May 2, 2022 • 32 mins
If you are looking for a career in the fitness industry, and need some advice on where to start, check out this episode of the Fitness Disrupted podcast as Tom talks about how to do it on your terms and be successful doing it!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Fitness Disrupted, a production of I Heart Radio.
I am Tom Holland and this is Fitness Disrupted. They
say it every show, greatest job in the world. But
it worked really hard to get here, and I'm still
(00:22):
working hard, smarter, Maybe it's still hard. And this podcast
is for those who might want to do what I do,
and I get those questions very frequently. So not only
do I feel the nutrition questions, exercise questions, motivation questions,
(00:44):
all that kind of stuff, but also from people just
getting into the industry. Maybe they've been in the industry
a couple of years or so. And many of those
who are getting into the industry are those later in
life maybe second job, third job. And I love it.
It's the greatest job in the world. But as I
(01:05):
will outline, there is no outline, there's no roadmap to
doing what I do today. And when I talk about
the industry, I mean there's a lot of different branches
for me, and for this podcast, it's the fitness industry
right exercise, So we're talking personal trainers, group fitness instructors.
(01:30):
Obviously there are offshoots from there, the nutrition side, all
of that kind of stuff, and that's a good and
a bad thing. It's a good and bad thing, right,
But it's not only the greatest industry in the world
in my opinion if you love it, and I will
talk about that, but there are super you know, there
(01:51):
are challenges because it's not a traditional job, and let's
call it what it is. If you want to make
money me you know, support a family and things like that,
then it gets even more challenging. Alright, So this podcast,
so you want a career in the fitness industry, This
(02:13):
is part one. So this is top level. This is
top level stuff. Just kind of the framework what I
think and what I have experienced and what I've seen.
And let me say that I learned by studying the
(02:33):
people who had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. And
I've interviewed several of those people here on the show.
Matt Fitzgerald, the writer, Troy Jacobson, the triathlete who went
off and started incredible business for himself. He's on his
third or fourth career, but he was a professional triathlete
(02:55):
and at the time he started coaching and doing his
own so I cling DVD spinner vols videos ended up
being in one and cheating cheating is a strong word.
I kind of cheated. Uh. I studied him and interviewed him.
So if you want to listen to that podcast, and
Jack Wilane was someone I looked up to and studied
(03:21):
and respected his philosophy, his approach, and yes, I yet
to do that podcast. I'm waiting because it's so important
to me to do it right. But back when I
had my first radio show, I interviewed him for an hour.
To this day, I am blown away that the person
I looked up to so much gave me a full
(03:42):
hour on a Saturday live and so that's a huge
part of this. So that's I understand. If some people
want what I have achieved, yes, that's the question. So
I'm gonna give it to you. But as I just outlined,
like you kind of want to follow a bunch of
people and take a bit from here and a bit
from there, and you do your own thing. That's success.
(04:11):
It's not rocket science. You go what worked for this person,
what worked for that person, and then what am I
willing to do and how will I make my mark?
All Right, So that's what this is about. If you're
in the fitness industry just starting out or maybe you
(04:31):
want to take it to the next level. That's a
huge part. Maybe you're a trainer through fitness instructor the
shows for you. And again this is just part one.
Much more to come in this area because I'm getting
more and more questions about it. Quit break when we
come back, So you want a career in the fitness industry?
Part one, we will be right back and we are
(05:00):
back talking about how you make a living in the
fitness industry if that's something you want to do. And
I will say it probably a hundred times during this
episode that I I love it. I have the greatest
job in the world. And that's where we're gonna start.
You have to love it. You have to be passionate
(05:20):
about it, and hopefully you do that with whatever you
do in life. Right, we want to figure out what
we enjoy, what we're good at, and we want to
monetize it. So all the cliches are true. If you
find something you love and you make a living at it,
you never work a day in your life. Well, yes
(05:43):
and no, I've worked really hard, and as I said
in the intro, I continue to work hard, but I
love it. And the alternative is not an option. For me.
You know, vast majority of my family and friends are
in finance, and God bless all you people that are
in that industry probably not listening this episode though, Uh,
that wasn't for me, and I trained. I know the
(06:07):
term is abused literally, but billionaires. I trained all the
celebrities and people have lots and lots of money, and
that was never the be all, end all for me.
So those two initial concepts are heavily entwined. In other words,
you've got to be passionate about it, and at least
(06:28):
out of the gate people money can't be shouldn't be,
in my opinion, the driver because if you're doing this right.
One of the reasons this industry is so hard, so challenging,
it's because there's so much that stuff out there. That's
what this show is all about. It's about getting the
(06:52):
truth the myths, breaking them down because there are a
lot of people in this industry maybe shouldn't be call
it what it is, aft you know, and they're not
going to make a career out of it, most of them.
And that's fine, do whatever you want to do. But
I I this is not selling shoes to me. I
take this super seriously. And when you waste people's time
(07:14):
and money, that's a problem. It's a huge problem to
me because this is about your health. This is about
your well being physically and mentally. So you've got to
be passionate about it. Really, ask yourself, is this what
I want to do? Do I love it this much?
And money will come when you do a good job
(07:36):
and you work hard anything in life, But you want
to make millions right away? Not your goal? Ask yourself,
you really want to help people? Do you really just
want to get stuff for yourself? Can make money? I
want you to make money, and that's also why I'm
(07:57):
doing these shows for the industry. Let's start with the passion,
start with helping people first. Really really kind of important,
all right, because you are going to work hard. You're
gonna work really hard. And I started, I'm gonna give you, obviously,
(08:19):
my experiences because that's my that's my vantage point, and
that's what worked for me. Right started as a personal trainer.
If you've listened to the other shows, you've heard much
of this already. But you know personal trainer said many
years ago, Okay, I'm finally gonna do this for a living.
And so I went from personal trainer to a group
fitness instructor, and then started branching off. Let me backtrack
(08:42):
a tiny bit. All the time I was into fitness,
which is since I was a teenager, I was also
doing other things. It's so many different jobs in my lifetime,
but a huge passion of mine along with fitness. You
can have more than one. People was performing, and that
goes for music, stand up comedy, and acting. Was doing
all of those things for many years in college a
(09:05):
couple of years after college, but I was also doing
the fitness thing, and the state up comedy got to
a pretty high level, working with names you know that
are super successful today. And at the point where I
needed to like really make a decision, was this the
career choice? Said no, because I was going to the
(09:26):
twenty four hour gym's in Manhattan after doing a stand
up set. You know it eleven midnight, one am, and
usually all three of those times, and it was fitness,
and that was not the lifestyle. But let me say
this back to the concept of failure. You know, there
are many people I grew up with who knew me
(09:48):
as the stand up comic or knew me when I
was doing the acting. For the short amount of time music.
I still do all those things today, and I do
all of those things within the fitness world, and so
I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. But that's
what makes me unique one of the things in this industry.
It helps them measurably with the DVDs I hosted way
(10:11):
back when and booking those big jobs and then going
on QVC and HSN and you know, the Canadian Shopping Channel.
So all of that made sense. And so this goes
to another thing you got to think about again, top
level stuff here. You have to have a loose long
(10:33):
term plan, right, what's your goal? What's your goal in
the next year, two, what's your goal halfway? You know,
maybe five years, ten years, and then I know that
I'm fifty three now, at like seventy, I want to
be teaching. I'll be teaching like anatomy and some sports
(10:53):
psychology and motivation and things like that. But things change.
And that goes back to why brought up the unique
nature of my background is you have this long term plan,
but things change, and that's okay. It's actually part of life, right,
It's not a linear progression, and that's really important to embrace.
(11:19):
Because as I said at the start, there is no roadmap.
You kind of outline where you think you want to
be and then you just let things start to fall
into place. So you're passionate about it. You realize you're
not going to make a fortune right away, and you're
ready to work hard. You're gonna get up early, you're
(11:39):
gonna go to bed late. And again I'm talking from
the vantage point of the personal trainer and then the
group fitness instructor, and then all of the revenue streams
that come off of that. That's the most important part
of this podcast Part one is thinking about the multiple
revenue streams available. And they are so many today, so
(12:01):
many more then there were when I started, and many
that are just different. Right, so real quickly, you start
as a personal trainer, get paid by the hour, and
it's brutal because people don't show up and if you
don't show up, we don't get paid when you're a
personal trainer, and that was brutal. And yes, so many
gems have twenty four hour cancelation policies really hard, as
(12:26):
those of you who are personal trainers know to enforce,
especially with people you know well will go oh, Tom,
you know you've been working with this person for maybe
a year or longer, and like like you know, last
minute cancelation. Well, you know, something happened with a kid
or something came up, and you want to say, well,
you owe me x dollars. I don't care how the
trainers do, and actually he should, but my point is
(12:48):
it's an hourly thing and you only get paid if
you work. And I tell the story that one of
the gyms I worked at many years ago, I would
sell training packages and sometimes people would never show up
and I never saw a dime of it. Sold a
fifty pack many back in the day, but one in particular,
the only time I sold a fifty pack in the
(13:09):
person never came back, never showed up, and I saw
it not a dime thousands of dollars in personal training
that I sold the gym kept. So you start at
that personal trainer level if that's your goal fitness, right,
And then I said, okay, let me start teaching classes
because I love to do it. Get a workout in.
If that's how you do it, you know it's not
(13:29):
about you, but obviously there's a way to do it
where people want to see you exercising you're demonstrating you
get workouts in and classes don't cancel the way clients do.
And so that was my progression, right, personal trainer add
in the group fitness, and by the way, group thatitness
also put you in front of potential clients for personal training.
(13:50):
And now today, I don't want to get too deep
into it in this episode, but you've got Zoom and
the Internet and apps in so many different ways to
train bowl one on one and in group situations. And
that's amazing. All right. One really important point is that
(14:14):
you have to be ready and willing to do a
lot for free, not training people necessarily. Although I used
to give personal training to charities, you know, you'll start
getting hit up with that, will you donate five training
sessions for certain um, you know, charity event and then yeah,
(14:35):
you're doing that for free. But I'm talking also about
all the media that I've done and continue to do,
all the articles I contribute to TV appearances and things
like that. I remember when I finally achieved that goal
of getting on the Today Show years ago. Quiet, who
made a lot of money at the time, probably still does,
(14:56):
but he said, did you get paid for that? I
was like, oh, my God, yeah, indirectly. So this is
about building your brand, all right. So you will do
a lot of stuff for free, but it's not for free.
My goal back when I started and to this day
(15:17):
is to get my name out there so that the
great line is you don't have to introduce yourself, right
or the only one I love is work until you're
idol becomes your rival, and I had that too, alright,
But a lot of that comes from doing stuff for free.
(15:40):
You know, I subscribe to many different media kind of
sources that ask for my input on articles and things
like that. Do they pay me for it? No, I'll
do workouts different magazines. Now it's online so many different ways.
But at the end, well, they put your name in
(16:02):
it and then they put maybe your book if you
have a book, or your gym, or your online now
you know, website where you're gonna train people. So it's
just super important to realize that you will do stuff
for free. Now I'm not saying again, qualify this one
final time that your time is not important. You have
(16:22):
to value yourself and you will be asked to do
a lot for free that you shouldn't. You will never
stop getting asked to do stuff for free that you
shouldn't and that will be in a separate podcast, and
they're in lies the challenge, right, But I've watched far
too many fitness people turned down stuff that they should
(16:42):
be doing for free and has to get paid for it.
And I leave it at that. You if you truly
are passionate about this business and start to study it
and learn it, you'll know. You'll know the stuff that
you should be paid for and this stuff you shouldn't,
and where you are in your career and how good
you are what you do. All right, And so let's
take one more quick break and we come back a
(17:03):
couple more points just to get you started in this industry,
because again, it is the greatest job in the world.
All right, quick break, We'll be right back, and we
are back. One really important topic to cover in this
(17:28):
first take on making a living in the fitness industry
is what's your specialty, what's your thing? What makes you different?
And that goes back to what you're passionate about people,
what's your thing? Why did I use almost daily as
A squat is a squat, A push up is a
push up. There infinite number of people pushing workouts and
(17:50):
their fitness gurus. Is on social media today easier than
ever before, right, all doing the same stuff, And I'd
argue the problem is to differentiate themselves. So many people
are doing really dangerous, stupid stuff to get more clicks
and likes and potential lawsuits. That's getting ahead of myself again.
One of my revenue streams now being a fitness expert
(18:10):
in lawsuits. But when you find what you're passionate about,
when you start doing this because you love it and
and focus in that area to start, by the way,
you don't have to stay there. Always think of like
singers and actors. You know, your first movie as an actor,
there's gonna be the best, but you gotta get your
foot in the door. Now, you could stay there. But
(18:33):
what's unique about my career is that I do a lot.
So I have a bunch of different buckets right the exercise, nutrition, motivation,
and even within those buckets, you know, I've written the
books on marathons, I've written the books on triathlon. I
did the sports nutrition, then I branched off into beat
the gym and the micro workout plan. So for me,
(18:54):
it's been harder, more challenging because I didn't necessarily focus
on one area, but that wasn't for me. So you
can have more than one where you just focus on
what you can be, the running person, you can be,
the high intensity whatever it is that makes you want
to get up every day and just be authentic and
powerful and passionate. That's your thing, and so you need
(19:16):
to identify that, and then you want to start to
build your brand. As I said earlier, around that in
so many different ways, right to get known as that person,
to be the expert in that area. And one way
you do that. By the way, and this is one
of the trickiest parts of this industry, although it shouldn't be.
(19:40):
Is get as much credibility through the education. It is
actually potentially a detriment as crazy as it sounds, in
certain scenarios in this fitness world. Like you know, you
try to get a job at certain gyms and you
are more qualified. This happened to me, You're not gonna
get hired because the personal training manager, you know, you're competing,
(20:02):
or the group fitness as huge. You know, group fitness
is so cut throat. I'm talking in the gym's it's
changed now. But regardless of that, get as much education
in your area. Are you a running coach, well, get
certified in as many different ways as you can, running
specific group fitness, study your craft, and never stop. And
(20:24):
so when I said this is what I was going
to do for a living, I said, I'm gonna get
the most education possible. Never stop, because my number one
goal as far as perception from individuals and corporations is credibility.
I want them to go and I want you. You're
listening to this podcast, hopefully because you go. I think
(20:46):
he's got something worth saying, because he's done it, he
studied it. And yes, one other quick bullet point is
walk the walk. If you're a running coach, hopefully you
run right hopefully out there. I never really trained golfers.
I don't golf now. There were golfers back in the
day where I would work on core stuff and flexibility,
(21:08):
but if they got to that point or you know,
it was usually pretty quick and there was a golfing
specific trainer, then I would push the client to them,
because you want to specialize in your thing. Again, if
we're qualified trainers, you can work with everyone. You you know,
you know the the sport they're doing, and you can
(21:28):
prepare them for it obviously, but study your craft and
then hopefully you are engaging in that area. And that
goes back to the passion again. If you're passionate about
Olympic weightlifting, then you're gonna be hopefully doing that in
the gym and people are gonna come up to you,
(21:49):
or you're doing it online wherever you're doing it. But
do it, walk the walk and talk to talk. All right,
all right, let's finish up this first one quickly with
what I talked about, the most important part of this
first take on it, and again I'm gonna do many
is that multiple revenue streams. So you're thinking about being
in the industry, making a career out of this, what's
(22:09):
important is that you go, Okay, maybe you are a trainer,
maybe you are a group fitness instructor, maybe you're doing
online stuff, maybe a couple different things going irons in
the fire. Is that the saying, so you need more
and so the great thing about having multiple revenue streams
is you don't ever have to have all of them
(22:30):
hitting it once, and they rarely are and one will
develop over time, and this is where you start to
make really good money. Right, So for me, just gonna
walk you through them quickly. You know, started already by
giving you a few started with the trainer, personal training
(22:52):
for for years, by the way years and that started
in the gym, and then I was doing home you
know in New York City and apartments. Uh. Then I
took a foot out and went into a personal training
facility where I had to bring the clients in but
got a bigger cut. Was doing the group fitness right
teaching classes. Then I started my camps. I did a
(23:15):
running camp in New York City, Team Holland Running Club.
I've got this Nantucket camp that is over twenty years running.
I'm when you get back to that really quickly. Online
coaching when the internet hit, that was huge for me.
So you go, how do you scale this? How do
you work with multiple people at different times on your
(23:36):
own schedule? And so that was online coaching for me,
and that's huge today, right. Designing plans Again, whatever your
specialty is in fitness, you can train people all over
the world some well I've one on one if you want,
but even more importantly designing programs. And I had a good,
better best what was it back? I think it was gold,
(23:59):
silver for platinum for online coaching, and my platinum rate
was obscene, and I just threw that number up on
my website that I designed myself. And guess what, there
were people willing to pay for it if you made
it worthwhile. All right, So again going through these quickly,
but I want to get you thinking personal training, group
fitness so much online with both of those things. Then
(24:22):
I started writing. I wrote a spec article every week.
This is back when there were magazines. Now it's even easier.
You should have to mail them out. But I love writing,
and so I started just writing articles on topics I
enjoyed that I was passionate about that I knew something about,
and I would send them out. Didn't happen right away,
but every single one of them was published because I
(24:44):
was passionate about it, I knew what I was talking about,
and I was persistent. All right. Then consulting so many
different ways to consult in this industry. I started working
on photo shoots for magazines like Self, where they bring
a fitness person on the set to make sure the
model who's not a fitness person off and time times,
is doing the exercise correctly. I did online consulting for
(25:06):
magazines like Self where they're like, will you just answer
ten questions on their board. Now, this is a while back,
they're not doing this the same way, but just to
get you thinking. Now you can answer you know, questions
and Twitter forms and things like that for different companies,
and that paid really well. It started to play well.
This is where I was starting to go, oh my gosh,
(25:28):
I love this industry even more because I'd worked so
hard up until that point. Right, lectures huge and just
real quick. One of my first lectures was for Gatorade
back in the day the Boston Marathon expo. I remember
having no idea what to charge, and this person reached
out again because I had gotten my name out there,
(25:48):
was starting to get known, contributing to everything, showing up,
you know, doing races, being at expose, so many different things,
and they said what do you charge? And I said, well, what,
what's what's your normal? You know, what's the going rate
for your budget? And the number was five x what
I probably would have asked for at the time. And
that's another podcast where we'll talk about you know, perceived
(26:10):
value and learning what you should charge and how you
figure that out. All right, Then I did my own
DVDs and they got hired to do them. But I
did my own, invested, took a chance. I did audio
workouts before there were audio workouts, and they got hired
to do audio workouts, just like I got hired to
do the DVDs. Sponsorships huge today with Instagram and things
(26:34):
like that. So whatever your passion is and you get
known for and you build that brand, then you reach out.
I got turned down from power Bar I think six
years in a row to be on their team Elite
never gave up and then ended up on the team
for over six years, and they had a great program
(26:54):
where it was you got free stuff, obviously free product,
but then if you got in the media, you got
paid either in you know, power Box, or you could
get cash. So sponsorships today with Instagram and things like that,
it's evolved. But when you find what you're passionate about,
you walk the walk, you start to build your brand.
All of this stuff starts to fall into place, and
(27:16):
it goes back to that loose framework you're gonna go.
Tom didn't talk about any of this stuff, and things
just start to happen. But it's by getting that ball
rolling all right. So many different ways to monetize social
media today, you know, YouTube channels, things like that, and
here I am today with podcast did two radio shows
(27:36):
because how much I got paid for the radio shows. Nothing.
I loved it, but indirectly I did, so I didn't
get paid directly, but there were things that happened from that.
And you get a book published and you get different
things like that as a result of what's known as
(27:58):
your platform. How many people do you reach? That's a
huge part of social media today. And finally to other
of many different revenue streams. You know, I am the
fitness advisor for a major home exercise equipment company. Sometimes
I throw up brands, sometimes I don't. Uh, usually I don't.
(28:19):
But those couple they're all over what I do and
in the books and everything like that. Um, but that's
Nautilus and Nautibus owns both flex and things like that.
In my micro workout plan, you'll see that. And that
was a part in the in the symbiotic relationship. Is
that the right term for you know, they were part
of my most recent book and that was a huge
(28:40):
deal for me to sign on with Nautilus. And that
was my first true fitness job when I was in college.
Was managing a summer job, managing a Nautius facility, and
as I said before, finally again there's many more. But
being a fitness expert in lawsuits crazy fun goes to
(29:02):
my credibility and the time in this industry. So I
wanted this first show not to be about me, but
I have to give you my way of what I accomplished,
because as people say, why how did you do what
you do? I want? I want to do what you do.
There are dozens and dozens of other revenue streams, and
(29:22):
we'll talk more about that specifically in the next episode
of this series, but that's enough for this one. I
gotta start where it matters. I made a commitment in
the nineties that this was what I was going to
do for a living. Studied those people, I started to
get the education, figured out what I was passionate about.
(29:43):
I worked my butt off for a long time. I
loved it, though I didn't think about the money and
it comes. And just know that this is a lifestyle.
This is a lifestyle. I don't have a choice. That's
how passionate I am about what I do. I tried
all the other jobs I made good money and other
(30:05):
things but it wasn't close to making me happy. And
I didn't do it for a long time, thank goodness.
But I made very little money for a long time,
but it didn't matter because it's not about the money.
It wasn't for me, and I'll leave you with that again.
You can get into this industry make a lot of
money really quickly, but that's not why I'm in it,
(30:27):
and that's why I will be doing it when I'm
hundred twenty. Maybe that's when I'll retire, not sure yet.
So there you go. If you're listening to this podcast
and you're truly just starting out greatest job in the world,
figure it out in your terms, what's going to make
(30:48):
you happy and start to implement what I talked about
here today and what I'm going to talk about all
the other podcasts. But that's one of the greatest things
is that you truly a fitting entrepreneur. You'r a fitness entrepreneur.
I have a tough time people say what do you
do for a living? You know, you say fitness consult
(31:10):
and you say author. I have a fitness company in
so many different ways, but it doesn't matter, and I'm
someone who needs variation in everything I do, and that's
why the multiple revenue streams is not only helpful with
making money, but it's helpful with me enjoying what I
do every day. All right, thank you for listening. And again,
(31:34):
if you're starting out, love to hear from you more questions, comments,
things you're confused about. I just want to hear where
you are in your journey, in your fitness industry journey.
Tommy Fit is Instagram and Twitter tom h Fit. You
can direct message me through the site. Go to Fitness
Disrupted dot com emailment through there. Again. A bunch of
(31:55):
books that I talked about. Micro Workout Plan is the
most recent one is great when to pick up again
because not only is the the workouts and the info
and they're good great, but if I do say so,
but you'll see that I did it in partnership with
both legs. So everything is connected. Everything you do is
(32:15):
connected in this industry, good and bad. But building that brand,
your personal brand, because it's about you push up as
a push up, the squats a squad. How do you
make it? You? All right? Thank you for listening. I
am Tom Holland this is Fitness Disrupted. Believe in yourself
(32:39):
Fitness Disrupted is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Welcome to Fitness Disrupted, a production of I Heart Radio.
I am Tom Holland and this is Fitness Disrupted. They
say it every show, greatest job in the world. But
it worked really hard to get here, and I'm still
(00:22):
working hard, smarter, Maybe it's still hard. And this podcast
is for those who might want to do what I do,
and I get those questions very frequently. So not only
do I feel the nutrition questions, exercise questions, motivation questions,
(00:44):
all that kind of stuff, but also from people just
getting into the industry. Maybe they've been in the industry
a couple of years or so. And many of those
who are getting into the industry are those later in
life maybe second job, third job. And I love it.
It's the greatest job in the world. But as I
(01:05):
will outline, there is no outline, there's no roadmap to
doing what I do today. And when I talk about
the industry, I mean there's a lot of different branches
for me, and for this podcast, it's the fitness industry
right exercise, So we're talking personal trainers, group fitness instructors.
(01:30):
Obviously there are offshoots from there, the nutrition side, all
of that kind of stuff, and that's a good and
a bad thing. It's a good and bad thing, right,
But it's not only the greatest industry in the world
in my opinion if you love it, and I will
talk about that, but there are super you know, there
(01:51):
are challenges because it's not a traditional job, and let's
call it what it is. If you want to make
money me you know, support a family and things like that,
then it gets even more challenging. Alright, So this podcast,
so you want a career in the fitness industry, This
(02:13):
is part one. So this is top level. This is
top level stuff. Just kind of the framework what I
think and what I have experienced and what I've seen.
And let me say that I learned by studying the
(02:33):
people who had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. And
I've interviewed several of those people here on the show.
Matt Fitzgerald, the writer, Troy Jacobson, the triathlete who went
off and started incredible business for himself. He's on his
third or fourth career, but he was a professional triathlete
(02:55):
and at the time he started coaching and doing his
own so I cling DVD spinner vols videos ended up
being in one and cheating cheating is a strong word.
I kind of cheated. Uh. I studied him and interviewed him.
So if you want to listen to that podcast, and
Jack Wilane was someone I looked up to and studied
(03:21):
and respected his philosophy, his approach, and yes, I yet
to do that podcast. I'm waiting because it's so important
to me to do it right. But back when I
had my first radio show, I interviewed him for an hour.
To this day, I am blown away that the person
I looked up to so much gave me a full
(03:42):
hour on a Saturday live and so that's a huge
part of this. So that's I understand. If some people
want what I have achieved, yes, that's the question. So
I'm gonna give it to you. But as I just outlined,
like you kind of want to follow a bunch of
people and take a bit from here and a bit
from there, and you do your own thing. That's success.
(04:11):
It's not rocket science. You go what worked for this person,
what worked for that person, and then what am I
willing to do and how will I make my mark?
All Right, So that's what this is about. If you're
in the fitness industry just starting out or maybe you
(04:31):
want to take it to the next level. That's a
huge part. Maybe you're a trainer through fitness instructor the
shows for you. And again this is just part one.
Much more to come in this area because I'm getting
more and more questions about it. Quit break when we
come back, So you want a career in the fitness industry?
Part one, we will be right back and we are
(05:00):
back talking about how you make a living in the
fitness industry if that's something you want to do. And
I will say it probably a hundred times during this
episode that I I love it. I have the greatest
job in the world. And that's where we're gonna start.
You have to love it. You have to be passionate
(05:20):
about it, and hopefully you do that with whatever you
do in life. Right, we want to figure out what
we enjoy, what we're good at, and we want to
monetize it. So all the cliches are true. If you
find something you love and you make a living at it,
you never work a day in your life. Well, yes
(05:43):
and no, I've worked really hard, and as I said
in the intro, I continue to work hard, but I
love it. And the alternative is not an option. For me.
You know, vast majority of my family and friends are
in finance, and God bless all you people that are
in that industry probably not listening this episode though, Uh,
that wasn't for me, and I trained. I know the
(06:07):
term is abused literally, but billionaires. I trained all the
celebrities and people have lots and lots of money, and
that was never the be all, end all for me.
So those two initial concepts are heavily entwined. In other words,
you've got to be passionate about it, and at least
(06:28):
out of the gate people money can't be shouldn't be,
in my opinion, the driver because if you're doing this right.
One of the reasons this industry is so hard, so challenging,
it's because there's so much that stuff out there. That's
what this show is all about. It's about getting the
(06:52):
truth the myths, breaking them down because there are a
lot of people in this industry maybe shouldn't be call
it what it is, aft you know, and they're not
going to make a career out of it, most of them.
And that's fine, do whatever you want to do. But
I I this is not selling shoes to me. I
take this super seriously. And when you waste people's time
(07:14):
and money, that's a problem. It's a huge problem to
me because this is about your health. This is about
your well being physically and mentally. So you've got to
be passionate about it. Really, ask yourself, is this what
I want to do? Do I love it this much?
And money will come when you do a good job
(07:36):
and you work hard anything in life, But you want
to make millions right away? Not your goal? Ask yourself,
you really want to help people? Do you really just
want to get stuff for yourself? Can make money? I
want you to make money, and that's also why I'm
(07:57):
doing these shows for the industry. Let's start with the passion,
start with helping people first. Really really kind of important,
all right, because you are going to work hard. You're
gonna work really hard. And I started, I'm gonna give you, obviously,
(08:19):
my experiences because that's my that's my vantage point, and
that's what worked for me. Right started as a personal trainer.
If you've listened to the other shows, you've heard much
of this already. But you know personal trainer said many
years ago, Okay, I'm finally gonna do this for a living.
And so I went from personal trainer to a group
fitness instructor, and then started branching off. Let me backtrack
(08:42):
a tiny bit. All the time I was into fitness,
which is since I was a teenager, I was also
doing other things. It's so many different jobs in my lifetime,
but a huge passion of mine along with fitness. You
can have more than one. People was performing, and that
goes for music, stand up comedy, and acting. Was doing
all of those things for many years in college a
(09:05):
couple of years after college, but I was also doing
the fitness thing, and the state up comedy got to
a pretty high level, working with names you know that
are super successful today. And at the point where I
needed to like really make a decision, was this the
career choice? Said no, because I was going to the
(09:26):
twenty four hour gym's in Manhattan after doing a stand
up set. You know it eleven midnight, one am, and
usually all three of those times, and it was fitness,
and that was not the lifestyle. But let me say
this back to the concept of failure. You know, there
are many people I grew up with who knew me
(09:48):
as the stand up comic or knew me when I
was doing the acting. For the short amount of time music.
I still do all those things today, and I do
all of those things within the fitness world, and so
I'm getting ahead of myself a little bit. But that's
what makes me unique one of the things in this industry.
It helps them measurably with the DVDs I hosted way
(10:11):
back when and booking those big jobs and then going
on QVC and HSN and you know, the Canadian Shopping Channel.
So all of that made sense. And so this goes
to another thing you got to think about again, top
level stuff here. You have to have a loose long
(10:33):
term plan, right, what's your goal? What's your goal in
the next year, two, what's your goal halfway? You know,
maybe five years, ten years, and then I know that
I'm fifty three now, at like seventy, I want to
be teaching. I'll be teaching like anatomy and some sports
(10:53):
psychology and motivation and things like that. But things change.
And that goes back to why brought up the unique
nature of my background is you have this long term plan,
but things change, and that's okay. It's actually part of life, right,
It's not a linear progression, and that's really important to embrace.
(11:19):
Because as I said at the start, there is no roadmap.
You kind of outline where you think you want to
be and then you just let things start to fall
into place. So you're passionate about it. You realize you're
not going to make a fortune right away, and you're
ready to work hard. You're gonna get up early, you're
(11:39):
gonna go to bed late. And again I'm talking from
the vantage point of the personal trainer and then the
group fitness instructor, and then all of the revenue streams
that come off of that. That's the most important part
of this podcast Part one is thinking about the multiple
revenue streams available. And they are so many today, so
(12:01):
many more then there were when I started, and many
that are just different. Right, so real quickly, you start
as a personal trainer, get paid by the hour, and
it's brutal because people don't show up and if you
don't show up, we don't get paid when you're a
personal trainer, and that was brutal. And yes, so many
gems have twenty four hour cancelation policies really hard, as
(12:26):
those of you who are personal trainers know to enforce,
especially with people you know well will go oh, Tom,
you know you've been working with this person for maybe
a year or longer, and like like you know, last
minute cancelation. Well, you know, something happened with a kid
or something came up, and you want to say, well,
you owe me x dollars. I don't care how the
trainers do, and actually he should, but my point is
(12:48):
it's an hourly thing and you only get paid if
you work. And I tell the story that one of
the gyms I worked at many years ago, I would
sell training packages and sometimes people would never show up
and I never saw a dime of it. Sold a
fifty pack many back in the day, but one in particular,
the only time I sold a fifty pack in the
(13:09):
person never came back, never showed up, and I saw
it not a dime thousands of dollars in personal training
that I sold the gym kept. So you start at
that personal trainer level if that's your goal fitness, right,
And then I said, okay, let me start teaching classes
because I love to do it. Get a workout in.
If that's how you do it, you know it's not
(13:29):
about you, but obviously there's a way to do it
where people want to see you exercising you're demonstrating you
get workouts in and classes don't cancel the way clients do.
And so that was my progression, right, personal trainer add
in the group fitness, and by the way, group thatitness
also put you in front of potential clients for personal training.
(13:50):
And now today, I don't want to get too deep
into it in this episode, but you've got Zoom and
the Internet and apps in so many different ways to
train bowl one on one and in group situations. And
that's amazing. All right. One really important point is that
(14:14):
you have to be ready and willing to do a
lot for free, not training people necessarily. Although I used
to give personal training to charities, you know, you'll start
getting hit up with that, will you donate five training
sessions for certain um, you know, charity event and then yeah,
(14:35):
you're doing that for free. But I'm talking also about
all the media that I've done and continue to do,
all the articles I contribute to TV appearances and things
like that. I remember when I finally achieved that goal
of getting on the Today Show years ago. Quiet, who
made a lot of money at the time, probably still does,
(14:56):
but he said, did you get paid for that? I
was like, oh, my God, yeah, indirectly. So this is
about building your brand, all right. So you will do
a lot of stuff for free, but it's not for free.
My goal back when I started and to this day
(15:17):
is to get my name out there so that the
great line is you don't have to introduce yourself, right
or the only one I love is work until you're
idol becomes your rival, and I had that too, alright,
But a lot of that comes from doing stuff for free.
(15:40):
You know, I subscribe to many different media kind of
sources that ask for my input on articles and things
like that. Do they pay me for it? No, I'll
do workouts different magazines. Now it's online so many different ways.
But at the end, well, they put your name in
(16:02):
it and then they put maybe your book if you
have a book, or your gym, or your online now
you know, website where you're gonna train people. So it's
just super important to realize that you will do stuff
for free. Now I'm not saying again, qualify this one
final time that your time is not important. You have
(16:22):
to value yourself and you will be asked to do
a lot for free that you shouldn't. You will never
stop getting asked to do stuff for free that you
shouldn't and that will be in a separate podcast, and
they're in lies the challenge, right, But I've watched far
too many fitness people turned down stuff that they should
(16:42):
be doing for free and has to get paid for it.
And I leave it at that. You if you truly
are passionate about this business and start to study it
and learn it, you'll know. You'll know the stuff that
you should be paid for and this stuff you shouldn't,
and where you are in your career and how good
you are what you do. All right, And so let's
take one more quick break and we come back a
(17:03):
couple more points just to get you started in this industry,
because again, it is the greatest job in the world.
All right, quick break, We'll be right back, and we
are back. One really important topic to cover in this
(17:28):
first take on making a living in the fitness industry
is what's your specialty, what's your thing? What makes you different?
And that goes back to what you're passionate about people,
what's your thing? Why did I use almost daily as
A squat is a squat, A push up is a
push up. There infinite number of people pushing workouts and
(17:50):
their fitness gurus. Is on social media today easier than
ever before, right, all doing the same stuff, And I'd
argue the problem is to differentiate themselves. So many people
are doing really dangerous, stupid stuff to get more clicks
and likes and potential lawsuits. That's getting ahead of myself again.
One of my revenue streams now being a fitness expert
(18:10):
in lawsuits. But when you find what you're passionate about,
when you start doing this because you love it and
and focus in that area to start, by the way,
you don't have to stay there. Always think of like
singers and actors. You know, your first movie as an actor,
there's gonna be the best, but you gotta get your
foot in the door. Now, you could stay there. But
(18:33):
what's unique about my career is that I do a lot.
So I have a bunch of different buckets right the exercise, nutrition, motivation,
and even within those buckets, you know, I've written the
books on marathons, I've written the books on triathlon. I
did the sports nutrition, then I branched off into beat
the gym and the micro workout plan. So for me,
(18:54):
it's been harder, more challenging because I didn't necessarily focus
on one area, but that wasn't for me. So you
can have more than one where you just focus on
what you can be, the running person, you can be,
the high intensity whatever it is that makes you want
to get up every day and just be authentic and
powerful and passionate. That's your thing, and so you need
(19:16):
to identify that, and then you want to start to
build your brand. As I said earlier, around that in
so many different ways, right to get known as that person,
to be the expert in that area. And one way
you do that. By the way, and this is one
of the trickiest parts of this industry, although it shouldn't be.
(19:40):
Is get as much credibility through the education. It is
actually potentially a detriment as crazy as it sounds, in
certain scenarios in this fitness world. Like you know, you
try to get a job at certain gyms and you
are more qualified. This happened to me, You're not gonna
get hired because the personal training manager, you know, you're competing,
(20:02):
or the group fitness as huge. You know, group fitness
is so cut throat. I'm talking in the gym's it's
changed now. But regardless of that, get as much education
in your area. Are you a running coach, well, get
certified in as many different ways as you can, running
specific group fitness, study your craft, and never stop. And
(20:24):
so when I said this is what I was going
to do for a living, I said, I'm gonna get
the most education possible. Never stop, because my number one
goal as far as perception from individuals and corporations is credibility.
I want them to go and I want you. You're
listening to this podcast, hopefully because you go. I think
(20:46):
he's got something worth saying, because he's done it, he
studied it. And yes, one other quick bullet point is
walk the walk. If you're a running coach, hopefully you
run right hopefully out there. I never really trained golfers.
I don't golf now. There were golfers back in the
day where I would work on core stuff and flexibility,
(21:08):
but if they got to that point or you know,
it was usually pretty quick and there was a golfing
specific trainer, then I would push the client to them,
because you want to specialize in your thing. Again, if
we're qualified trainers, you can work with everyone. You you know,
you know the the sport they're doing, and you can
(21:28):
prepare them for it obviously, but study your craft and
then hopefully you are engaging in that area. And that
goes back to the passion again. If you're passionate about
Olympic weightlifting, then you're gonna be hopefully doing that in
the gym and people are gonna come up to you,
(21:49):
or you're doing it online wherever you're doing it. But
do it, walk the walk and talk to talk. All right,
all right, let's finish up this first one quickly with
what I talked about, the most important part of this
first take on it, and again I'm gonna do many
is that multiple revenue streams. So you're thinking about being
in the industry, making a career out of this, what's
(22:09):
important is that you go, Okay, maybe you are a trainer,
maybe you are a group fitness instructor, maybe you're doing
online stuff, maybe a couple different things going irons in
the fire. Is that the saying, so you need more
and so the great thing about having multiple revenue streams
is you don't ever have to have all of them
(22:30):
hitting it once, and they rarely are and one will
develop over time, and this is where you start to
make really good money. Right, So for me, just gonna
walk you through them quickly. You know, started already by
giving you a few started with the trainer, personal training
(22:52):
for for years, by the way years and that started
in the gym, and then I was doing home you
know in New York City and apartments. Uh. Then I
took a foot out and went into a personal training
facility where I had to bring the clients in but
got a bigger cut. Was doing the group fitness right
teaching classes. Then I started my camps. I did a
(23:15):
running camp in New York City, Team Holland Running Club.
I've got this Nantucket camp that is over twenty years running.
I'm when you get back to that really quickly. Online
coaching when the internet hit, that was huge for me.
So you go, how do you scale this? How do
you work with multiple people at different times on your
(23:36):
own schedule? And so that was online coaching for me,
and that's huge today, right. Designing plans Again, whatever your
specialty is in fitness, you can train people all over
the world some well I've one on one if you want,
but even more importantly designing programs. And I had a good,
better best what was it back? I think it was gold,
(23:59):
silver for platinum for online coaching, and my platinum rate
was obscene, and I just threw that number up on
my website that I designed myself. And guess what, there
were people willing to pay for it if you made
it worthwhile. All right, So again going through these quickly,
but I want to get you thinking personal training, group
fitness so much online with both of those things. Then
(24:22):
I started writing. I wrote a spec article every week.
This is back when there were magazines. Now it's even easier.
You should have to mail them out. But I love writing,
and so I started just writing articles on topics I
enjoyed that I was passionate about that I knew something about,
and I would send them out. Didn't happen right away,
but every single one of them was published because I
(24:44):
was passionate about it, I knew what I was talking about,
and I was persistent. All right. Then consulting so many
different ways to consult in this industry. I started working
on photo shoots for magazines like Self, where they bring
a fitness person on the set to make sure the
model who's not a fitness person off and time times,
is doing the exercise correctly. I did online consulting for
(25:06):
magazines like Self where they're like, will you just answer
ten questions on their board. Now, this is a while back,
they're not doing this the same way, but just to
get you thinking. Now you can answer you know, questions
and Twitter forms and things like that for different companies,
and that paid really well. It started to play well.
This is where I was starting to go, oh my gosh,
(25:28):
I love this industry even more because I'd worked so
hard up until that point. Right, lectures huge and just
real quick. One of my first lectures was for Gatorade
back in the day the Boston Marathon expo. I remember
having no idea what to charge, and this person reached
out again because I had gotten my name out there,
(25:48):
was starting to get known, contributing to everything, showing up,
you know, doing races, being at expose, so many different things,
and they said what do you charge? And I said, well, what,
what's what's your normal? You know, what's the going rate
for your budget? And the number was five x what
I probably would have asked for at the time. And
that's another podcast where we'll talk about you know, perceived
(26:10):
value and learning what you should charge and how you
figure that out. All right, Then I did my own
DVDs and they got hired to do them. But I
did my own, invested, took a chance. I did audio
workouts before there were audio workouts, and they got hired
to do audio workouts, just like I got hired to
do the DVDs. Sponsorships huge today with Instagram and things
(26:34):
like that. So whatever your passion is and you get
known for and you build that brand, then you reach out.
I got turned down from power Bar I think six
years in a row to be on their team Elite
never gave up and then ended up on the team
for over six years, and they had a great program
(26:54):
where it was you got free stuff, obviously free product,
but then if you got in the media, you got
paid either in you know, power Box, or you could
get cash. So sponsorships today with Instagram and things like that,
it's evolved. But when you find what you're passionate about,
you walk the walk, you start to build your brand.
All of this stuff starts to fall into place, and
(27:16):
it goes back to that loose framework you're gonna go.
Tom didn't talk about any of this stuff, and things
just start to happen. But it's by getting that ball
rolling all right. So many different ways to monetize social
media today, you know, YouTube channels, things like that, and
here I am today with podcast did two radio shows
(27:36):
because how much I got paid for the radio shows. Nothing.
I loved it, but indirectly I did, so I didn't
get paid directly, but there were things that happened from that.
And you get a book published and you get different
things like that as a result of what's known as
(27:58):
your platform. How many people do you reach? That's a
huge part of social media today. And finally to other
of many different revenue streams. You know, I am the
fitness advisor for a major home exercise equipment company. Sometimes
I throw up brands, sometimes I don't. Uh, usually I don't.
(28:19):
But those couple they're all over what I do and
in the books and everything like that. Um, but that's
Nautilus and Nautibus owns both flex and things like that.
In my micro workout plan, you'll see that. And that
was a part in the in the symbiotic relationship. Is
that the right term for you know, they were part
of my most recent book and that was a huge
(28:40):
deal for me to sign on with Nautilus. And that
was my first true fitness job when I was in college.
Was managing a summer job, managing a Nautius facility, and
as I said before, finally again there's many more. But
being a fitness expert in lawsuits crazy fun goes to
(29:02):
my credibility and the time in this industry. So I
wanted this first show not to be about me, but
I have to give you my way of what I accomplished,
because as people say, why how did you do what
you do? I want? I want to do what you do.
There are dozens and dozens of other revenue streams, and
(29:22):
we'll talk more about that specifically in the next episode
of this series, but that's enough for this one. I
gotta start where it matters. I made a commitment in
the nineties that this was what I was going to
do for a living. Studied those people, I started to
get the education, figured out what I was passionate about.
(29:43):
I worked my butt off for a long time. I
loved it, though I didn't think about the money and
it comes. And just know that this is a lifestyle.
This is a lifestyle. I don't have a choice. That's
how passionate I am about what I do. I tried
all the other jobs I made good money and other
(30:05):
things but it wasn't close to making me happy. And
I didn't do it for a long time, thank goodness.
But I made very little money for a long time,
but it didn't matter because it's not about the money.
It wasn't for me, and I'll leave you with that again.
You can get into this industry make a lot of
money really quickly, but that's not why I'm in it,
(30:27):
and that's why I will be doing it when I'm
hundred twenty. Maybe that's when I'll retire, not sure yet.
So there you go. If you're listening to this podcast
and you're truly just starting out greatest job in the world,
figure it out in your terms, what's going to make
(30:48):
you happy and start to implement what I talked about
here today and what I'm going to talk about all
the other podcasts. But that's one of the greatest things
is that you truly a fitting entrepreneur. You'r a fitness entrepreneur.
I have a tough time people say what do you
do for a living? You know, you say fitness consult
(31:10):
and you say author. I have a fitness company in
so many different ways, but it doesn't matter, and I'm
someone who needs variation in everything I do, and that's
why the multiple revenue streams is not only helpful with
making money, but it's helpful with me enjoying what I
do every day. All right, thank you for listening. And again,
(31:34):
if you're starting out, love to hear from you more questions, comments,
things you're confused about. I just want to hear where
you are in your journey, in your fitness industry journey.
Tommy Fit is Instagram and Twitter tom h Fit. You
can direct message me through the site. Go to Fitness
Disrupted dot com emailment through there. Again. A bunch of
(31:55):
books that I talked about. Micro Workout Plan is the
most recent one is great when to pick up again
because not only is the the workouts and the info
and they're good great, but if I do say so,
but you'll see that I did it in partnership with
both legs. So everything is connected. Everything you do is
(32:15):
connected in this industry, good and bad. But building that brand,
your personal brand, because it's about you push up as
a push up, the squats a squad. How do you
make it? You? All right? Thank you for listening. I
am Tom Holland this is Fitness Disrupted. Believe in yourself
(32:39):
Fitness Disrupted is a production of I heart Radio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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