Podcast Episode 7: Leadership, Branding, and Certifications for Gym Owners

Summary:

Brian Oberther from Infinity Athletics shares his journey of founding a gym and offers advice for those looking to enter the fitness industry. He emphasizes the importance of having a clear vision and aim, as well as the value of real-world experience over formal education. Brian also discusses the significance of mentors and finding the right co-founder or partner. He highlights the importance of authenticity in building a brand and advises against trying to emulate others. Brian also shares insights on hiring trainers and the importance of aligning with the values of the business.

Check out Brian's Podcast, Becoming Ronin and his favorite certification, the CCPS.

Takeaways:

• Having a clear vision and aim is crucial when starting a business in the fitness industry.
• Real-world experience and shadowing can be more valuable than formal education in the field.
• Finding mentors who align with your goals and values can save you from making costly mistakes.
• When building a brand, it's important to stay true to yourself and not try to emulate others.
• When hiring trainers, prioritize authenticity, values alignment, and the ability to connect with clients.

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Show Notes

Chris Alto (00:00.676)
Hey, what's going on? This is Chris with the Zipper podcast and today we have Brian Oberther from Infinity Athletics. Brian, thanks for coming on.

OB (00:08.028)
And no problem Chris nailed that last name. I'm proud of you.

Chris Alto (00:11.076)
Hell yeah, I practiced it a couple of times. Yeah, and I think you're the first person, well, you are the first person to have the most legit recording studio that I've seen. You look like Joe Rogan, I like it, it's awesome. It's sick, I love it, sweet. Well, yeah, really love having you on. And as I said, the goal is to learn a little bit more about your story and your founding of Infinity.

OB (00:19.292)
thanks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is my like safe thinking cap space.

Chris Alto (00:39.268)
I'm sure you have a lot of really interesting lessons that you could share with other folks who might be in the industry or might be looking to get into the industry. So yeah, I'll kick it off to you. I'd love to just hear a bit about your background and how you got things founded.

OB (00:48.988)
Yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, first off, I'll say if I can figure it out, anyone can because you it's, I almost feel I don't have kids. So I don't want to overstep here, but I almost feel like it's the horror stories of people. When you talk about parents, parenthood and all the just like absolute like dissuasion going on, like they just want to tell you how bad it is and how hard it is. And, I, every single person I consulted with about starting a business, it was the same thing. It was like,

You know, I don't want to be blindsided. So I think they're coming from the right place, but I feel like it gets a little overboard. I think it's a little simpler. And it's the fact that I had a really clear idea and vision since I was really young of what I wanted to isn't lost on me. I think a lot of times it takes people years to figure that out for themselves. So I do feel really grateful that I had some image and vision of what I was trying to accomplish because I think...

unbeknownst to me, that's like the main thing in, in creating an actual successful plan is just having an aim and knowing exactly what it is you're trying to manifest. And, you know, when I was, I was really young when I got into strength training and I don't, I'm not going to bore anyone with the details of going back to childhood, but it's always been a part of, you know, my dad was into bodybuilding. He was in the Marine Corps that really ignited, you know, this, this,

Chris Alto (01:56.772)
Mm.

OB (02:12.348)
at least intrigue at that point about strength training and bodybuilding and watching horror movies. And then I ended up going to school for exercise science. And that was a letdown, honestly. I would say not to dissuade anyone from doing that, but the I would say I had a lot of experience going to seminars and going and seeing Eric Cressy speak and seeing Louie Simmons from Westside and some seminars there and going to elite FTS and.

Chris Alto (02:25.124)
you

OB (02:40.38)
I felt like I had a really good understanding of what I wanted and what my vision was and my role in the fitness industry. Going to school was taking like 10 steps back of what I thought it was going to be. It was just so academic and in the weeds on textbook. It is good. It gives you a really good foundation, but it felt a little bit more geared towards maybe pre -med or something like that. A lot of bio and chem and things like that. I don't regret it at all, but I will say...

As soon as I started college, I just wanted to get done. In my head, I thought I needed an exercise science degree. Turns out you don't. If anything, I think cutting your teeth on real world experience and shadowing people and getting out there and doing continuing education certs. I think there are so many good gym owners out there that have zero formal education. And that gets into some of my lessons here. But yeah, the biggest reason I chose the fitness industry aside from my lifelong,

you know, desire to would be at a crossroads coming out of school, going back into PT or PA school or even med school. I think the biggest thing was shadowing taught me that healthcare is not healthcare, it's sick care. And the fitness industry is the only healthcare right now. And it is the healthcare of the future. You know, even as insurance companies become privy to the fact that they can save money through keeping people healthy instead of paying for sickness, there's going to be a massive shift towards preventative care.

And that comes with legitimacy to the industry. And we're already seeing that, but over the next 10, 15 years, you know, trainers and gym owners are going to have a much larger hand in keeping people healthy.

Chris Alto (04:24.1)
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. And so when you graduated, what was that process like going from, okay, now I graduated to you have this vision of you want to start your own gym. You want it to be in bodybuilding or strength training. How did you finally get to that point? What did that process look like?

OB (04:41.212)
I took a job out of college, in Lake Placid with the Olympic authority. There's an Olympic center there. I had known that I wanted to start a gym, but I didn't feel like I was ready to pull the trigger. I felt like I wanted to get out there and get some real world experience first. And, I did that for about a year. And then I worked at a commercial fields facility that specialized in medical fitness. So they did a lot. It was, it was like your average commercial gym, but they had a,

program where they did a lot of post rehab and cardiac rehab. And that was an area that I've always loved assessment and corrective exercise. And I took a job there and worked there for a year. And then around the year, Mark, I started to get the itch to start looking for a facility. Excuse me. And I met up with a guy that I knew in school and we ended up coming back out to Ithaca from Albany and starting a gym out here. We both went to school here.

And that process was definitely not laid out. Like there was no Googling what to do when you're looking. You would think that there would be a little bit more of a standard operating procedure for that. But man, I felt like every turn there were four or five more questions that we never thought to ask. But basically the gist was looking for a commercial facility, getting a good deal on hiring someone that can talk to us about...

the terms of a commercial lease and learning a little bit about corporate structure, LLC versus S Corp. And I think it's almost good because it is a little bit of a vetting process where if you're not able to at least handle that little bit of load and figuring things out for yourself, then you're not probably cut out to run your own business. Not to sound like one of those guys that's trying to scare people out of it, but...

It is a lot of that. Like that's my biggest piece of advice is don't think that once you get things off the ground that it gets any easier. But yeah, it wasn't, I guess like if you really know what you want, it makes all of the obstacles worth pursuing. When you really know that's what you want to do, you see all those things as like opportunities to learn. And that's at least the mentality that I took with it. So it really wasn't.

OB (07:06.172)
Again, that's why I'm saying it really wasn't that bad. For every obstacle, there's always someone willing to help you, which is why I'll never say I'm a self -made anything. There's so many people that... Even me being on this podcast alone, I invited the co -owner, the co -founder. I was even thinking of having a trainer come on because I almost feel like an imposter accepting any praise for the business because you can steer it in the right direction. But that's like taking credit for...

the invention of an automobile because you drove across country. It feels like that sometimes because there's just so many people that contribute to the success of it. So that's also not lost on me, but I'm getting a little ahead of your question.

Chris Alto (07:40.516)
Yeah.

Chris Alto (07:45.892)
Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. I think staying humble is what also allows you to be excellent at what you do, right? Because if you're like, I have it all figured out, it's all good. I feel like that's when you run into a lot of traps.

OB (07:59.868)
It will humble you. Yeah, for sure.

Chris Alto (08:03.108)
So you graduated, you spent a couple of years working, and then you went and started your facility and started kind of jumping over those hurdles. Are you glad you spent time working under other people? If you could go back, do you wish that you had just gone for it? Or did you find a lot of value from working with people?

OB (08:20.828)
No, I still to this day, that's like running a business. The one thing I crave is interaction with outside businesses. And that's the beauty. I'm involved with the CPPS certification now. And it's certification where we travel all over the US and we get international coaches. And the hour for me, even though I'm helping run the course, it's so impactful. I always leave charged up because you talk to all these other coaches.

And you just even like down to the way that they carry themselves when they're coaching, there's something to be learned in that, that you just miss from any informational product online or reading blogs or books or anything like that. Not that that's bad, but it really short circuits the process of learning when you can get together with other coaches. And that's what working in another gym did for me. It does that still to this day. And that's...

So I definitely don't regret that. I met a lot of awesome coaches, a lot of awesome clients, and it kind of gives you a little bit of a nest, you know, before you really leave the nest of to like, just to gain some confidence, be like, I can definitely do this. You know, I've learned a lot about who I am as a trainer and in the direction I want to take my brand in. So yeah, I think it gives you a good time to detach a little bit and, you know, learn from everyone around you.

Chris Alto (09:41.476)
Makes a lot of sense. And you mentioned how you've had so many mentors help you through this process. Can you talk a little about how you found your mentors and any recommendations for other folks who might be looking to also find mentors?

OB (09:50.108)
Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Sorry. I'm going to cut you off there. My first mentor is Smitty Jim Smith of the Diesel SC. That was just dumb luck of being in the right place at the right time. When I was 15 years old, there were guys in my high school that would wear Diesel shirts and they were all like superb athletes, just elite level wrestlers. And so there was a website on the back. I went to the website at home and it was still like

Chris Alto (09:55.876)
Yeah, no, it's okay.

OB (10:19.42)
at the time when you had to download videos, people didn't host videos on their website. It was just an archive of training videos. And I would go home and just watch all of them over and over and over again. And I now know that apparently he was getting charged by... You get charged by bandwidth. So I was like, dude, I owe you some money for that because I was probably one of the few people that was just watching those videos on repeat. But it was all odd object training. It was like strongman training, logs and stones.

And one of the guys does grip training. So he's like bending nails and ripping cards. And it was like mind blowing from a kid that's just in the weight room at school and, you know, on this like three by 10 pyramid workout for football. And then you see that it just like ignited a new, like a third eye in my mind for training. And, so then I was like on a relentless pursuit to try to meet this guy. I had no money. I was 15 and, I knew he was training a lot of athletes. So I w I found out where they.

trained. There was a commercial gym they would train every like Thursday or Friday. So I would go and just spend hours there. Like I would just work out. I didn't know what I was doing. So I would just work out the whole time. And then finally at the end of a like three hour workout, I saw them roll in. So I made it seem like I was just getting there. I was trying to like change my shirt and make it seem like I wasn't drenched in three hours of, you know, futile exercise attempts.

And they walked in and I knew one of the wrestlers and he's like, dude, you want to jump in? We're about to train. And I was like, yeah, what are you guys doing? He's like upper body. And I just finished like a three hour, just stupid workout. And I'm like, yeah, sure. I'll jump in. And then from there, he invited me to come train. They did a strong man Saturday every weekend at his house. And then it just, it became like, probably he was a little worried about the level of intensity that I had just to be around him. So I was just trying to play it cool. And then eventually I ended up working for him, mowing his lawn.

That turned into me helping him with his website. He does informational products. So I was doing, you know, he was teaching me about backlinks. So he would just, it was just like mindless work for him. And then, he's one of the reasons that I had access to all those certifications early on, cause he would take me, he was always speaking at them. So he would take me to all these NSCA conferences and, elite FTS symposiums and all these things where like all the top guys, were speaking. So I just really had like,

OB (12:42.332)
an amazing, lucky opportunity. And then once I went to school, I kept in touch with him the whole time. And that's how I got involved with the CPPS because in school I was really studying assessments and corrective exercise and looking at the FMS and study McGill and Shirley Sarman. And I was kind of putting together my own assessment. And then that ended up becoming a part of the CPPS. They used...

I can't even say it's my assessment. Again, it's like one of those things where I reference so many other people that it's really a conglomerate of all their work. But yeah, Smitty definitely deserves the vast majority of the credit. Obviously, they're coaches and my dad and things like that that I credit for getting me into it. But I wrote Smitty's coat tails as long and as far as I could. So in terms of...

Chris Alto (13:33.86)
Good guy to know.

OB (13:35.004)
In terms of advice, I wouldn't recommend going about it the way I did, so I don't know how to answer that question, but I would say you cannot understate the importance and how profound having a mentor is. That will save you decades of mistakes.

Chris Alto (13:52.76)
Is there anything specifically that comes to mind that he has given you in terms of advice that has saved you a big mistake that you could have made?

OB (14:01.86)
Yeah, I think if I didn't have as much experience going to certifications prior to developing a formal education, I think I would have been more of a byproduct of academia. I think I would have gotten duped a little bit more in thinking that I knew more than I did. Just being exposed to the wealth of knowledge out there, I think, like they say, having a degree makes you just knowledgeable enough to be dangerous.

I think that we see that as facility owners when we are conducting interviews a lot of times, the ones that have their degrees, we'll still give them a shot, but it's like a pattern. With the higher level of the education, the more there's a complacency that comes with that. Maybe a chip on their shoulder. I don't want to disparage anyone, but there is a level of...

hunger that people have when they don't have a formal education. And I think that keeps them on a better path. So I think he saved me, even though I did go to school, I think he saved me because he kind of preempted me, not purposefully, but the exposure to the knowledge he was giving me was preempting me to have some better references as I was going through that formal education side of it.

Chris Alto (15:18.956)
It's almost like the theory versus the practicality and like learning by doing. Yeah.

OB (15:22.204)
100%. Yeah. And I think that's true with every, every single, you know, I'm also a firefighter and I've been doing that for three years. And I think it's the same thing with the fire service. Like there's a practice, there's the state side and what they teach you and the theory. And then there's the practical practical side. And I think you have to be well versed in both, to be proficient in whatever it is you do.

Chris Alto (15:43.444)
It makes a lot of sense. And I know we were talking a little bit about the CPPS certification. Can you talk a little bit about that and how folks who might want to be getting into the fitness industry or already be in it and looking to with that continuing education, what that is and how it might be helpful?

OB (16:00.7)
Yeah, the beauty of the CPBS is like we were talking about before we were recording. It's just it's so I guess the word comprehensive is overused, but it's it's very comprehensive in the way that it gives you a system. The one thing that I would caution people against if they are starting, excuse me, if they're starting a gym, any business model is you don't want to. You can ask for directions, but you don't want someone to drive your car.

Right. It's, it's up to you. And I think that there's an authenticity that lends itself to creating a good brand. It needs to be connected to the essence of who you are. And I think a lot of certifications and a lot of continuing education, informational products tend to insert their brand into, they try to make it fit into what your model is. And the beauty of the CPPS is it's just giving you a template that you can take back to your facility and make it your own. It fits in without diluting.

or polluting your brand. I think like that's to me the biggest takeaway from the CPPS. But beyond that is it gives you foundational knowledge of how to be a trainer from the second a client walks in the door and you're doing a consultation and assessment and how to take that knowledge and let it drive the program design. And there's a speed component, a power component, a strength component, a program design component.

And it's all online. All the modules are online at least. And then the beauty of that is obviously you can do it at your own pace. But if I'm being honest, I just don't love online products. Like I said, I learn so much better. And I think a lot of people would agree that it's so much better to be around other coaches. So then as you finish all of the informational modules, you can go to the workshop in person where you're taking everything that you learned in the modules.

and kind of running through it in real time with Smitty and Joe DeFranco. And they're walking you through every single step of it. And you're using another participant as if it's your own client. And every single time, like I said, I've been through it since the inception in 2014. Every single time I go, I learn something and I'm able to come back and immediately apply it. And that is so valuable. We were talking earlier about gym owners and how a lot of...

OB (18:23.132)
moments of your day are taken up already. So I don't want to have to go read something and then try to think through it and then let that develop naturally. I want to immediately have something that I could take back to my gym and what it makes me or my coaches better immediately. And I've always felt that way with the CPPS. There's no leap of intellectual application. It's automatically at your fingertips. And it's kind of hard to explain until you go...

through it, but there's templates. I'm also a little OCD when it comes to organization and it is so organized. There's templates that you can take out and use and adapt it however you want. There's exercise indexes that the program design could be as simple as plug and play, or you figure out, you measure your own program design against it and figure out what you're missing sort of thing. So yeah, I can't recommend it enough. Obviously I'm biased because I'm a part of it, but I wouldn't be a part of it if I didn't truly believe in it.

Chris Alto (19:20.388)
I mean, I think it goes to show that you've been a partner for 10 years before you're getting any benefits. So it sounds cool. I haven't heard of it. So see PPS.

OB (19:24.252)
Yeah.

Yeah, certified physical preparation specialist.

Chris Alto (19:31.588)
Amazing. Okay, cool. And in that you touched a little bit on brand. I think you guys have a pretty cool brand, Infinity. How did you come up with that and any advice you have for people who might be developing their brand or wanting to revamp it?

OB (19:47.196)
Yeah, it's almost a paradox because my advice is to not take advice. I think there's plenty of good coaches out there and we went through a lot of some of the bigger coaching programs. I don't want to slander it because I think what those programs do really well is offering you simple things like how to calculate your margins or how to pay your trainers and how to set up.

ongoing processes that you can measure to determine your success and the trajectory of your business. All that's great. When it comes to brand, I would say stay as far as mentorship or coaches as you can, because any advice we've ever applied to our own brand has taken us in a direction that's inorganic, I guess is the best way to put it. I would say infinity just as the name kind of represents the fact that we didn't want to be pigeonholed into

a specific like strength or power athletes or, you know, our whole view on fitness is that like every single person should be working out and they should also be finding a program that fits them. And I felt like at the time, a lot of models were forcing the client into whatever it was, their program, whether it's, you know, a workout of the day or like, you know, I don't believe in just taking a workout of the day and progressing it or regressing it. I think the beauty of,

knowledge of programming is that it's not the workout, it's the program. If you're learning guitar, you can learn as many chords as you want, but if you don't know how to compose them into a song, it's gonna sound awful. And that was my view on working out at the time and I felt like no one was doing it. And I think there are more and more facilities now that are, but it's at the expense of the business owner and the coach because if you sit down and you think...

If you think X's and O's and what's going to make you the most money and what's the most scalable in the beginning, you've kind of lost all the benefits of a small business while you have the benefit of employing those benefits, if that makes sense. The benefit of being small is you can be agile, flexible, you can figure out your mistakes. I think too often there's all these programs out there that teach small businesses to be like large businesses and you want to think about scalability and all these things.

OB (22:08.54)
and it just kind of removes the authenticity to it. So there's that we had a guest on our podcast. He was a firefighter and he was talking about PTSD and he was talking about getting through that. And this sounds like a non sequitur, but it comes back to brand where he was saying his mentality with overcoming alcoholism and PTSD is that you always take the next indicated step because whatever it is that's being laid out before you,

is probably a calling back to your authenticity, right? Whatever feels natural of taking that next step. My advice in terms of creating your brand is do what feels natural. And I hate to even say that because it almost sounds cliche, but looking back, if we had done that, I think we would have saved ourselves some starting over aspects of the business. And, you know, it's like we're 10 years in and we've kind of come back to where...

my original idea was. Now the facility is back to where my image was. And it's been over a year since we've hired any business coaches. And I think that at some point, you have to leave the nest and not rely on anyone to coach you. Because there's a book called Rework that says emulate chefs. Chefs will give you 100 % of the recipes and even show you how to do it, but you can't make it.

like they can because you're missing the chef themselves. Like you're not, you'll never be a Gordon Ramsay. You could be your own equally as profound chef, but you'll never be Gordon Ramsay. And the more you try to emulate Gordon Ramsay, you're playing a role and that's the antithesis of being, being authentic. so that's my mindset on brand. I think just it's, if it's easy, it's probably right. Like if it just feels right, go with it.

Chris Alto (23:56.997)
So trust your gut, really. Yeah, no, I mean, it makes a lot of sense because to your point, you have these business coaches who I'm sure are using the theory again of like, hey, you should think about these things, but it kind of takes it away from why you started it and what you're and your co -founders why are.

OB (23:58.652)
Yeah, I could have just said that. That's a little easier. Yeah.

OB (24:07.804)
Yeah.

OB (24:15.58)
Yeah, exactly.

Chris Alto (24:17.7)
Makes sense. And you started this with a buddy, right? So how has that affected your, I guess the growth of the business, because I'm sure you guys have hit a lot of ups and downs and any recommendations on co -founders or partners in business?

OB (24:22.3)
Yeah.

OB (24:35.868)
Yeah, I think it's this. I mean, anyone who runs a business with a co -founder will tell you it's just like a marriage. Like, and not that I'm a marriage specialist by any means, but I will say that two things. One, it takes a lot of forethought because there's going to be times. And in fact, my business partner and I, we probably butt heads more than we agree on things. And in that struggle comes...

a third essence of the business. And that's like how we move things forward. Like there's a push and pull and that constant tug of war creates this third brainchild of what we both want. And with that though, there has to be like some ground rules. Like it's like stepping in a boxing ring and we need to know what the rules are so that we can play by them. And we had a partnership agreement that we wrote out in great detail when we were...

in the inception of the business, like when we were still thinking about how the business was going to run. And everything that was detailed in that was like down to who's going to take the trash out, who's going to mop the floors, how often we're going to switch. Like all those things that we're like, we, you know, this is, this is actually the idea of our business coach to his credit. This is where business coaches do come in is like laying out all those questions you don't think to ask is like any business coach is going to be excited when they're starting and they're thinking about the training and.

and what brings them the most enthusiasm for it. But no one's thinking about, you know, simple things like, okay, well, who's going to run the payroll? Who's going to do the reporting? Who's going to do the outreach? Who's going to do the hiring? Like all those things do have to be laid out and it's better to lay them out in advance. And at least if there's any issues where you deadlock on something, you can always come back to that partnership agreement. On top of that, I would say make sure you're, it's just like any, you know,

choosing a marriage, make sure it's the right person. Don't ignore red flags because if there's someone that can't handle that constant struggle, to my business partner's credit, as much as we go back and forth on things, we can wash our hands of it the second the meeting is done and go back to being friends. Even if things get a little tumultuous and heated, and they often do, we can immediately set that aside and get right back to work. And I think it takes a special...

OB (26:58.844)
kind of dynamic, you know, where no one's feeling is feelings are left hurt. So, you know, that comes down to, you know, some of our core values as coaches to in terms of like just telling the truth, not letting things do, making sure that things are talked about and we don't just, you know, leave things or, you know, leaving them on said basically. But yeah, that's like.

Chris Alto (27:13.156)
Yeah.

OB (27:26.044)
It's funny, a lot of the business books that I did read early on and even exercise science specific books, it comes back to not being a jerk. If you're a good person as a coach and you're authentic and you're telling the truth and you're being professional and you're showing up on time and all those things, those are lessons that you have to continue to relearn. But when it comes to dynamics and managing people and managing relationships,

Like that's really, there's no industry specific answer for that. It's just being a good person. So yeah, I mean, I'm saying that not as I figured it out, but like a lesson that I have to keep relearning.

Chris Alto (28:02.936)
Yeah, it's the fundamentals. Did you guys outline your values? Did you go through that exercise when you made that operating agreement or that just was something that you had at your core both?

OB (28:11.228)
Ahem.

OB (28:14.876)
We kind of, we had like a, an informal core value. I guess it was formal. You know, we, we did a program early on that where there was an exercise involved where it had us each individually write our core values and what we found was important and kind of figure out, tease out what ones were similar and important to both of us. And over the years, in fact, we just kind of redeveloped them. And now that our position is more.

Operators and like facility operators instead of like the technician role. we kind of revamped a lot of our early, procedures to be more geared towards hiring trainers instead of like our, our, our clientele now is our trainers and you know, now our trainers are training clients. So the way I see my role is just evolved a little bit towards like, I want to make sure everything we do is geared towards giving the trainers the best opportunity to become.

who we want them to be, if that makes sense.

Chris Alto (29:14.308)
And around finding trainers, any tips? Hiring is always hard. Being able to find the right types of people, and I'm sure you've made a lot of mistakes, everyone does. If someone is thinking about making new hires, are there any lessons that you've learned in that process that you think would be relevant?

OB (29:32.348)
Yeah, I would say first off to I'm going to take it slightly in a different direction. My advice to anyone that's interviewing for a job in a facility like ours is don't confine yourself to the construct of the question. And I don't mean that to sound philosophical, but understand that your opportunity in an interview is to showcase who you are as a person. That's what we care about. This is a very personal.

position, right? Being a trainer, people don't care about what you know until they know you care. So you could be the smartest trainer in the world and lose every single client that walks through that door. And you'll make an excuse for why you're losing that client. And clients don't talk with their mouth, they talk with their feet. They're not going to come tell you that they don't want to train with you anymore. They're just going to stop showing up. And the retention and the attrition numbers do not lie. So if you are going to interview for a position,

Just show them what your training philosophy is and prove to them that you are passionate about it. A lot of times people will come in an interview for a job and they talk about how passionate they are, but they have nothing to back it up in terms of knowledge. Everything is a canned answer. They haven't developed their own philosophy. And I'm not really hard on, or I don't mean to sound like I'm being hard on people, but I think people get in this box of an interview and they immediately like flip off the creative aspects of the brain.

And they think that they just have to answer your questions the way that you want them to answer. So that would be a piece of small caveat piece of advice. But in terms of hiring, the tough part that we realized is you can't tell who a candidate is on paper. Even in the first interview, it's really difficult. There's been very few people where we've immediately known they were going to be a rock star coach. So, you know, being that our clientele are people that

get our business model, know who we are, know our values. We put them basically in front of our clientele and let them be a part of the interview process. So we'll do a first interview. We do a pre -screening on the phone. We do a step one interview and the step one interview is a lot of self grading. So if you were a candidate, I would say, Chris, you know, on a scale of one to five, how do you feel you fit these criteria? There's a list of like exercises that we're gonna go through together.

OB (31:57.596)
And instead of just asking you like, what are your biggest weaknesses? we just kind of talk through and see if you're in introspective and you're aware, self -aware, how you are with people. We can, we'll do some scenarios and things like that. And I asked very few questions about exercise science and programming because I could care less about that. That's, that's easy enough. we have developed a completely different interview process at this point compared to where we started. And it is almost.

all personality based. And that's even difficult because so many personalities are different, but they're still successful trainers. And I think that comes back to, again, what I said with the brand, I think if you're authentic, and you spend your life chipping away at all the things that are not you, like if you can, you can figure out like where you're trying to play a role, and that doesn't feel right to you.

Chris Alto (32:31.172)
Hmm.

OB (32:52.509)
and you might be emulating someone. Like if you can strip that away, you will be a very successful trainer. And I've seen it in so many different shades because we have a lot of different types of trainers. And I think initially we were thinking, okay, this is the image of a good trainer. We need to find that person. And now we just see like, okay, who can dive into our clientele base and figure out where they fit in? You know, like I'm not asking them to be us or, you know,

clone of us or who we think that they should be. I want to see how they have conversations. I want to see how they hold themselves. Can they take command of a room? Can they joke around? Are they lighthearted, but also professional? And so our interview process is usually the in -person interview, sit down, and then we have a week of shadowing, and then we have a week of them assisting, and then we'll let them run some classes. And then we give our clients grading rubrics, and then they come back with feedback.

And that usually seals the deal on it. Like if clients that we trust really like them and they fit in, that's kind of earned them the job. And then we have, you know, obviously like a probationary period where, you know, step one's done. Now we see how well can you learn the brand, take on the responsibility of learning, you know, this 90 day competency list and integrate it so that we're all on the same team, right? We don't want freelancers doing their own thing and...

You know, one person saying this exercise really good and one person not understanding it. Like everyone can develop their own expertise and the art of coaching will allow for that. But we do want everyone to be wearing the same infinity badge, right? We want it to mean the same thing.

Chris Alto (34:34.084)
That's really cool. Specifically around the fact like, it's almost like you can, there are things that are teachable, right? You can teach someone to program. That's not rocket science. It's difficult, but you can teach them to do that, but you can't teach someone to align with your values, to be kind, to be customer first. Those are kind of things that it sounds like you're sussing out in the interview process, which is really interesting.

OB (34:43.1)
Right.

OB (34:52.988)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, our mentality now is like, if you say you can do it, prove it, you know, just like kind of thrown to the wolves a little bit and, let it develop over time. And that in and of itself is a weeding out process. We've had plenty of people that just didn't feel comfortable doing it. And like, thank you for showing us your red flags up front. I didn't want to have to discover this, you know, a year or two down the road.

Chris Alto (35:21.7)
Interesting. Well, hopefully they listen to this podcast and know exactly the questions are going to be asked. They've done their research, right? Great. Well, I mean, we could chat all day, but I'm sure you have places to be. We're at 35 minutes. Any final pieces of advice or tips you have for folks who are trying to the industry or might be in the industry from things you've learned in the past 10 years?

OB (35:24.836)
That's true. Yeah, I don't even care. I'll tell you exactly what I'm gonna ask you.

OB (35:43.772)
Hmm.

Yeah, I would just say, you know, learn from the best and make it your own. I think that's kind of been the theme. Maybe if I were to boil it down and distill my mindset after, you know, 10 or so years of business is like, you know, in the beginning, if you're if you're starting a gym, nothing. When you first start off, nothing is above your pay grade. You're going to have to learn it all HR, community outreach, SEO. You're going to have no money to do it. And you're going to have to learn all that.

And then once you've achieved some level of success, nothing is below your pay grade. You're going to have to understand that if you want to maintain leadership capital, you got to be taking the trash out. You can't be asking anyone to do anything you don't want to do, or you're not above anything. So I think there's that aspect. And then on top of it is just, you know, in the CPPS, they even talk about the white belt mentality. There were some great.

Jiu -Jitsu practitioner who wanted to be buried in his white belt, even though he was like a coral belt or, you know, he achieved the highest level, but he wanted to be buried in the white belt because that was always his mentality. And I think as long as you can maintain that, you'll never be obsolete because I think there's always going to be room and even in a crowded, saturated market, there's always going to be room for novelty and whatever it is you feel like you are solving. If it's a problem you're solving.

Dive into that, lean into it, learn from the best and figure out how to make it your own.

Chris Alto (37:12.836)
A white belt mentality. I like that. That's good. Do you train jiu -jitsu as well? Yeah. As do I. I'm a white belt and I'm used to getting beat up so I'll just continue to get beat up the next 10 years. It's great.

OB (37:18.332)
I do, yeah. Yep.

On the way.

OB (37:26.652)
That's sometimes you're the hammer, sometimes you're the nail, except for like the first six years, you're just the nail.

Chris Alto (37:33.828)
Yeah, exactly. Amazing. So Brian Oberthorff from Infinii Athletics, thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, appreciate it. All right, we'll talk to you soon. See ya.

OB (37:41.244)
Thanks so much, Chris. This was fun.

Sounds good.

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