In this personal anecdote, the speaker recounts his experience running a gym and promoting a top trainer to a manager position, raising his salary from about $25,000 to $45,000. After six months of success, the new manager requests to return to being a trainer, fully aware that this means a roughly 50% pay cut. When the speaker asks why, the trainer simply says he would rather be "poor" than stay in a role that doesn’t make him happy. The speaker is stunned, respects the decision but cannot fully understand it. Ten years later, they reunite, and the former trainer appears genuinely happy, reinforcing the idea that personal fulfillment can outweigh financial gain. The speaker reflects on the contrast between money and happiness, acknowledging the trainer’s lasting contentment as a powerful testament to choosing passion over pay.
Chapters
My first gym ever, I had my first manager who worked there and he was a trainer. He was awesome, best trainer I ever had, and I promoted him to manager. And with that pay raise, he went from something in the neighborhood of like $25,000 a year as a trainer paid by session to getting a salary of like $45,000 a year, which for me was a ton of money at the time when I was paying somebody else. Right. And he did it for 6 months, crushed it, did an amazing job. And he said, hey man, can I talk to you after work today? I was like, yeah, sure, man, what's up? Like, you're like, you're doing great, whatever. He says, um, hey, I, um, I don't, I don't want to be, I don't want to be manager anymore. And I was like, what do you mean, you're quitting? He's like, no, no, I, I just, I just want to be a trainer. And I was like, but I mean, but you realize your, your pay would get cut in half, like that, like that doesn't really make sense. And he just looked at me and I still remember this to this day. Looked at me, he's like, I'll just be poor then. And I, and I, it was like, it was like, it was like a, it was like a bomb detonated. I was like, and I looked at it and I was, I was literally speechless. Then I just said, I respect it, but I will never understand it. And the thing is, is that he is to this day, I got to see him 10, I got to see him 3 weeks ago, first time in like 10 years. He was then the happiest person I ever met. And today, or when I just saw him, just as happy. And he's like, dude, I mean, I can't believe that we were starting that gym and you were at the floor. And, you know, we were getting some of those old stories. He's like, look what you have, man, all this stuff. And I was like, dude, you won. Like, I'm still trying to catch up to you.
