Mark Ottobre was bullied and overweight until he found the gym in year 10, which changed everything. His first personal training job in 2006 paid $16.75 an hour for 15-hour days in a basement gym. He nearly quit but kept going and built a thriving business.
I was the fat kid at school. I did pretty poorly at school up until about year 10, where everything turned around. It was actually a friend of mine who came to my house when school finished and needed a stapler, and he said, I'm going to the gym. And we went to the gym together, got a 2-3 week membership, fell in love with training, and came back to school in year 10 and just had a whole different confidence about myself. And that really transformed me mentally. Ended up finishing year 12 really well. So when I did finish school, I did a course to I got my certificate for in design, but I realized through doing that course is what I really wanted to do more than anything was just spend all day at the gym. And personal training was the natural extension of that. And even back then, people were saying to me, it's an overcrowded industry, you're not going to be successful, you don't make money as a personal trainer. 2006 was when I got my first personal training job, and they were paying me $16.75, and I was there from 6 in the morning till 9 at night. And the thing about the gym there was there were no windows, so you'd walk in and it would be pitch black and you wouldn't know what time of day it was. And then walk out in pitch black. So I'd spend my whole day there not making very much money at all. And in the course of that, I was actually ready to give it up.
And when you look, say, at these 4 walls, how does it make you feel when you see what you've set up here?
It's hard to imagine Mark Ottobre was ever unhappy with his body.
I got into training because I was the fat kid at school. I was the one picked on, and I wanted to change my body.
Now he runs a successful personal training business inspiring clients to get fit.
I'd be lying if I said I feel like I've arrived or like I'm here or I'm where I want to be. No, there's still so much more.
