Read this if you're a personal trainer (or want to be one)
Published: Tue, 03/22/16
There are so many trainers out there who are going to fail not because they aren't good trainers with exceptional fitness knowledge and expertise but rather because they suck at business.
A huge part of being a personal trainer is being able to sell yourself to attract new clients. Whether you like it or not if you're a personal trainer you're also in sales.
I've been reading a book called Intrinsic Excellence that my friend John DuCane from Dragon Door just released and it covers in depth the business side of being a personal trainer.
The Four Core Competencies covered in Intrinsic Excellence are:Technical Expertise, Customer Care, Sales and Business Development/Strategy. As the author puts it, "Mastery of your art cannot be confused with success in the profession." Most of those who fail as personal trainers fail because they mistake their necessary technical expertise as the principle predictor of financial success in their field. "Not so" is Rolando Garcia III’s response to this perception—and it holds true for almost any other profession.
Technical expertise is at best only 25% of the success-formula… Without a thorough grounding in the other three core competencies, the trainer is doomed to mediocrity and will most likely not survive in the industry.
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Intrinsic Excellence not only provides a masterful exposition of the role and function of each core competency, but also weaves the four core competencies into a dynamic, interactive program—shot through with the flesh and blood tales of struggle and success within the trenches of the personal training world.
Most unique to Intrinsic Excellence is the insistence on a heart-based approach to the relationship with the customer—where every interaction is evaluated through the prism of a deep commitment to humanity, to self-worth and to leadership as inspirational partnership.
Personal training clients see their trainers anywhere up to 144 times a year—which is way more contact-time than with any other professional or, for that matter, most relatives. According to Rolando Garcia III, the personal trainer’s relationship with a client is therefore of immense potential significance. The personal trainer becomes an inspirational model that their customers aspire to emulate. The high-level personal trainer embodies that elusive alchemy of athleticism, intellect and singularity of purpose that is the cornerstone for success.
Rolando sees the personal trainer as having the power to represent a resurgent ideal: the self-possessed individual. Through fitness and exercise they have gained command of their life and they have a chance to effect that same transformation on their clients—a gift worth its weight in gold.
Rolando Garcia III makes a profound case for the Personal Trainer as a kind of modern day hero-in-waiting—with the dramatic potential to act as a primary Success Agent in their customers’ lives. Therefore, Intrinsic Excellence—as its title implies—is a philosophy of life-at-full-engagement, as much as it is a detailed battle plan for overcoming any challenge or realizing any long-held fitness dream…
Intrinsic Excellence has a wisdom-soaked authority to its advice—born from Rolando Garcia III’s evident experiential immersion in his subject matter, a fierce intelligence, a deep commitment to values and a heartfelt desire to help both his fellow trainers and his clients lead deeper, more fulfilled lives.
To absorb the life-lessons revealed with such generosity in Intrinsic Excellence is to stack the career deck in one’s favor—regardless of one’s profession. Intrinsic Excellence is at once a call-to-arms, a message of hope and a vision of the heights that can be achieved when heart marries science in the quest for a greater well-being.

Keep training hard,
Mike Westerdal
CriticalBench.com
P.S. This is a paperback book and has 200 pages. It's not an eBook.