Hardline trainer gets personal
NO-NONSENSE FITNESS GURU REVEALS HOW TO ESCAPE THE COMFORT ZONE
HOME TRUTHS
James Smith’s motto is that he is not a life coach but he can change your life. As a brutally honest but effective personal trainer, Smith is known the world over for calling out fad diets, fake influencers and short cuts for losing weight and shaping up.
After the success of his Not A Diet Book last January, in this exclusive extract for SMARTdaily, he unleashed his no-nonsense approach in Not A Life Coach to help push you out of the ‘comfort zone’ that is responsible for holding you back.
LIMITING BELIEFS
One of the biggest hurdles we face when thinking about the state of our current mindset is limiting beliefs and boundaries. We think our capacity for growth, for intelligence and for success is finite and that things are set and governed by boundaries, which they are not; we then have a set of beliefs that back up and fortify our boundaries — what we can do, what we can’t, what we’re capable of doing and what we’re not capable of doing.
Boundaries never physically exist unless we build them; even the boundaries between countries, states, counties and cities are made up and do not physically exist, so the ones in your mind are even less real.
What are limiting beliefs? To me they’re constraints we impose on ourselves — both consciously and subconsciously. Something as simple as believing or assuming something that results in limited potential can have a huge and profound impact on what we do, what we say, how we act and, ultimately, what we achieve. There is no one source from which they derive. Many factors (including upbringing, parents, culture, education, experience or societal influence) combine to create our beliefs and understanding of the world and, most importantly, our place within it, and we then apply a faulty logic based on these to the scenarios we face in everyday life.
Whether we like to admit it or not, fear is the underlying principle of limiting beliefs.
THE EFFORT PARADOX
One of my first limiting beliefs was about how much I could charge as a personal trainer on the gym floor. I set my pricing based on what other personal trainers were charging (classic herd instinct). I then pretty much assumed that would be my price forever, maybe adding a bit to my hourly rate when I had kids. I didn’t fully grasp commoditisation and economics. Imagine this for a second: it wasn’t my mindset that initially broke through my early limitations; it was basic business and commoditisation that led me on a path to realising the majority of thoughts or ‘beliefs’ I had — about not only what I was capable of charging, but also what I was actually capable of on a larger scale — were completely false.
The first step to recognising and overcoming this way of thinking occurred early one Saturday morning. I was at the train station on my way in to London to go to a seminar about how to actually run a personal-training business. I got the 6am train from Ascot in Berkshire. I would usually be asleep at that time, as I didn’t work at weekends. However. on the platform I had a strange and delightful buzz. I knew I would be going to develop my business, while other trainers either had the day off or had clients. I was on my way to learn from the best and I was in the mindset of the long game, not the lie-in. To this day, it remains one of the most important days of my life.
INCREASING YOUR RATE
It was at this seminar that I first realised my personal-training hours should be charged out like an airline charging for seats: at the outset they need to fill the plane, which they do by offering competitive rates.
Every time I hit 30 hours, I put my rates up by $7 an hour. That was it! I didn’t have to challenge my ‘selfworth’ or go on an ayahuasca retreat to find myself. It was basic business. To the question ‘James why is your rate increasing?’ I’d happily say, ‘I am doing too many hours,’ and no one could argue with that.
I did have one client who refused to pay the increase (he was a bit of a wanker), but I then said to him, ‘OK, how about we do 45-minute sessions and you can do your own warm-up for the first 15 minutes?’ We shook hands and we both took a win from the stand-off.
I soon learned I was earning more money from not doing any more work. Within a few months, I was the highest-paid PT in my gym, which was ballsy, as I soon overtook one who had been training for a decade longer than I had. I was only at the 16-month mark when I made that change.
Being better paid meant I could be more selective with clients, and before I knew it I was earning more money while having to deliver only 25 hours a week of training.
This meant I could use my spare time for development, so I was doing 25 sessions a week, finishing each day at 2pm, then, after studying, I’d do a little article, chat to my mum over a cup of coffee and biscuit and have a nap before rugby training.
Strangely, by doing less you can sometimes do a lot more. Going into the gym for four sessions as opposed to six or seven meant I was more inclined to put on a podcast on the drive home and I’d have the cognitive energy to remember what I heard.
The more I develop myself, the more I feel like I am paying into development, which really enables me to appreciate my own self-worth. Charging more for your services is easier when you pay more into your abilities. Being tired and overworked, moving sideways and not forwards can leave you feeling like a fraud and that your services aren’t worth what you have charged.
I am sure any personal trainers reading this will know how it feels to deliver your 11th session for the day and feel inclined to offer a refund to the client as they leave the gym.
If you only focus on income, you can neglect personal development and self-help.
It’s funny how you can neglect your full potential and can neglect your business at the same time by trying too hard to build it in the first place. It’s an effort paradox.
For me, I was charging and earning nearly double what I’d ever thought I was capable of, but it wasn’t what I was capable of — it was merely what I believed I was capable of. The boundary between what I charged and what I could charge was invisible, and I hadn’t known until that point that it existed.
It was a limiting belief imposed by nothing other than the environment I had subjected myself to and my belief that it was true. Little did I realise the profound impact that would have over the next few years.
I sometimes wonder whether or not a particular belief I have would hold up in a court of law. For instance, imagine this:
“Your honour, James Smith here believes no one in the world would pay him more than £100 for an hour; his evidence is what he believes.”
The jury and judge would laugh at me, as I’d have nothing to back up my belief, therefore it would be false and should not be a factor in making any decisions. Not A Life Coach: Push Your Boundaries, Unlock Your Potential, Redefine Your Life is out now through HarperCollins.
By doing less, you can sometimes do a lot more