Personal Trainers Re-Shape

Their Business Model

Two personal trainers brought their passion for health and fitness to the E-Myth Mastery program. They're determined to re-invent the personal training industry

By Larry Heiman, Sr. Certified E-Myth Mastery Coach

	Client: Gabriel Valencia and Joe Masiello
	Business: Focus Integrated Fitness
	Home Office: New York, NY
	Website: www.focusnyc.com
	Years in Business: 3
	Began Mastery: 2/27/04
	E-Myth Mastery Coach: Linda Alber

WHEN I THINK OF PERSONAL TRAINERS, I PICTURE AN EMPLOYEE IN A GYM. IS THAT A BUSINESS?

Joe:

"70 percent of personal trainers who start in gyms don't make it as a career. "The hours are incredibly long, and the pay in most major franchise gyms is very, very low. It's a tough industry."

Gabe:

"On the other end, you have the independent individual trainer doing 10 to 12 sessions a day and making well into six figures. But there's no light at the end of that particular tunnel either. You just burn out. Your clients call up one day and say: "Y'know what? I quit." It's just not sustainable for more than 4 or 5 years."

In the middle of that range are "contract trainers"; highly accomplished personal trainers who are employed through a placement agency. Three and a half years ago, Joe and Gabe met while working for the same company in Manhattan.

WAS THIS EXPERIENCE THE MOTIVATION TO START YOUR OWN BUSINESS?

Joe:

"It was, and we knew we wanted to be unique and change the way we'd seen things done. We were determined to build on the opposite of everything we didn't like from our combined previous experiences, but we didn't have a vision for exactly what we wanted to do."

WHAT WAS YOUR MOST DIFFICULT CHALLENGE IN THE BEGINNING?

Gabe:

"We were both successful as individual trainers, so we thought, logically, that if we could find people like us - experts - we'd have an expert training company. We started by trying to replicate ourselves.

"But experts are expensive, and the market will only yield a certain amount for what we had to charge. There was no way we could make any money and keep the business growing, and maintain any level of control and consistency by hiring more experts like us."

"Then we both read The E-Myth Revisited, and we were dumbfounded. We immediately called about the Mastery Program. Within the first couple of months, working with our coach, we just totally changed the whole way we thought about and looked at business."

WHAT WAS THE REVELATION?

Gabe:

"E-Myth made us focus on the concept of "minimum required skills." The first people we hired were experts; highly qualified, accomplished, talented trainers. And we'll keep them booked up. But now we're moving away from hiring experts to creating expert systems. In our case, those minimum requirements translate to: someone who is willing to learn, has team spirit, a pleasant personality, great communication skills, a passion for good health, and ambition. The rest is easy."

Joe:

"That's true. If you're not hiring an expert, you're hiring an open vessel. You can fill them up. That's part of the learning process, and that's what's going to keep them here. If they come in as a brand new person with those minimum required skills, and love the industry, all they want to do is learn. And we can teach them what they need to know to be a expert personal trainer for us . We bring them to seminars. We coach them. And we teach them about the business.

WHAT IS AN EXPERT TRAINING SYSTEM FOR TRAINERS?

Gabe:

We realized that the knowledge and experience is really the easy part. It's quantifiable, systematizable, and teachable. We're developing systems for learning that we can apply to anyone. So most important are those other skills. At the end of the day, you have to like your trainer. Once we have the right person, we can give them the structure, the context, and the environment in which to learn and work and make money - and be part of something that's growing.

Joe:

"Nobody owns the rights to the sit-up. Nobody has a proprietary claim on "exercise." But there is quantifiable research and certification. We design our programs on what we've found to be the best protocol, latest research, best practices, and the most useful certification. We turn that over systematically to our trainers, and consult with them to create specific programs for our clients.

ARE YOU CONCERNED THAT ONCE YOU'VE PRODUCED A QUALIFIED EXPERT TRAINER, THEY'LL JUST STRIKE OUT ON THEIR OWN?

Gabe:

We understand that if we keep our trainers happy, keep them involved and part of something, they aren't going to want to go anywhere else. And the more our trainers make, the more we make. And that's really happening - simply because our clients are really happy with our services. We're able to deliver consistently.

HAS THE E-MYTH HELPED YOU BUILD A SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS MODEL?

Joe:

"Build it and - more importantly -- understand it! And it continues to add value. The Money Module alone - cash flow, understanding our P and L's, creating a budget, analyzing our pricing, creating a long-term financial strategy - all of these things have had an immediate impact on what we do. I see this as having pushed us five years ahead in our business development."

Gabe:

"And the most amazing thing about this is that two years ago, none of this existed. We've nearly doubled our revenue over last year, and we are projecting to do that again next year. We're looking at 150% the year after that, and we want to double or triple that in the years going forward. We're putting the plan in motion. We can literally track week by week and month by month our conformance to our growth plan. That's the first step to becoming a multi-million dollar company - which is what we see happening."

YOU'RE BUILDING A BUSINESS BASED ON YOUR INDIVIDUAL VISION AND IDEALS. WHAT MOVES IT BEYOND BEING DEPENDENT ON YOUR PERSONALITIES?

Gabe:

"We came to E-Myth, and with the help of our coach, have built it from the ground up. Intentionally. Step by step. It's all in our Strategic Objective. We're building into our training a lot of the standards we held for ourselves when we were independent trainers, but we're not shoving our identities down the throats of our trainers or clients. We're both very professional. We care about learning. We love the industry. We intend the company to embody all those things - but in a way that is systemic, not personality driven.

Joe:

Dynamic leaders are great, but, if they break their leg on the way to work - what then? We wrote down how we want people to look, how our trainers will dress, what their personalities were going to be like. So while these are qualities that the two of us may have, now we have a model that we can nurture in our people, perpetuate, and sustain over the long haul."

HAS YOUR E-MYTH MASTERY WORK HAD AN IMPACT ON YOUR PERSONAL PERSPECTIVE, TOO?

E-Myth Mastery has given me a critically important change of perspective. And I see more truth in it every day. In the past, if something went wrong, I'd immediately get mad and think it was that person's fault. We all make mistakes. These days, rather than get upset at somebody, I'm accepting the realization that I haven't given them the proper tools to do it right . And that's our trigger to uncover another area in which we need to get a system in place!

WHAT ABOUT THE IMAGE OF A PERSONAL TRAINER?

Gabe:

"If you stop ten people on the street and asked them to describe what a doctor or a nurse or a massage therapist does, you get ten pretty consistent answers. Ask those same ten what a personal trainer does - you'll get ten different answers."

No one understands what a trainer does. So in terms of evaluating our services, E-Myth has forced us to really examine what we do and what it is we're truly providing our clients. Then we've had to define that for our trainers. It gives them a lot of pride and purpose. We all feel that we're part of something that's raising the bar to a new level. We're just this tiny little company, wanting to try to change what's going to be a trillion dollar industry. And you can see that little fire in all their eyes. It's about a mission."

YOU'RE BOTH ENTHUSIASTIC AND FOCUSED PEOPLE. WOULD YOU HAVE ACHIEVED THIS SUCCESS WITHOUT E-MYTH MASTERY?

The E-Myth coaching and curriculum has been transformational. It got us into a systems-based approach and a new perspective about what we do. It gave us a blueprint and allowed us to lay a foundation. It may be the most important thing we've done for our business. We see now that we're not going to make the kinds of mistakes that would have completely set us back later on"

We've already eclipsed companies that have been in business for 18 years. We've done it in two. E-Myth Mastery has given us a huge competitive advantage. All the Modules in Mastery seem to pull together everything from the previous modules. I'm excited because we're getting to see kind of an x-ray of what this company looks like systemically and how it operates now, and how it will look in the future, too."

It may be the professional trainer in my talking, but I figure that the energy that goes into being mediocre and the energy that goes into being exceptional is about the same. So right now, even though Joe and I are working as hard as we've ever worked, it's all going to something that's sustainable over the long haul - and more tangible as each day goes by.