*Deep breath*
Okay
This will be easiest to do through typing the condensed story.
In 2004ish, I was 17 years old and probably around 125 pounds. I decided I wanted to stop losing all my backyard wrestling matches and began working out. I started doing fitness magazine type workouts, which meant I trained biceps and abs.
In 2006, I was a freshman in college and learned that I should probably train my entire body. I went through a short stint with machines in the gym before I discovered CrossFit and thought I was on the fastrack to my goals. I wasn’t. I stuck with it for about a year and a half, doing the daily workouts on their website. I gained a little strength and muscle, but in the way people say they “read a book” because they had Siri narrate the Clifnotes version of it to them.
In 2010, my wife married me despite me having the physique of Gumby.
In 2011, I was a seminary student who had just recently begun training with barbells and dumbbells. I was seeing the most progress I’d ever seen.
In 2012, my wife and I learned our first daughter, Maura Jade, was on the way. I was a full-time grad student working part-time at Starbucks, and my wife had just lost her job. I freaked out and joined the Air Force to get on our feet financially.
In 2013, I went to basic training. I spent two months running, doing pushups and stupid situps, and losing what muscle I’d gained during my flailing progress thus far.
Later in 2013, I got to my job training for the military, where I had access to a gym and tons of food for free. I discovered the StrongLifts 5x5 program by some random guy named Medhi who sent me emails for years after but gave me far and away the most progress I’d ever attained. Over the next couple of years, I went from around 135 to about 180 pounds gaining around 45 pounds of muscle and at least quadrupling my strength and lifts. I did this by continuing to make progress on the main barbell lifts and some good accessories, and by eating enough calories and protein. I’ve eked out another 10 pounds since then to hang out around 190.
In 2016, my 4-year enlistment was almost over, and I wanted to help others with fitness so they didn’t take almost a decade to figure it out like I did. I started a blog and began posting.
In early 2017, I left the Air Force, warned everyone to unfollow me on social media if they didn’t want to see absurd amounts of fitness content, and have posted blogs, articles, videos, and podcasts on the topic almost every single day except Sundays since then. We moved to Brooklyn, NY, where I worked as a youth pastor and a Payroll Specialist while starting my online coaching business on the side. I signed my first few clients and began leading in-person fitness classes at my church. Oh, and somewhere in there I got my first certification.
From then until summer of 2019, I kept coaching people online as my side gig while I worked another full-time job. I did mostly 1-1 coaching. I started experimenting with different group models, some of which were more successful than others. I kept putting out consistent content, which is where almost all of my clients came from. During that time at the end of 2018, we moved to Kansas City.
In mid-2019, for the first time in my life, I got fired for being an awful salesman. It was very amicable, and if you ever decide to get fired, I recommend it going the way mine did. I knew it was probably coming at some point, and I was actually planning to leave and step out into self-employment totally six months later, but who knows if I would have done it?
My wife and I decided that rather than enter the job market again, it was time to do our own thing. I started ramping up the coaching business to make it my full-time income. I grew my online clientele and somehow also started coaching some people in person in the leaky, disgusting basement of my rental house. I started a used furniture business on the side to close the gap between what the coaching was bringing in and what we needed to pay the bills. I continued to grow both businesses.
In summer of 2020, an awesome apartment complex reached out to me about being the trainer at their gym, and I wound up doing it because the gym is amazing, and it isn’t a “job.” It’s an independent contractor deal where I get to lead awesome classes there and still run all my own businesses.
This brings the story current, where I can finally share why I’m making the decision to step away from online fitness coaching and into some other things. There are three reasons:
Over the past year and a half of being fully self-employed, I’ve had freedom to find my own groove in business completely unrestricted by the policies or schedules of other people. I’ve grown far more professionally than I did in the nearly 15 years before working in restaurants, the military, and corporate America. I’ve learned what my true strengths are and how to play to them, and I’ve learned what my weaknesses are and how to slowly improve them while not emphasizing them in what I choose to pursue. I’ve learned what I actually value in life, and I’ve developed strategies on how to spend my time on those things. Online fitness coaching is amazing, but it isn’t fitting into that framework the way I thought it would, mainly for the other two reasons.
The online fitness industry is insanely saturated. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm believer in the fact that if you’re passionate, good at your job, and determined, then you will rise to the top over time. But in an age where everyone who goes keto and loses 12 pounds changes their Insta bio to “personal trainer” and starts selling a course or coaching program, the ramp to that success gets longer. The “sunk cost fallacy” is when a person continues a behavior or endeavor as a result of previously invested resources. Going back to learning the things I value, I’ve decided that just because I’ve spent 5 years on this doesn’t mean I should continue doing it. While I’ve certainly seen some success, it pales in comparison to what I could be seeing elsewhere (like my above CrossFit experience), and I’ve decided to spend my time on things that give a larger return on my time. This leads into my third reason.
I have discovered other things that I love doing equally as much for money as online fitness coaching AND that have a much larger return. Three of them, in fact. Two I’m already doing, and the third is what my online coaching is going to morph into. I’m running a very profitable online used (mostly vintage) furniture store, I’m coaching in-person indoor cycling classes (so I’m not stepping away from fitness, just online fitness), and I’m about to kick off my online time-management coaching business.
Let me briefly elaborate on the time-management piece and wrap this up.
Over my five years of fitness coaching, I’ve realized that probably the majority of people I work with don’t really have an issue with what to do fitness wise. Yes, they need a program to follow, motivation, accountability, coaching form, etc, but they get most of that over the course of a few short months of us working together.
The problem they really have is a time-management one. They make a plan for their fitness progress, but then other things steal the time, and they stay stuck. In a vocation where I literally see what a person eats all day, talk through their struggles every week, etc, I’ve come to really be able to understand how other people actually live their lives, and how different it could look if they put a few strategies in place.
I’m a time-management junkie myself, and I have created systems that work very well for me and can be customized to work for everyone. I’ve already been implementing aspects of this into some of my fitness clients’ plans with success. I know how to coach, I know how to manage time, and this business will be my blending of those two things.
Let me make a quick point of clarification here. I will not be a life coach, because I don’t presume to understand someone’s entire life and try to coach them in it. I certainly won’t be a business coach. I will literally be coaching people through managing their time so they can spend it on the things they value using nimble plans that change as they and their lives do.
Over the next month, I’ll be changing everything over and launching a new program. This will likely not be an indefinite time period like my fitness coaching has been, but probably a 5-week program we go through. Because while you can’t drop 30 pounds safely in five weeks, you CAN get a solid, working plan to manage your time.
Oh, and if you’re one of my clients reading this who has already paid/is already paying me for online fitness coaching, don’t worry! I’m still committed to what we have going until it naturally ends. I’m just not taking on new clients.
Thanks for reading this, and thanks so much for trusting me over these last five years to be a resource for you fitness progress! Oh, and if the time management coaching interests you, let me know! I’ll likely be running the first group at a very discounted rate in exchange for reviews as I kick it off. Love you all!
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