Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 70 - Successful Goal Setting + My Story (How To Build a Training Business)
Episode Date: September 18, 2020In this episode, Danny shares his story as well as the fundamental aspects of setting AND achieving goals. Today's topics will cover:How to identify a goal.How to ensure you are choosing S.M.A.R....T. goals.How to "gamify" things.Common goal-setting mistakes.How Danny got started in personal training.How Danny built his personal training/online coaching business.Thanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE! Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS: Follow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!Support the Show.
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Welcome in everybody to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. As always, I'm your host Danny Matranga and today's episode, per your request, is going to be all about goal setting, how it is that I structure goals for my clients, how I've done this successfully for myself, as well as a little bit of story time talking about my professional
journey in the fitness space. And what I mean when I say professional journey is a lot of people ask
the question, oh, how did you get into personal training? How did you start working in the fitness
space? Or what is it that inspired you to pursue a career in the fitness space? How long have you
been training? That's a question that gets asked all the time. But so is this question about how it is that I became a successful
personal trainer professionally. Not what got me into it, but what got me from getting into it to
being successful professionally. And I think there's a lot of trials and tribulations
worth sharing that will help you with your own fitness goals just by virtue of, you know,
sharing that will help you with your own fitness goals just by virtue of, you know, learning from my own mistakes as a professional or help you as a professional if in fact your goals are to be a
coach or a trainer in this space. But the goal setting question, the professional development
questions are ones that I get all the time. And I've been meaning to make a standalone podcast
about this exact stuff for quite some time. And so this is going to be that episode, and I'm really excited to share it with you.
Now, before we get into it, guys, I just wanted to give you a heads up.
Head on over to the website, www.coachedannymatranga.com.
I have free guides specifically designed to help you develop as a personal trainer or coach.
If you are one of those people who is trying to make the most out of their time in the space and impact as many lives as possible.
If you just want to gain a little bit of muscle, lose a little bit of body fat, get a better handle on nutrition, understand training nuance.
I have tons of free guides for stuff like that as well.
And if you head over to the product section of the website, you'll see tons of programs as well. So do check that stuff out if you want to support
the show and you're not inclined to share a screenshot to your story, leave me a review,
check out the website, download a guide, maybe even a program. I promise you'll enjoy them.
But without further ado, let's go ahead and get into goal setting, specifically goal setting with regards to achieving your fitness goals.
And then this will segue really, really nicely into kind of the story time portion of today's episode where I talk a little bit about my professional journey.
what appears to be the most popular school of thought with regard to goal setting, which is identify the goal, write it down somewhere, and break it up into small, achievable pieces, right?
So that is the most nuts and bolts way to say it. Identify the goal, write it down somewhere that
you see it, and take that goal and break it into small, achievable pieces.
Right. Super simple. But there's so much context.
There's so much individual variance that I think we should really dive down the rabbit hole into how it is that I do this stuff, particularly with clients.
And the way in which I think it has potential to help you reach your results or achieve the results you want to achieve goes a little bit deeper than just saying, write it down, break it down, go for it.
The first thing is I like to use tools, visual tools constantly with regards to goal setting.
So if it's a goal for myself, if it's a goal for a client, if it's a goal professionally or fitness related, like I said,
I want that goal written down, but not just written down. I want it somewhere where I see it
and hopefully see it frequently. So some of the best places to write down goals are on small
sticky notes that you place on your bathroom mirror, something you'll see every day, on your
bedroom door, something you'll see every day, on your car dash, something you'll see every day. On your bedroom door, something you'll see every day. On your car dash, something you'll see every day. The reiteration, right, the replication
of seeing that goal, reading it, not being able to get away from it is a really powerful reminder.
And I think that there's a lot of power in repetition. I think there's a lot of power in seeing something and, for lack of a better term,
not really being able to get away from it.
It's one thing to tell yourself you want a goal and to say, hey, I want to accomplish
this thing.
And we'll get to why that's not enough in a minute.
But when you write it down, that takes it to the next level.
And there's plenty of studies to support this.
Goal setting is actually a goal setting, and I should say goal reaching,
is actually a really, really popular area of study, particularly in psychology.
And one of the things that's been shown time and time again
is that writing down a goal works really, really well.
But I'm not a fan of writing it in my notes on my computer
or writing it in my notes on my phone.
I want to put pen to paper and put that scribed, written goal somewhere where I'm going to see it multiple times a day.
So it's always sitting in the forefront of my mind. If it starts to slip away when I sit in
the car, I'm going to see it. When I go to the bathroom, I'm going to see it. That type of
reiteration, constancy, is really, really important. And
consistency and constancy are powerful tools that we have. It's hard to get away from that goal
when it's put a lot of places. So I think that's really, really powerful. Another visual tool that
I am huge on for goal setting is the utilization of calendars or journals. And this is particularly to track down and jot down and make a point to
check the boxes, if you will, on those small bits and pieces of that goal. So let's say the goal is
lose 20 pounds. And maybe I'm going to write lose 20 pounds on my bathroom mirror and on my car
dashboard. But what are the actual habits that go into losing 20 pounds? Because a goal is
one thing, but we achieve goals by repetitiously implementing and following through with hard
hitting habits. It's that simple. A goal is nothing without the habits required to achieve it.
So the utilization of a journal or a calendar is really important. So if that goal is lose 20
pounds, that's going to be written down.
That's going to be put on my mirror.
That's going to be put on my car dash.
But from there, I need to say, what are the action steps,
the biggest, most important action steps to lose this 20 pounds?
Okay, I'm going to go for a walk after every meal.
I'm going to exercise five times a week, and I'm going to track my calories.
And so I go to my calendar, I go to my journal,
and every day I have a box, and that box says, walk after each meal. And then another box that
says track calories. And then another box on five of my days that says exercise. Maybe we add get
good sleep into that. So every day on that calendar, I'm not seeing when I check my calendar
lose 20 pounds. That's very clear, right? That's the meta goal.
I am seeing my daily non-negotiable habits that I have to follow through with.
And so I actively have to either one, check that box, secure that habit for the day, get
it done.
Or I have to say, you know what?
I didn't do my habit today that's aligned with my goal,
and I need to make sure that I get back on track tomorrow.
So having those visual tools, not just the goals written down,
but things like habits and small micro goals written down as well,
that you're going to check those boxes.
Because you get a degree of satisfaction when you check those boxes.
And I've always found that if you can take that larger goal
and break it down to scalable, small, achievable, almost gamified habits, right? Like I have a good
time checking those boxes. And I think all of us can agree. And at least one way or another,
there's some degree of positive reinforcement when you check that box. It's like, heck yeah,
I checked that box. I went, I tracked my calories today. I got my workout done. I went for my walks. I got good sleep. That is positive reinforcement.
Simply writing a goal down is not enough. You need to bake in opportunities for positive
reinforcement all along the way. And using your journal or your calendar as a tool for this
is incredibly, incredibly valuable.
And so again, just to summarize,
identify the big goal,
write it down and put it somewhere that you're gonna see it every day.
But then take that big goal
and break it up into daily habits and practices
that you are going to engage with
and you are gonna gamify every single day
in the form of a whiteboard
that you check off on your bedroom wall,
a journal,
your Apple calendar, whatever the hell it is. These are going to be small daily habits. And I
like to focus on three to five small daily habits. I found that three to five is that sweet spot
of just enough that I can get into a rhythm and that routine here of doing these things,
but not so many habits that it becomes
daunting and it's like, oh my gosh, I have 10 things that I have to do today. While I do think
you can put 10, 20, 30 things a day on your calendar, I think that if you're starting a goal,
something that's a little bit intimidating, something that has a long runway and might
take some time, starting with three to five easy daily habits or practices is critical. And again,
no matter where you're at, you know, if you're really new, it can be as simple as exercise today,
eat mostly healthy food, take my vitamins, all the way to get nine hours of sleep, hit one PR in the
gym. You can specify and gamify these micro goals however you like, and you can kind of tailor them
to match your personality.
Another thing that I think is really, really important for goal setting is to have a litmus
test for, is this goal genuinely reasonable? And how I like to qualify that is I use a lens called the SMART goal system. So SMART is an acronym, S-M-A-R-T, spelled just how
it's spelled colloquially, but it stands for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic,
and time bound. So let's break down that acronym because lose 20 pounds isn't exactly a smart goal just yet. But let's take
that 20 pound weight loss goal and make it a smart goal just for the mechanistic thing here.
So you guys can track with me. So specific lose 20 pounds. Okay. That is pretty specific.
Measurable. Okay. Can I measure 20 pounds of weight loss?
I can't, and I can measure it using a scale,
maybe how my genes fit, all of this stuff.
That's all, it's all on the table.
It's all available, okay.
Attainable, is 20 pounds a realistic weight loss goal?
It depends, right?
If you're 110 pound female,
I would not say that's attainable,
nor would I say it's healthy. If you're a 280 pound male, hell yeah, go for it, right? So make
sure that that goal is attainable. It's something that you can reach. And if you've never lost 20
pounds before, but maybe you've lost five, maybe you've lost 10, that might be the thing that you
set. That might be what you do. You change that goal from your primary goal of 20 pounds to an attainable goal of 10.
And maybe you set that 10-pound weight loss goal twice, but you're being realistic with
yourself, with your history, and what you believe you can do.
That's one of the biggest pitfalls people have, is they start off and they know they
need to lose 100 pounds, but the first goal is lose 100 pounds.
That's really daunting. That's a lot to ask 100 pounds, but the first goal is lose 100 pounds. That's really daunting. That's
a lot to ask for somebody, right? So break that goal up. That initial goal has to be something
that is attainable. Okay. Realistic is part of this as well. And it goes hand in hand with attainable.
So I don't necessarily feel the need to cover it. I think the one difference between realistic and attainable is like saying, yes, you could lose 20 pounds. Your body physiologically would allow you
to do it. Realistic would be you've never lost that much weight before and you've struggled with
dieting. So those two kind of come together into one. And then time bound, that's really important.
And that's missing from this sticky note that says lose 20 pounds. If I don't have a date or a time or something to anchor this to,
I could say I've been working on losing 20 pounds all year.
So I like to have a realistic time-bound approach to these things.
So if we know we can lose between 1 to 2 pounds a week,
I might say I want to lose 20 pounds in the next 10 to 20 weeks.
That might be a really good way for me to, again, quantify and
qualify this goal and put it through a lens of, is this legit? Because one of the things you might
have a hard time doing is you might have a hard time really following through on all of these
habits if you don't anchor some degree of time or some degree of like, hey, I want to get this done
by this time to your actual goal.
So those are the big things, right? I like to make sure I write my goals down after qualifying the
fact that they fit into that SMART goal framework. Then I like to identify the small daily habits and
practices that will help me reach those goals. The gamification of it, like checking boxes,
is something that I love to do a lot of people like
crossing things off that works really really well and i would strongly encourage you to put pen to
paper before you go digital with your goal setting and putting that stuff where you're
going to see it every day is critical i i have one small caveat before i move on to the next
section of today's episode which again is going to be about my professional journey and my career, but I call it being frugal with whom you share your goals.
And one of the things that people have a tendency to do is when they set a goal, they go out and
they tell everybody they know, hey, I'm going to do this. Okay. And so an example that I've seen a
lot in the space from other coaches is I'm going to pass my CSCS. And we'll use this so an example that I've seen a lot in the space from other coaches is, I'm going to pass my CSCS.
And we'll use this as an example because the CSCS is an examination that is very strenuous.
It's considered the gold standard of certification in the personal training space.
It's what you would want to see if you were going to work with a collegiate or professional sports team.
It's not an easy test.
And a lot of coaches go out and they say, yeah, I'm going to sit for and pass the CSCS.
That's my goal. And they tell everybody they know. And one of the issues with telling people
that you're going to accomplish a goal over and over again is you actually get a false sense of
confidence. You get a false sense of accomplishment from communicating this to people when in fact,
you haven't done anything at all. And this has been shown in the literature that people that over communicate their goals,
they end up getting a false sense of feedback that they're actually doing it. And I want you
guys to think about it for a second. Has there ever been something that you wanted to do
and you got a little bit of a dopamine hit or positive response from telling somebody
and they go, oh, that's an awesome goal. You're going to crush that. And you end up getting the satisfaction that you should be getting from checking those
boxes, from doing the studying, from reading the book, doing the different things that you actually
mechanistically need to do to reach that goal. You get that same bump, that same spike from just
telling people. And that's not really good enough. And it's a double-edged sword too, because on the back end,
if you'd rather tell people than actually do the habits and practices, what you see a lot of times
is people are like, man, I told like 15 to 20 people that I was going to do this and I haven't
made any progress and they're all going to end up judging me. And so then you end up with this
defeatist perspective of, man, I told all these people I was going to do it and I didn't do it.
So now I need to come up with an excuse or a reason. And that is a really slippery slope that
a lot of people fall into. So I would instead recommend that you tell one to two close friends,
family members who have a history of holding you accountable and being supportive,
not judgmental, but supportive, tell them what
you're trying to do, but then work in the silence, work in the shadows, work quietly, do it in the
background. I think doing work for the sake of doing the work is a really powerful thing that
we've forgotten. Don't just do the work for clout. Don't be like, oh, I'm studying and post your book
on your Instagram story. None of that shit. i take courses all the time i do continuing education all the time and i used to always
post about it because i was cloud chasing but now i try to stay away from it at all times because
i don't want to dive down that rabbit hole of getting i don't want to get stuff from people
encouragement from people uh hype from people until that job is done.
And I know it's a slippery slope.
I've seen it in the literature.
I've seen it happen all the time.
So I just warn you, when it comes time to set that goal and you write it down and you've got it broken down, don't go tell everybody.
Tell a few people who will help to hold you accountable and move on.
Hey, guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. and move on. Be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked and how I can continue to improve.
Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode.
That's kind of a breakdown of how I like to set goals.
And again, daily practices and habits are the gateway to goal accomplishment.
Period.
Daily practices and habits.
Writing your goal down.
Telling people your goal.
Saying I want to lose
20 pounds doesn't do shit. Identifying a goal is easy. Making sure it's a smart goal is easy.
The daily habits and practices are how you reach that goal. So moving forward with whatever it is
that you do, whether it's fitness, your professional career, your relationships, when you have an
outcome in mind, this is a quote from Dan John, one of the greatest strength coaches who's ever lived.
Ask yourself, look at your goals and look at your habits. Do your habits match your goals? If not,
you can't expect to get there. And it's that simple, guys. So this is a story that I have never told on the podcast before it's one that I haven't really told
on really any media platform in its entirety and that's how I got to where I'm at right now
and I do think it's really important to share that stuff because I think that people can glean
inspiration they can glean insight but again I don, I don't tell these stories for clout.
This is just the nuts and bolts of how I got to where I am professionally in the fitness
space.
And it all really started kind of standard, like how most people's fitness journey starts,
which is you're either an athlete and you get introduced to weight training through
sport, or you're a small, insecure person and you want to gain some muscle.
And I was actually both of those things. and I got introduced to weightlifting about my sophomore
year of high school. Seriously, you know, you always lifted for sports, even as a freshman,
but I started taking it a little bit more seriously as a sophomore, and you know, most of my peers
had already hit growth spurts. They were bigger than me, they were stronger than me, so I kind
of dedicated
my junior year of high school to lifting and learning the craft and going to the gym in the
morning before school and, you know, lifting again in the evening with the teams and having practices
and learning and watching YouTube videos and watching Netflix documentaries, which at the
time were really bad and mostly about nutrition and just trying to expose myself to anything and
everything that could give me as a small dude a competitive edge and very quickly I started to
make gains I started to get attention from girls and I started to perform better in sports and that
was a moment where I was like hey as somebody who academically had always struggled right growing up
with ADHD couldn't focus uh you know, was constantly getting
asked to sit outside, getting sent to the principal's office, getting suspended for bad
behavior. School was never something that I excelled at. It was something that I could,
at the last minute, pull myself together enough to get C's and B minuses. But, you know,
academically, I struggled all the way through high school,
grade school into high school. I didn't get my shit together until I got to college,
which is down the road here in the story. But, you know, weightlifting was something that I was
like, hey, if I apply myself here, I will get the success that I'm not getting in the classroom.
And I'm getting validation from other people, which makes me feel good, especially as a younger
person. Right. I really leaned into the attention that I was getting and the praise that
I was getting. And that made me feel really, really good. And I had a lot of instability with
my home life at the time. My dad was very, very sick. He still is sick, but he has a degenerative
illness, which had at that point in my life really started to ramp up. And I was, you know,
had a ton of responsibilities around the house. I was acting as his effectively primary caretaker, taking him to
and from work in the car because it's a physically degenerative illness that had really gotten away
from him really, really quickly. And when I was a freshman in high school, he could walk with a cane.
By the time I graduated, he was fully bound to a wheelchair, which is how it's been ever since. But that transition, right, from going from,
you know, having my pops around being able to lean on him to being very self sufficient,
because my mom was not very present in my life at all at that time. They'd been divorced for
over a decade anyway. But you know, it really made me have to grow up really quick. And so
when I got to be a senior, the stress of dealing with that with not having the support I needed with not really having
the stability that I needed, my grades had slipped, all I really had was weightlifting,
all I really had was, you know, the enjoyment of physical movement. So I got my grades together at
the last second and got into Sonoma State University, which is a California state university,
which isn't very hard to get into in full transparency as a kinesiology major, which is
the only thing that at the time made centuries, of course, is the study of the human body and
human movement. So, you know, I'm very fortunate for that. I'm lucky that I found it when I found
it, because had i not been introduced
to it i really don't know where i would be because it was a kind of a guiding light it was like man
you know poor academics i didn't have the physical tools to take uh athletics any higher which is
probably a good thing um because i wouldn't have made it to a professional sport uh contract in
any sport um but realistically know, weightlifting gave me
some type of hope and getting into Sonoma State, I knew, you know, hey, financially, my parents are
not going to be able to support me. Working wasn't something I was a stranger to. So I wanted to get
a job in the field. And I applied for a job at the vitamin shop. And I remember very specifically when I moved down
from my hometown four hours away to a new area to go to school in Sonoma State, I didn't know
anybody. The vitamin shop made a lot of sense. And so I applied, I got a job there and I showed
up for my first day of work and the manager stared me dead in the face as I walked in the door
and his eyes just kind of went straight down. And it looked like when I walked in, I was like, oh man, he's got something to tell me something bad
happened. And sure enough, he said, hey man, I totally forgot to call and tell you, I actually
had to give your job to a transfer. And so I was like, okay, well I'm running out of money. And I
was really hoping to get this job to supplement my academics. And I was living in a
town about 20 minutes away from where I was going to school because I couldn't afford to live in the
dorms. So I was living with a friend in a room that I was renting in a house. So him and I were
both renting a room in a house because we kind of decided at the last minute we were going to try to
go to school together. He went to the junior college in the same area. I went to the state school. The job getting pulled out from
under me really sucked. And on my way home from this job, right, I get home and my buddy has
moved out of this house. So here I am in this situation where I'm like, man, I just got kind
of screwed out of this job. My buddy moved out and left me a note that said he just didn't like it here.
And so here I am renting a room in a house and I don't like it here either.
I feel like I don't know anybody.
I feel like I don't have any friends.
I had a buddy who was living across town that I played basketball with in high school
that let me move into his apartment and we shared a room.
It was 10 by 10.
And this was, again, as a freshman, it was 10 by 10. And I
was like, man, this just blows. And I was like, I need to get a job. I need to do something. So I
took my credit card, my college credit card, I maxed it out. I got the NASM certification.
And I when I got that book every day, I went to the gym right by school, which was a 24
hour fitness.
I went to the 24 hour fitness, which is five minutes from my school.
And I would work out from 4am to 6am and from 6am to 645, I would sit in the lobby of that
24 hour fitness right in front of the front desk.
The manager who'd managed the trainers got there every day at six and I would read my
NASM book and I would position myself and be like, dude, I hope this guy sees me.
I hope he offers me a job. I hope I, you know, I was hounding him. I was like, dude, I want to
work here. I want to work here. And he was like, ah, you're too young. You're too green. But every
day I put myself in a situation where he would see me and I hope that he gave me a job. And one
day, sure enough, after pestering him every morning on my way out, he let me interview,
him every morning on my way out. He let me interview, he gave me a job. And for about six months, I, you know, had like one to two clients max at any given time, because it was
a really hard job. At first, I didn't have the professional skills, I didn't have the confidence,
I didn't know a lot about the human body, I had just gotten started. At 18 years old,
I had a hard time relating to people at a hard time connecting with people. And I really struggled to get my business off the ground for like four to
six months. And what really was a catalyst for me to take it to the next level was living in that
10 by 10 room, sharing a room with my buddy in a two bedroom apartment. The other guy who had the
other room moved out and the two of us had been splitting
the rent for one room and we didn't have the money to pay for the whole apartment. So we got evicted
from that apartment. And I was like, yo, I need to turn my shit around fast because I don't have
anywhere to go. I don't want to live in my car. I'm not making enough money to really support
myself. Like I need to step it into high gear so I sat at that front desk at
that gym for hours every day before class and after class and asked every person that walked
through can I take you through a free workout take you through a free workout and I got to a point
where I'd finally built up a little bit of a clientele and after that I built a quality
reputation around the gym I was able to do tons and tons of sessions, between 40 and 50 sessions a week while I
went to school.
And I did that for four years.
Very, very simple.
I started my day at 5 a.m.
I would usually do a 5 a.m.
session, a 6 a.m.
session, a workout, an 8 a.m.
session, a 9 a.m.
session, a 10 a.m.
session, go to school from like 10 to 2, come back, train from like 2 to
4, and then go back to school in the evening from like 4 to 8. And I was basically working around
the clock from 5 a.m. while I get up at 4, from 4 a.m. to about 8 p.m. And then at 8 p.m. I'd get
home, I'd do what homework I could do, and I'd fucking pass out dead exhausted. And I did that
for four years until I got my degree.
And at that point, I was like, man, you know, I really like training.
I love training clients.
I really like working at this gym.
I had moved into management at that gym.
And I'd been turned down for multiple promotions multiple times.
And it really sucked because it was super defeating because I took my craft really seriously.
I felt like I was one of the best trainers in the entire company and it wasn't really getting the recognition I deserved.
And after a series of people getting fired and hired and fired and hired, it got to a point
where they were begging me to take the job of managing the entire training department. And I
got to this point where I said, you know, I've been turned down for this job so many times.
where I said, you know, I've been turned down for this job so many times.
It's always worked out okay.
Is this the job you really want to do?
Is this the path you really want to take?
Do you want to climb that corporate ladder one more step?
And I got to this moment in my life where I said, no, I don't.
I don't want to work for the man anymore.
I don't want to take the next step.
I don't want to climb the corporate ladder.
And so not long after I graduated, I decided to leave 24 hour fitness and start training my clients independently. And I made a point to start posting content and to create an audience on social media, particularly Instagram. And when I
got a couple of online clients and people that I was working with virtually, and I had a little bit
of money coming in from the side, I decided, hey, I can leave. I can leave the nest, I can go for this. And right around that time, I started
filming YouTube videos for mind pump, which is another podcast in the fitness space, many of you
are probably familiar with it. It's quite popular. And so I was working independently as a personal trainer from about 5 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Wednesday.
I would show up Thursday mornings or Wednesday mornings and I trained five to about two.
I would hop in the car, drive down to San Jose, which is about two and a half hours with traffic, stay on a buddy's couch, wake up at 6am, film at MindPump anywhere from 8 to 10 videos on Thursday,
which took about 6 to 8 hours, and so I would start at about 6, I would leave MindPump around 2,
fight traffic all the way home, get home Thursday around 4 or 5, and then again have a full day of
sessions on Friday, and so, you know, plus managing a growing social media and the online
clients. And I was making more money than I'd ever made. Everything was awesome. The opportunities
were great. The audience was growing. And that was kind of, I don't want to call it the peak,
but that was when I was juggling the most things I'd been juggling. You know, I'd no longer do the
YouTube stuff for Mind Pump, which has been a blessing in disguise. Uh, cause it was just too much work for me. You know, I, a lot of people who do like fitness, YouTube stuff, that's their
only job and they can come out with like one video a week cause they do all the editing,
which I never had to do. But having to come up with an idea for 10 videos, eight to 10 videos
a week was hard. And it was something that creatively was kind of running me ragged.
And I felt like it had gotten to a point where I wasn't enjoying it anymore. And so it ended up being probably for the best when I was asked to basically piss off and go away. Because the relationship wasn't where it was when we started working on the YouTube project. So when I was asked to leave, that was right at the beginning of COVID. And I just built my garage gym and I've been training my clients out of there ever since,
or virtually using Zoom or online, the way I've always trained my online clients.
And I've gotten to a point now where I feel like I have really become quite happy with the amount
of work I'm doing, the amount of money that I'm making, and the money that I'm making and the impact that I'm making on the world But all of this story to tell like just goes into like I had to do this shit for eight
Fucking years. I had to work my ass off for eight
Years, right because again from high school all the way through to college to graduating college
To going independent to going online to doing different work in college, to going independent, to going online,
to doing different work in the space, to getting the certifications. That was a lot of work just
to find my happy sweet spot seven to eight years down the road. And you know, that's not sexy.
That's not a sexy story to tell. But when people ask me like, Hey man, I want to do what you do,
right? I love the social media. Do you have, that you have, do you have any tips? Do you have any
tricks? Like I just started training and I get these Dms and i go like oh man if only these people knew or if only i had
the time to tell them the whole story so i wanted to get to a point where i finally told the whole
story um but again it it wasn't easy it required blood sweat tears it it worked me it was hard and
i wouldn't change a damn thing about it because
it's made me who I am. I really had to bust my butt. Nothing was given to me. I never really
had great leaders in my time in the corporate fitness space. So I was mostly self-taught.
I had to keep myself above ground. I got turned down for promotion after promotion. You know how
college is with women. You're dating one and then you're not dating one and then you got homework and they don't have homework and I'm working 40 to 50 hours
and taking 16 to 18 units and all that shit sucked. But it was part of the journey that got
me to where I am. And this idea that it's going to be fast, that there's quick fixes, that you
just have to do this or you have to make content like that, or you have to run ads like this,
or you have to, that shit is all bullshit. to that shit is all bullshit at the core of it the
reason i'm at where i'm at is because i just didn't quit and if anybody can glean anything
from my story as a professional as somebody who wants to lose weight or reach a new place in their
athletic career or their you know with with their body with their career uh professional career
just don't quit you know if you are committed to the grind, you show up
every day, you do the work that needs to be done. I don't have any doubt in my mind that you'll get
there. But showing up and doing the hard stuff takes energy and you have to be willing to bring
that shit day in and day out, even when you don't want to. There are so many days where my alarm
would go off at 4am and I'd be like, fuck, I don't want to go in and train right now.
I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted. I'm exhausted.
And for five years straight, I never hit snooze once.
I never missed one alarm. I got my ass out of bed at 4 a.m., got into that gym, never been late to a session in my fucking life.
never been late to a session in my fucking life. And that is something I'm super proud of. Because when I look at again, going back to the first thing we talked about, the goal was to be a
successful personal trainer, the goal was to make a living, the goal was to own a home, the goal was
to have, you know, cash flow that cleared six figures, the goal was to, to reach a pinnacle
of financial success and stability that I didn't have growing up.
And I got there. And I got there by virtue of simply not quitting. But it wasn't, hey,
I wrote down these huge goals and then all of a sudden I was there. No, I wrote down those huge
goals and then every day I showed up on time. I woke up instead of hitting snooze. I stayed later.
I went from school back to work, back to school,
back to work all the time, even when I didn't want to. And for years, I checked off those boxes.
And that's what my story is all about. And if I have anything to teach anybody,
it's the power of simply showing up and doing the work can be one of the most impactful things you
ever do in your life.
And there are so many things that happened that were unfortunate related to my family,
related to personal relationships along the way that could have knocked me off or could have held
me down or could have made me give up. But just showing up and doing the work and being like,
hey, I have the energy to get through the day today and I'm going to do it with the best of my intentions.
I'm going to check off every box.
That's all it took.
So hopefully you guys can learn something from the story.
Hopefully you enjoy this episode.
I enjoy having you guys as subscribers.
I really do.
If you did enjoy the episode, please share it because you never know who might need to
hear this.
Whether it's somebody who's looking to lose weight, somebody who's new to the industry like you, somebody who's a grizzled veteran, who's just looking for some
motivation. These types of stories hopefully give you something to feel good about, to say, hey,
that's a simple story. I can show up every day. I can check boxes. I can do the work. And I know
that you can. And hopefully you learned from this. Hopefully you enjoyed it. If you did, leave me a five-star rating and review on iTunes. Check out the website,
www.coachnanimatranga.com. Grab yourself a program, grab yourself a free guide.
Enjoy this. If you're hearing this, it's going to be Friday, September 18th.
Enjoy your Friday. Have an awesome day. And I look forward to chatting with you guys soon. you