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I would ask permission if it was okay to even have that dialogue.
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Because again, it's a safe space for them.
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They might not want to talk about anything having to do with work and leadership and business or whatever.
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Like, listen, kid, I'm just here to try to.
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You just rolled into the smartest, small town of the fitness.
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Yeah, we're building it up.
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Smartest small time fitness.
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Merry Christmas.
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Christy Funny.
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A podcast for personal trainers.
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Let's get to work.
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Should your clients become your friends?
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Now we know from doing a bunch of the trainer circuits with personal trainers that are going through the BCPTI program.
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You've talked about the early days of Christmas in the gym, personal training, and a lot of your clients not only became friends, but also mentors in regards to your leadership trajectory.
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But there could be some blurry lines here.
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So we'll just kind of start with that basic question.
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Should your clients become friends?
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I wouldn't say should, but I wouldn't say shouldn't.
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If it happens organically, then sure.
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I think if you have like a set expectation, like I'm going to make sure that my clients all enjoy training with me so much that they want to be my friend.
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I think that happens from an organic nature of the beyond the fact that you're helping them to accomplish their goal, there's some mutual interest and backgrounds and whatever it might be, that kind of opens up that that opportunity from a friendship perspective.
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But they hired you to do a job, and the job they hired you to do is help them accomplish their goal, whatever that might be, right?
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So I think that's that's first and foremost.
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Like that's the focus or the foundation of like where that relationship starts.
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And then yeah, it can grow and blossom into something different, right?
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How do you toe the line of your professional boundaries and a friendship when that's forming?
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Because it's still you've got to build them at the end of the day and all the rest of it.
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I think for everyone's that different, and this again would be one of those things that I think could be potentially controversial for the Smithizens out there.
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But me as a dude, first and foremost, and then also the way my brain works is I can compartmentalize things pretty easily, truthfully.
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But I'm also transparent with it.
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So I'd be like, hey Chrissy, I really enjoy training you.
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Uh really enjoying like where we're at with our relationship, that's that.
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I know you've invited me like to go out and hang out with you and your buddies, you know, a couple times, and I just want to let you know, like the reason that I said no is I don't want to blur the line in terms of like where we have like our professional relationship, and because to me that's kind of outside of the scope of we do.
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So I just want you to know why I've been saying no to that.
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Because I've spent some time thinking about it, and I would love to kind of come meet your friend circle, but I don't want it to mess up what we have in the facility.
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So do you think if if I did go kind of come hang out with you and your your friends at this concert or this music festival you told me about, do you think that would blur it or how would you feel about that?
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Because you did invite me.
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I'm just I just wanted to be open about it.
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So you could just frame it, right, and just be transparent.
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But that's kind of where I would go with it.
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Now, if it's a specific one-on-one scenario, that's probably not a friendship, right?
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That's not like, hey, let's come hang out, or we're all going to the beach and there's this thing going on, or I'm playing beach volleyball with this group of people, or I'm gonna go do this run club thing at with all these other people.
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Like if it becomes one-on-one, let's go hang out.
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That's that's not let's be friends.
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How do you navigate?
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Because I'm sure this potential blurring of the boundaries can happen even within your organization amongst the client trainer relationship.
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So how do you kind of manage that?
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Well, you message it, right, first and foremost, and you try to teach them tools to recognize like what signs or what things are appropriate or not appropriate and those types of things.
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I mean, for us, like we only do the training inside the facilities.
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It's very rare that we're going, like we're not gonna come train people at their homes.
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Um, there's folks that do that, we don't, right?
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That's not what we're about.
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Load full transcript
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Um but yeah, there's just different things you gotta equip people to kind of understand and recognize, and then truthfully, it's also teaching our managers to look for the signs, right?
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Like if you see this or see that, like make sure you call it out.
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And again, I'm trying to help people all be kind of safe and protected from themselves, right?
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Not put them in a situation.
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Yeah, certainly there's some reputation management stuff out as an enterprise business, but at the end of the day, it's also about them, right?
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And like what's in their best interest.
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Well, and also maybe let's talk about it from the client perspective, because a personal trainer has a very vested and significant relationship with this individual when it comes to helping them become the best version of themselves.
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That is why somebody literally signs a paper to commit to I'm gonna go to this many sessions in a gym.
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And depending on where they are in life, that could be the highest level of care that's really been focused on themselves, which could feel different.
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So it gets misconstrued, but it's just because they've never had that need fulfilled, which then can really blur a line.
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Yeah, I mean, I I think it's interesting, right?
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I think a lot of times people are looking for what they don't have.
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Right.
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So if I don't have money, I'm looking for someone with money.
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Right?
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If I'm out there single looking to mingle, if I'm someone to your point, from a self-care perspective, I've never really cared about myself or I feel like no one's ever really cared about me, and now I've got this person making this super invested interest in me to go, well, gosh, this person really cares about me.
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This must be because they really want me or like me or think that this, that, which could be completely false, right?
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They just might be doing their job and doing it so well that you believe that, yeah, there's some type of you know, interest that goes beyond that of the professional nature of it all, right?
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And they're just the consummate professional who's just giving again, giving the best world-class customer service they can around, you know, delivering the program, doing it in a timely way, being energetic, being fun, making you laugh, like you're you know what I mean?
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And it's like, wow, this feels like more than and it might just be they're just really good at their job.
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How do you coach?
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Because I've seen this come question come up.
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I follow the personal trainer threads on Reddit, and it comes up a lot of handling that conversation if it starts to edge that way, because you also don't want to crush your client's confidence.
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So, how would you coach a trainer that came to you with exactly this situation of I'm providing this great customer service experience, but I'm concerned, like we've been friendly and there's like a friendship there, but I'm concerned that maybe they're wanting to push the boundary a level more.
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Like, is that something where all of a sudden you should file or fire a client and refer them to someone else?
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Or how do you manage that?
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Yeah, I'm gonna give a kind of a funny answer back to So I had a if I had a young lady trainer and I've given this advice to young women, and if they have like an older gentleman or gentlemen that are like, you know, asking them out all the time or hitting on them inappropriately or whatever, I say, I said, what are you doing about it?
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And they're like, I'm asking you for advice.
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Like, what do I do?
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I said, Well, make it so they can't talk.
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Like, what do you mean, make it so they can't talk?
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I said, Well, do HIT training, do something where like they can, they're just they're struggling to get oxygen, man.
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There will be no flirting with you going on.
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They'll just be like, like, they'll just be like, How much more of this do I gotta do?
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Like, you're doing great, keep it up, let's go! I'm so proud of you today, you're crushing it.
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Woo! Here we go.
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And that'll stop it real quick, right?
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Like that'll go away.
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Now, again, I say that jokingly, but I've like legitimately given that advice to people in the past.
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Say, yeah, give it a go, see how that goes.
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To all the way to say, Yeah, you just gotta tell them like they need to stop.
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And there's some times where I've had some people that like even then they wouldn't, and then as the manager, I would step and say, Hey, can I can we got a minute?
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Hey, just to let you know, like this and that is what I've been told.
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If you do it again, like they won't be your trainer anymore.
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Do you understand?
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Like, it's not appropriate, right?
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Because sometimes people don't get the message.
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But and again, we're in a different world now, but I've been doing this a long time as we spoke about.
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But yeah, I've seen the full spectrum of you know what I call idiot behavior.
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I'm sure.
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And one day I hope to crack the lid of more of the idiot behavior.
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So I'm not sure.
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That's like a whole separate book.
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That's like a whole book.
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Oh, it's slip.
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That's an Easter egg that you just dropped.
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Maybe, but that's a whole book I'd have to write someday on just that topic alone because the stories, yeah.
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That one's not PG 13 either.
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That's fair.
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I'm sure there's a lot of but that's kind of the dark side of where it can go, but something very real that a lot of trainers would face.
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But I know on the other side, I mean, you met some of your greatest mentors through by nature of your work.
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Yeah, I mean, I had some clients that were great mentors to me, recommended different things I do as I was growing my professional career.
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I wouldn't say I was friends with them, but it was more than the client-trainer relationship, or at least they saw it that way.
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And again, I was asking permission.
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It would be okay if I talked to you about this during our session.
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Yeah, I'm curious about what you do at work or how you lead people or what books do you read or whatever.
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But I would ask permission if it was okay to even have that dialogue.
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Because again, it's a safe space for them.
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They might not want to talk about anything having to do with work and leadership and business or whatever.
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Like, listen, kid, I'm just here to train because I was a kid then, right?
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Like, I just want to work out, bro.
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Just let me sweat, all right?
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Like, shut your mouth.
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And, you know, I think luckily for me, none of my clients really did that.
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And I had a lot of, you know, pretty successful clients at the time with Nike and Adidas and Apple and other, you know, Intel, some pretty, pretty, you know, big companies that were able to kind of give me direction, right?
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So it was helpful.
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Let's head to the trainer circuit.
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Real questions, real situations.
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Chris shows up, listens, and mentors from experience.
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Looking back on your 30 years of your journey, what do you believe is the single most important factor in helping people achieve lasting fitness results?
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That's a big question.
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Big question.
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I mean, I had like an immediate answer.
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I just want to think about it a little bit and make sure it's it's true.
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I mean, I I was telling a young man this morning one of our clubs an opener, right?
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I got to the club pretty early.
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He'd been there since five, we were chatting it up, and I was just talking to him about, you know, happiness, right?
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And where does it come from, enjoyment and satisfaction?
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I was referencing like Dr.
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Arthur Brooks, who's like a happiness guy that I follow and listen to.
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And for me, I became a trainer to like make a difference and help people.
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And it made me happy to do that because I loved the human body and movement and training and what it did for me, and then the ability to then pay that back or pay it forward, however you want to think about it, with other people was a thing that that hooked me and kept me from the beginning, right?
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So, like I think that's why I would how I'd best answer that question.
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Question, though.
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Deep one, right out of the gate.
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Going we're going deep.
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Sorry, that's me.
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Yeah, that's good flexibility too, right?
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Did you guys see that?
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Slow-mo.
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Boom.
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Before we wrap, we'll leave you with a smithism, a lesson Chris has picked up along the way.
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Well, we've kind of rambled on a few things today, but I have to say, if I was boiling it down, I think we're talking about communication, right?
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And so I just think in communication, again, whether I'm a personal trainer, somebody trying to grow my career, young, old, whatever, it doesn't really matter.
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But it would be the two ears and one mouth.
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So listen twice as much as you talk.
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Um, it's something that I've been really working on, even truthfully personally, as a as a CEO, if you will, over the last kind of five or six years, is just really trying to shut up and listen.
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And so you got two ears and one mouth, so listen twice as much as you talk.
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If you think you're the smartest person in the room, you're fucked.
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That's today's Smithism.
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Chris Smith is the mayor of Smittyville, and I'm Chrissy Van, your town correspondent.
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This is the smartest small town in fitness.
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We'll see you back here every other week.