Matt Ryder turned down $800 a day to shoot camels in Australia, spent his savings traveling, and came home broke. A decade of odd jobs taught him that fitness knowledge meant nothing without sales skills. People skills, not expertise, determined success.
I was offered camel shooting in Northern Territory for $800 a day. Sort of considered it, then decided I got no beef with camels. No, me either. I was like, fuck camels. Like, it wasn't the hill I'm gonna die on, you know? Imagine the helicopter goes down. How'd fucking Matty die? Doing what he loved. Yeah, shooting camels. Um, so anyway, when I got out of the army, I spent all my money on travel. Came back completely broke. I didn't really have any marketable skills, and so there was a 10-year period where I was just always trying to find the next bout of money to pay bills. I was like, you know, I was never the fit guy, so I'll be a PT. Yeah, yeah. It seemed like a great idea. I was always taught in the personal training space. The more you learn, the more you earn. And I was like, well, I see some phenomenal PTs that are struggling and I see some shit ones that are killing it. The difference was they could talk to people. Pretty quickly learned that sales was a very necessary skill set for me to learn.
