Ep68: The 6 Steps You Must Do To Become An Elite Trainer

Alrighty, team. Matt here from another episode of the PT Profit, Leverage and Lifestyle show. I've got an absolute weapon with me today, Mr. Paul Meldrum. Good morning, mate. How are you today?

I'm good, Matt. How you doing?

Very, very good, thank you. So, thank you so much for joining the. The podcast. So I've. I've just for context as well, I've heard your name thrown around a lot in the industry, which is a good thing. Yeah, tell me all the good things. Which is. Which is really good. But, yeah, super, super keen to have a conversation with you on all things personal training. So for context, for everyone listening, do you want to give us a bit of a background on who you are and what you're about?

Yeah, I'll give my little spiel. So when I started off personal training, I would have been 20, 20 or 21. I basically got into it because when I finished school, I had good grades and all that type of stuff, but I didn't want to commit myself to another four years of study. That was my mindset. I was like, I don't want to commit myself to something that's going to cost a lot of cash if I'm not interested in pursuing it. So I did the PT certification because I was mildly interested. Well, I like going to the gym, let's be fair. I liked working out and I wanted to be a bit better at it. So I did the qualification and I ended up getting a job in sales at Fitness First. Like, just because there was a job available, I thought, oh, this might be a cool thing to do. I get to go to gym for free. Not realizing how horrendous that job actually was. This was like, you know, 21 years ago. So it was cold calling all day long, seven days a week, like it was. The marketing wasn't anywhere near as efficient as what we can do now. And when I was doing that, I was like, you know what, what the trainer's doing on the gym floor, it's so much more interesting to me than being on the phone all day, which is ironic considering I'm on the phone all day now. And when I. And I said, you know, I need to hire a trainer and see someone before I do the thing, I think that's probably a pretty good, good idea to have some degree of authenticity and experience, because then I can know what to deliver at the very least. And I hired a guy who I still talk to this day, who had won International Trainer of the Year. He just happened to be in the gym at that time, and I booked him for an assessment, and it was one of the most. It was one of those moments in life where you remember for the rest of your life. Because in that moment I realized how little I knew. Like, I felt like Jon Snow. I know nothing. Like, there was literally, I had no clue of what I was doing. The stuff he was doing was so far above what had been taught in my cert 3 and cert 4 that at the end of the session, I was like, I want to be able to do that. I want to know what this guy knows. Anyway, I did the finished, got my subcontractor, got my role. And in my first ever training session, my client actually broke their ankle. So something very. I set up like it was the standard. I wrote the program in advance. I was at the front counter. I greeted her. I did all the stuff that you meant to do. The whole Pilates studio was set up with all the equipment she needed. And she literally broke it just going up and down the step, like, totally innocuous. But that kind of led to that whole, like, dark Night of the Soul type thing. Oh, my God, I can't do this. Blah, blah, blah. And I decided it was either I quit now or I become really. I try and become the best trainer I can possibly be. And I chose the second option. So from there, fast forward two years. I won the National Trainer Review for Fitness. First I apparent I won it twice. And one of my other colleagues, he won the last one ever, so he says he's the reigning champion, but that award finished in 2007. So he's had a long reign. No one remembers the second last person who won it, which is me, unfortunately. And from there I went into clinical rehabilitation and orthopedic treatment from my training experience and some other courses I did, and then opened up a facility in Hunters Hill in Sydney, that within a year I doubled that and opened up a training facility as part of it. Year after that, I moved into Saint Leonards and opened up a training facility with a person. We kind of shared the rent. Like it was a very standard. And this would have been all the way back in 2005, would have been maybe, yeah, 2007, probably. I'm getting the years slightly off because they were so long ago. And we decided one day that he would. He was traveling a lot. I said, you know, why don't we just partner up and just do this, like train people together, do like a semi private arrangement. And he's like, what the.

What's that?

And I found a book by Alan Cosgrove. And it was from his results fitness model in the usa. I ordered it. It took like two months to get here back in those days. And it talked about he had semi private training. So from my experience and from what I know, I think we opened up the first semi private training studio in New South Wales at the time. I know that we beat Dan Henderson at the time because I told him about it at a conference and then he did one, which is, you know, awesome because he's really, really good at it, but he's awesome at it. So I remember the ultimate health event, we were talking about it, which was cool. And then from there we doubled the size about twice. And then we ended up moving into a facility the size of fitness, first as a semi private facility in Crowsnest, underground in the city. In that part of the city. And that was wild. We had 400 semi, 400 plus semi private PT members every single week coming in, you know, doing 20k plus per week, which is awesome. And then that, obviously there was a number of challenges that came from running that logistically, financially, etc, and we ended up shutting it down in 2019, which, from all things, the benefit of hindsight could not have been better timing with, like, Covid coming at, like, it was late 2019. Covid came in early 2020. So we had really, really. We were lucky, basically, because we were being totally screwed. And from there I kind of had shifted into online really, really effectively because I had been building it up since about 20, 2014, 2015, 2016, by the fact that our gym had clients who were kind of transient. They would travel from place to place. And North Sydney Crow's Nest has a lot of people come in for work and then dis. So of course we got the team builder app when it, like, kind of first came out due to referral from Lachlan Wilmot, who was the strength coach of the GWS Giants at the time. And, like, he was actually my first ever mentoring student. We were doing online training all the way back then, but we were charging like a pitiful like 10 bucks a week, which is kind of funny, but all good. So from there, yeah, that's been like the. The business journey. I've trained multiple Olympians in that time frame. Tons of rehab, tons of high performers, actors, tv, like all over the place. And now kind of my main thing is help trainers be better.

That's awesome. Yeah, it's obviously quite, quite the story. It's a long one. Yeah. That's the first time I've heard that. So yeah. Well done on all the success that you've had over. Over the years. Obviously been in the industry for quite a long time. Quite. Yeah. As I said, I'm super keen to pick your brain about, you know, how to become a better trainer, because at the end of the day, I think, you know, the best trainers obviously get the best results from their clients, but therefore gives them more clients because people want to work with them because they're the best trainer. So it all kind of works together. So just, I suppose, just going through the. The part about becoming a. A better trainer, and it was super interesting that you kind of mentioned that obviously you had that incident with the broken ankle in that first session. Obviously, everything happens for a reason, of course, which is super ironic. But was that the. Was that pretty much the only reason why you wanted to become that better trainer? Was there. Was there stuff going on before that? That kind of.

There was that and meeting the guy who first assessed me. So when he did that first assessment, like, I knew nothing. And I was like. Compared to him, I knew nothing. Like, I would say I had my set three, set four, which back then was a longer qualification and a bit more challenging. But, like, that moment, too, like, also having that realization that my knowledge base was here, my perception it was here, my knowledge base was here. And that, like, rude reality that. Shocked. There was one more incident. I went to my first ever fitness expo back in the day when they had those at the convention center, and they were huge. And they were not just protein powder cells. They had a combination of everything. And I met a guy who had been coached, like, extensively by Paul Check. He had had multiple Olympians. He had had multiple people and all different things. He was really, really, like, biomechanically insanely smart. And I spoke to him for a little bit, and basically, I'm fairly argumentative about a lot of things. Like, I don't have a problem with conflict. It's not a concern that I have. It doesn't bother me. I kind of like it. And he started saying, I can do what you can do in half the time. And I was, like, immediately, like, arced up and got into a little debate with him about that at the Expo, which was cute. And he said, come to an open day where I'm going to teach you the stuff I know and you'll see if it's true or not. And I said, okay, I'll be there. And sure enough, I was there. And by the end of that day, I had handed over $30,000 to learn from that Guy for a, like a full advanced diploma in what he was teaching. So that was probably that other moment where it was kind of like, man, like I had three moments, I would say, like one where I got first assessed where I was like, I don't know anything. And I know that this guy back in 2003 or 2004, he was charging 150 bucks an hour, which was really, really high back then. Another moment where I broke my client's ankle. I'm like, man, am I actually cut out to do this? Do I have the capacity? So it was a self doubt issue. And then the other guy that I met, he was like, man, this world has so much more possibility than what I even thought before. I'm missing. Not only did I not know all the stuff I had learned from the first guy, there was all this stuff over here that I didn't know. So I was like, I got a lot to learn. And those kind of three moments coalesce together into being the motivation for the journey.

Yeah, love it. And just for context, what was kind of, what was in that assessment that you did that was so mind blowing for you, if you remember?

Yeah, I remember. He did neuromuscular tests, a neuromuscular recruitment test to see if I had the correct firing order for patterns. He did a whole bunch of length tension assessments, which, you know, not that exciting. Now when looking back with context, he checked things with like my ATLAS alignment, what my respiratory rate was, what my TMJ alignment was, and my temporomandibular joint, if I had any occlusion there, looking at some reflex profiles and things of that nature. And when he then took that assessment and put it into the program based on the weaknesses he had found, like I was a 20 year old, 21 year old male, like I wasn't exactly weak. But then the exercise he had me doing was on a cable machine with 3.75 kilos and I was just getting crushed. Like I was just dripping sweat and going, this is, this is horrendous. What the hell? Like I'm not, not weak. And then I'm like, I feel absolutely terrible because he had identified kind of nearly every single structural weak point that I could have and targeted in on it to fix it for me. And that was kind of like the key to think of the assessment. I was like, I didn't know you could be weak in these areas.

Yeah, well, like even, even some of those words that you're using, I don't even know what some of those things are.

The length Tension, neuromuscular stuff and the ATLAS alignment, all of it would be very specialized. But knowledge for rehabilitation type stuff, I do have where I put it in my hierarchy of where, when and where. It's important to know because when like we talk about the whole thing of being the best trainer ever, it's a lot of people immediately go to how technical you can be, like how book smart you are and how you know, you understand periodization and whatever content and physiology or whatever it is, right. And it's kind of like really dolls in dives into that. It's like, what's the problem you're trying to solve in how you're becoming the best trainer ever or the best trainer you can be. So like, I'll use this as an example. So for the first I'll say 13 to 15 years of my career, all I gave a sh. Gave a damn about was textbooks and learning, learning, learning, learning and becoming really technically brilliant. And I broke it down into. It took a while to break it down because I'm stupid. It's my rehab clients. Awesome results. Awesome, amazing, like life changing results. Because that was the need that they had, that was the problem they were solving. The technical ability to find out what was wrong and fix it. Fantastic. Amazing body composition, like losing weight. I think we could both agree that losing weight is simpler in theory than rehabbing a complex injury. 30% of people getting results. And I was like, it took me a while. I was like, I was like, first of all, I did the whole thing where you blame the client for being a crappy client and all that type of stuff and saying, oh, they're not really dedicated. And then after a while, you know, I did that whole thing saying, it's not, it's not them, it's me. You know how everyone says in a relationship, it's not you, it's me? Well, no, it was me in this situation. So I figured out at that point it was like, I'm explaining the clients everything they need to know and said I wasn't explaining it to them, I was just speaking it at them. That was the difference. I was lecturing rather than coaching. So at that point I realized, man, I don't know how to communicate very well. So I had this shift in my model of how I spoke to clients to communicate. And then all of a sudden results started coming in in that realm because the whole thing, like for us, with the business that we're running, like people would come in for rehab and then they'd stick around for the training afterwards. Because, you know, they got a great result in one area and then they naturally assumed I could do the results in the other area due to them thinking I'm an expert. Everything basically from solving one problem. People have that tendency to put you on the pedestal when you solve one problem, even though it may and often is not true. And they'd stick around, but only if I was coaching because the systems weren't strongly developed. The way we communicated what we were doing wasn't developed. So I had to fix that problem then. So it's a. It was a different journey. Like, you know, learning the technical stuff is only one part of being one of what I think there's six parts of being the best trainer you can be.

Okay, well, I'd love to dive into those six parts, but before we get into that, I'm curious what your perspective is of the current cert 3 and 4 and how prepared people are to, you know, become a good trainer when they first get qualified.

By the way, that's a really cool tattoo.

It's a big sleeve and a whole sleeve.

Nice.

Beautiful.

Where the current Cert 3 and Cert 4? Because I've been, I've partnered off with some Cert 3 Cert 4 people. Right. Some certificate Cert 4 providers with like ongoing education and like there's a con, there's necessary conflict. Like the demand is high for people to get into the industry fast. Like that's what is. People want everything today, which is a very human response. I don't think they're qualified in terms of their training experience. Actually trained general population clients and gyms. They just need to have their knowledge like that high above the client. They don't need to be. And you have a ragdoll. They don't need to be life changing practitioners for that particular goal. Okay. I got two other things. They never stop running around. They don't need to be that better. So they probably are prepared to an extent.

Could it be better?

Absolutely. I feel like where they're really, really lacking is business and marketing and sales acumen.

Yeah.

Because they gloss over that. Because from the whole perspective of what the RTO is provide and what they have to hit, they have to hit X amount of, you know, technical hours in the gym, X amount of programming hours and business and sales and marketing are kind of thrown on as to an afterthought. And then they assume that the, sorry, the Cert 3, they assume that the, like the PTMs of the commercial gyms are going to give them enough training on generating thousand leads and they don't. And I get why they don't because they have a job to do, they have a ton of other stuff to do and it's a lot to teach that, which is why like people like you exist.

Right.

To help people get through that part where their skill set is really deficient. So are they prepared to coach people? To an extent, yes. Healthy general population people? Absolutely. Are they prepared to build really good niche specialities and skills? Absolutely not. Are they prepared to build good businesses? Absolutely not.

Yeah, well said. I completely agree because I, I, some people, I help get their qualifications done, like I have to be in the gym with them and we need to tick off certain things, et cetera. But even when you mention like the business and sales and marketing side of things, I think there's, there's like one module in the whole all that. And yeah, obviously a lot of the, a lot of what they expect is, you know, you know, the ptms or the club managers or whatever to help them with the business side of things. But in reality it just never happens like that. No, never. But yeah, I completely agree. So do you want to walk us through kind of the six steps to becoming the best personal trainer in, in your experience?

Yep, absolutely. So I have six, you know, it's a floating hierarchy as well. Okay. So six kind of qualities and it depends on the problem you're trying to solve. So I basically break it down, there's multiple answers, but these six will work for everything. You just had to put it in a different place based on the problem. So the three problems we'll have, we'll have in person. Commercial facility. Okay. That's one place you can be a trainer, semi private facility. Whether it's semi private or private, like a private facility owner where you can be one on one or like small group. And online I'm not going to put in strength and conditioning fields or training like elite athletes or anything like that because that's kind of a different field. And online has multiple specialities. So online you can be like, like there's a thousand comprehensive coaches for online, for example. Right. There's a thousand, there's, you know, hormone specialists, there's eating specialists, there's bikini, you know, flexible dieting, all that type of stuff. Right. So when we're looking at it, be the best. And this is what I do with the people I, I coach and mentor. I was like, where are you right now? Like, where do you want it to be? And that's how we're going to solve that problem. So there's six. Number one probably goes across all of them as being the most important. And I think it's been the number one quality. I'll just read them all out actually, because I wrote them down because I case you didn't notice, I have a tendency to go on and then we'll move them into places we have personal and charismatic and understand the principles of attunement, buoyancy and clarity. So being able to hit someone's emotional level, be a little bit above it and be clear with what you're getting. Number two is efficiency in business systems. So being able to deliver on the service that you say that you have for your clients. Because that is a very big skill set that a lot of coaches, you know, lack. I'll get to. Yeah, I'll have it to you tonight after the session. You get three weeks later, your program's ready. No, it's not. My app's not working. All that type of stuff. Number three is technical ability. Again, that will float based on the niche. Number four is niche and technical ability will be like squats, deadlifts, macros, etc, kind of like the technical ability that we all kind of need to have as coaches. Like we should all be able to correct a squat, correct deadlift, understand the basics of nutrition, understand the basics of physiology and stuff like that. We don't need to be a master of it. We just need to know the basics. Number four is niche specific knowledge. So you need to have some knowledge of that particular niche. So for example, if you work with menopausal mums, for example, that's your thing that you work with. You probably want to know a lot about that.

Okay?

And that niche specific knowledge doesn't just mean you know that you know the physiology behind that avatar, that condition. You also know the language and how to communicate with that person. And that one's a hard one because like I have young male, like 23 year old coaches coming up to me and they're like, yep, I want to teach postnatal. I want to help, you know, moms get in shape. I'm like, bro, you've never had a kid. Like, come on, let's, let's not pretend. Yeah, it's like, bro, you got to be at some point and this is the next point, be in shape to some extent or practice what you preach. And that will depend a little bit more on the, on the niche that you're in, the problem that you solve. Because that's one I know that can be perceived as a very contentious topic. Okay. Being in shape or practice what you preach. The example I'll use just really quickly is like, if you're a bodybuilding competition prep coach and you don't look like you've ever been in the gym, it's probably not going to go too well for you. It's that thing that now general population clients do you need to look like you're a stage competitive bodybuilder? Absolutely not. In fact, that is sometimes detrimental to your results. Like, I remember when, like I'm 42 now, when I was 40, like I was ridiculously ripped, like stupidly ripped, and I was going to do a marketing campaign for dads and one of my colleagues, he said, don't put up any pictures of yourself. I'm like, why? It's like I'm the avatar. I've got, I've got, you know, two kids, super rip. What's the problem? He's like, it's unachievable. I'm like, yeah, it is for most because again, they don't have the experience and the knowledge and the background that I have. So. And also over time with the career that I've chosen. So again, there's like pros and cons to it all. And the last one is marketing and sales. And now I say the last one is marketing and sales because if you're a semi private facility owner or a private facility owner, marketing sales probably needs to be number one because you need to get people in the door. If it's online marketing, sales need to be one or two because you need to get people in the door. If you're in person, commercialing in person, commercial marketing probably doesn't need to be too high, but there are some aspects to it. But if you're getting, if you're really personable and charismatic, have efficiency in business systems and good technical knowledge and in shape, practice what you preach to an extent, getting good results. People are going to come to you via the fact that they see you in the gym and they see that you're really awesome and people love being with you. So that's kind of like the six that I break it down that most people would have to be the best possible trainer they can be. So when people come to me, they're often under the. They kind of like, I want to be an expert next. Okay. And I have clients and students who like, I got one online coach who makes like, she's probably on 50k a month at least. Like probably more by this point. Um, her technical ability is good, right? Her technical ability is Good. But I would not say she's. And she trains girls who want to basically look good in bikinis and be able to drink and go. Go out for dinner and stuff like that on the weekends. Right. That's her niche.

Yeah.

If I look at it, personal and charismatic. Yep, absolutely. She speaks to her niche, like, so well. She understands everything about them because she is them. Her efficiency in business systems is a little bit lower. Right. But people love her because she's really personal and charismatic. Technical ability, decent, not amazing. Niche specific knowledge, technically not amazing, but more than enough in what she needs, in shape or practice, what she preaches. Absolutely. Marketing and sales, very good. So she's. By her metric of success, which is this. Again, this is the question you're answering. Her metric, your success, is to make more money. That's a primary thing. It's not to change the world. It's not to have this massive impact as the greatest online coach that's ever existed. It's to make more money and have a really good business. So when I speak to a lot of coaches, it's only like a couple of them that. A couple of us that want to become really, really technically proficient, but we want to become the knowledge, the bearers of all knowledge, so to speak. Okay. And with those guys and girls who want to do that, they then need to understand it's a longer journey to get to that point to then be making good money. So there's a sacrifice there.

Oh, yeah, 100%. And obviously the. Therefore, the pro, I suppose, in becoming like, you know, that type, that type of knowledge is obviously, you know, I would assume you'd obviously be able to charge more for the service.

Yeah, absolutely. So for myself, for example, like, if I want to sell someone 12 weeks, 6 grand for online coaching, I can do that, but so I don't need to get anywhere near as many leads or anything like that. And my client, client lifetime value is high because I'm solving those specific problems, but I know how to solve those very specific problems. So for me, myself, like, I don't need to be that personal and charismatic all over time, which is nice in the gym. Absolutely. I think that's probably number one thing in your. In a commercial gym, you need to be the cool, the coolest trainer there. Like, you need to be the most likable person and you can be technically. Sorry for the language, you can be terrible and you can still have a good business in the gym. Like, if you're just fun and people love being around you, but like that, the coach that I worked with and he, I got him from online coaching. I was paying about 300 Australian dollars a week for one email a week because of the problems that he was solving.

Yeah.

And the problem was I gave myself one year to become a semi professional basketball player after not playing for six years. So like, hey, it was horrendous. I'd never worked so hard in my life. But again, that problem I was solving was like a very valuable problem to me. So it's kind of like there's no right or wrong answer here. I don't think there is a right or wrong. If you want to charge big money for what you do, you need to online. In the online space, you need to solve a really, really big problem for people because the we can use money as a really easy example. Like if you said to a student who came in and said, all right, cool, hey, you pay me $5,000 today, I'll make you $50,000 by next week and you 100% your money back. They're 100% going to pay back.

Right.

There's no risk and it's a huge reward. So hey, I'll pay a lot of money for that. If you say I'm going to lose, oh, we're going to help you lose five kilos in the next 12 weeks, that's $6,000. No one's going to buy that. That's crazy. It's crazy talk, right? So with the technical ability and niche specific knowledge, the bigger the problem you solve, the more you can charge. The more efficiency in business systems and marketing and sales, the more volume that you can put into the business and you can actually grow bigger revenue that way. The more personable and charismatic you are and in shape. Practice what you preach, the more you can absolutely dominate the in person space in what commercial gyms?

Yeah, love it. I'm curious on your perspective because a lot of people that listen to this podcast, they're either in a commercial gym like an Anytime Fitness, Good Life, Fitness first etc, or they're just online but more specifically in the commercial space. At what stage would you like get super niched down in that space? Because like me personally, I've been a PT for five years. I've really only really helped the general population. I don't have a really specific niche for me because I didn't need to niche down because I was doing fine. Like business wise, I didn't need to. But would you suggest niching down or just especially in the commercial gym, would you just help general population?

Yes. And no, and that's actually a fantastic. People been asking me really good questions the last two days. I did a presentation to 50 businesses last night on lead magnets, not the magnets on Facebook marketing. And they're asking some really good questions with that one. I think it actually depends on the facility to an extent and I'll give my reason why. Now I started to. I started in the commercial gym I worked at at Fitness First. It was attached to an RSL club. Okay. So a little bit remote like distance wise and everything. Wasn't certainly the city or anything like that with suburbia. But if it's in the RSL club, the majority of members, what do you think it's more likely or less likely that they're going to have injuries?

Oh, more likely, right, cool.

So none of the other trainers had any experience there. Like I was very lucky. I got into the ground, I got into the ground running. The only two other trainers there was and neither one of them was only interested in athletic performance because of his own personal interest as a basketball player. And one was only interested in weird looking shit. Like seriously, he just did weird stuff. I don't know what he was doing, but he was really not. He was really personable and charismatic. Right. And I decided very quickly that like, you know, if I do well at rehab in this gym, I've got basically unlimited supply, 20,000 people, members of our RSL club who could potentially come in the gym and I'm going to be the first person that gets sent to them. So I made that choice there. That again was very, very contextually specific. So if it was like, if that was the commercial gym, I'd look at the environment and go, yep, cool, let's get a niche. If there's one that's already apparently there that's not being targeted. And for like older RSL people who are a little bit beaten down, broken up, it's not really other rehab them, to be perfectly frank, they're not complex injuries, they're just overuse and they do the same thing every day for most people. And I was very similar to. I was actually, I would, I would echo your sentiments totally. I didn't believe in niching in general in commercial gyms at all. I still don't. Unless there's a context where the gym has that environment right there, has that population right there. And I would say all the time is like, you don't need a niche. You don't need a niche. You don't need a niche if you're running in. If you're in person commercial gym, you should be able to help 95% of people get 10% better no matter what they want. Because the elite people, all you have, the elite athletes type stuff, all you have to do to get them better is not break them. They'll get better. The bodybuilders and stuff like that, they just need, they're going to get better anyway. They just need time. It's time is the only thing that gets them better. Rehab people again, everyone's got a little bit of injury type stuff or a little bit of movement stuff. You don't need to be exquisite at that and an expert to help most people because if you've got enough knowledge to help, you know most people there with some basic stuff that will apply to multiple populations. So yeah, and also from a perspective of if you do decide to one day go into your own private facility, whether semi private or one on one private or do online, the skill set that you learn in terms of communication, being personal, charismatic and being able to talk to everyone is going to help improve your sales for running your own stuff so much more than anything else you could possibly do. Because where else besides a commercial gym can you get paid to talk to the 40 year old male exec who's working, who's like working 60 hours a week and you know, just needs a fast time efficient workout to get his job done to then dealing with a mother who's struggling with the stress of kids and they've just done the school drop off and they're there at 9:30 and it's the best, you know, it's the hour of me time per week to the retiree, to the young person who's like feels a lack of confidence is coming to the gym to build that there's no other place where you can actually learn to talk effectively and communicate with those groups of people. So I think not having a niche unless it's absolutely right there in front of you and no one's tapping it, the best idea that you can have.

Yeah, completely agree. And then if we flip that into the specifically for the online space I would, I would assume, and I'm just curious on your opinion on this, is it absolutely necessary to have a niche in the online space?

I wouldn't say it's absolutely necessary. It will depend on who you want to work with as well. So I think it's, there's always that question of like, well use the most successful online businesses there like ABT James Smith, affordable coaching and stuff like that. They don't Have a niche, do they? It's weight loss. It's hardly a niche. Right. Weight loss, is that a niche? No, it's what 95% of people are wanting. So I don't think it's necessary to have a niche as such. I think having a niche makes it easier to get your voice out there and communicate to a certain people. So if you want your business to grow on scale and you want to be a volume based thing, it's the solve the problems that the majority of people want solved. They want to feel a little better, they want to lose a little bit of weight, they don't want to be in pain. Solve those particular problems and make it, you know, do it in a funny, attention grabbing way or providing more value than other people. And you'll get people signed up. If you happen to fall into a particular avatar, like you are the avatar, that works out really, really nicely as well. So there's a couple of different ways I kind of break it down into the five A's. I did this and I can't remember it. You can be the aspiration online where it's like you are the person that you, your audience wants to be. And if you are that person is probably a pretty good thing to lean into that. So my client I was talking about earlier, she's, you know, tall, bond, good shape, goes out on the weekend, lean into it. She made way more money when she started posting out, posting pictures of her going out for drinks on the weekend with her friends. If you are the authority in the space, then yeah, you definitely need, if you want to be the authority, then you definitely need a niche. So you're the technical expert in say bodybuilding type stuff and that's who you want to work with, like for a bodybuilding coach. If you want to work with comp prep, if you're not talking about, you know, very specific topics there and you're talking about, you know, building a better relationship with food, bodybuilders are going to ignore you. You're not going to sign those people up. If you are looking at aspiration and being the avatar like for yourself, like so if I got one student who went from 190, 180 kilos to 90 kilos, I was like, dude, you're the avatar. Like you're the avatar. Like you can show people who are in that situation what is actually possible. Lean into that. That's where you need to lean. And you know, he's been on TV from it and stuff like that, like had to tell his story on Things, which is really cool. So you don't need to do it, but if you have an opportunity to do it, I think it can be more beneficial.

Yeah. And I think a lot of the time when people are choosing a niche, it's. They've previously been that person. For example, like for that person, like obviously weight loss is probably going to be their niche to a degree. Or if they're a mum, they might want to help mums. If they're into sports, they probably want to help sports people. That was really good. That was really insightful. Um, if you were to, you know, let's just say for example, PTs that are kind of just qualified, what would your advice be to them in terms of improving their knowledge? Where would you go to? Would you be like articles? Would it be textbooks? Would it be anything specific that you would suggest to them to become the best trainer possible?

Another good question. So I had this conversation with another Dylan Fowler, another person in the space the other day because me and Dylan talk a lot. We fight, we, we bitch at each other a lot basically over. I like, you don't need weight releases on your squats, bro. Calm down, let's relax. I'm, I'm. I wouldn't say I'm a minimalist when it comes to training tech. I just, I just tell him I'm stronger than him with less, with less stuff and it's majorly mean to him. We would both say the best thing you do would go into commercial gym for three years and train every single person that you possibly could. The experience that you get like under the bar, so to speak, or like, you know, some skin in the game is incomparable. And then I would probably, if this is purely on skill development and being really good, I would then find this like a private training facility that trains, has the people that you want to train and go in there and work there and watch what the people are doing. I think people really underestimate the amount of mentoring opportunities that there are in these spaces and opportunities to learn. So I think most people now, textbooks don't work. Attention spans are low, time is money and a lot of time you've got to take the textbook knowledge and then you can go to convert that into real life knowledge. And it can be very, very tricky to do that. So for example, undulating periodization or like looking at deloads and stuff like that and how they apply the periodization really don't work with general population clients ever. Life deloads them all the time. I'm not, I can't go to gym today. The kid's sick. Cool. Guess what? You got to deload. Problem solved. So I think that's skin in the game. Getting under the bar yourself and doing that stuff is really, really useful. And I would probably recommend before getting a mentor. And this is like totally like, you know, typical to me doing what I do. I'd actually get like a real life coach first in a couple of different disciplines that you're interested in because there's no other way to learn better in what we do. So like I coach, I coach clients in multiple continents. People always wonder why that, like they asked me, why don't you ever give me Olympic lifts? And I'm like, because I can't, I can't, I can't teach you. I can't see you doing Olympic lift unless you film it. It's going to be really hard for me to help you get better. And all my clients can literally vouch for this. And they'll say, Paul's really annoying. Hey, ask for video all the time because I want to see how they do their stuff. So I would go spend three years in the commercial in a commercial facility, which is exactly what I did. Not that I was intending to do that, just how it was. And then I would spend two years in like a privately owned facility where they have like a real degree of expertise and like a reputation for getting good results. And then from there you have enough skin in the game and enough time to know what you truly want to specialize in. Have you read Cal Newport? So good they can't ignore you.

Oh, I haven't actually.

Basically the whole idea has been really good and then they can't ignore you, right? So it's an expertise based book. And he basically says that. And it's a really interesting one here, a really interesting point. He's like, passion isn't, isn't something you have at the beginnings. Passion is something you earn. Okay, so when I started off training people in the gym, like I was 21, 22 years old, right? No 21, 22 year old male is passionate about doing rehab for old people from an rsl. Like no one, you know, everyone goes inside. I'm really interested in bodybuilding or sports or, you know, I'm really interested in that. Passion comes from expertise over time. Like I would probably say when you got into this industry, like you do a lot of business coaching now, you probably didn't know that much about sales and marketing. The first, like, you know, first five days in industry, you probably didn't imagine yourself, your first two months, actually becoming a mentor and teaching people how to do that stuff. In your first six months of working, you built that passion. And as you built that expertise over time and you found out, you know what, I'm actually really. I'm better at this than I am. Or maybe not me better. I'm more interested in that. I find this more involving and I find it more engaging. It's more rewarding, blah, blah, Whatever it is, you build that passion over time rather than come into it with an ideas. Because most of the young coaches I speak to, they come with an idea of what they want to do, and then after, like, you know, three months, they're like, oh, I don't actually really like this stuff. That's cool. So that's why I say, like, spend five if you want to do it for a long time. There's nothing wrong with, like, spending five years, like, particularly if you're like 20 and starting and working out, because you can still get well paid, you can still make a good amount of money, and you build a skill set that will basically apply for the rest of your life in terms of, like, if you have the skill sets of communication, being personable, good interpersonal skills, and marketing and sales, you can make money no matter what you do.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I think five years in the field, then you decide what you want to be passionate with, and then you can do extra study.

Love it. Well said. And if people want to follow along on your journey or work with you in the future, where's the best place to find you or connect with you?

I'm so old. Probably Facebook. I was gonna say. I was gonna say snail mail, but then it's like, no, I'm moving. Generally Facebook or Instagram, the best. So I have a company, we're called the Ascend Collective, where we do multiple things. Like, we do some business coaching. We actually do business coaching in multiple industries outside of fitness, but we have all our fitness education stuff in there. But probably Paul Meldrum on Facebook or Instagram, I think. I didn't know what my Instagram is. I've got, like, a business one, and it's called Ver. Paul Meldrum. There you go. So Paul Meldrum or Paul Meldrum, Facebook, Instagram. Easiest places to find me. I'm very responsive on them.

Awesome. Thank you so much for the conversation. It was very insightful.

No worries. Thanks, Matt. Appreciate it.

No worries.