Unless your prepared to give most of your passion away, serving people who aren’t passionate about it like you are, failure in this space is inevitable.
“‘Liking working out’ & ‘playing a sport back in the day’ are the 2 worst reasons to get into S&C.
The guys who do this not only aren’t qualified, they are more focused on themselves than they are you.
They realize their IG hype reels don’t pay the bills & then they fail.”
-Ray Zingler on X
I don’t write about this stuff because I’ve seen it a time or two.
I’ve meticulously studied the industry for over 2 decades. Every single day.
In addition to being in Year 15 owning and operating my brick and mortar facility, I am counseled by some of the most successful professionals in the industry and I also consult strength business owners & coaches on multiple continents.
I share this not to toot my own horn or project perfection (which I am far from), but to simply share that I have significant time & skin in the game.
While I don’t have all the answers and am still attacking my education, growing, & evolving, every day, I have a fundamental understanding of what works and what doesn’t work in our field with an 80% failure rate.
“I want to get into the fitness space because I am passionate about Health & Fitness!”
Let me tell you why that’s an awful idea.
The fitness space isn’t about your health & fitness, it’s about theirs.
And not only is it about their health and fitness, the whole production is about THEM.
Their lives, their stories, their problems.
The focus isn’t on “your new work out” or “what you like to do”. It’s about helping people who DON’T have the passion you have.
For the same reason many athletes turned coaches fail, the spotlight isn’t on you anymore, it’s on them.
So, if you’re passionate about health & fitness, I applaud that, but don’t ruin your passion if you’re not prepared to give the majority of it away, serving others.
And then the next guy who almost always fails in 2 years:
The, “I used to play a sport, I don’t know what I want to do in life, so I may as well tell kids to hobble around cones for some side money” guy.
It’s easy to gravitate to “performance” training, and self-appoint yourself as a “performance trainer” but without the skills, education, and qualification to operate as a professional, you’re simply a wannabe cowboy with a cheap hat and no cattle.
You can fake it for a few months, but failure is inevitable.
If you’re going to do this thing, service & professionalism must be the drivers.
