Podcast Episode 10: Making a Business Out of Passion ft. Tyler Weader

Summary

‍Tyler Weader shares his journey of becoming a fitness entrepreneur, starting from his passion for strength and conditioning in middle school to working at various gyms and eventually opening his own training facility. He emphasizes the importance of building rapport and trust with clients, getting results, and creating a strong community and culture. Tyler also discusses the transition to online training during the COVID-19 pandemic and the significance of personalized programming and effective communication. He advises aspiring fitness entrepreneurs to take action, gain as much experience as possible, and continuously iterate and improve.

Our Favorite Words of Advice:

• "Take action now or take action yesterday."
• "Nothing is going to beat taking messy action."
• "Clients will buy online training because of you."

Takeaways

• Building rapport and trust with clients is crucial for success as a fitness entrepreneur.
• Getting results and creating a strong community and culture are key factors in growing a training facility.
• Transitioning to online training requires effective communication and personalized programming.
• Taking action, gaining experience, and continuously iterating are essential for aspiring fitness entrepreneurs.

Transcript:

Chris Alto (00:00.762)
How's everybody doing? This is Chris Alto with the Zipper podcast. Today we have Tyler Weader from Weader Performance. He is an independent strength coach, both in person and online. He's going to share his story of becoming an entrepreneur in the space. Tyler, thanks for coming on.

Tyler Weader (00:15.822)
Thanks Chris, really appreciate it.

Chris Alto (00:17.754)
Awesome. Cool. So you have a pretty cool story. I don't want to ruin anything. So I'm going to just hand it off to you and love to just hear a bit about your background and how you ended up where you are today being a fitness entrepreneur.

Tyler Weader (00:31.342)
Yeah, I mean we can take it all the way back to middle school, really the first thing getting into strength and conditioning.

I used to play basketball and skateboard and then back in middle school I discovered the weight room and with skateboarding you happen to fall a lot and one of the best ways to not get hurt when you fall is to get stronger and improve your muscles and your range of motion and what you can do. So I started getting into the gym back in middle school to both get better at skateboarding but to also get better at basketball and really wanted to be able to dunk.

And so my buddy and I used to go to the Bucknell weight room in Pennsylvania. We had no idea what we were doing, but things worked out pretty well. And I really fell in love with it back then. And then moving on to high school, really for me, the biggest thing with playing basketball was the fact that I was, I loved the gym too. So I might not have been the best basketball player, but I was definitely one of the weight room guys for the team. And I ended up going to Penn State back in 2011. I got my bachelor's degree in kinesiology.

But funny story, I actually started off as an engineering major in my first year and ended up switching over to kinesiology in my sophomore year because I wanted to do something that I was actually passionate about. Towards my freshman years, I really realized that this is something that I'm passionate about and it's something that I could do for a career. So my senior year at Penn State, we had to do an internship in our final semester. And with this, I was able to get an internship with one of the Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning Thrive Gyms in State College, Pennsylvania.

and this is a great way to get experience before getting into the workforce and get something on your resume too. So what's nice is that I've been able to start training people since back in 2014 and one of the best parts of that was being exposed to so many different people whether it was young athletes at middle school or high school, adults anywhere from ages 21 and up.

Tyler Weader (02:24.782)
And as well as even like training older adults in their 70s or so too. I think being exposed to such a large population of people when I was young really set a good base for me because number one, you have to be able to build a good rapport with those people. You know, if you're 50 years old, it's going to be tough to trust in a 21 year old trainer, right?

But at the same time, I had to be diverse and be able to find ways to connect and energize these younger athletes too. So it really exposed me to a wider variety of people and it really just helped me get my feet wet and accumulate some hours training and coaching. So from there, I was hired on full time right after I graduated. I stayed there and stayed college for about a year and a half.

And again, doing the same kind of thing, running sports performance training sessions, running adult functional training sessions, and even working with this group of older people in their seventies too. So just accumulating a ton of different hours following pretty much the Mike Boyle strength and conditioning model, which if you're not familiar with that, it's got a good base with aerobic and anaerobic conditioning at the start or at the start with the end of a workout.

a lot of focus on mobility and dynamic warmups as well as some good strength exercises. And it's more of a small group fashion in a small group atmosphere. So it wasn't really that one -to -one type of training, but it wasn't like the large group where everybody's doing the same exact thing. Everyone basically had small variations of a typical program for that given day, which was great because at the same time, like you're giving this individualized one -on -one instruction, but you're also managing multiple people in a room at one time.

And I think that's a really big different skill is working one -on -one with somebody versus being able to manage a room with different people too. So briefly after I graduated, I got my NSCA CSCS right after that. And like I said, stayed there at the Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning Thrive location through about late 2016. And then I ended up getting hired by this franchise out of Pennsylvania called Power Train Sports and Fitness.

Tyler Weader (04:27.15)
And at the time, the owner of the company was the now extra strength coach of the Baltimore Ravens, Steve Saunders. And this company at the time, I believe they had 26 different locations and their, their big niche and claim to fame was the small group personal training. So basically with power strain, everybody, sorry, basically with power strain, it would be a three to one client to trainer ratio. So during every session, every single person has a completely customized program.

but you're bouncing back and forth between three people each hour. And that's really high energy. That's a lot of work. But at the same time, like you're, I'm putting one person through a set, I'm coaching them up on how it goes, I'm making sure they have the right technique and I'm pushing them to during their rest periods, I'm flipping over to other people as well. So it's kind of like a mix of that one -on -one style of training along with being able to still manage a room of people. So the really exciting part about this was that

Powertrain was opening up a brand new location in Rockville, Maryland, right outside of the DC area. And I was living in central Pennsylvania at the time. So me and this other guy, Brian Paulson, who now works in Michigan under PowerStrength Training Systems, we both moved out to Rockville, Maryland, and we opened up Powertrain Rockville completely from scratch. We were there from the build out from basically square one. And what was nice is that we were partnered up.

in a sports facility with Koa Sports, who was a local nonprofit that did baseball and basketball training, field hockey, and a whole bunch of other sports too. They built this really cool facility that had a basketball court along with a parent lounge and batting cages and like a social area. And then right next to the basketball court was a chain link fence. And our gym was directly on the other side of that fence. So there was really, really good cross traffic there. You could see everybody through that fence.

And all the parents would be wondering like, okay, my kids are here for sports. You know, why don't we go over to the gym and work on strength and conditioning? So some really good, really good cross traffic there, but just backing up a little bit, Brian and I had opened that spot in late 2016 in December or so after we were trained up quite a bit in Ashburn, Virginia and Delos locations. And starting that gym from scratch, completely zero was such a great experience at a young age. I mean, I was 23 at the time and I got exposed to essentially being a business owner without

Tyler Weader (06:42.446)
any of the risk. I think opening up your own studio tends to be a large risk financially. So people don't usually do that until a little bit later on. And what's nice is that we had the power train franchise backing us so that the whole investment was there. Everything equipment wise was taken care of. It was really on us to number one, grow the business. Number two, train people. Number three, create a culture. And number four, really manage the P &Ls and do everything right. So.

I'm super grateful to have that experience at such a young age because not many people get that. They're either exposed to like just training in a corporate environment or they might be doing like just sales or something like that, but we did everything. So I'll keep going along with this. We opened up in December of 2016 and then I was hired on as the assistant performance director. So it was me and this other guy who both weren't from the area and we had to grow the business from scratch. So it was on us to

grow our network to meet people, to meet local sport coaches, as well as other business owners. And kind of like what I mentioned, it was really nice that we had the COA sports business in there originally because there was so much good cross traffic. But I'm really proud of how we were both able to move to a brand new area where we pretty much knew nobody and grew an absolutely thriving facility. So over the course of the first year, we grew from zero to about, I believe it was about 80 or so clients. And then

After in March of 2018, Brian ended up leaving. So I took over as director and the gym really ended up skyrocketing from there. Just like in a nutshell, we grew from zero up to 200 plus clients that are at our busiest. At one point I had 20 plus coaches on my team as well as four interns at the time. And we just grew to be such a large name in the DC area while I was there. And backing up a little bit, I don't mean to...

had so much stuff about the story here. We ended up doing a lot of NFL combine training too, because like I mentioned, the owner of the franchise, Steve, had a lot of contacts in the NFL and he was familiar with agents who had college football players that wanted to make it to the next level, but they might've needed some training for the NFL combine. So back in 2017 and 2018, we did NFL combine training too with a group of six guys who...

Tyler Weader (08:59.15)
We're all focused on getting in the best shape as possible over the course of about 12 to 15 weeks or so. We were trying to get them stronger, trying to get them faster, working on their 40 yard dash times, bench press tests, all that sorts of stuff. So I was able to be exposed to such a high level of training at such a young age. It was, it was fantastic. And then on the flip side, kind of like what I mentioned at Thrive before, we also train young athletes and adults too. So I was working with middle schoolers that have never touched a weight in their life.

Working with high school athletes who were studs and going to D1 schools like I said at potential NFL players and then adults anywhere from age 25 to 70 or so we had such a wide variety of clients that it makes you into such a good coach because you have to be able to conform to what is in front of you and adjust your style to that training session and a big thing with with a new business is that with whenever your books aren't really full you're gonna have a weird schedule so like

At certain times we might push three different clients to be at the same time slot. So I could be working with a 12 year old as my first client. The second client could be 18. And then I could also have like a 50 year old in the same session. I'm managing all three of those clients at one time. So that's going to have me have to adjust my style for three different people in one session, which is tough. It takes a lot of energy, but that experience was just so great for me because I was able to mold myself to whatever challenge was in front of me.

I could go on about this story forever, by the way. So, back in.

Chris Alto (10:28.186)
Well, quick question on that. So when you have to be so dynamic in terms of like, obviously they have different needs, different personalities, how did you navigate that? What were some major learnings you had for folks who might be just getting started and trying to figure out who is my ideal client and then how do I get that sort of experience?

Tyler Weader (10:46.318)
Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing is building report and trust. So a lot of times when you're younger, it's going to be hard to build that report to a degree, I think, with older clients, just because they're generally going to trust somebody who's been through the challenges they've been in their life. They're going to trust somebody who knows what it might be like to have kids or a busy job or whatever it might be, right? So you have to have the authority and the knowledge and be able to show that to them in a way that makes sense to them and to their goals. So for example, if you have somebody who

has knee pain, you have to be able to both relate to that empathetically, but also show them ways to get out of that pain and hopefully get results with that too. A lot of the times, if you can get results with people and do it in a way that connects with them empathetically, then you're gonna build that trust and build up that report and the referrals should come in. But then on the flip side too, if you're training a younger athlete or even like somebody in high school too, you almost have to be that role model that they look up to.

you might be flipping off that knowledgeable trainer switch to where you could explain every single biomechanical term, but you're not gonna really explain that to somebody young in high school. They're focused on getting better for their sport. They wanna have somebody that they can look up to and somebody who's gonna push them every time that they're in the gym. So being able to switch between those two styles I think is very useful for that.

Chris Alto (12:06.682)
makes a ton of sense and just taking a step back as well. So obviously you had some huge success with the franchise. What do you attribute to the growth? Was it mostly word of mouth or were there any other growth strategies that you were using that were particularly effective?

Tyler Weader (12:22.382)
I would say three things contributed really well. Number one would be word of mouth for sure. Our first client actually came from doing a physical mailer, which I personally don't think that those work too well nowadays, but apparently they do.

So our first client came in from the mailer and then it all just snowballed from there. And I think number two reason for growing was getting results too. So what we did was a really great job of tracking client progress, quantifying it really well, taking pictures and being able to show clients of how they get good results and actually getting them to where they want to be. I think in training, this is a little bit of a side topic, but.

People tend to have their own biases and they want to push people towards certain things. So for example, if you're married to the squat, bench press and deadlift, but somebody just wants to lose 20 pounds, it might potentially not matter what those numbers are for a certain lift. Yes, they can be means to an end, but at the end of the day, this person is a bit more concerned about reaching their personal goal. So it was on us to be able to find the most appropriate means to get to the end that they want, but at the same time, make it an enjoyable process, but also...

build up and this is number three is building up a good community and like a good name for yourself too. We had a really strong culture or facility. So it was really high energy and honestly it was very intense training as well. So we were kind of known to be that intense training gym that had the music blasting. Our coaches were loud. We were yelling across the gym. It was super high energy. There might've been like a baseball practice or basketball game going on too. So it was loud, but like the whole time that you're there, it was a super effective workout too.

And we even like on top of that did a great job of documenting things on social media. And back in 2017 or so, I don't think it was as big at that time. I mean, nowadays fitness is all over social media, but back then I think we did a really great job of just getting in pictures and videos with our clients, creating a name for ourselves and highlighting our clients' achievements on both like stories and posts and things like that too. You know, if somebody was having a big training session, setting PRs, we were quick to take a video or a photo of that, congratulate them and get that up.

Tyler Weader (14:24.942)
I think that made a really big impact on our local community.

Chris Alto (14:28.73)
Yeah, because you're essentially getting access to all of their followers, right? Because likely they're going to share it to all of their friends is pretty high, right? And so their friends are probably into the same sort of stuff. So that makes a lot of sense. And then mailers. So that's interesting that that worked. And then referrals are always the best. That makes a lot of sense, but it just sounds like you had a great product and it spread once it started to snowball and also keeping into consideration to your point, what are the client's goals versus, you know, what are your biases? I like to.

I like to crush bench press, but that's not really something that someone who's trying to look good for their wedding cares about.

Tyler Weader (15:04.142)
Right, and to build off of the second point there too, with training athletes, a lot of times if you get one kid in from a school and that person has a great experience, it's easy to get the rest, right? They're gonna tell the rest of their team, they're gonna wanna try to get their best friends to come into there. So that was a pretty quick way to snowball, but another way that people don't really consider is that those kids have parents, and a lot of the times if those parents are just dropping their kids off at the gym and going and doing whatever, grocery shopping for that hour,

why not get the parents to train too? So there's a really good potential there to get the parents in and then eventually those parents have a good experience. They end up seeing how good the training is for their kids because they experience it themselves. So they're so much more likely to refer their coworkers, their friends and family and things like that. So we kind of took that two -pronged approach in getting in with the school and the kids there. Once we show them a great experience and get results, we're able to build up to the family and the friends from there.

Chris Alto (15:57.049)
Great, makes a lot of sense. All right, I'll let you keep going on the story. I just had to ask those questions.

Tyler Weader (16:03.001)
Yeah, I mean, let's we'll dial back to to 2018. So like I said, I took over as as director of powertrain Rockville. He ends it up. So the way that it worked is we would have typically anywhere from two to four full time staff members per location, right? We would have a director as well as an assistant director and potentially a full time performance coach. But on top of that, we had hourly performance coaches to write.

And it's because we had so many clients that we needed to be able to train these people. So a big thing that also I think contributed to my growth at a young age was being able to build a team and a culture. So with training, I think it's really easy to think about just yourself and you could be a great coach too, but being able to build that into a system that's repeatable with other people is a big skill. And with that, you have to find what I like to call our three sport athletes. So

Number one, they're a good trainer. And number two, they're able to talk to people and have good social skills and be empathetic along with people. And number three, they're also able to build a business and sell. Finding people like that is extremely rare in my opinion. A lot of times it's very easy to find a good trainer who can sell, but they might not be able to talk to people too well. Or you could find somebody who's a really good trainer, but absolutely hates to sell. So finding those three sport athletes is really key. And then developing those people towards their strengths was really large as well.

So from there we grew to have our team at the peak was about 20 coaches in the summer of 2019. And like I said, we had five interns at the time. So we had, sorry, four interns at the time. And we had some good local connections with other universities. Actually had a good connection with Penn State too, where I went to school at. So we were able to connect with local kinesiology departments and offer internship opportunities. And fortunately from there we could get somebody in who was a great coach.

you see that good potential in them and a lot of times it's just a willingness to learn, an ability to take notes and be humble and also somebody who's gonna put forth the effort. Because training is a hard thing to do at the end of the day. You're on your feet for a lot of hours, especially managing three clients during one session. It's nuts, it's a lot of energy. And doing that for the typical trainer schedule anywhere from like five in the morning, you're pretty busy until...

Tyler Weader (18:22.574)
11 or noon and then you might be dead until three or so typically and then you're busy again from three or four and so like eight at night. That's a tough schedule to do and keep that energy up. So when you find somebody like that who can manage that schedule and who treats things like an entrepreneur, you want to keep them around as much as you can. And I think that's what I did a really good job of when we would have a good coach, we'd be able to, we'd be quick to push them up to a next level and give them more responsibilities and kind of turn them into that entrepreneur who

is both able to grow the business but also deliver a really good training experience. So from 2019, obviously COVID came around in 2020, which was an interesting time. We ended up having to close the gym for a few months and we ended up training the majority of our clients online, which was really interesting, training through Zoom for, I think it was about four or so months there.

And what was nice is that about 80 % of our client base stayed with us and continued paying, which definitely helped keep us afloat at the time. Again, I didn't own the facility, but at the end of the day, like this was my job, right? So I'm going to do whatever I can to, to maintain this client load and to also just keep people getting results too. So a lot of people they were working out at home, they might've had a nice home gym. So we were fortunate to be able to train them through Zoom, which was a really interesting era. And then we ended up.

Opening back up later on there in 2020 and we continued growing the gym. But from there I got an opportunity to help manage our Frederick, Maryland location, which was a really brand new location that had just launched right before March of 2020. So this is when I became a regional director where I was really overseeing the sales, the P &Ls, the teams, the culture, obviously training to multiple locations as well. So we had a location up in Frederick in a lacrosse and soccer facility.

And from there, we had to grow a team. We had to grow the business. And our goal was to be profitable. So from there, continued training and managing these two locations. Come early 2021, I got the opportunity to become regional director of managing our Ashburn and Dulles, Virginia locations on top of that. So I really had four locations under me. And my goal was to create good teams there who could get great training results, who were able to follow good processes.

Tyler Weader (20:37.39)
make sure everything is systemized really well so that it was easy to follow and easy to apply. That way we have a good business model that could expand to other locations, right? For me, in the back of my head, my goal was always like, let's open more gyms. Whenever I first started as the assistant director, I wanted to be the director, right? Whenever I was the director, I wanted to be a regional director. When I was a regional director, I wanted to be a president or whatever that might be. I was always kind of hungry for that next level and I wanted the company to grow, even though it wasn't.

my company, I still took ownership of everything that I did. And I think that was a really big difference maker back then. So ended up managing these four different facilities through 2021, towards the end of 2020, or sorry, towards October or September of 2021. I ended up actually seeking a bit of a life change, kind of my wife and I wanted to get out of the area then. And honestly with you, I was a little burned out at the time.

With training, like I mentioned earlier, it's a really tough schedule where you're working super early in the morning. You're working potentially like 10 to 12 plus hour days very consistently. You're working late at night too, so you're not getting home until like eight or so o 'clock at night. And in some of the facilities, we didn't even have air conditioning. So it was pretty tough. And so I ended up seeking a change in my career. I ended up getting a job as a director of business development for manufacturing.

technology company called Variable out here in Phoenix, Arizona. So as I mentioned before, we were living in the Maryland area, but we had never been west of the Mississippi River. So my wife and I ended up taking a huge leap of faith. We ended up moving across the country for a state we had never been to, to Phoenix, Arizona, where it's always sunny. We love it now. And actually got out of fitness completely for close to two years or so. But the thing is, while I was there,

I kept training myself, right? I kept in contact with all of my ex clients and I honestly ended up trying to do like, I honestly ended up wanting to work with clients online or in person in some capacity on the side, but I never really had the time or the energy after my job because the way that I work is I put 100 % effort into whatever job I'm doing. So I tried really hard and I did pretty darn well at this tech sales job managing a team of five plus people at certain points.

Tyler Weader (22:54.766)
and did great with this. But the thing is, I just couldn't really sell something that I wasn't too passionate about. Like at the end of the day, if I'm not working for something that I really, really care about, it's just not a good match for me. So I ended up wanting to train people on the side, wanting to do something. And towards, what was it, towards June of last year in 2023, we had some, there were some issues with the team at work, but I don't need to go into that. But June of 2023,

Ended up wanting to make a change. I decided, you know, now is the time. I was, I was 30 years old. We didn't have any big commitments here. Didn't have any big risks. So I was considering why not try to go out and do my own thing. Training. There's a lot of other people who are successful doing this. It's a very possible thing to do, especially in the Phoenix and Scottsdale area. It's such a very health and fitness focused area here. So decided to quit my job completely one day and start my own training business, working with people, both online and in person.

That's where I am now. I'm self -employed. I currently have a book of about 25 or so different clients. And I'm very fortunate to have a lot of clients that I previously worked with out East who have gotten good results with me, had a great experience, and they want to work with me online too. So I've been very fortunate to have some previous connections and being able to work with them ever since June of last year. And then starting January of this year, I was able to start training in person too. There's a couple of different locations here called Fitness 48.

which is an independent trainer studio where they only allow independent trainers to run their business out of, which is nice because you don't have that competition for equipment or typical gym traffic too. So I started training folks in person here and getting the full entrepreneurship experience, trying to grow the business and really kind of bootstrapping everything by myself. I've been a little slow to take on additional, not necessarily responsibilities, but I've been...

I've been trying to figure everything out myself first and giving it my own try before outsourcing a lot of work. And I'm starting to realize that it's super important to systemize stuff whenever you work for yourself because it has to be quick processes where you can decide what your priorities are pretty quickly for that day and really just triage everything every single day. What's the most important thing that's gonna move the needle? What are the quick tasks that have to be done every single day?

Tyler Weader (25:11.662)
and get those smaller rocks out of the way. That way you can focus on the bigger rocks and continue to grow the business and build things up sustainably long -term. So that kind of takes us to where we are here now. I know that was a pretty long story, but I think it's important to give that background because I was not, I didn't really go straight into being self -employed. I had a solid, close to 10 years of experience under my belt. I had a large roster of clients and connections too, and I think that made.

such a difference in going out on my own versus doing things without having any much experience before that.

Chris Alto (25:43.802)
Wow, that's pretty cool. So what, so it sounds like COVID kind of forced you to learn how to do the online versus the in -person. What were some major learnings that you've had that have made you more effective at training folks who aren't face -to -face with you?

Tyler Weader (25:59.406)
Yeah, and it definitely did. We had trained some people online before that. So we actually use the software called Team Boater. They're based out of the Maryland area too. And what we were able to do is essentially take our programs that we were really well known for in person and then translate them to online. So we typically before that, we did everything on paper. All of our programs would be written down on paper. Our clients wouldn't be able to see it or anything like that. But back in 2018, we transitioned over to doing everything digitally. So I figured why not just give our clients access to this stuff?

I don't think it's going to have them go away from our gym. I think it's actually going to have them get a better view at their progress and what they're doing each and every day. So through COVID, we were doing the Zoom sessions where we were actually training people online through the computer screen. Had a really great experience with that because it was just, it was different, right? People weren't really used to that. And we had to find ways to coach people effectively through a screen, which is totally different because you can't, you can't like touch somebody. You can't like, you know, do things.

for them, you can't put them in the right place. You have to find ways to be really good with your words as a coach versus being really good with your body language or just like I said, putting somebody in the right position, right? So that was a little bit different. I don't coach people through Zoom right now. I'll be honest with you, it's not my favorite thing to do, sitting there in front of a computer screen while someone works out. And then it's a tough way for them to work out too because they have to sit at their laptop in their home gym or whatever it might be.

But that being said, I think it developed my skills really well because you have to make it easy for the client and you have to make it translatable for them. If your program is super complicated and hard to read, your client's not going to want to do that. If your program is really simple, you can just click a button on your phone and you have things that are there that make sense in their own language, then they're going to respond a lot better. So you might have some fancy training program where you could be doing like tempos with contrast training with all this.

cool stuff, but if the client doesn't understand it, as well as the why behind it, I don't think it's going to work out too well for them. So it's on you as a coach to be able to communicate the why's behind your program, why you're choosing every single thing to do, get them comfortable with it, and then also just make it in a really easy to digest way. I think a lot of people who do online training, they kind of want to outsource their fitness choices, right? They're essentially just looking for somebody to, you know, hey, I want you to set this up.

Tyler Weader (28:23.246)
That way when I go to the gym, I can just click a button and do what it tells me, right? They don't want to have to think too much about this. Not all clients, so there's a lot of clients who are very into fitness and like to think about these things for sure. But for like general population people, they want to have that sort of outsource. So if you can make it simple and easy for them to follow, but also kind of give them ideas and educate them along the way, the whys behind it, why certain exercises are chosen, but then also deliver a really good personalized experience, I think has been super key for me.

you'll get great results and clients will stick around and you won't have to deal with the constant carousel of clients going in and coming out all the time, having to constantly run sales. If you can have a good consistent group of 20 to 40 clients who are staying with you for a very long period of time, you have a very sustainable business model right there. And I think a lot of that can come down to keeping things personalized as well. I know in the fitness industry, a lot of the talk nowadays might be like potential AI automations and trying to outsource

Communication with your clients, but I think a lot of times clients will buy online training because of you and you can solve their problems Versus you know a lot of the marketing speak might be like trying to address their problem and show you how to solve it and show them the whys behind that but they're also going to buy into you and if they're not communicating with you on a consistent basis, you know, they're there because they buy into you and they believe that you can help them solve the results. So if you're not

communicating with them on a consistent basis or they're not feeling like a really personalized experience, I don't think they're gonna stick around as long.

Chris Alto (29:55.194)
Makes sense. And you mentioned burnout was something that made you have a bit of a career transition. How did you avoid that this time? Or any tips for avoiding burnout or getting reinvigorated and wanting to come back and continue to train people?

Tyler Weader (30:12.494)
Yeah, so what's nice is as an entrepreneur, you can control your schedule to a degree. Obviously, as an entrepreneur, you're pretty much working 24 seven, but you do have control over your training hours. So a lot of times the in -person training hours can be the most tiring things for a lot of people. And the hours tend to be weird, right? If somebody is working a nine to five job, they're either going to be in the gym at like 6 a or they're going to be in the gym at like 6 p which are tough times for you to work.

So I'm fortunate to be able to control my schedule to really only train clients between the hours of 6 a and about noon or so right now. I have a couple people that I'll train at around like 3 p on some days too, but I don't do anything in the evening, which has been really nice. Is that holding me back in my business development? Yeah, probably, but is it keeping me sane? Definitely. I don't have this tough to manage schedule. And what's nice is I have about close to like a 75 -25 split, about 75 % online clients and 25 % in person.

So people think that online clients aren't a lot of work, but yes, they are. They're actually, in my opinion, more work than somebody in person because of the programming and the constant communication with them. But what's nice is that you're able to kind of batch that work and do that at different times of the day. I think for me personally, the biggest time sync right now is writing programs because I do everything super customized and I like to have it so it's well written out for people so they can understand it. So being able to batch that work into certain time blocks is super useful.

getting things done all at the same time. And you're always gonna have programs to write, right? So it's gonna be a constant battle that's never done. So you're almost gonna sometimes be happy to, be happy to, sorry, sometimes you're gonna have to be okay with having untied loose ends, right? And if you're an entrepreneur, it's never gonna feel like everything is done. There's always gonna be something that could be done better. And you have to be able to sit with yourself and be okay with that. I know that you're just constantly improving day by day, little by little.

Chris Alto (32:05.05)
a lot of sense. And another thing that I was thinking about, you got a degree in kinesiology. How important has that been to making you an effective trainer? Or did it really just give you the baseline and you learned a lot of stuff on your own?

Tyler Weader (32:22.414)
I think a bit of a combination of both. Nowadays, there is a large sector of people that likes to bash on degrees to a degree saying that you don't need it. But that being said, I do think it sets a really good foundation of knowledge for what you're going to apply, right? At the end of the day, getting experience has absolutely been number one for me, working with people, but also it's super important to understand the reasonings and the mechanisms behind why certain things work a certain way.

And really a lot of times with getting a degree, there's going to be some form of practical experience there, whether it's like in an anatomy lab or you could be training your classmates in a certain class. You could have an internship or things like that, too. I think those experiences are super useful. And a lot of that going back to the anatomy, too, I think knowing anatomy is huge. Knowing anatomy and biomechanics and how physics work has made understanding exercise selection and applications so much easier. Right. If you can understand

the differences and how forces act during an exercise and let's take for example like a dumbbell bench press. How do the forces act in that exercise versus a barbell bench press, right? There's going to be different nuances and ways that things work and if you can understand the why's behind that and those mechanisms it's only going to make your understanding better. So I do think that the degree was was really useful to have but at the end of the day getting that experience of being thrust into a leadership position at such a young age was absolutely invaluable.

Chris Alto (33:51.098)
Well, you've obviously had a lot of experience. What would be one or two pieces of advice you'd have for other folks who might be on their journey to become your fitness entrepreneur or might argue on and want to improve any piece of advice that they should think about?

Tyler Weader (34:09.486)
Yeah, number one, I would say to take action now or take action yesterday. I think it's really easy to get caught up in researching everything, looking at how other people are doing it, learning about what might be the best technology tools, whatever it might be, the best way to track things, whatever it might be, but nothing is going to be taking messy action, right? At the end of the day, if you have the opportunity in front of you and now is the time, take action first, see how things go, iterate, make changes on that based on the feedback, just continue iterating.

from there. I personally spent a lot of wasted time back when I first started looking at how other people were doing it. And honestly, what I figured out is that I could do it better than those people. So I ended up kind of wasting my time anyways, just sort of figuring out what other people were doing. And I think number two would be getting as much experience as you can get, whether it's training kids, adults, family members, whatever it might be. Running group classes is a really big one too. Group fitness classes, I think, are fantastic for developing your skills as a coach.

get as much as experience as possible under your belt. That whole 10 ,000 hours thing, I think really rings true with training. And I think with training the mark of a good, humble coach is that you start to realize you don't know that much as you get more and more experience too. And just get as much potential experience with different people under your belt as possible. It's only gonna make you a better coach. It's only gonna help you diversify your skills. I know that nowadays the big marketing focus is to niche down really hard, which is certainly true to a degree.

but also being a good diverse coach is only gonna help you in long term, work with different people, whatever case is in front of you, if you can handle that confidently, it's gonna make you into such a great coach then too. So I think taking action and getting experience is really key.

Chris Alto (35:52.155)
Amazing. Well, Tyler Weader from Weare Performance, where can people find more information on you or learn more about your services?

Tyler Weader (36:01.55)
I'm on all socials at Tyler Weader and I'm pretty active on LinkedIn and Instagram mainly. I have a website on the way titherweider .com and I'm also here in person in Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona.

Chris Alto (36:15.514)
All right, well thanks so much for coming on. Your story is super interesting. Hopefully there's a lot of good tidbits for folks listening and we'll chat soon.

Tyler Weader (36:23.854)
Great, thanks so much Chris. Take care.

Chris Alto (36:25.146)
All right, see ya.