Back before the internet was everywhere, I was just finishing up my degree at the University of Alberta, and ready to begin an exciting job in the fitness industry. I’d just spent 5 years in a science-intensive program, and thought I knew a thing or two about how to make people lose weight, get stronger, and feel a lot better about themselves in the process. In short, I was the cats meow, the bees knees, and I was ready to show everyone, whether they liked it or not.

Reality quickly set in, however.

When I started working, I figured I would be busy right away, you know, working around 8 hours each day, 9 to 5 kind of thing, then could work out, watch a movie, and live the kind of life I’d put on hold for the past few years. What I completely didn’t realize is that people are usually at work between the hours of 9 and 5, and less than likely to pull a dip from their work day in order to hit the gym to get their swells on. What this meant was that I would have clients at 6 and 7 in the morning, then no one until around 4 or 5 in the evening, and go until 8pm. This would mean being at work for 14 or 15 hours each day, and only being paid for about 3 or 4 of those hours. Boo-urns in deed.

On top of that, like many recent university graduates I was confident in the fact that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, or if I was going to be even the slightest bit successful at either getting results for my clients or of being able to pay my bills each month.

Flash forward to today, and I’m still working ridiculous hours, but now I have clients in those dead times that would otherwise drain the soul out of me. I’ve also been able to exceed the average trainers income, while also gaining some stability in my month to month income, plus begin to take on other projects like this here blog, speaking engagements and some other fun things. That being said, I would have to say that my story is somewhat atypical, seeing as how many personal trainers don’t las beyond the 2 year mark once they begin their careers, and many don’t advance beyond a basic survivalist levee of income or comfort with daily operations. Most trainers tend to not have well-defined systems of assessment, scheduling, program design, continuing education, or even billing or invoicing procedures, which means they have holes in their business that quickly leads to a sinking ship.

Today I’m going to go through the basic survivalist tactics I used to get through those first few dicey years, and what I was able to do to not only survive, but to thrive in the fitness industry, in addition to making some good cash and helping a lot of people do things that are pretty fantastic.

#1: Treat this like a Business, Not a Hobby

Sure, we get to live in sweatpants and hang out in a gym all day, but at the end of the day it’s still a business, and those trainers who get that simple fact sooner in their careers will be the ones left standing.

What a trainer can offer is no different from what a dentist, massage therapist, house cleaner, carpenter, or any other person who trades a service for a fee. Would you bat an eye if you went into your mechanic and they charged you a hop fee for doing work on your car? Then why would charging someone for developing a personalized exercise program to get them the specific results they’re asking for be any different?

The simplest way to consider this concept is the thought of perceived value. When benefits outweigh the costs of a good or service, the perceived value is much higher, and the individual is much more likely to trade mad skrilla for the benefits being outlined. When the benefits are less valued than the cost, they’re going to jump ship and take their dollars elsewhere. What this means to fitness professionals is that we have to always strive to provide more benefits to our perspective clients, and it has to be benefits that THEY can relate to. Do you just write out your programs or do you also take pictures of the exercises and arrange them so that the client can follow a workout when they’re not training with you? Do you say “go do cardio” or do you provide a specific cardio program, with real heart rate or work rate numbers? Do you go through nutrition with each client, ensuring they know more about the effects of their food intake on their health and waist line after their session than before?Do you re-test them regularly to hold them accountable and show them the benefits of all the money they’re spending?

Business also means making some occasional un-popular decisions, such as charging clients for not showing up or for late-notice cancellation, or telling a client they need to purchase more sessions because they have no more left. Get over it, and it will cause you a lot less  stress and increase your level of professionalism in your clients eyes.

#2: Don’t Turn Down Work. Ever

I was working with a young trainer a few years ago who was very intent of being able to work only 8 hours each day, from 8:30-4:30 each day. The downside is that there are usually minimal people coming into any facility during these hours, which means they will have to either bend their timeframe to accommodate or turn away potential business.

If you’re just starting out and a client wants to train at 6am, and you also have a client who wants to train at 8pm, you may have to accommodate both if you want to pay your rent. While you’re training these clients and trying to figure out how to get by with only three hours of sleep each evening, you can also continue looking for clients to fit into those ideal time slots.

The trainer I was telling you about would routinely turn down clients who wanted to train at 5pm, simply because it was outside of his desired time to work. The funny thing is that he also never had any clients at 8:30, which meant he would stroll into work at around 9:30 or 10 for his first client (when he had a client at those times), and want to be out by 4:30. Sure, he could have extended his day for one or two hours a day for one or two days a week, but heaven forbid! He didn’t have  girlfriend, kid, or even a hobby that would be extremely time-pressing outside of work, so I could never figure out why he wanted to leave money on the table like that, and then complain about how he wasn’t busy enough!!

#3: Forget about Marketing for a While

Yes, I said it. Marketing is extremely valuable, but in the wrong hands it proves to be more of a nuisance. If you have a steady stream of clients coming to your business due to a slick marketing campaign but you aren’t able to hang on to any of them for more than a month or two, you’re doing something wrong.

Get really good at getting your clients really good results, and you’ll never have to market your services again. People talk to their friends and co-workers about things that matter to them, and if you are able to get a client to lose the 20 pounds they really want to use, they’ll talk to people and send them to you for the same benefits.

You should consider each client who works with you to be a $10,000 investment. An investment you have to protect, guard, nurture and develop, making sure it’s getting the best you can offer. If your investment leaves after only investing $500 in your services, you’re dropping the ball.

#4:Get a Certification…..Eventually

Certifications are great, but they don’t make the world go around. I’ve been able to get some good certifications that allow me to work with some pretty complex clients (heart transplant recipients, post-surgical, that sort of thing), but I’ve also seen some trainers without these certifications working with similar clients. And they do it successfully, too.

All a certification means is that you’ve successfully shown hat you understand the course material covered in that certification. It’s rarely mandatory to have a specific certification for a lot of different jobs, just recommended. I would say that anyone working in a clinical setting would need to have specific designations for insurance, but otherwise, not so much.

Certifications should be based on what your interests are in, and also what kind of clients you find yourself working with. As much as I would love to take a cert in Mixed Martial Arts conditioning (Note: I don’t really, just an example), I don’t work with any MMA athletes, so it would be a waste of my time and money. That being said, I work with a lot of low back pain clients, so attending a workshop with someone like Stuart McGill or Shirley Sahrmann would be way more beneficial than forking out the same money for a course to learn how to do a sit and reach test.

That being said, there has to be a sound understanding of basic anatomy and function. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve taught courses to a room full of trainers and asked a simple question like “what muscles directly influence the hip?” and gotten nothing but blank stares. So instead of simply trying tog et a bunch of letters after your name, learn some intermediate and advanced anatomy, and then understand the function of something like the supraspinatus, and how it only causes abduction for the first 20 degrees. This will help to direct your training, and in turn help you get better results for your clients. Notice a theme here?

#5: Shadow, intern, and take mentorships instead

There’s no substitute for on-the-job learning, and there’s no better way to learn than directly from some of the best in the business. I started out by going to some of the bigger studios and clinics in the area and asking if I could shadow and observe what they were doing for a few hours here and there, which gave me a chance to learn about how some successful people worked with various groups, be it rehab, boot camps, or even elite hockey conditioning programs.

This adds in to the concept of providing more service to your clients, as your learning will only help your program design and help you get them better results than otherwise.

#6: Form Strategic Partnerships

There’s definitely an art to forming a referral network of qualified individuals or organizations who can help send you a consistent stream of business. For me, I networked with a bunch of chiropractors, physiotherapists, and doctors. It took a few years to form the relationships, as they get approached all the time by Jersey Shore rejects who want to get their patients while rocking a tank top and glitter.

Strategic Partnerships don’t just have to be with medical professionals. They can also be with fitness equipment sales locations (buy a treadmill, here’s a 2 session pass to a trainer who can help you get a program), modelling agencies, hotels (guests get a reduced rate), health food stores, or any other business that can offer cross-over with your services. This helps to drive traffic to your business with the promise of driving traffic back to theirs.

This also helps you to make qualified referrals for your clients. If one of your clients wants to buy an elliptical for home use (aside from simply staring at them in amazement for wanting to do something like that), if you can refer them to someone in your network who sells them, it adds to your professionalism and you may actually get a referral fee paid out to you!!

#7: Keep on Smiling

It’s tough to give 115% of your energy all day long, but your client at the end of the day deserves your best, just as the client at the start of the day. They don’t care how long you’ve been at work for, they just want to get a great workout in and feel like they’re special. Give that to them, and then go home and crash.

Think of it this way: You could be stuck in a cubicle somewhere, hunched over your computer screen reading the TPS reports and getting yelled at by 5 of your 6 managers, but hey, you’re in a gym making people sweat and grunt and curse and drop weight while moving weight all over the place. It’s a pretty sweet gig, and you’re going to get out of it what you put in, so make it a real effort to make fitness into a long-term business and career that you can live with, not just a hobby to get by until you’re ready for your “real” job.