S6:E18 - Choosing the Perfect Personal Trainer: Decoding the Fitness Puzzle!

Welcome to the show that punches you in the face with information. Welcome to the Enterprise Fitness Podcast. Today we are going to be discussing how to choose a personal trainer. I am joined today by Coach Cristiano Colla, and his first appearance on the show, and Ari Otis. Aristotle, it's good to see you. Where's Plato?

Howdy, good to be back. He's at home, he's a bit camera shy, so I stepped in.

So thank you.

Yeah, still a second appearance.

Seneca was my first choice, and but it's to have Aristotle here. Anyway, enough about talking smack to each other, which we certainly do a lot here in Enterprise Fitness. Today we are going to get into the topic how to choose a personal trainer. I'll give the intro, introduce the landmass, and then we can add things to it. So in introducing or selecting a personal trainer, obviously there's— first of all, we probably should discuss the many modalities of how to discuss, how to choose a trainer. So you have group training, you have semi-private, and you have one-on-one. Am I missing anything? Online training as well. Am I missing anything, gents?

Sounds about right. Yeah, it covers most bases.

Okay, and then from that, the choices really that people have are studio like us, for example, boutique studio. You have big box gyms, say for example your Fitness First, Goodlife. And I know Cristiano, you spent some time at a Goodlife.

Yeah, short run.

Yeah, short run, as I spent some time at a Genesis, and then I went to a local gym as well. So there are choices there. And then you have your kind of group fitness, semi-private models, which are more like your F45s, your—

what's the other one—

BodyFit. And there's quite a few of these around. And then you've got your CrossFit boxes as well. And all of them offer obviously something that is online. You've got no shortage of online coaches today on Instagram, and you've got online group, and you've also got online in the sense of one-on-one, more of a personalized service where you're really going to the coach for a specific thing. So it's like you're a powerlifter and you want to get a powerlifting coach, right? So you go to Specific Powerlifting, that's online. So you have a kind of a— there's a lot of choices today. How does someone choose and vet a personal trainer? Do you want to add some— anything to that that I've said so far?

Look, I think you covered all bases in terms of what's out there. I think it's actually quite eye-opening when you articulate all that in one shot and you realize how many options there are for people and how overwhelming it can be.

I also forgot one— boot camps. So boot camps as well is in that mix too.

Absolutely. And I think when you realize how oversaturated, in a sense, the industry is, and not just the services that are offered and the information that's out there, how overwhelming it can be for people of any experience level, but especially impressionable people, especially young people who are looking to start their journey and looking for for where to start.

Yeah, and I think another thing that I'd probably add on that as well is then you have, even in fitness, you have different niches of some people want to do yoga, some people want to do handstands, some people want to do movement-based stuff. What is it called?

Calisthenics.

Calisthenics. Thank you, lost the words. Sport-specific training, martial arts, there's more niches inside of that. All right, where shall we begin? I think probably the place to begin is let's go around the outskirts and then move into kind of more about what we do. So let's look at the first one. So if you're looking at a low price option as a PT, of someone to train you, you're probably going to be looking at a group. The bigger the group, obviously the less it's going to cost often, right? For example, if you go to boot camps, usually they're going to be a group fee that you're going to pay, and it's low cost and everyone shows up at the same time. But obviously in those models, they're not personalized. Everyone's going to get the same workout maybe a few different things regressed instead of someone's doing a full squat, someone's doing a half squat, that kind of thing. But for the most part, boot camps are going to be generic, and because there's so many people to serve. Then in inside of that, you have the semi-private. So the semi-private is where it's usually 4 to 6 on one trainer, and again, everyone's getting the same program. And what I've seen in my experience— I don't know about you guys, but what I've seen in my experience with a semi-private model is the screening aspect of when people are let in, there is no screen really. So if there's— I remember speaking to one coach who ran this model, he gave everyone snatch grip deadlifts. There's a— not everyone can do snatch grip deadlifts, and that's the entry. Definitely what we see, most people can't perform a snatch grip deadlift. So the regression of being able to run these programs is somewhat limited upon the clientele. But again, It's a cheaper way for the customer to then consume this, but it's definitely not personalized, and a lot of things do get lost, and sometimes people do get injured. One of the ones I did forget in that is CrossFit, and I'm going to name personally, but CrossFit I would say is another one of these group style with weights, and people do conflate it. Again, it's not personalized, it's a group class with weights, and often people do get injured. It's not a fabrication or a poo of what they do or anything. Obviously there are different boxes inside of CrossFit, and everyone, once they buy the licensing fee, they run it the way they want. So there's obviously good ones and there's really bad ones. But when you're doing things like Olympic lifting for reps without training, without screening, with all these other things, it is, it is a recipe for people getting hurt, which is, is sometimes unfortunately what— so I'd put that CrossFit kind of model in that box as well. How am I going so far, Cristiano?

I was thinking about the semi-private one. I was thinking, let's say for example we have a couple and maybe there is the, the partner, one of the partners trying to drag the other partner in the gym, and, and he's already fit but the other partner is not as much. It's very hard for a trainer to— they obviously have different goals, so it's obviously hard for a trainer to train them both at the same time.

Yeah, yeah, very hard. Because, you know, that's the thing that we see here as well, is like someone says, I want to train with my partner, and the guy or the girl who's coming in might be super, super fit. Let's say in this case it's the, the woman here in this case, she's super fit and she's dragging the partner along, the guy along, and he's not. He's overweight, let's say, in this case. She's going to be a superstar ready to do advanced movements, whereas he's not. She can't keep up with him. The, the program needs to be different for each of them. And you put her in a CrossFit class, she's going to kick ass. But this guy in the CrossFit class is going to hurt himself. Same class, but that's where the specificity has to take place to make sure that we're getting these people on track. So for sure, and that obviously is one of the things that is— and also then with nutrition as well, as nutrition isn't a one-size-fits-all. In some cases, one size can start all in a way, but the real trick with nutrition is to have an engaged and operating biofeedback, because it's from the biofeedback that we make changes to what someone's doing. Yeah, and this is where here we're able— what were you on when you started to do your photo shoot? You got 3,500 calories?

That was a bit more than that.

A lot 4,000 calories?

Yeah, 4,000.

Yeah, and that's a good example of what most people would do in that case is just diet you down at 1,200, like 12,000 calories, because you'll lose weight on 1,000, you know, you lose weight. But you want to push people's calories to as high as they can go before they stop losing weight, and the other way to do that is with nuance and biofeedback. All right, so we've covered the group training, the boot camps, we've got— all right, and you know the other thing we haven't covered? Is exercise classes. So they're usually run like your Les Mills, your Rev, your Cycles. They're usually ran at your big box Fitness First kind of places. And for what they are, I look at these things as edutainment or trainer-tainment, like a mixture of training and entertainment, right? You guys are like looking at me like, fuck, you're going hard on these classes. But that's what I look at it as, right? This is my personal opinion. They're not training, it's exercising.

Class before.

Sorry, fun. I used to run spin classes back in 2006. Yeah, it was a genesis.

The images that I'm getting in my head right now, cursed.

I just want to tattoo the image of me in Lycra in your brain, Ari. It's there. Good. I'm already done. I can leave the podcast now. Bye guys. Now my classes were full. People loved my classes because I had awesome playlists. None of these hardstyle trance that you play, but it was good music anyway.

Missing out.

I don't think I am. But so we— they're not bad, they're not, but they're not— it's exercise, not training. Training is when you lift up a dumbbell, a barbell, you enter the gym with a purpose in mind. Exercise is just doing busy work. And I look at the group classes for the most part as a lot of busy work without a directive goal, because we're not screening, we're not addressing dysfunction, we're not addressing what is the deficiency or discrepancy. Of course, how could you in a class of over 30? You can't. Everyone's doing the same thing. It's fun. It's the community aspect of it. It's exercise. It's not training. So for a very low barrier to entry, I'd probably say that's like the lowest barrier to entry in terms of doing something inside of a gym. Then you have boot camps, then you're semi-private. Good.

Yeah, I'd like to speak on the little experience that I had before this in a well-known group fitness gym. And yeah, just elaborate on what you've just said a little bit further. You definitely get what you pay for in terms of how much a gym can ultimately individualize the programming approach. Definitely the biggest thing that was of the most value, value to a lot of these people is exactly what you said, the community aspect, where you see a lot of the same people every day, you get around each other. And I think that's a great aspect of it because I think the North Star in everything that we do in terms of the programming and the nutrition and lifestyle advice we give to people is whatever is going to be the most sustainable is what you enjoy. In that sense, I think it does a good job in terms of getting people's foot in the door. However, if you are someone that has a more specific issue or an injury and you're coming to a group fitness gym, it's not going to be the most efficient means of rectifying, if at all, whatever problem you have. I remember running, helping running a class, and you've got 20 seconds rest in between two exercises, and someone's barbell squatting and the technique is— couldn't be further from optimal, and you've got 20 seconds to correct a barbell back squat, something that we can easily spend an hour with someone. So in that sense, it's not going to be optimal if you're someone that has a very good training background and no glaring injuries or issues, then it's something that perhaps is going to be a lot more enjoyable, and ultimately, ultimately you'll get a lot more out of it, right?

Yeah. You guys called me a training purist, which I totally am, and that's why the idea of semi-private and group has never— as to me, as, as a coach and also as a business owner, has never appealed to me because to me, I know what I want as training. I don't want my feelings to be— I don't really care about my feelings. I want to get a result. And I know for certainly these classes, they certainly serve a segment of the population. And what I've noticed here is that they're almost like the entry level into Enterprise. A lot of the time people have done the F45s, the Body Fits, the whatever, the other semi-private, and then they do it and some people get results or they get to a certain level, they get no results, they get hurt, they get injured, whatever the case may be, whatever the experience was. Everything in between. Maybe they even got great results, but then they get to a point where they want to go to the next level and that's only got them so far. So I think it's actually, if you look at it, zoom out, helicopter view from an industry perspective, I think it's actually great because it serves that entry level where people don't really know how much to spend on things. It offers them a service, it gets their foot in the door, and then from that they're able to go, actually, I really enjoy this, I want to do more, I want to level it up. And then they go into one-on-one. For me, it's been like, for our business, the addition of these semi-private getting popular has actually been great for us.

Yeah, you could call it the gateway drug to the, the higher exercise.

It absolutely is in many ways. So then let's talk about big box gyms, and I know you had some experience here. Do you want to lay out the land?

I've done like 4 months of Good Life. I've never personally trained before, so it was my very first experience. There's definitely something to learn. Just to manage yourself and deal with people, just being around the gym and getting to know people and chatting to people. So that's what I used to do. But it's also like the sale part of the job, the marketing part, how you market yourself and, you know, showcase your skill to the clients. And for me, it was very hard because I had zero, zero experience. So yes, I was training clients, but I wasn't really confident on what I was doing or the value that I was presenting to them. And that's when I decided to come to Enterprise and I did the internship and that opened my mind to how much more is there to learn, experience and, and share with trainers or just clients in general. So my experience was, it's overall positive. I would do it again just for the fact that you put yourself out there.

How do I translate Italian?

I think you're saying a lot of the skills are very transferable in terms of just basic working with people and how well that translates over to any other profession.

Yeah, there's so many trends. Look, that's where I start. I started at a big box gym, actually Genesis in Ringwood, back in— I did my PT course 2005 and I started working at Genesis in Ringwood in 2006. And when I started, they didn't have the independent business owner model, which is what most places have today. And for the folks listening, the independent business owner model is where the trainer— this is how Fitness First, Goodlife, Snap, pretty much every big box gym operates— is the trainers there are not employed by the gym. The trainers are licenses, licensees, or franchisees of, of the gym itself. So the trainer is paying rent to the gym. So in my case at Genesis in Ringwood, I was paying $1,100, $1,000 a month plus GST. So it was $1,100 per month that I paid to rent that space. And I got access to obviously the members and the equipment and I could run my business as a sole trader within Genesis in that space. And I was there for about 2.5 years. And actually when I started, I didn't have that program. So I was getting paid, was it like $17, $16.75 an hour? And then for the gym floor shift, this was back before Australia's minimum minimum wage was 2005. So I was getting paid pretty much minimum wage. And then I think for a PT, an hour PT is like $22, $23. That's where I started. I was ready to pack in the towel because I was there from 4. I'd get up at 4:35, be at the gym at 6. In the early days, people would cancel on you obviously because you didn't know how to set appointments. And grinded. And the thing about Genesis Ringwood, it didn't have any windows. So when you'd go in I remember it being like total dark and then I'd work all day, all night. I'd get out and it'd be total pitch black dark. And because you couldn't see what time of day it was, it really did stuff with your head. Anyway, I was ready after 6 months not making any money to go into like the sales role because I heard that was more of a sustainable, get it, kind of get a wage and be based off commissions. So that's when the manager, club manager, came to me and said, we're introducing this new model. It's a franchisee model. You can rent the floor. $1,100 a month was more money than I'd made at the time. I think the most I'd made was like $300, $400 a week. So I was really struggling. Lucky I was living at home with my folks and shout out to my folks. And anyway, the manager sold me on the idea. I was super hesitant about it and it ended up, that was my baptism by fire, so to speak, into business because it really, for me, the saying that we have here, sink or swim, it really was a sink or swim. Thing for me. So that's where I started. I remember charging, I had $33 for half hour, $45 for 45 minutes, and $60 for the full hour was my starting point of what I was charging. And I just had to hustle, hustle my way, finding clients, walking the floor, making so many mistakes along the way, but made it through, so to speak. And that's basically what I'm explaining now is the model. So now inside of the Wolfpack program, I mentor trainers all over the world, and a lot of the huge portion of that folks where you were, which people renting out of that model. And as you said, they're not shown the roadmap, and that's why they reach out to me to show them people with more experience, to show them that roadmap of this is how to service the client, this is how to sell, this is how to find clients. Because it is— thing that a lot of people don't understand about PT, it's not a regular job. Even if you're working at a fitness first, it's not a regular job where the manager is going to say your shift is punch in the card at 6 and you get to knock off at 12. Doesn't work that way. It's completely on you. How much free sessions do you give away? How much work do you do? It's 100% performance-based, which if you're performance-minded, it's a fantastic thing. If you're not, it's probably the wrong industry in a lot of ways because as I say to you guys, as much as I'm the boss here, the real boss is the client. Is the client happy with the work that you do? Because they're the ones who pay. And if they are, awesome. If they're not, then that's when issues down, downstream come. They're the real boss of everything. It's the client that we serve. Quick message from our sponsors, us. If you're enjoying this podcast, make sure you hit subscribe on wherever you're listening to this podcast, be it Spotify or iTunes. And also go right ahead and check out melbournepersonaltrainers.com. Hit the resource tab and you can actually download the digital version of this completely free. This is our user manual. It's loaded with shopping lists, our questionnaires, our how to set goals, serving sizes, and a whole bunch of stuff. Really quick, easy reference guide that you can use. And of course, if you want to dive deeper into our world of nutrition, check out the Enterprise Diet book. It's on Amazon if you're an international— right from Australia. And if you are within Australia, check out enterprisediet.com to order your copy today. All right, back to the podcast.

What you've just said, obviously client experience is the most important thing, but going back to ultimately justifying our worth in terms of why one-on-one personal training is the top end of the spectrum and why I love working at Enterprise is that it unites a lot of the good qualities of gym environments that we've just spoken about and brings it all into one. You obviously get the one-on-one, 100% tailored service of working with any personal trainer here, but being part of a team here, you also get the community aspect that a lot of people will— would enjoy in a CrossFit or a group fitness gym environment. Sorry, I'm getting sidetracked because I'm just thinking about what you said before. And let's be honest, if you were— even if you were making enough money to move out of your house. Your parents would have still have had you there because you're Italian.

And yeah, most Italians don't move out of the house until they're 45.

Yeah, that's not true.

No, no. Yeah, you moved out.

If my parents have my way, I'll still be there when I'm 40.

You're real Italian. Yeah, I'm a generation.

Yeah, yeah.

So my parents came from Italy, and my mum's fresh off the boat. She came off the boat. My dad was off— he actually— his folks came by plane, and I think he was either in my grandmother's stomach at the time or born straight after. Both my mom and my dad had very Italian upbringing where both their parents couldn't speak English. They were both Italian.

Even less than 50% Italian in that case.

So coming back to this topic of the show, challenging my Italian-ness. Anyway, so coming back to this topic, so basically let's bring it back to now talking about the one-on-one aspect. And actually before we do that, let's talk about online. So online, there are a lot of providers online, and unfortunately, again, as with everything, there are really good providers and there are really bad providers. I would say for the most part, if you're a beginner, online isn't something that I would recommend at all. And the reason for that is because you do need to be shown— training is a kinesthetic thing. I could say you can watch a video of someone doing a squat and you can try and teach yourself and you can think you're doing it right, and then you go do it and it's still wrong. And it's one of those things that your unconscious competence— or what is it, unconscious incompetence? You don't know that you don't know when you're a beginner. And this is the value of having someone face to face saying, hey, when you squatted, you did this, do this instead. When you did this, you did this instead. And then you did start to develop that conscious incompetence, and that's a much better place to be because that, that at least then when you're watching the videos or you're recording yourself, you're going, okay, I'm doing this with feet, I'm doing this with my back, I need to be here. Until you get to the point of conscious competence. And I think if you're at conscious competence, online training probably is okay, but you want to be at least at conscious competence of your training because it is kinesthetic. So I think for— and that's why we, we're very selective here with our online programs, actually, who we let in, because we know that online training just as a modality— and this is going to rub a lot of trainers listening to this the wrong way, but it, it's true— online training for a lot of people is not the modality. As good as that program may be, often for most people it's not the right modality for them to begin with. There should be some type of base where someone's able to coach them, and there are some great, really great online programs out there. But for the most part, beginners, I don't think it's really that, that great and suited for. So you do want to have that, again, that conscious competence of knowing what you're doing, having that time spent. And then online training, it can be group online training where it's really low cost and people are just getting diets same diet, same program, it's getting sent to everyone. And then you have the bespoke online training, which is what we do, where you've got Tyrone or Amy or someone, or one of you guys, every week, 15-minute check-in, sending, looking at the biofeedback, tweaking, adjusting numbers. And it's the same, it's the same as if you were doing face-to-face training minus the face-to-face.

What you mentioned is the Dunning-Kruger effect, right? The more you start to learn, the more you realize how much you don't know, right? And that's something that you definitely see with a lot of clients that come in here who may have worked with an online coach in the past. And then you start— we begin to educate them on a wider variety of things regarding lifestyle, training, and nutrition, and they realize how much wasn't being taken into account by their previous coaches, and they realize how much more potential there is for their results. I think it's definitely eye-opening as a client and also eye-opening as a PT when you're learning and working on your craft and just realizing how much more there is out there that you can learn and improve on and better learn to administer to your clients.

Yeah, 100%. And so now let's talk about PT one-on-one and what we do. And so you have obviously the one-on-one PT which you can go to big box, or you can see a trainer. And then there's one-on-one PT that we provide, which is in a studio. And I suppose in, in saying this, part of this, I should also explain the backstory of how Enterprise came to be, because then you could probably look at why we charge some of the rates that we charge and why we do what we do and how I've come to some of the decisions that we've made as PT. So let me start with this story. I was working at a fairly big gym and we were doing a program, 8x8. And 8x8— this is with my client— 8x8, basically you pick 2 exercises. Vince got on the 8x8, you guys know the program. You pick 2 exercises. On this night we were doing lat pulldown and incline bench press, and you do just 8 reps, then goes to the lat pulldown, does another 8 reps, goes back to the incline press. And we were about on our like 4th round, we still had another 4 to go, and as we walk to the incline press, someone takes our bench. And I'm like, man, I wish I could say that this was the first night it happened, but the problem was it would happen multiple times a day with multiple clients. And I remember thinking in my head, you know what I want? I want a studio I can just train clients exactly the way I want to train them, and I don't have to deal with anyone taking my equipment. And in fact, if I do have any trainers there, I just give them a look and they know exactly the deal. Because I said to this guy, can we work in with you? And we're almost going to— no, you can't work in with me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's on it, dude. It came a very confrontational— constantly a confrontational environment of you have to confront people, hey, I'm using this. You'd have like multiple towels running around the gym, and people get— members would get really annoyed at you for taking up so much equipment. I just remember thinking, like, wouldn't it be nice in an environment where I can just give like the other trainer Ari a look being like Hey, yep, cool. And that, that's what I wanted.

I get so many dirty looks by all the trainers here.

Like, are you taking a bid? But the point is, it's just part of the culture. Like, if you're not using it that second, someone else is going to use it. And then when they get off, they just assume that you're going to use it, right? It's not a big— it's not a big deal because it's not a big deal, right? And I just thought, wouldn't that be nice? And wouldn't it be nice that the trainer— the client can come in, do their warm-ups in peace? Wouldn't it be nice if I didn't have to yell over the techers if I didn't have to yell over the music, uh, if there wasn't—

you still have to yell over the music when you're here, wouldn't it be—

but your music you play most of the time is pretty good.

I wouldn't have it any other way.

Wouldn't it be nice if all of the members here were just of a level caliber that just isn't seen in gyms? Obviously when you go into a gym, big box gym, people on their phones, people talking, just wasting time on the equipment, like taking 10 minutes between, you know, sets on the cable, and as they're taking up 2 cables now wouldn't it be nice if everyone at the gym came in for the sole purpose of getting their results? Wouldn't that be an amazing environment where it was a coach's paradise? And that's what I wanted to create with the best of equipment, not compromising, none of this, the, this machine's out of order, this is the shit bar but we're stuck with it tonight because everyone else is using the good bars, better not look at that guy because he's just done 5 cycles of testosterone in one day and he might bash you because he's on roid rage, or whatever the case may be, right? Or the smelly person who hasn't had a shower in 5 days. What if I could just get rid of all this shit, get rid of all of it, and just provide the very best service in a way? And that was Enterprise. That's what I wanted for Enterprise. That's what I want for Enterprise, is that, as you said, taking all the best elements, getting rid of all the kind of not-so-good elements of the big box gym scene, and just providing it all in one space where have a world-class gym, be able to provide a world-class service, and people come in and know why they're coming here, which is the mindset of we are here— you're here to get an outcome. You're not here because Ari's a nice guy or Cristiano's a nice guy, which we are nice guys, we're nice guys sometimes, sometimes. But you're here more importantly to get a result, and the nice guy comes gift with purchase kind of thing.

I love what you said about trainer's paradise because that definitely extends to what clients would call coffee machine. Yes, but client's paradise, because what I have seen training people here is— you touched on the culture behind people not working in at a commercial gym, not sharing equipment, and we obviously promote that culture here, working directly with our clients. And then what will happen is when my clients go back to a big box gym and try to do sessions on their own and work in with people, they realize the culture isn't the same. And it definitely helps them understand the value of not just the level of service we provide in terms of everything we, we already do at training and nutrition, but yeah, promoting a healthy gym culture.

And that's the other thing I wanted to add. What I noticed with with fitness studios or personal training studios by and large is they always compromised on equipment. Always. They always got the cheapest, dirtiest equipment. I'm like, man, if I'm going to build a gym or a studio, I have to train there. And I'm an equipment snob, as you guys know, right? I only want the best equipment because I'm going to use it. And I love training. And when I'm not doing this, I'm training. So I want the best equipment because this is my gym for me to train. So I'm not going to compromise on equipment. And it's going to be better equipped than most big box gyms. I think a lot of time we actually have more dumbbells than most big box gyms, and we're a pretty small relative studio.

Not only do we have more dumbbells, you know where they are. Nothing's worse than going to— nothing is worse than going to a big box gym and you've got one 6-kilo— you've got— you're looking for a pair of 6-kilo dumbbells, you find one, and then you realize the other one is upstairs.

Oh. So that was the thing, right? I didn't want to be like every other PT studio which compromised. It had to be better equipped as well in that the way we provide our service at Enterprise, it is like an enterprise. It's not just about what we do, it's also about who we say no to. So the reason why, one of the reasons why we charge what we charge and we position ourselves the way we are and we have that minimums of 12 weeks and all this kind of stuff that we do with clients is because of the fact that we also have to say no to a bunch of people. We're not 24-hour. We are appointment only. You can't just walk in any day and go, I'm going to train. You can't come in and say, here's my $20, I want to do a casual session, or can I have a membership here. We only do PT when you are with your trainer, you have their undivided attention for that full hour. We don't do half hours, 45s, none of that, because we want to wow you, want to give you, want to get to know you, want to correct your form and give you something rather than just teach you training or exercise. We want to teach you how to train so it can become a permanent fixture and part of your life.

But do you normally approach the conversation when the clients come in and they want anything but this?

They want anything but this?

Yeah, because they don't know what we're doing, obviously.

We obviously explain what— obviously this is part of the conversation. The initial conversation is finding out what their goals are. And I've had people say, you sound really intense. And my answer is, yeah, we are. Look, we'll meet you where you're at. Are you here for a result? And some people will say no. I don't know if we're right for you. And I've said that to people before. I don't know and I don't, it's cool. You want to do something that's a little bit less of an investment. I don't apologize for the investment that I want people, our clients to make. And as you've seen, clients who do invest, they get the results. And there's so many clients where we have amazing transformations, but that I don't apologize for the fact because if you want to get that level of result, you have to invest. And if you're not ready to invest, great, go do one of these other things and then let that be the kind of the entry thing to get you warmed up. And it's not to say we don't— because this is one of the big fallacies about Enterprise Fitness, is that we don't take on beginners or you have to be advanced. We've taken on heaps of beginners, heaps of people. The first time they've ever been to the gym is here. The commonality, the common, the only commonality with them all is mentally they were ready to change and they wanted to change. That's it. It doesn't matter actually about your experience on the gym floor. In actual fact, if you're a beginner, it's often better that you start here. But your mentality towards you wanting that change, that's what needs to be there.

And the follow-through, I think the understanding that it starts and ends with the client is always something that I do my best to drill into people. We can— like anyone looking for any kind of service, right, we can only provide the tools that they need to change. But at the end of the day, they're the ones picking up the weights, putting or not putting food in their mouth. They're the only—

they're the one—

the action's finished with them.

Absolutely. Uh, final thoughts or final questions on this topic, gents?

If you had to summarize it in one sentence, why should I pay what I pay to train at Enterprise? One sentence.

Oh, one sentence. Results.

Three words. Results is one.

Can I just say—

I would say community.

Yeah, it's interesting you say community. What would you say?

I would have said community. Fun.

There we go.

Fun is sustainable.

Community, fun, results. Yeah, community, fun, results. That— look, the reason why we charge what we charge is, as I said, it's not just to have all the best equipment from around the world, to give the client that undivided trainer's time, to include the program and nutrition, the structure, to train our trainers to the level at which they can deliver excellence time after. And I've been doing this for almost 20 years, and I've had this studio for 10. Faces may have changed over that time, but the one commonality is that every trainer that comes through here becomes excellent. And the reason for that is because we never lower the standard of what we do. And we do, in part, we have that abundance of sharing knowledge and making sure— because that thing in, in, in business, it's what if you train a staff member and they leave? What— in, in my head, it's no. What if I train— what if I don't train a staff member and they stay? That's a massive cost. So It's in the business's best interest that we give our people everything that we know so they can give our customers everything that we know. And that's what's ultimately creating raving fans of the business. So we're not— and even with Wolfpack, I'm giving away heaps of free information often to even quote-unquote competitors. I believe fundamentally, like, high tide raises all boats. And it also— the other thing, it pushes us pushes me to get better. So you just gave away your best stuff, I gotta figure out some even better stuff and get back to you kind of thing. So the reason is it's all the things we include, but it's also all the things we are then able, by charging that, able to say no to. And as I said, we do have a capacity. You are one person, you're only able to take on so many clients. For you to be that full-time role, you need to be paid for that. And the better you pay, the more motivated obviously you're going to be as well. And you're gonna, you're gonna want to wow the client because you're getting paid well. And that's the thing, I don't look at business as— and this is where I talk about the narcissist versus the altruist in business. And real quick, in you there's two wolves. Wolf one is the altruist, which would do anything for anyone, and it's all about serving the client and would give you, give everything away for free and take the shirt off your back just to serve and to give. And that's one perspective. The other perspective is the narcissist, which it's all about you. When do I get paid? How do I make bank? Both of those are illusions and deceptions because what happens with the— if you're purely altruistic in business, what will happen is you'll end up hating your client. You'll end up resentful of the client because you didn't get paid your worth, and therefore you start coming late to the client. I'm not going to do my best work today because I'm not getting paid enough. And if you're narcissistic, you know what's going to happen. You're going to make some quick money, but people aren't going to want to stick around. They're going to burn out. They're not going to— you're not going to have any retention. You're going to have any relationship with people. You want to marry the two. You want to go over and above for your client, but you also want to get paid and get rewarded for the work that you do because that's motivating in and of itself to do better work. And that's where I, in my head as a business operator, I try and structure our prices to go, what inspires us as a business? What enables us as a business to give even more? And yes, money is a part of that. This, these podcasts, these videos, the book, everything we give to the client, the merchandise, all that stuff, it costs money. The best equipment in the world, it costs money. Building a building just for our clients, your coffee, all that stuff it costs money. Being able to charge what it's worth and then being able to push that in a way that goes, right, how can we give even more? How can we do it even better? So when you operate on the edge of those two things, I think that's probably where magic happens. And I think that's probably a good place to close this podcast on. Alrighty guys, so where can people learn more about you?

You can find me on Instagram at coach.rio and inside the four walls of Enterprise.

And Cristiano, you can find me right here because I'm not on social media, but I'm thinking about it, so Come see me face to face.

All right guys, my name is Mark Ottobre. You can find me on Instagram @markottobre, and obviously, and of course, check us out on the web at melbournepersonaltrainers.com. And if you're a personal trainer wanting to learn from us, check out enterprisefitnessacademy.com. And finally, if you're listening to this on whatever podcast device you may be listening to this, hit subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend if you've got any value of what we've spoken about today. Helping us get the message out helps us do more of these shows if you've enjoyed it. And till next time, the next show, folks, train hard, eat well, and supplement smart. Are you frustrated with your diet? Not knowing what to eat, when to eat, macros split, whether you should do a meal plan? Well, I have a solution for you. It's called the Enterprise Diet. We have literally transformed tens of thousands of people's lives. These are the exact principles, systems, methods that we use in creating the head-turning results that we do. Time after time for over a decade here at Enterprise Fitness. You can check it out at enterprisediet.com. This took me 3 years to put together, and I'm very proud to share it with you all. It literally is like taking everything that I know in my— in here and just putting it on paper for you to download today. So check it out, enterprisediet.com, and grab your copy today.