From Zero to Multi-Six Figures - Scaling a Fitness Coaching Business That Actually Converts

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This is the Beyond the Story podcast, a show that goes way beyond the story. And now, Sebastian Rusk Zach, welcome to the show, man. I appreciate you inviting me on. I appreciate you taking some time out of your day to hang out with me for a few minutes to tell your story. That's what we do here on the Beyond the Story podcast.

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Kind of go back to the beginning of the story and help people better understand how it all really came together. I know you and I connected, well, first or second on Instagram, I believe we're both in Dan Martell's mastermind group. Is that correct? Yeah, absolutely. Dan Martell, bringing people together one, one podcast interview at a time.

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So, um, for context purposes, let's help our listeners better understand a little bit more about you and your backstory. Let's go back to the beginning of the story, wherever the beginning is for you. I know it's different for everyone, but go back to the beginning of the story where it all started and what really brought Absolutely. So just to give context of who I am now and what I do and before I jump back into the backstory, I am an entrepreneur, obviously, but being in Dan Martell's program, but I specialize in helping online fitness coaches that are looking to launch their businesses online and build something actually sustainable that gives them freedom of time, money, location, all those fun things. But yeah, it's funny how I kind of got into this and I kind of look back as there being multiple butterfly moments in my life that have led me to sitting here across from you on this podcast. So I'll jump back to like just fresh out of high school. I was a young man and I didn't really have any direction in my life at that point in time. I just known I'd been in school for like the majority of my life at that point. And I wanted to not do any more of that for a little while. So I chose to take time off and work a little bit and travel and just have a little bit of fun. But when I was 20 years old, the fun came crashing down pretty quickly. I found out that I was going to be a dad at 20 when I still felt like a kid myself. This was something that was unplanned with someone that there was no future plans with.

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So it was quite the shock. And I really had kind of like a fork in the road moment at that point. One, I hide away, I cower away, I don't show up, and I just keep doing more of the same and just... try to ignore the consequences to the actions that I was taking at that moment. Or option B, it was time to actually smarten up and do something with my life. And that was like a really kind of like dark moment within my life. And the only thing that really got me through that was the one thing that I felt like I had control over because everything else I felt like the control was taken away.

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I felt like, again, like, you know, lots of money was going out to something that I hadn't anticipated.

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I felt like A little bit of shame and embarrassment.

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All my friends were going to school. They were doing something big with their lives. And then there's me, Zach, who just, you know, knocked out somebody and isn't doing anything and doesn't have a career, doesn't have any prospects. And the only thing I control over at that time was my fitness. And I use that as an outlet. And I think Dan always talks about, you know, exhaust the body, tame the mind. And that was my truth at that stage of my life as well. I that was the one thing I could show up for. It's the one thing I could control is what I put in my mouth and what I decided to do and how to move my body. And that ended up opening up a lot of opportunities for me. Right. The gym, I would go to all the personal trainers to come up to me and they'd be like, Zach, like you're seeing phenomenal progress, like lots of people talk about you. You should come in. You should like work here, help people out with their fitness journeys. And that's trying to make this story as short as possible. That's what led into the personal training side of things. I was like, okay, I saw some great results myself. There's people asking me questions about how I did it. They want advice for themselves. There's something here. Because at that point, I was just working front desk just to pay for my gym membership, make some money so I could cover my expenses, my bills, the child support, all that type of stuff, right? So I moved into personal training. And that was great at the beginning. But I realized with a job like that, there's a lot of restraints. One, I have to be at the gym with a client if I want to make money. So you're always trading time for money and that's only scalable to a certain point. Two, working for somebody else, working for a gym, you're giving like 60% of what you make to the gym, even though I'm the one going out, sourcing leads, doing the training, turning out results. And another thing, I only got 10 days off per year while working at a corporate gym. And that's I mean, another part of the story, my daughter was moved down to the United States, I live in Canada. So they're in Florida, I'm in Calgary, Alberta. That's like a full travel day to get down there. So one travel day to get down there, then I get eight days to spend down there, and then another travel day back, right? So I'm like, okay, if this continues for the next 10 years, I get 80 days with my daughter. That's it.

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Not to mention when I'm gone, I don't make any money. So then I come back and I'm scrambling to even make ends meet, pay rent, that type of stuff. Not an ideal situation to be in. So I knew I needed something different. I needed to find a way to be able to take back some more freedom, to not have a boss tell me whether or not I can go visit my daughter this month, and to still earn an income while working in the fitness industry. I had a bit of a vision, but I had no clue how I was going to get there. And to be honest, the fear held me back from actually making that jump because I'm like, well, what if I make the jump and no one wants to work with me? How am I going to find my leads? How are we going to do all this stuff? So it wasn't until 2020, the pandemic, where all the gyms shut down, where all of a sudden I realized that my job that I thought was so secure and I could just rely on wasn't secure. because the gym shut down, I couldn't make any money, I couldn't cover my bills, couldn't pay my support, any of that type of stuff. So it was a panic move for me to essentially, I don't know if I should say it at all, but I'll say it. I got an email the day before the gym shut down. And I was at the gym that night, closing it up. And out of panic, I grabbed a bunch of equipment I called up my mom, I was like, hey mom, can I use the garage? I'm like, the gyms are shutting down, I wanna bring this equipment over, start using the garage. So I grabbed some equipment, some plates, a bar, well it's funny enough, even the janitors were like, oh here, there's some stuff in the back room, we're actually gonna throw this away, you can take this stuff as well. I was like, sweet. Brought that all over the next morning.

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When it was being announced that all the gyms were shutting down across the country, I got to Fitness Depot first thing, just spent the rest of the money that I had in my bank account on what I could afford to bring over because I knew that if all the gyms were shutting down, one, there would definitely be some people that would be interested in coming and training at my own facility. And two, I need to work out. Otherwise, I will go mentally insane. And that kind of started my entrepreneurial journey. And I started doing some training and coaching out of the garage. And even though I was charging like way too little, you know, that type of stuff, I started to see a little bit more opportunity there. And not only that, but I started to have people reaching out to me being like, Hey, you know, I'm not in your area. I can't come to the gym, but do you do any sort of online programs?

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It's like, okay, so there's something to this. So I started doing that and it built up pretty quick to a point where we had about 50, or I, sorry, I had about 50 clients. But I noticed again, I was working like 16 hours per day. And again, if I wanted to take time off the gym, that was a big, like a bunch of income that would drop, right? And so same kind of position, built a job that it was more profitable, my margins were better, but it still lacked the freedom because I was just working every single day and I wasn't actually seeing my daughter anymore frequently. which then led to me hiring my first mentor, um, who was actually my manager back at the gym that he used to work at. And she was amazing. Like, I don't think I'd be where I am today without her. And she showed me how to take everything 100% online and actually start building a sustainable business plan. That wasn't just me flying by the seat of my pants and hoping that people would sign up and having no actual action plan other than just like posting content, posting and praying is kind of the method that we called it. Right. Because you know, Same thing when you don't have a good business model, you can have like five, six clients drop off overnight because one scary thing happens with the economy. They look at training as a luxury item.

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If you don't have any agreements in place, no actual proper business model, they can just leave. And that happened to me a few times, which then again leads to issues with sleep and stress and oh my God, where's this money going to come from? So finally seeing like what was possible when you actually have a well-structured business that this mentor taught me. it completely transformed my life. And then that allowed me to start actually scaling my fitness business, bringing on coaches to handle the delivery side of things and allow me to coach and mentor them and just see the impact that we got to have in their lives by helping them build a sustainable business model that, you know, when nobody else could see it, I could, cause I had done it and lived it.

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And I was able to instill that belief in them for them to be able to flourish and build the lives that they wanted to. So that's like the very condensed version I love it. You did a great job explaining. Normally people burn through that in about two minutes and I'm like, okay, cool. We have more to talk about. So I had my, um, my daughter when I was 20 as And I went on to raise her on my own actually. So we're very, uh, I, uh, you, you can only imagine you're like, wow. I, what, what I did was it was enough, you know? I mean like it's, it's challenging enough just to be a parent, let alone do it alone. Um, she's 24 now. How old's your daughter? She just turned nine on Sunday. Oh, enjoy it. Cause they grow up and then they become adults and it's a whole new level of asshole that you have to deal with. You know why? Cause they're self-sufficient. Great. Yay. Every parent wants that, but you don't have a dog in the fight. That's the problem. Unless they want you to have a dog in the fight, meaning, you know, how's that all work? So embrace it. Cause my grandmother used to say the days drag on and the years fly by. And that is the absolute total truth and gospel of parenting. That's for sure. So what's that? That's a good soundbite right there. That's good. I like that. Thanks man. Thanks. So you, you opened the gym and in your garage started training people that wasn't sustainable. So you started going out, you hired a coach, you started going out to other trainers and then teaching them how to actually Yeah, so to give a little bit more context on that, it was actually, I focused on building my brand Team ZS first, because I hit a point where I was capped for clients. And then the clients that I did have, some were like very coachable, seeing amazing results. And they actually expressed interest to me in becoming a coach themselves.

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So I have one in particular, who's now a business partner. Her name is Ana. I've been coaching her for maybe six months. She was like a dream client, literally never complained, did everything to a T, super coachable. And she finished up school for finance, I believe. And her options were to go work at a bank. And that's what her family pushed her to do. That's what they wanted her to do. But she was like, hey, like, I really like what we're doing together. And I would love to learn more. So I could either become a personal trainer and online coach as well. And I was like, okay, well, very different things. I'm like, do you want to go one-to-one PT? Or do you want to go online coach? And she's like, well, what do you think is better? I'm like, well, I'll tell you my story. Definitely working online, way more scalable, way more enjoyable. And I kind of realized in that moment, I was like, okay, well, here's the certifications you can go and do. Because these are the ones that I did. I found them very, very beneficial for like the delivery side of things. You can turn out good results and trust in your skills. And then she completed that in like, I don't know, three, four weeks, like just hammered it out. She's like, I'm done already. I'm like, holy crap. Okay. So I'm like, well, what's next? Like, where can I send her to learn the things that I had to learn in order to be successful?

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And I was like, you know what? I think I can teach you. Like if you're open to it, I'm like, I barely charged anything at the time. I was like, come work with me. I'll mentor you.

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We can work out some kind of a deal here where you can come in and be a part of my brand and start working on like the delivery side of things. I'll help you get leads. I'll help teach you how to get leads, grow your social media account sales.

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I was really, really good at sales. Probably one of my, my strong points. Cause I did a lot of membership sales at the gym. That was like my first job at a high school. And that went pretty well. Um, and within about 15 months, she was clearing 10,000 Canadian per month consistently. And I was like, well, she'd actually surpassed me at a certain point too. I was like, okay, wow, this is amazing. And then we started to build the brand a little bit more, but I found. I mean, I've learned lots of things from Dan now when it comes to my interview process that I have to clean up and have a very strong filter, high or slow, fire or fast. But I noticed when I was hiring people to kind of repeat that process, it was tough to find people with that same level of buy-in. to my thing, right?

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But I still saw other business owners out there that were like really bought into their thing, but were struggling. So I started to have conversations with other online coaches just to go and see if I could be helpful, just to ask them about their businesses. What are you struggling with? You know, what are you looking for help with? And that's when I decided to launch a consulting service.

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And I was like, you know what? I want to help outside business owners, people that are truly bought in that, like that have skin in the game. The skin in the game was like the really big thing. Cause when people come on to work for me, it's like no skin in the game. they show up or they don't, it didn't seem to matter to them as much. And I'm not looking for B and C players, I want A players. So I was like, okay, let's try this with outside business owners. And then the first guy that I brought on that paid me for that service, so that service could even exist and I could start building it out, saw some really great results as well. And within a couple months of me helping him, he quit his nine to five job where he was just a manager at a restaurant. He was able to do the full-time coaching and then within six months he moved to Mexico to live there, work abroad, do the online fitness thing. It was just amazing to see how quickly this thing can happen. when people are properly motivated. And it's like, it's not just a nice to have, like, oh yeah, that'd be nice for me to do this, but it's like, no, like, I have to do this. This is exactly what I want, and I'm not going to stop until I achieve said thing, because those are the people that I can work best with, because they still have to show up and post the content. They have to get over the self-limiting beliefs that are holding them back, the mindset problems that are holding them back from being successful, and really engulf themselves in that process and become the professional, right? Become obsessed with their own success. And that's where I saw that opportunity to be like, okay, wow. There's these other business owners out there that are running online coaching businesses like I used to, flying by the seat of their pants, no well-structured model, completely undercharging for their services, with no idea that they can actually make this a very lucrative career where you can change a lot of people's lives. And now, flash forward since then, we're at, I think, 52 businesses Cool. I've never really understood that online thing. I don't know that I could get motivated. I guess it works different for different people. Have you come across that where it's like, Hey, you know, I need someone, you know, physically in the room with me making me do another set versus zoom.

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There's a girl that works out in the gym and she just takes her phone and props it up. And she has her trainer, wherever her trainer is. And she just does full blown workout. Some people like it. I, it hasn't resonated with Yeah, so we definitely like the service isn't going to be for everyone, right? We have a niche of client that we like to help and you definitely have to be self-sufficient, right? It's like you wouldn't go into Dan Martell's elite business coaching program if you needed your hand held every step of the way, right?

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You got to try things. You got to be open to pushing yourself and showing up for yourself so you can show up to the meetings and ask your questions of like, here's what I tried.

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Here's what worked. Here's what didn't work. I need a little bit of help. So I think one-on-one personal training is going to be key for some people who need someone physically there, and someone physically there to help them move properly if they have injuries, if they're concerned. you know, about like performing certain movements or the, you know, the dangers or risks around actually going to the gym. But where I find online coaching can be really, really good is for people that are, that don't necessarily need the handholding or the babysitting at the gym, but need a plan, need accountability, need support with their lifestyle and their nutrition, need someone in their back pocket that they can message any time of day to get the support accountability that they need in order to be successful. And then to actually, again, like, be able to delegate certain things that they would otherwise have to do themselves. Because the thing about one-to-one personal training as well, I mean, some trainers have great all-encompassing services, but I know where I worked, it was just a training session one hour, two to three times per week. And the issue with that is that the majority of the progress that you see is what you spend the other 23 hours of the day doing. So, how are you eating? Are you tracking your macros or following a plan for that? Are there check-ins that are happening frequently to make sure that the metrics are moving in the right direction?

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Is there accountability outside of that one hour that you're spending with your trainer? So, that's kind of how I look at it. And I think there's a lot of people that are within my age range that don't necessarily need someone there. single movement of the day, but rather they just need the accountability, the support, the mindset, and just a system that they can follow where they don't have to think about it or worry about the changes themselves or worrying about filtering through all the information themselves. And they can just start applying and seeing Love it, dude. Talk about building something from nothing. Congrats on that. Sounds like you even doing it for five plus years now. It sounds like you're still just getting started. So, um, Yeah, I like that saying too, like building something from nothing. Cause we always crack that joke, like in our team meetings, we're like, yeah, we basically just like made up our own jobs and it's going pretty well. So. I I love that. Hey, listen, create the life you want and then go out and attack it with massive action. Right? Absolutely. Well, I really enjoyed our conversation, learning more about what you've built here, really inspired by your story as well. So I appreciate you again, taking some time out to hang out with us for a few minutes and share that story. Any final thoughts for our listeners on the world of personal training, Absolutely. If it's okay with you, I'd actually love to share something with, um, any personal trainers or people that are, either wanting to get into online fitness coaching or already online fitness coaches that are maybe doing it as a side hustle but know that they could be doing it a bit more seriously, making it a little bit better. Because I know what it's like to, again, just take massive action without any real structure, strategy or plan. And I think that's the great first step.

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I think that's the first step you need to do. It's like, don't worry about every little specific detail.

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You're going to figure it out as you go. Just start, get the reps in and every single rep needs to be a new iteration where you're making something a little bit better. But I want to give them something that I wish I had right off the bat that saved me a ton of headaches. And it's just a big breakdown. on how I personally modeled my business to have consistent income with my revenue, to make sure that I was able to target and attract a more premium client for a more high-ticket, white-glove experience. So I don't have to, again, be the volume guy that's the cheapest in the industry, always hunting for leads. And just how you can structure everything so that way when the potential client is hearing about it, it makes perfect sense for their point A to point B. They have complete buy-in and then there's just going to be a lot of peace of mind on your side of things. So without going too deep into that, if anyone wants that, first toss me a follow on Instagram. It's at Zach. Uh, are Okay. Okay. So I was going to say at Zach and Spencer is that AC, but ZAC underscore Spencer. Uh, all you gotta do is DM me the word model and I'll give you the full model breakdown of like what I do myself for all my coaches completely on the house. Um, just Cool, man. I'll make sure we include a link in the show notes of this episode. That's the description of this episode that you're listening to right now. And you can just click away, reach out, connect with Zach and see if you guys are a fit. Well, thanks again, man. I appreciate your time. Keep rocking and rolling, keep doing what you're doing. You're clearly doing work that matters and work that you love. I love to see that as an individual that's doing the same exact thing as well. So keep up the great work. Thanks again, Zach.

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Yeah, you as well. Thank you. My pleasure. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode of the Beyond the Story podcast. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show. This way you'll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review. We sure do appreciate it. Signing off from the podcast, Launchlab.com Studios.