Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 2140: How to Choose the Best Gym for You

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover how to choose a gym, whether you a consumer looking for a good place to work out or a trainer looking for the ideal place to build your training business. Which Gym is Right for You? The pros and cons of each from both a client and a trainer's perspective. (1:11) #1 - Big Box gyms: 24 Hour Fitness, Crunch, Balley's, LA Fitness, or UFC. (2:18) #2 - Small Box gyms: Your local ma and pa gym private trainer studios. (22:36) #3 - Class gyms: F45, Orangetheory Fitness, or Barry’s Bootcamp. (34:02) #4 - Training from home. (45:57) Related Links/Products Mentioned For a limited time only, Mind Pump listeners get a free LMNT Sample Pack with any purchase: Visit DrinkLMNT.com/MindPump August Promotion: MAPS Anabolic Advanced 50% off! **Code AUGUST50 at checkout** Mind Pump #1862: How NOT To Be An Idiot In The Gym Mind Pump #1990: Nine Reasons People Stop Working Out (& What To Do About It) How to Become a Trainer - Mind Pump Blog Mind Pump#2025: How To Be A Successful Fitness Coach With Jason Phillips Is it Worth the Money to Hire a Personal Trainer? - Mind Pump Media Mind Pump #1237: Why Most Group Exercise Classes Suck Mind Pump #2022: Lost Motivation To Workout? Do This… Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources  

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind, hop, mind, hop with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You just found the most downloaded fitness health and entertainment podcast ever. This is Mind Pump. Right, today's episode we talk about which type of gym is best for you. Which one's going to get you the best results? We also talk about this from a trainer's perspective,

if you're a trainer or coach, where should you work if you wanna build a successful business? Now this episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Element, Element makes an electrolyte powder that has no sweeteners, no artificial sweeteners, no sugar, and the right amount of sodium for performance, health, and the right amount of sodium for performance, health, and for muscle pumps.

Go check them out, go to drinklmt.com-forward-slash-mine-pump, and on that link, you'll get a free sample pack with any order. We're also running a sale right now. Maps and Abolic Advanced is half off. If you're interested, go to anabolicadvanced.com, and then use the code August 50 for the 50% off discount. All right, here comes a show. With all of the gyms available today, all the places you can work out, how can you find out which one is the best for you? In today's episode, we're going to discuss

different kinds of gyms, big box, small box, working out at home, which one is going to get you the best results? For both client and trainer. Yeah, we should, we should talk about that, right? There's definite distinctive differences. Huge. Which we'll be able to cover. It's cool because also too, as a trainer, you can kind of structure your business around serving

those different types of environments. And that's one thing that I did for sure. Well, between the three of us, we've done all of these, right? So all of us at, we all did big, big box, small box, and at home training. And studio. So studio, right?

So there's, and they're all unique. It's real, from both the trainer and the client perspective too, it's not just different for the client, but it's also very different for the coach and the client perspective too. It's not just different for the client, but it's also very different for the coach and the trainer. Now on the podcast, I would say that we consistently encourage trainers to go to the big box gym. So I don't know if you wanna start there,

but like your big commercial, 24-arfitness, L.A. fitness, U.F.C. gyms, like those type of crunch, those type of places, and we tend to encourage them to go there first. Yeah, that's always like the question is, if you're a brand new trainer, like what would be sort of the ideal place for me to start? And we tend to all think that based off of the amount

of repetition and just, you know, what the big box gym provides as opposed to the others, like, I just think it's great training grounds for the trainer. It's going to have the most, it has the most, this is where most people will start, period. It's where most trainers will start. It's going to be where most people who want to start working out will start. It's got the lowest barrier to enter, typically the least expensive, easiest to find.

It's easy to find 24 fitness or a crunch or a Bayley's, you know, Jim, so- Hours of availability. Yeah, so let's start there. And there's definitely some pros and cons, right? So one of the big pros with Jim's like this is, there's just a lot of equipment and they're very easily accessible.

Like you walk into a big box gym, which is typically about 20 to 30, sometimes 40,000 square foot, you have a lot of equipment, you have a lot of access to different classes, to different trainers. And then for trainers, you have access to a lot of potential clients. This was something that I said, you know, talked to my new trainers about. It was like, you know, if you want a new client, walk out in the workout floor. There's tons and tons of opportunity out there. People just working out who could benefit from working out with a trainer. And then from the, you know, client perspective, with a trainer. And then from the client perspective,

it's easy to sign up, show up, and get started. Now you can get lost in the shuffle. These gyms can get packed, but they're easy places to start. And all of us started in Big Box Gym. So it's always gonna be a special place in my heart when it comes to these places. Well, I remember talking about the three Cs

when we worked at 24 Fitness and they had done surveys on, you know, the way people purchased a gym and they came, they had to still let down to three main things, the average consumer, right? Obviously that everyone's an individual and they have different needs or whatever, but for the most part, most people looked at the three Cs

which was cost, convenience and cleanliness. So that was like part, most people looked at the three Cs, which was cost, convenience, and cleanliness. So, that was like a big talking point always at the gym and the thing about the big box gyms, they probably, of those three, the biggest challenges cleanliness because how big and the high traffic and so that was all, that was why, if you remember, like always, DMs and VPs coming in and like hammering the way the gym looked and making sure that it stayed up because a lot of people That's exactly what makes their decision. It's it's cheap. I can afford you know

999 to you know 29 bucks a month to come in here. It's convenient. It's right up their road from my house Or it's open 24 hours or open to me midnight and then oh look It's not dirty and messy all over the place and so now I have a gym But I feel like there's so much more to making a decision about the gym, because when I think of things like community and the people that are on there, and then how much availability for equipment and the trainer, the level of the education of the trainer and experience in there, there's so many other factors I feel like should be as important or more important

than how most people make a decision on finding a gym. There's a lot in big box gyms, they typically look to cater to the most amount of people. So you'll find classes, cardio, strength training, soaring pull, fast work loads, circuit training. So the idea with a big box gym is to track as many people as possible. So if you're getting started and you don't know

what you like or what you don't like, which most people when they first get started, they don't know. They just don't know what they're gonna enjoy, what they don't enjoy. Maybe they haven't worked out before in the past or it's been a long time. Big box gyms are attractive in that sense.

You can show up and you can look at the class roster and you can take everything from Pilates to yoga to a step class. You can look at the strength training area and there's free weights. Nowadays they all have platforms and bumper plates. They didn't have those back of the day, but now they do.

You can look at all the different forms of cardio and it's like, okay, I have all these options and this, I have all these options to choose from, and I can find something that I'm going to potentially enjoy. And then this, we can't understate this, the low barrier to enter. Like, the hardest step for somebody getting started on a fitness journey is the first step. This is always, this is true for anybody. It's like, we used to tell this to any members.

It's like you just took the first step, which is the hardest one, which is your here. Showed up. And if the cost is 150 or $200 a month, well, that's an easy way for me to say no. So the easy one to justify, maybe I'm not gonna continue with this, because really it is, it's about the consistency especially when you're first getting into your journey of fitness.

It's the biggest thing is yes showing up, but then how can I repeatedly show up and then create these small habits that I can repeat and the big box gym is it's better for that in a sense that you start to at least show up. There's a class or there's, you know, coaches there and trainers available and there's machines and there's just, there's a lot of other options there for you to at least start kind of working your way through that. Get, so educating yourself, get help educating yourself to make a better workout program for you to be able to adhere to.

And then I think from there is really where you can evolve further and fine-tuning what your focus is going to be. Well, those are a lot of the stuff that we're talking about right now with a big box or why we loved it, why we pushed people that direction, why it's the majority of people start there. But there are some cons that come with that. There's a lot of things that are drawbacks of a big box gym.

And the first one that comes to mind for me is, it's really easy to get lost in the weeds, right? There's less of a community vibe that's inside there. Because it is an entry-level place for a lot of trainers, the education level. So I would say at most big box gyms, there's like a 50, 50 chance the trainer you get is gonna be really good. I mean, we all started there.

So there's obviously an opportunity to find a good trainer that was in there, although I wouldn't consider myself a good trainer the first five years. But decent, yeah. Not great. I mean, it's hit and miss, right? Like you attract a lot of young, just fresh out of college or just got your first national certification and then they go work there.

And so as a member, you're in this huge space that has all these possibilities, classes, you've got trainers in there, all this equipment. It's like, so it can be a bit overwhelming to know what you should do or what's going to get you the best results. And so I think that's a major con about a big box gym is that even though it's really easy to get started because of the convenience and the cost of it, it also is really easy to get lost and easily become one of those statistics of you join that you join that big box, you have the membership

and you use it sporadically for three months trying to figure things out and then you disappear but you keep paying them and nobody notices. Nobody notices when Steve stops coming to the gym because it gets 2000 workouts a day and they don't notice the difference between 1900 workouts and 2000 workouts, they can't see that. And so you easily just get kind of lost in the weeds. Yeah, the fail rate in big box gems is gotta be the highest, right? It's the highest with people who start and then stop. It's the hardest place to feel like you're a part of a community.

And the truth is, for the average person, when they're starting to work out, community is the most important thing. It's just a fact. CrossFit actually proved this quite well with their warehouse, no air conditioning, like bare bones type gems, and they got so much consistency. It had nothing to do with the equipment, had everything to do with the community. When I used to manage Big Box Gems, this was what I focused on. I focused

on creating a community within my gym, and it was so powerful in terms of success. For me as a gym manager and sales, but really what it came from was just people showing up. If you show up to a big box, it's easy to get lost. The ways that you can help build community in a big box gym is taking a class, showing up at the same time, same days, every week, what you'll find is when you do that, there tends to be a small group of people that are very consistent. I would say early mornings, you're going to get your most consistent member base. If you do the whole five o'clock, six o'clock after work, hours, that's where you get the most transient, people that tend to come in and out and don't show up again. So those are a couple of ways to do it.

And you have to be more self-motivated, I would say, in a big box gym. When you're in a small box gym, it's like, very quickly, people know your name, very quickly, people are like, hey, where were you last week? And for the average person, this is a big deal. Now, if your fitness fanatic doesn't matter, I'm gonna show up no matter what. But for the average person, this is a big deal. Now, if your fitness fanatic doesn't matter, I'm going to show up no matter what. But for the average person, this is a big deal. It's not, I talked about the hardest step is taking the first step.

And then continuing, I would say, is equally as challenging. So if you know that you tend to stop, if you know, and you've done this before, where you get started, and then you fall off, then the big box may not be the right place for you. Now one of the best ways you can keep yourself consistent and have that accountability is hiring a coach or a trainer. If you show up and you work with a trainer and you do this consistently, the staff quickly becomes your community.

When my trainers would work with clients consistently, those clients, very short period of time, were known by the staff, the staff knew when they weren't there, and it helped the person stay consistent. So I'd say the most important thing you could do, and what's cool about a big box gym, in this case, is you're not spending much money on the membership, so it probably leaves you with more expendial income for a personal trainer. I think personal training in Big Box Shims is one of the most effective things you could do

just for that reason right there. Yeah, I was gonna say too. It does require a little bit more effort on the client coming in to introduce themselves to the staff and get to know like your front desk and like find these other coaches and trainers on the floor and just introduce yourself or ask like a real basic question

and get some semblance of where to start. And so that way they recognize you as your coming back in and you start kind of building that and developing that yourself versus like a smaller gem, you know, you might have a little bit more of that community aspect where they're really going above and beyond and reaching out towards you, but you can kind of create that.

And I know that you'll get lucky and there'll be some of these big box gyms where they do a good job of, that's their focus is really to touch members and make sure they introduce themselves and have you feel like you're part of something. I mean, that's how, in my opinion, that's how you know if you're in a good big box.

Like that to me, if I'm a scared new member or new to working out, I go to this big box gym down the road for me because it's the most convenient price and location wise. And I don't feel that. I'm out and I recommend someone's out. Like if you don't feel like it's at the least inviting. Like so I know when there's 2000 workouts, it's impossible to physically touch everybody and be able to have a conversation with a single person. But you should at least get that vibe of where it doesn't feel standoff because sometimes you'll go to these places and it'll feel almost standoffish.

And that's like you're going to the post office. And that's a that's a reflection of the leadership there. If there if there is a good GM, a good owner or leader in that in that facility, you should feel this energy when you walk in from the front desk to people that are staffed up saying hi to you when you pass by them. If you walk in a big box gym and it feels cold and people don't make eye contact that have that have uniforms on saying hi to you when you pass by them. If you walk in a big box gym and it feels cold and people don't make eye contact that have uniforms on, so that's not a good sign.

That is not gonna be a good environment for somebody who is just getting started to be around. I wouldn't encourage a client to stick that out. I would tell them to go find a better place. Now for trainers, big box gyms are great because it's the easiest place to get clients. Yeah. Just hands down, born on, you're gonna have.

It's proving grounds, literally. Oh, it's, I do it there. You're not gonna be able to do it anywhere else. I used to do this with new trainers all the time because trainers are, trainers become trainers because they want to help people, not because they want to sell training or approach people. They hate it, they all hate it.

So I used to talk to them about this, they said, it's so tough, I don't know how to get clients, and I used to tell them, all right, I got 15 minutes, I'm gonna walk the floor and I'll get a client. And I'd walk the floor and I'd come back with a client. So I would show them how easy it was in this, you know, like you said, there's any given moment, you got a hundred people working out in your gym,

and 90 of them don't have trainers or more. Just walk the floor, talk to people, become the mayor of the gym. If you're a trainer and you want to get good as a trainer and you want to have lots of opportunities, you want to have lots of different kinds of clients, which is imperative. This is imperative to becoming a good trainer. You don't want to just train athletes, you don't want to just train old people, you don't want to just train athletes, you don't want to just train old people, you don't want to just train teenagers, you want to have a wide variety of clients when you first get started. Later on you can become much more focused, but in the beginning it's important you

train lots of different people, it makes you well rounded and it really hones your skills, big box gyms are the place to do it. You'll have the most opportunities, hands down, bar none, do it. You'll have the most opportunities hands down, bar none. I today could walk into a big box gym and fill my book book with clients in that day very, very easily because of the opportunities and the amount of people working out in there. So if you're a trainer and you're nervous about approaching people, you don't know how to build your business. You want to learn more like big box. That's the place to go. Now you're going to make less money as a trainer per hour, but don't confuse and here's a big mistake a lot of trainers would make, is they would look at the per hour that they would make in the gym,

and they compare it to what they would make, let's say in a small studio, and they'd say, oh, I can make so much more money in a studio. Look, you could have one client a week and make 70 bucks an hour, which is better than making 40 bucks an hour, but maybe in a big bucks gym you have 10 clients, because you got 10 clients quite easily. So don't get caught up in that numbers game because the opportunities in big bucks shims are just massive. Yeah, you said something about like diversity of clients. And I think that's such an important factor. And just to be able to see all these different variables of what people are coming in with and

their past experience and what they're capable of. As a trainer, you need to become a bit of a detective. You need to be able to ask the right questions. You need to be able to be somewhat predictive going forward as to how you're gonna draw this up and how you're gonna be specific and individual to this person to get them the best results possible. And the overall amount of volume and diversity in terms of what kind of client you get,

it's just gonna be so much greater than a specialized gym or a smaller gym where a lot of people already have a good semblance. It's funnels down a very specific type of a client that you're only going to see certain types of variables there versus this big box gym to me is the most applicable education you can get as a trainer going forward to then be able to branch off and whether it's online training,

whether it's specializing in sports-specific stuff or weight loss or... Private rule. It doesn't matter. This is where you get that education. Yeah, I think we would all agree that hands of all the things we're gonna talk about today, I think we would all agree that hands of all of the things we're going to talk about today. I think that it takes the cake, right? For sure, for a personal trainer like this

is the place to start. We didn't even touch on the thing that I thought was my favorite. So I love the healthy competition and having a bunch of peers, right? So like when you work at a place like this, like 15 to 20 plus trainers. And so, and I liked being the new young guy that sucked, you know, I had all these other trainers, of these peers to look up to and to compete with, in a healthy way, like to be better, like to watch their skills,

to see how they communicate to their clients, to watch how they train their clients, and to pick their brain on why they did that or why they said that and start to acquire these skills, I felt like it accelerated my growth as a trainer. I couldn't imagine a scenario where it was just me, you know, by myself. If I started as a solo trainer doing it privately or just online and I didn't have all these peers to look at and to see them making their mistakes,

them having success and then me be able to pick you back off of that, I mean, you get that in that big box. And so hands down if you're a trainer, this to me is the best place to start. We've said it on the podcast many times, but these are the reasons why. Yeah, my favorite thing about big box shins, hands down is the best place to start. We've set it on the podcast many times, but these are the reasons why. Yeah, my favorite thing about Big Box Shims hands down is the energy.

The energy in a Big Box Shims is just, it's on. It's unmatched. And you're having a good time and it's fun. On the flip side of that could be exhausting sometimes, you know, with that kind of energy. But I work the most hours in Big Box Shims. I wanted to be around that vibe and that energy and that loud music and.

It's contagious, it's contagious, it's a good time. You're not gonna get paid quite as much, so there's some cons, you know, and that's always like something that trainers are gonna wrestle with that, and also to just the amount of hours you're gonna stack, like sometimes you can get burnout, but this is all like, again, like it's so great.

You know what that is, though, it's just, that is, that's not a trainer thing, it's a great. You know what that is, though, Justin? That is not a trainer thing. It's a new entrepreneur thing. I literally had this conversation yesterday with my cousin and I love my cousin and he's a serial entrepreneur and he's been going through it, right? The last couple of business he's done, they start out the gates and then they took a dive

and he's like, he was venting to me. I just don't, I don't want this thing that I'm doing now to be the trend and I feel like it's another trend or some of that and I looked at it and I'm like, are you fucking kidding me right now? I said, whether you decide to follow this through or not, somebody's gonna make millions of dollars doing this exact same thing.

That is not what's, it being a trend or not a trend is not what separates you from being successful. The same thing goes for these trainers. It's like what's so nice about a gym like that is the amount, what they all underestimate. And for most of my career, I train trainers, right? They work for me and I watched lots of them walk out the door and leave me to go do it on their own

and be private because they thought it was gonna be as easy on their own. And what they failed to realize was how difficult it is to consistently generate leads and bodies in front of them. And they all would leave and go, oh my God, yeah, I can go charge four times the price that that little, that commercial gym was paying me. Yeah, but now you got no clients. But you have no clients. Yeah. And by the way, most of their clients, they stole from that gym, right? That's how they actually had some sort of a private gym, is they used the big box, they think,

and they get this ego of, oh, I can go make this, all these clients, they love me, that's where they show up, that's where they keep resigning. And so then they take those clients, they go to tribal, and then eventually, like all clients do, they get their results, or they something happens, and they fall off, and then I'll have to go get new clients. No idea how to do that. No leads to get there, and they something happens and they fall off. And now they have to go get new clients. No idea how to do that.

No leads to get there. And they realize that is as much if not more of a challenge than anything else and scaling your business is generating leads. All right, now let's talk about the small box gyms, the private studios. Now I would say for me, although I have a warm place in my heart for the big box gyms

because that's where I started. The small box gyms was my favorite, my absolute favorite, but I will say this, if you start in a big box gym and you're not the top trainer in that big box gym, you have no business going to a small box gym. You're not going to be able to make it in a small box because you don't know how to get clients because you're not going gonna be able to walk the floor with tons of random people working out. You gotta figure out how to do that.

So, but if that's you, if you are the top trainer in your big box gym, you know how to generate leads, you know how to get clients, small box gyms can be amazing. They're amazing for a lot of different reasons. One is the flexibility in your training and coaching is incredible. You tend to have much more autonomy with how you train people.

It's like you own your business in this facility versus following the protocol of the other place or the big box gym. So you have all this flexibility. You have a bit of a self-selection bias. People who go to work with trainers in small box gyms have more expendable income. That does mean that they tend to demand better service. But if you're a trainer, you love doing this. It allows you to deliver better service. I owned a small box gym for over 15 years and I was able to have some incredible trainers and

coaches work in there. And the results we were able to deliver some incredible trainers and coaches work in there and the results we were able to deliver people were astounding. And so I would say the success rate in a small box gym with clients so long as the business is run well because this is another part here. Small box gyms tend to shut down. So you don't see 24 fitnesses pop up and then shut down. Small box gyms tend to do that because they're hard to to keep a float For the the reasons that we talked about leads and being able to generate you know new revenue and all that stuff

But if you figure that out you work out in a small box gym you work out with a trainer there the community feel is Incredible you walk in and it's like everybody knows you And you have access to really good coaches and trainers typically, people who were the best, and the big box shims tend to go to these small boxes. And the success rate tends to be through the roof. Yeah, there's definitely a filtering process for this, and I'm glad you said you gotta be the best, you gotta crush that environment first in the big box.

And I tend to prefer the smaller box setting as well because of my peers there to your point of them being sort of the best in their other respective gyms. You're surrounded by a higher quality group of trainers that really take their career serious. And so, you know, in the other setting, the big box, you get a lot of volume and you try your best, right? And even as you're working through all of that, really, it's just you're trying so hard to get more and more clients.

Whereas here, the volume's a bit lower, the price point goes up, so you have to pay a lot more attention to detail. And so your quality really matters for you to stand out and for you to be a force in this setting. There's only two types of trainers in a small box gym that is successful, too. That's it. You either one are so fucking good that you get referrals always.

So you've already proven that you've got a client book that you can build or have built. And as clients fall off, you're so fucking good. There's always a waiting list of people that are wanting to train with you again because of the results that you give your people. So you've got a lot of skills or you're ahead of the curve than your peers

and you know how to generate leads on your own. Whether that means you're really good online and building a website, you have a relationship with doctors and chiropractors, like you have got to be one or the other of those trainers. Now, ideally, you're both, right? Ideally, you kick ass, you give great results, you've built relationships with doctors and chiropractors, you've got a great website and you know how to generate leads and SEO stuff. But if you're not one of those two trainers, you're gonna be all drown in that place. You're absolutely drowning in that place.

Very well said. The other thing too I liked about Small Box Gems is you tend to have more access to specialized trainers and coaches. When you go to a big box gym, you have a bunch of trainers, some of them part-time, some of them full-time. Small Box Gems, everybody's full time, everybody's taking it very seriously.

You don't see people doing it as a way to kind of pay through school or whatever. It's like everybody's there because this is what they want to do. And you get specialties, you get specialists, I should say. Now, as a trainer, I love this because I got to work with a physical therapist. I got to work with a functional medicine practitioner. I got to work with correction physical therapist. I got to work with a functional medicine practitioner. I got to work with correctional exercise specialists

and athletic performance specialists. And in a small environment like that, it's easy to learn from these other trainers. So I would see training techniques, workout programming. I'd see the value and benefit of body work, of meditation. All these things that I never knew anything about, I learned more as a trainer in a small box gym than I ever did. In a big box gym, I learned how to get clients, and I learned how to build a business. In a small box gym, I learned how to be a really,

really well-rounded, good trainer from working with all these other specialists. Yeah, I learned how to create systems and repeatable systems. And that was a big part of being able to scale what I did in my business. You know, as opposed to the big box setting was really as reactionary. It was like, okay, I got to figure this out. I got to, you know, you become more predictive.

And also you start kind of selectively screening clients as to where your focus, where your strengths are. So each one of those other types of trainers in that environment, they've kind of started to figure out more of their specialty and they're starting to attract a certain type of a client. And so it actually makes it a lot easier to market to them as well, which you have to learn as a big part of that is how you present yourself because you are your own business in this setting

if you're approaching it right. Well, what you both are saying ties back to what I said about it's a filtering process. Because if you are a yoga person, an acupuncture, chiropractor, physical therapist, sports performance trainer, and you're really fucking good, and you got referrals, or you figured out how to get leads,

you survived in that small box gym. And so you're not just getting to learn, because there's those types of people, or those types of trainers in big box gyms, dude, there was the girl that was all into yoga, that was teaching you at the big box gym, but in order for her to make it in a small box, she has to be one of the best.

Really good. She has to be really good at her craft to attract that specialty client. And so you get this natural filtering selection when you go to a small box gem. If they, these trainers have these specialties and they're surviving in that type of atmosphere, they're probably really good at either their craft

or their marketing ability, which allows trainers like ourselves, like that's why I think a lot of us love that setting, you know, eventually, right? So it's like you go, you get your reps in at the big where it's lots of leads, lots of opportunity to screw up to learn your niche, to figure out what you're good at, figure out what clients you're good at attracting and servicing and helping, and then eventually go, okay, I figured this out. Now I go to this small place where I have more control of my pay, I have more control of how my hours and how I work, and now I'm in this selection of five to ten trainers

that also are great at their craft. And now that really, I think all of us agree that once you get to that setting, if you've made it, that really accelerates your level of education and training and makes you that much better. It's also for the client. I think this is a really cool atmosphere. If you're a client and you're just trying to decide, do I want to go to a small box, type of gym or private studio versus a big box, if you can afford it, because that's the con of a private studio or a small box as the price is 10 to 10.

So a lot more. You're looking at probably two to three times more expensive. I mean, you can get personal training sessions in a big box gym in some places for like 50, 60 bucks an hour. In a small box gym, you're going to pay double easily. It's a lot more expensive. But you're also going to get double the quality of the trainer. And then here's the other thing too, is some people, when they get started, and this is just the fact, they want to get lost in the shuffle. They don't want lots of attention on themselves. They don't want to kind of show up

and nobody look at me and let me do my thing. Small box, you can't do that in a private studio. You're on front row. You walk in and everybody, like do my thing, small box, you can do that. You're on front row. You walk in and everybody, like in my place, and Doug was my client, he'll tell you, he would walk in and I'd yell across the gym, Doug and everybody would say, Doug, what's going on? Well, if you want to be anonymous, it's not going to really work out very well

in a small box gym. But so this is kind of a question for yourself, like how serious are you? And sometimes you just don't, you're not quite sure how serious you are In which case you might want to be a little anonymous But if you're ready to make you know a big decision and you know people are gonna watch you Small box. That's the that's the way to do it people will know you they'll know who you are Everybody works together to that community kind of feel but the success rate is much higher

Astronomically high if you can afford to go this route right feel, but the success rate is much higher, astronomically higher. If you can afford to go this route, right? Because that's the part where I understand, right? Not everybody can afford that personal training type of service in those smaller gyms. I get it, you know, but if you can, if you can afford it, this is probably the best place for a client.

You wanna talk about all the things that we're gonna go over today. If my family, if it was like my family coming to me and saying, Adam, I've got X amount of money. I need how they're not getting it from me right now. I'm not going to train them. Where do I go to find a good trainer? Where would you put me? I wouldn't send them to a big box. I wouldn't send them to these other studios that we're going to talk about. I would send them to a known small private studio where there's probably

10 trainers in there and I would tell them that go find the trainer that's been working there for several years. They've made it in that place and that small community place. I guarantee that's gonna be a really good trainer. They wouldn't have survived in that small setting unless they were really good at their craft and go hire that trainer and your likelihood of this.

And the reason why you likely have the success is nothing to do with the motivation or the equipment or the fancy exercising they're gonna do. It's the education and the experience. The connection. Yes. Look, I had my private studio had a squat rack, dumbbells and a cable machine, and that's it.

I had, like compared to the big box shims that I worked in. I had almost no potential. But my success rate was so much higher in that private studio with clients than it was in the big box shim. And that's just the fact. So success rate is through the roof. But it's a lot more expensive.

Like I said, you're gonna pay two to three times as much. But look, this is where I tell people, why are you doing this? $20 is $20, but if you burn it, then what's it worth? $100 is a lot more, but what if you get what you paid for? Well now it's totally worth it. All right, next up are the class type gems. These have gotten popular more recently, right? These F-45 orange theory fitness,

Barry's boot camp type, you know, type places. Even CrossFit would be good. Yeah, CrossFit. I would say one of the biggest pros by far has got to be the community. Yeah. You show up, you're in a class with other people. Energy, the accountability, that kind of stuff.

The entire model is built off of that. Yes. When we started this, we talked about big box shims. One of the things that you alluded to that we all know because we've managed these things. One of the biggest attractions of getting the consumer to buy into the membership was the offerings of the classes. It was, it's kind of crazy when you think about it

for as long as that we worked in that space and knew that, how long it took for somebody to put models together like that. Like, why are they selling this big 40,000 square foot membership to a gym when the people that come consistently every Monday, Wednesday, Friday love this little corner, this little class, this mirror, this blocked off- classing, and they live for that. And they come, and a lot of people would sign up for the membership specifically just for those classes. Life Balls finally started going off in, in entrepreneurs heads and going like, wait a

second, why don't we take that class type of setting on that model and create all these F-45s, berries, bootcamp, orange's, CrossFit type of ideas, and we will get these people to come in because it's the community aspect. It is, and they capitalize on the fun, the fun aspect of fitness. Now, I will say this to the person listening to the client or the consumer, the person who wants to get in shape, getting addicted or obsessing over the fun aspect of fitness is a great way to get started. It's also a surefire way of stopping at some point. At some point, it's gone, and the novelty wears off, and then you stop.

So the success rate with class-type gyms a little bit better than Big Box gyms, not that great though, because the phone is over. I don't even know if I agree with that. I think that of course they would promote that and show that and if we took it in a, this is why we talk about studies, right? Like when a study's done in a 12 to 16 weeks setting, it's like, okay, yeah, but if you take that study

and you stretch it over two or three years, does it still hold true based off of behavioral stuff? Yeah. I would make the argument that in a short term, meaning less than a year, these classes will show more results than the big box gyms and so that, only because the people were more consistent with coming for that short period of time.

But what you see, what ends up happening when you follow those people over the course of a year, two years, three years, is injury, burnout, frustrated because of hard plateaus, friend left the studio, and so they don't know how they're the friend that they were meeting there anymore. So of all the things that we're going to talk about, which I'm going to get the most grief for here, this is my least favorite for both trainer and for client. I want to leave. And they're the most popular right now. Yeah, I think because it takes into account the average to with your big box of people that will pay

and have all this motivation and drive to do something and then they might show up once and then just be gone. Right? Or they pay for it with the hopes of like, there's this sort of satisfaction that some people get out of, like taking that step of like purchasing, and then in a lot of these big box gyms kind of account for that type of a client kind of as well,

is like just somebody that's, you know, because it's such a low entry point, they can sort of justify the payment that eventually I'll get to the gym. But these classes do provide that initial energy, electricity, and community kind of feel to pull them in. And so yeah, they'll get this like initial hype, but really it's a lot of motivation and hype that's driving it in the net phase.

Yeah, look, if you're like I said, if you're obsessed with motivation for consistency, you're going to be screwed at some point because nobody stays motivated forever. Here's the path of a successful client as defined by consistency and results if they start in a class setting, okay? This is, now I'm talking about a successful person for years and years and years, this is what they do. They'll start in F-45 or Orange Theory or Barry's boot camp. They'll do that for a while.

Eventually, move to a small studio and work with a personal trainer. Those are the people that end up becoming successful. The people who stay in the classes almost never find that long-term success. And that's for the following reason, which is classes can't possibly be individualized. It essentially becomes just movement. You're in there and you're just moving. And yeah, you're doing different kinds of movement, whether it's a dance type workout,

whether you're using weights, even though it's not really strength training in these classes, it's more like cardio with weights. Or you're doing something mouse, some other new trendy thing. I saw one where people were suspended in doing like air yoga and weird stuff.

At some point that's gonna stop working and the people that I've seen who succeed long-term, they tend to, I guess, for lack of a better term graduate and they move to a small box. That's exactly what happened. This is always such a hard conversation to have because you're gonna get the people that say things like, why would you guys shit on something like that? If it's what gets them motivated off the couch and gets them working out and exercising or they love to do it and they're consistent

with doing it, why would you say anything negative about it? It's helping people, it's moving in the right direction. And it's because that what you're talking about when you defend that like that is you're still looking at it in this small sample size or small window of like show me the person, show me a person who does orange theory for three years consistently and okay, but then keep doing it. I'm happy for you. That's something that you get up and you do consistently for three years and you love it and it's been a part of your life and you're happy where you are aesthet up and you do consistently for three years and you love it and it's been a part of your life

and you're happy where you are aesthetically and you don't have any chronic pain issues from pounding on the treadmill so that okay, then by all means. But what I see is people are consistent for a while, they burn out relatively quick and then they can't afford, they hit hard plateaus or they get issues where they have chronic pain

Because they're in these like circuit type of mentalities where they're not addressing all of their Inbalances in their own individual bodies, which is what a personal trainer does when you go to these private studios or train with someone and they go Oh, wow, we probably shouldn't be doing that. We need to do x, y and z So yeah, okay got that person off the couch because they ran a great commercial or they got the energy from their friend to go there and do that. But like you said, so it's the ones that are successful or the ones that eventually graduate out of that

and recognize like, oh, okay, this got me motivated, this got me going, but there's more out there, there's better for me and what I need for my individual goals. You can't possibly get that in a group setting, in a group setting. And what I don't like the most about them is, even though a lot of the formats and the programming was built with good intentions,

what ends up happening, because this is just, we're creating, we the built this way, is it creates this kind of competitive environment, and it just turns into this chasing sweat, chasing orange points. It becomes this thing where it's mostly cardio-based, and the most beautiful thing about strength training starts to dissipate because it's now turned into this, like, who can sweat the most, who can get the most points, who can do the most rounds in a class,

and now you're really losing the value of strength training. Yeah, and to that point, I'm sure I'm gonna get some grief for this, but the trainers, the instructors, I should say, that are the most, quote unquote, successful as defined by full classes and people showing that are the most, quote, unquote, successful as defined by full classes and people showing up are the most entertaining. Deentertainers, yeah.

Yeah, so it's like, if you're a great value. Yeah, if you're a one-on-one trainer, your success is often defined by actual long-term consistent results. If you're an instructor to a class, your success is defined by how fun and entertaining you are. And I know this, you can walk into a class and you'll see the one that's at her full, it's the guy that's energized and exciting and hilarious and fun. And so if you're a trainer and you like to entertain people, this could be great for you. If you're a trainer and you want to actually work with people and get them good results

in individualized, especially individualized workouts, you can't do it in this. Well, I'm going to really piss off some people here, but it's the truth. So when I went to Orange Theory, I was actually just sharing this with my cousin too. I was talking about entrepreneurship. It was one of the most humbling experiences for me, right? Because what we're talking about, we're talking about the journey of like most trainers, what you do is you started it like a big box gym and then you get your experience there, you get educated, then you go over, you go to like a small box gym, you get really educated, you get more experience, add more certifications, more experience on you,

then you go over and you do your own thing privately or build your own jam or whatever. That's kind of like the trajectory of like a really successful trainer. Class settings is the lowest entry level for a trainer. It is the like they have 10 grams of counted for. I mean, you're getting in, you have like all of your clientele, like you're maximizing your hour, right? Because now you have a lower entry point. So you have like a full setting of class, so you can make a little bit more money

in terms of that one hour. So it's very appealing for your entry level type of... You take zero experience and always to run one of these classes because they pay somebody with a higher education to build out these templates and do that. So unbelievably humbling at 10 years in my career plus to have to go work in a studio like this. Now granted, you all know what the point of that was like was to generate leads.

I knew that with all my experience, I would come and I also knew that what makes a great trainer and that is the energy, right? So the most entertaining, the most fun, the loud. So if I could come in, be the most entertaining trainer with my experience in my education level within a month, gonna gobble them up, that entire place would know I was the guy, right? But super humbling when I think about comparing myself to my peers to have to go work at a place like that,

and I know there's gonna be a lot of trainers that get offended by that, but it's the truth. You're not gonna find a trainer with their masters in kinesiology, three or four national certifications, five plus years in personal training, working on those, you won't find one. You won't find one.

And the reason is because they've evolved so much in their education level of helping people that they realize That those classes aren't helping people and they always get this pushback and it's always from either new trainers that are teaching those classes or Store owners who own those facilities or new clients who don't know any better You're never gonna hear, you're never gonna hear a very educated experienced trainer argue that with me. Not one. Never watch online how much this fires everybody up and then go on their profile, show me one trainer

that has their masters, has five, 10 years experience and certifications that back it up, that would argue that. You never will see that. Yeah, well the truth is fitness eventually needs to be individualized. It just does. Everybody's different. Everybody's life is different in the context

of the life changes. And you can't do that in a class. It's just impossible. All right, next up, training from home. This is where you hire somebody. They come to your house, and then they train you. The pros of this obviously convenience. I mean, you don't have to go anywhere. They show up to your house. Beautiful for a client. Yeah, it's uncomfortable. I'm at home. I'd have

to worry about other people looking at me or what's going on. For a trainer, this could be kind of challenging in the sense that you have very little equipment to work with. Now a good trainer doesn't need much equipment. You know, when I would train people at home, I needed some bands. That's it. Body weight and bands, and I could do almost everything. But for the client, it's about convenience and comfort. This has to be the most expensive, though, I would say. You're going to pay the most. You just have to pay the most. Especially if you're not. If you're not, it's not a very good train. Yeah, you haven't looked at your business plan very effectively.

Because you are gonna have to charge quite a substantial amount. More, you gotta account for that. A lot of the amount of time it takes you to travel to there, where you could fit in, clients throughout your day, it kind of takes away from that. But I mean, there's definite need there too. So it's an opportunity for trainers because there's demand there.

And you'd be surprised at what people out there would pay for that type of convenience, that type of level of individualized service. And two, it brings a lot of insight into that client's lifestyle. And so you don't get a lot of that just being at the gym. You get second-hand kind of relate information, like I could just go walk into the kitchen and I kind of know what's going on and what kind of behavior is like nutritionally they're doing. Also too, just like what we

have to work with in terms of like the area, like where they can go, you know, consistent walks and how we can structure this room. So it's most effective. So they're going to come down and do their routine. You can establish really good routines for them that will, they can adhere to probably even better than in the gym setting. However, there are negatives to that as well, because you get interruptions. You get more phone calls, you get kids, you get husband, you get whoever that are gonna come in, like a mailman coming in, so it is, has its own sort of factors that may be negative,

but overall, I mean, the biggest deterrent, I think, for trainers is the fact that you're gonna have to restructure your business. So a lot of time you can account for with this travel and being somewhere else in the gym. As a trainer, this was my least favorite thing I did. Same. Yeah, same here. This is my least favorite thing. And you're also, you get stuck in this situation where for it to be equitable for you, you have to charge a lot of money because of what you said, like travel time, gas.

It's no, you're going to train five people in a day, Max. Yeah, because you have to, because you can't be on the hour every hour. So you can't go back to back to back people. So you have these half hour gaps, minimum. That's if you even have your clients in similar vicinity. And so you have to, it's really, really tough to scale that model. And then you get all the distractions that you get. And then you also, again, like I said, you have to charge a really high premium to do that.

Now, when you do find those clients, those clients tend to be great clients because money is not a thing for them. So the best clients, I'm going gonna go ahead and argue there right now He will also there you go. So right you for that reason They they value their time. They're so busy that they're like I'll pay whatever it costs To have you come to me. So sometimes you do get a really good client from that I think as a trainer you got to really evaluate though How much that can disrupt your growth

building outside of that. And so you have to build that price in considering all those things. Successful trainers who build a successful business, training people at home, you have to be really, really good and have a lot of referrals and have to be very high demand. Otherwise, you're going to train one person a day, maybe. I mean, all the trainers I know that train people at home, they thought it was a great idea. And then they ended up training like one person

a day. And like this is more. Yeah. Here's the thing that I, here's the other thing I didn't like about training people at home is when people would walk into my studio, I felt more control, confidence, and power. You're in my place. I'm the authority. I'm going to help you accomplish these goals. When I would go to somebody else's house, there's always a little bit of this like I'm respecting your space. I'm in your home.

I don't feel the same sense of authority in your home. This doesn't sound kind of silly, but it's actually really something to consider. As a trainer, I just felt less effective when I would go to somebody's home, because I'm in your house. I kind of got to respect you. This is your place.

When you come to my place, we could have those tough conversations. And you're here. You're here to do what I tell you that we need to do versus what I'm at your house. That's a really good observation. I only have ever thought of it like that, but it's so true when I think about it. Like that is exactly that that kind of feel it felt like I'm on your turf and I have to get on your service. Yeah, yeah. No, it feels like no, when I think back to the like I'm like right now I'm drawing back to these

these moments of training people in their houses is like you're right, it does feel like that. I do feel a little bit like, I'm here to serve you and like, I got to deal with the phone going off, the kid running in, all this is just like, that's part of why I'm getting paid all this money to come do this. Versus you come on my turf and it's like, this is what we're doing. This is how this, and it's like, you have to fit into my, which gives me so much more control to then again, give these clients such better results. And so what a good point, I didn't even consider. Now for the client, there's definitely pros and cons to this, right?

If you absolutely have that crazy of a lifestyle, which I understand because I train some of these people, where it's like you have this very small window that a trainer has to come to your house, whether that be for kids reasons or very busy business reasons. And so, and you do it, hiring a trainer to do that,

to come help you do the right things for yourself, and then also be consistent, tremendous value there, in being able to do that. But I also think there's, there's cons because those are the people too, a real easy to cancel, real easy to, oh, it's just's just I don't know. I don't know if you guys, I don't know how many times I had at home clients were like, can we just do a go-for-a-walk today?

Yeah. Do some of them. You know what I'm saying? Do some of our stretching this and that. And so there's something about, you know, when you have to go to a training studio, I mean, I've felt this in myself. I've made the case before why I still like going to gyms versus training at home. When I make that commitment of getting in the car and driving to a location, that switch goes on where it's like, okay, I've got to get this full workout in where I'm at home.

It's easier for me like, I'm good. It's enough. You get that attitude. In my experience, the clients that did well training at home started with me in a studio. And then we eventually moved to their home. The people that I got that started in their home, it felt like this, and I'm gonna be a generalization,

but what it felt like was, I wanna be able to say I have a trainer, I have a lot of money, so I really don't care, and then you're gonna show up and kinda do what I say. And it just felt like a not very serious type of situation. But I'm making a lot of money as a trainer. So I guess I'm gonna show up. That was why I didn't like it so much.

But I did have amazing clients that train at home, but they all started with me in the studio. They all started there and then eventually moved to the house. Yeah, and I totally get all of that. I think a lot of that when I started a lot of that, when I started to kind of structure my business in that direction, we had an understanding in the contract of I'm gonna be there whether you're gonna cancel

on me or not. And so sometimes I would sit in the parking lot or in their driveway even while they're taking care of whatever. But in terms of the entire month, it's already accounted for. And they know that that's another form of accountability that they always have to recognize. And so for me, it was too, it was the quality of the client because they're so busy and successful and and need.

They really did have a lot higher need for my service. So it too was very challenging to work through a lot of those difficult things like getting the right type of nutrition and having it available and accessible, being able to repeat certain patterns throughout the day of movement that was very difficult. I liked the challenge of that. In my career, I started to get a little bit complacent because as you evolve as a trainer, you start to get into autopilot mode where I know I see you, I know exactly what I'm going to do with you today and I could kind of just like check it off

This was a whole another kind of level of difficulty in turns interruptions and Traveling and so I had to really fine-tune Making it more turnkey and making it more accessible for somebody that really Honestly has no time for me. You know, you you touched on something that I think that is also another pro Honestly has no time for me. You know you touched on something that I think that is also another pro Even though because even though this is one of my least favorite of all the places the train uh It did teach me some things that it made me a better communicator later on with just all clients in general And that was getting to peer into their kitchen and their and their like that wouldn't have happened right if I made a big box

Jim probably Jim like I'm not going to any of these house So I don't actually get to walk in and see your cupboards, see the types of stuff that you're cooking with, what you're eating. And that's like a staple thing you do. If you go train someone in their living room or in their backyard or their garage or like that, it's just like, hey, let's take a look at what's in the freezer.

Let's go take a look at what's in the cupboards and stuff like that. Let me see what are some of your regular choices. And it really gives the trainer, it's the stuff like that. Let me see what are some of your regular choices. And it really gives the trainer like a bird's eye view of like, oh, like this is, here's where a lot of our problems are, is like look at the options, look at the type of stuff that you're cooking for yourself.

Like, and so it would really shift the conversation. Even though I'm there to train you, to lift weights and do all these things, like I found myself a lot of times with these at home clients communicating a lot more around nutrition because now I started to appear at, and by the way, that same person, oh, I eat good.

You know, they always tell you like how good they eat or I diet or I'm on this and then you see what's in their cupboards and you're like, really though? Because I know I am. If I got all that shit in my house, like I'm gonna snack on it, I'm gonna eat it, right? So, oh, that's for my husband or that's for the kids. It's like, yeah, well, if you're gonna get on board and do this, like you want to also

teach your family to eat better and stuff. So I did like that aspect of it as a coach and trainer to really peer into how a lot of people eat that that struggle with weight and you see these things. And so it made me a better communicator around nutrition and how to help clients like that. So I did like that aspect of that. And that is a perk. If you get a really good trainer who comes into your house who you're open to like,

hey, here's my, tell me what I'm doing wrong. Look at my refrigerator, look at my kitchen, look at my cupboards and stuff like that. And tell me where I could be better. There is some value in that for sure. Yeah, you did, you probably did this the most that I'm all of us right, Justin. And you did, I think part of the reason

why you had success with this is you kind of did like a concierge type pay structure where they paid you a flat rate per month, whether they trained with you or not. Yeah, exactly. I could see that working a lot better with something like this versus the per session, you know, type of model.

Yeah, and it was a different mentality shift, where it actually opened up a lot of space for me during the day, so I could have more creative outlets, work on ideas for passive income, and like expand my business elsewhere. So I really enjoyed it for that, because the volume of clients was low, I could really up my service and my quality, which was really my focus.

How far can I go quality wise? How much can I provide this person to where the success, I can accelerate the success level of that to a certain degree. I really felt it made me a better trainer as well, I liked it too, which then I was able to kind of step back into the volume side of business and learn how to then apply that system on a greater scale. Excellent.

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