take their training to the next level, when they can just follow their prescribed routine and have it updated month to month. This, combined with the over-saturation of trainers (good, bad, and downright incompetent) leaves slim pickings. So, what happens? Less ethical trainers hard-sell.
Hard-selling personal training leads to three things: bad results, a bad reputation for the industry, and a distorted market. Bad results, because a hard-sell picks up clients who were never serious enough to follow through with their programs, so never really get anywhere. Because hard-sell clients come and go much more than dedicated clients, the hard-sell trainer must focus more on volume than on quality. Due to the lack of quality (and believe me -- I've seen a lot of that), the hard-sold, never-serious clients may feel cheated and disillusioned with training, which hurts the reputation and profitability of the real trainers out there. Now, the industry (at least at that particular gym chain in Las Vegas) is distorted, because the real trainers make themselves available and approachable, but the hard-sell trainers are all over everybody like car salesmen, hustling, flirting, and convincing their way into half-hearted training sessions, and all the potential clients out there (serious or not) never know what they're gonna get.
On top of this market distortion and the plethora of fake trainers overshadowing those noble to the profession, the gym has seized the opportunity to exploit the trainers who already struggle to play the game. It charges ludicrous 'rent' of the facility, or allows the trainer to work off the rent instead for so many hours a week at a pay rate that is hardly better than indentured servitude. You can also advertise in their magazines. At one point, brainstorming ways to get exposure, I thought I'd write an article or two to sell to the magazine. Then I found that I would not be selling the articles, but actually paying for them to be published. Like another form of advertising. Ridiculous.
The gym makes a fortune off of the trainers, a monthly amount that likely rivals the income from memberships. And they keep hiring more, more to work for chicken-feed, more to pay rent and multitudes of advertising fees, more and more when there's already too many, with little to no standards for intelligence, knowledge, experience, and work ethic. Thus further spirals out of control the struggle of the trainers, the need for the hard sell (and market distortions that come with it), and the disappointment and mishandling of clients. And the gym profits from it all.
There are ways to solve these problems, of course, but to raise the quality of training and the availability of clients would not be worth the business's bottom line. So, I won't go into these things. Maybe things are different at the other gyms in town, or maybe Vegas is too fickle and uncommitted for old-school training.
From what I've come to understand, from my own experience and from the words of wiser fellow trainers, there are three ways to get clients. One is referrals. That seems to be the supreme pull for new business. Of course, you need real clients before other real clients can be referred to you. The other way is to have a magnificent body. Your body is your business card. The other way is to hustle people. Otherwise, all you can do is be available, and dedicated potentials will drop out of the sky once and a great while.
One of the more experienced and ethical trainers I knew only acquired clients from such strikes of lightning, and referrals. He's been doing it for decades, and never hard-sells. He may have someone approach him ever nine to twelve months. Everything else is from referrals. Doing it this way takes time -- and the money or another job to ride out the long, long time it takes to pick up enough people to live off of.
Outside marketing doesn't seem to work much, from the limited amount I tried (of course, I could have done more), and from what I hear from the other trainers. Even advertising in the gym's magazine doesn't pull much (from what I heard -- I never felt the potential was great enough to risk the fee). Maybe one or two people, according to those who have done it. I tried forming relationships with doctors to refer back and forth. That was a far shot. Forget it. You have to be in thick with a doctor or chiropractor to be fed referrals that way, to have a doctor risk his license. I never got a single reply.
If you want to be a trainer, and are good enough to know what you're doing and take pride in your work, you'll have to realize:
1. It's really hard to get started. Takes a long, hungry time. Everybody's hungry. It's cut-throat, and the gym wants a (disproportionate) piece of you. Check out the environment and atmosphere (especially behind the scenes) of where you intend to train. I've heard of other places that are better. Even other cities where it would be inconceivable to charge 'rent'.
2. You'll have to look good enough to have people approach you and want to look like you. Or, you'll have to hustle people. Or, you'll have to wait a long, long time for random potential clients and the referrals they might bring.
I haven't been training myself long enough to inspire awe in others. I value my integrity more than the convenience of hustling, and I've been waiting long enough.
3. It will never be stable. Clients come. Clients go. No benefits, no steady income. Even that experienced and ethical trainer I mentioned earlier has been on hard times lately, because his clients (of many years) have been dropping off, and he hasn't been picking anyone up to replace them. He told me that if he could go back, he wouldn't do it again.
4. Training should be a second job. A small thing on the side of something steady, at least until you hit it off. You can't just quit your job, say "I want to be a trainer", and dive in guns blazing (as I did), unless you are willing to hustle people. Without the hard sell, it's a business of patience.
5. If you are a hard-sell trainer, a hustler, who spends most of your sessions chatting and bullshitting and flirting with your client instead of paying attention to his/her form (if you even know about proper form and biomechanics), you're messing things up for everybody, destroying your credibility, and reducing the future profitability of the business.
I still love training. What a way to make money! Being paid for the fruits of my intellect instead of selling my time to work for some employer's goals. Being the hero of the client who I motivated and helped pull out of a hole; made them stronger, leaner, healthier, feel better about themselves, reversed their osteoporosis, lowered their blood pressure. On a societal scale, I'm furthering the cause of health and fitness, fighting against the epidemic of 'civilization disease', one person at a time. Very noble work.
Armed with new knowledge and experience, I'll likely train again, but always as something on the side. Never as a sole source of income, and never as a career -- never as something from which to build a life, support a family.
That bears emphasis: training is not a career. At least, not if you're ethical. If you're a hustler, and can deal with your lack of principles, you can always round up a quantity of "here for a little while" clients, but it's still unstable. If you are ethical, and make it into a thirty year business without hustling, it'll take time, and you'll make it (if you can last), but you'd better be investing money away into plans for the future, because it can all disappear. They come and go, and that's all there is.
________________________________________________
If I heard myself, back in early 2007, listing the reasons why personal fitness training was a good business to get into, I would still listen to that person, and still even be inspired by that person, but I wouldn't do it again in Las Vegas. The industry is, and will be for quite some time, a great one. Full of promise, brimming with potential profit, and reaching far into the trends of the future. However, an aspiring trainer must consider more than his love of the
job and his own skill. There are things to consider in the environment, and,
above all, inside one's self.
I am guilty of the crime of self-dishonesty. I held faith in the blind, emotion-bourne hope of the way things should have been, instead of respecting reality. Since far back in the beginning of my stint as a trainer, I saw the signs, though I convinced myself blind. I felt the distortions of the market, though I justified my instincts away. In the end, it took a long time to realize and spell out the most basic of reasons why I would fail as a trainer: I refused to hustle people. My integrity would not allow me to stoop to the level of hard-selling personal training, because I believed in the concept of the soft-sell in order to attract only the serious potential clients. The ones that would stick around, show results through their own convictions, and make my professional reputation.
The problem with this integral approach, was the over-saturation of trainers. Those potential clients that truly felt the need to change themselves and seek out a trainer for the long term were few and far between. Take my (one) steady client, for instance: he came to me, professed his intentions, and stayed with me until today. But, any one of those rare, dedicated individuals, could choose from hundreds of trainers. And if they came across a volume-hungry, fast-talking pseudo-trainer (which were quite prevalent), forget it.
So, picking up real clients was either the luck of the draw -- the right place at the right time -- or by referrals from the real clients you already had. Unfortunately, my one real client, through his social hobbies, never came across any prospects.
In the ideal environment, a theoretical vaccuum, potential clients, especially those participating in membership-included personal training sessions, would see the value of a trainer's regular direction, motivation, and scientific knowledge. Following the logical conclusion of their original intentions of getting back to the gym, it would be in these peoples' best interests to purchase the further services of the trainer, at least once a week. Of course, human beings are rarely logical, particularly when it comes to such emotionally-driven aspects of their lives as their appearance, body-fat, diet habits, etc. Human beings are also easily swayed away from following through with things, especially in Las Vegas, such a fickle and transient city.
The gym in which I worked offers a free personal training session, every month, to its members. Because of this, potential clients who are already finicky and undisciplined, would be even less likely to take their training to the next level, when they can just follow their prescribed routine and have it updated month to month. This, combined with the over-saturation of trainers (good, bad, and downright incompetent) leaves slim pickings. So, what happens? Less ethical trainers hard-sell.
Hard-selling personal training leads to three things: bad results, a bad reputation for the industry, and a distorted market. Bad results, because a hard-sell picks up clients who were never serious enough to follow through with their programs, so never really get anywhere. Because hard-sell clients come and go much more than dedicated clients, the hard-sell trainer must focus more on volume than on quality. Due to the lack of quality (and believe me -- I've seen a lot of that), the hard-sold, never-serious clients may feel cheated and disillusioned with training, which hurts the reputation and profitability of the real trainers out there. Now, the industry (at least at that particular gym chain in Las Vegas) is distorted, because the real trainers make themselves available and approachable, but the hard-sell trainers are all over everybody like car salesmen, hustling, flirting, and convincing their way into half-hearted training sessions, and all the potential clients out there (serious or not) never know what they're gonna get.
On top of this market distortion and the plethora of fake trainers overshadowing those noble to the profession, the gym has seized the opportunity to exploit the trainers who already struggle to play the game. It charges ludicrous 'rent' of the facility, or allows the trainer to work off the rent instead for so many hours a week at a pay rate that is hardly better than indentured servitude. You can also advertise in their magazines. At one point, brainstorming ways to get exposure, I thought I'd write an article or two to sell to the magazine. Then I found that I would not be selling the articles, but actually paying for them to be published. Like another form of advertising. Ridiculous.
The gym makes a fortune off of the trainers, a monthly amount that likely rivals the income from memberships. And they keep hiring more, more to work for chicken-feed, more to pay rent and multitudes of advertising fees, more and more when there's already too many, with little to no standards for intelligence, knowledge, experience, and work ethic. Thus further spirals out of control the struggle of the trainers, the need for the hard sell (and market distortions that come with it), and the disappointment and mishandling of clients. And the gym profits from it all.
There are ways to solve these problems, of course, but to raise the quality of training and the availability of clients would not be worth the business's bottom line. So, I won't go into these things. Maybe things are different at the other gyms in town, or maybe Vegas is too fickle and uncommitted for old-school training.
From what I've come to understand, from my own experience and from the words of wiser fellow trainers, there are three ways to get clients. One is referrals. That seems to be the supreme pull for new business. Of course, you need real clients before other real clients can be referred to you. The other way is to have a magnificent body. Your body is your business card. The other way is to hustle people. Otherwise, all you can do is be available, and dedicated potentials will drop out of the sky once and a great while.
One of the more experienced and ethical trainers I knew only acquired clients from such strikes of lightning, and referrals. He's been doing it for decades, and never hard-sells. He may have someone approach him ever nine to twelve months. Everything else is from referrals. Doing it this way takes time -- and the money or another job to ride out the long, long time it takes to pick up enough people to live off of.
Outside marketing doesn't seem to work much, from the limited amount I tried (of course, I could have done more), and from what I hear from the other trainers. Even advertising in the gym's magazine doesn't pull much (from what I heard -- I never felt the potential was great enough to risk the fee). Maybe one or two people, according to those who have done it. I tried forming relationships with doctors to refer back and forth. That was a far shot. Forget it. You have to be in thick with a doctor or chiropractor to be fed referrals that way, to have a doctor risk his license. I never got a single reply.
If you want to be a trainer, and are good enough to know what you're doing and take pride in your work, you'll have to realize:
1. It's really hard to get started. Takes a long, hungry time. Everybody's hungry. It's cut-throat, and the gym wants a (disproportionate) piece of you. Check out the environment and atmosphere (especially behind the scenes) of where you intend to train. I've heard of other places that are better. Even other cities where it would be inconceivable to charge 'rent'.
2. You'll have to look good enough to have people approach you and want to look like you. Or, you'll have to hustle people. Or, you'll have to wait a long, long time for random potential clients and the referrals they might bring.
I haven't been training myself long enough to inspire awe in others. I value my integrity more than the convenience of hustling, and I've been waiting long enough.
3. It will never be stable. Clients come. Clients go. No benefits, no steady income. Even that experienced and ethical trainer I mentioned earlier has been on hard times lately, because his clients (of many years) have been dropping off, and he hasn't been picking anyone up to replace them. He told me that if he could go back, he wouldn't do it again.
4. Training should be a second job. A small thing on the side of something steady, at least until you hit it off. You can't just quit your job, say "I want to be a trainer", and dive in guns blazing (as I did), unless you are willing to hustle people. Without the hard sell, it's a business of patience.
5. If you are a hard-sell trainer, a hustler, who spends most of your sessions chatting and bullshitting and flirting with your client instead of paying attention to his/her form (if you even know about proper form and biomechanics), you're messing things up for everybody, destroying your credibility, and reducing the future profitability of the business.
I still love training. What a way to make money! Being paid for the fruits of my intellect instead of selling my time to work for some employer's goals. Being the hero of the client who I motivated and helped pull out of a hole; made them stronger, leaner, healthier, feel better about themselves, reversed their osteoporosis, lowered their blood pressure. On a societal scale, I'm furthering the cause of health and fitness, fighting against the epidemic of 'civilization disease', one person at a time. Very noble work.
Armed with new knowledge and experience, I'll likely train again, but always as something on the side. Never as a sole source of income, and never as a career -- never as something from which to build a life, support a family.
That bears emphasis: training is not a career. At least, not if you're ethical. If you're a hustler, and can deal with your lack of principles, you can always round up a quantity of "here for a little while" clients, but it's still unstable. If you are ethical, and make it into a thirty year business without hustling, it'll take time, and you'll make it (if you can last), but you'd better be investing money away into plans for the future, because it can all disappear. They come and go, and that's all there is.
