Is The Juice Worth The Squeeze?
20 Feb
Alternative Title: So You Want to Be a Personal Trainer???
In the past year I have received no fewer than 50 emails (plus numerous texts, facebook messages etc.) from folks asking for career advice. How did you transition to personal training? Do you think you made the right decision? How do I make a career out of my passion for fitness?
A number of folks I emailed or spoke to on the phone directly, but honestly I just don’t really have the time to talk with every single person (even though I wish I could). I thought it would just be easier if I pulled together a blog post that is a summary of the all the emails I have written plus some additional thoughts. The short answer is I really don’t know what the right answer is for YOU. I think it depends on your risk tolerance, current job situation, family status, and actual desire to make it work. I’m hopeful my experience can be of some value to folks that are considering a career change. I don’t want to spend too much time on my background, but I think its helpful because for many where you are currently will have a huge impact on the transition. Starting a career when you are 21 and broke is one thing while looking to change careers when you are 30 and established is something entirely different.
My Background
My original major in college was Exercise Science and I thought I might want to be a physical therapist, but like most folks I changed majors a few times and ended up with a double major in Management Information Systems and Decision Sciences (basically business statistics). I was a salaried network administrator for the School of Engineering and Applied Science for my last 2 years of school as well. Needless to say I developed a passion for technology. The job market was pretty good with someone with my skill set when I graduated and I had quite a few options. I interned will Deloitte & Touche LLP in Cincinnati, Ohio my last summer of school and really liked it, but didn’t find the group I worked in technical enough for my liking at that time. It was recommended that I check out a more technical group in Chicago – I did and liked it and so I started my career in professional services in Chicago.
I spent 4 years working in the Chicago office and then transferred to the Phoenix, Arizona office and worked there for 5 years. I was lucky enough to have some really good bosses and mentors in both Chicago and Arizona that really helped me become successful due mostly due their fantastic coaching (and lots of long hours on my part).
Overall I would say I was very happy with my time with Deloitte. I got the chance to travel a ton and spent a bunch of time in Spain and the Netherlands (though I also spent time in town with populations in triple digits that were very hard to get to). My first few years I traveled way too much. My busiest year I took 150 flights and my longest stretch on the road without returning home was 92 days. As I moved up within the company I was able to manage my schedule to a much greater degree and my last few years my travel schedule was very manageable. Additionally, I had a huge sphere of influence, 6 weeks paid vacation, great benefits, had amazing teams that worked for me, and got to help mold and develop young careers. I got to work with companies that were as small as 5 people and as big as several in the Fortune 100. I got to work in all kinds of industries and environments, but there was still a part of me that wasn’t sure this is where I wanted to spend my next 25 years.
I met Robb Wolf at a Crossfit certification in early 2006 and we interacted periodically online. Due to a weird set of circumstances he and Scotty Hagnas ended up staying at my house in Arizona in 2008. I really enjoyed the time I spent with them and this is where the idea of a career change probably started (Inception if you will). After one of many discussions on training I remember Robb asking when I was going to open a gym and my response was basically that is a very hard way to make a living. I spoke with Robb periodically after he stayed at my house and several times we discussed the idea of moving to Chico to work at his gym. Ultimately I convinced him to take a leap of faith and offer me a job. I wrestled with this decision for a long, long time, but ultimately decided it was worth the risk and that even if it was the wrong decision I needed to learn first-hand.
I saved up a bunch of money and in the fall of 2009 I resigned from Deloitte, packed up my stuff, and moved to Chico, CA to try my hand at personal training (please note that moving to a city where you don’t know anyone was a huge tactical error especially since part of my responsibility is to find many of my clients – I will discuss this more below). My hope was that I would enjoy my day to day work more and have a chance to impact folks lives in a positive way. Its sounds silly to say, but this has been one of the hardest things I have ever done and has impacted my life in ways I never would have anticipated. The further I get removed from my previous career the more I realize what a profound impact it had on my life and my world view.
Rather than continuing with what may seem like the worlds longest story I thought I would list some bullet points to address things folks have asked me about related to my career change. Please note that the examples I will list are specific to my experiences although I will try to add generalizations where possible.
- Compensation (Salary, Benefits etc.) – My first year as a trainer I made less than 10% of what I made the year before in my corporate job. It definitely wasn’t enough to live on and honestly it was very tough to watch much of my hard earned savings slowly evaporate from my bank account. This year I will probably make about 20% of my last year in my corporate job. Enough to live on, but I’m certainly not living extravagantly or taking many expensive trips. My corporate job included health insurance, short-term disability insurance, and a pretty good 401K plan. My current job offers none of those and I must pay for them out of pocket. The tricky part of equation is that I can’t really compare the salaries directly because my corporate salary had a ton of additional benefits on top it that add value to the overall compensation. My current job also has a fairly variable income that I’m still learning to deal with – this is certainly something that many professionals have to deal with, but I haven’t been paid by the hour since I was 20 years old so I tend to freak out with a big chunk of my client base takes a week off here and there.
- Schedule – My corporate job often involved long-hours and there were periods where I worked at least 6 days a week (although the further I moved up the more control I had over this). However I got 6 weeks paid vacation and had the ability to balance things out over the year so if I had a horrible month where I put in a ton of hours the next month I would probably be able to lighten the load a bit and catch-up on personal stuff that may have taken a back seat. An average day for me in corporate America would be 10-12 hours of total work. In my current job as a trainer I usually have about 35 hours a week doing actual coaching however since I am still building my practice most days begin with me being at the gym between 6 and 7 am while my final coaching session will end between 7:30-8:30 pm. I have a few days that are very busy and a few that are more manageable, but I’m still basically working in the AM & PM with a break in between. This can be hard to manage because there is a ton of inefficiency built in – I may have 4 client hours, but they may be spread over 7 hours. I only get paid when I actually coach and there can be a fair amount of time lost when you are at the gym because I may have an hour break, but I may spend like 30 minutes of that hour just dealing with questions from clients.
- Authority / Responsibility – Over the years in my corporate job I developed quite a bit of responsibility and authority. Sure I worked for a huge company, but related to projects that I managed I made most of the key decisions and lived with the outcomes. I was paid by my employer and my clients to have an opinion about everything. Since I am a first born Type A this suited me perfectly. In my new role I am a personal trainer. I am employed to coach group classes and do personal training. Sure my managers and owners are willing (within reason) to listen to feedback on other business matters, but honestly I realize that isn’t my job anymore. This can be tough for me b/c ask anyone that used to work for me – I have an opinion about everything. I also spent so long managing people that I have very strong opinions about the right and wrong way to do this that it can be hard to keep my mouth shut. One of my former bosses warned me that working for a small business that I didn’t own would be extremely challenging because I would be so close to the action, but I wouldn’t be able to make changes the way I wanted if it was my company or my department.
- Flexibility – One of the promises of being a personal trainer is that you can develop your own schedule. In theory this in true, but it can take a long time to build up enough of a client base to make this happen. Many of the trainers I am friends with still work some sort of double-shift even if they have fine tuned their schedule. In my old job there were certainly standard hours that most of us kept, but I definitely had a bunch of flexibility about what time I started and ended work and could manage things around doctors appointments etc. Now if I am sick or need a few hours off to go to the doctor I may have to cancel appointments that will directly impact my bottom line. The trick is figuring out ways to make your new schedule fit with the rest of your life. I’m obviously not planning many social engagements for a week night, but have developed a pretty good schedule of lunches with a small group of friends.
- Continuing Education – This is the biggest heartbreaker for me. I honestly used to attend more fitness CED functions before I was a full time trainer. Obviously my practical knowledge has increase dramatically, but I’m often farther behind in new emerging areas than I would prefer to me. There are some facilities I that know of that have a ton of education time built in, but those are few and far between. You have to work for a pretty large training facility for that to happen. My employer does provide a CED subsidy for us which is excellent, but taking time off for education cuts into my income and honestly if I am only going to take off a limited amount of time a year most of it will be family related.
- Job Satisfaction – Overall my job satisfaction is probably a little higher than my previous job, but not near as high as I would have anticipated. I realize now that there are my things that I miss doing from my old job – I miss being a formal (and informal) mentor to new employees, I miss participating in the employee hiring and evaluation process, and I miss the very high degree of autonomy. The flip side is that now I have contributed to some amazing life changes in many of clients (some of their stories bring tears to my eyes), but not everyone actually wants to change and that can be a heartbreaker for me. Additionally your clients will never care as much about this stuff as you do and I probably get more jaded everyday. I have also had to make some hard decisions regarding going to weddings or vacations with friends I haven’t seen in a long time. In my old job these would have been a no brainer, but right now taking trips almost counts 2x against me because I lose out on the revenue I would have produced and I obviously would spend money on the trip. I am also surprisingly much more tired from my new job than from my old one even though I theoretically work less total hours. I’ve found it is very emotionally expensive to be “on” for 35 plus hours a week. When clients come to the gym they generally don’t want a cranky, tired trainer – they want someone who is very positive and engaging for their hour of fitness. I never would have anticipated how much emotional energy that would take. In my old job I certainly spent a good deal of my time interacting directly with clients, but since I was typically working onsite at their location I had a fair amount of time to myself to catch up on other work or to decompress. Most of my work hours now take a pretty heavy toll and honestly on most Saturday nights I find myself wanting to go to bed at 9 pm even though Sunday is the only day I get to sleep in.
Hopefully some of the thoughts above were helpful to those considering a career change. If you are considering making a career change I would definitely spend some time shadowing current fitness professionals and then try to think critically about what things in your life will improve with the change and which things may become more challenging. In Part 2 of this post I will discuss some of the things I would do differently if I were to do it all over again. I think some of those insights can help better prepare those who are looking to make the jump into the fitness field. Please let me know if there is anything specific you would like me to address.
