Cory McKane 0:00
Cool. So here with Eddie Lester, so happy to have you on here, man, we we started messaging on LinkedIn four or five years ago. And, you know, it's great to, to see where your business has come and see where where my business has gone to. And, you know, have us here on the podcast. So can you tell the audience a little bit about yourself and what your businesses that will kind of take it from there?
Eddie Lester 0:20
Absolutely, yeah. And very excited to be on here. So, so thank you for inviting us. Yeah, so So my name is Edie Lester, I am the founder and CEO and we'll call it head Educator here at Fitness mentors. And you know, Ben Ben a personal trainer for man 1617 years now for pretty much them at the moment I turned 18 I knew that this was this was my industry and, and really, really made it made a gun for it to having, you know, a background in some professional sports, as well as just being active my whole life, I knew I knew that this was going to be the main thing that I want to do with my life and and really, really initially for the selfish purpose of improving my athletics and elements of that, but then realizing how much fun it is to help other people, you know, just just achieve health and fitness goals and become healthier and, and that's that that's so much of that has really led into what what fitness mentors achieves with, you know, bringing new trainers in the industry and helping them really grow not only in their business and knowledge, but in themselves and understanding kind of where they they want to take their lives. So no, just just super pumped to be on here. So thank you.
Cory McKane 1:32
That's awesome. And I want I was curious, as we first started talking, I had my original app is like a marketplace for fitness programs. And then let's, let's call it 2016. Like, what were you guys doing back then? And then we'll kind of touch on what you do now and kind of how to compare the two in five years? Yeah, absolutely. So
Eddie Lester 1:47
So kind of kind of giving further background into myself, I was a trainer for about maybe about five to six years before actually training the CEO of a local college and really was more or less kind of recruited by them to come build a personal training program, a 900 hour vocational style program for personal trainers. And so basically what I did was, was build 900 hours worth of curriculum that was based around the National Academy sports medicine, curriculum, or respect or their textbook, and, you know, gain a ton a ton of knowledge around just curriculum development. But really, what I what I attribute a lot of that to or what I take the most from that was my ability to take a curriculum and then teach it and apply it to, to help personal trainers will say, really comprehend the material in a way that allows them to be successful because one of the biggest things that I was so it was so tough in my start to being a personal trainers, I picked up the textbook, watched a few online videos, took a test and literally had no clue what I was doing it trying to, you know, get clients and even train and, and you know, that realizing that that style of education was not very promising for a lot of trainers. And that's that's kind of why the dropout rate for personal trainers is pretty, pretty high in that respect. Yeah, but basically, what my initial start with fitness mentors was is to bring together the education, the curriculum, and then really the in classroom experience of a teacher with all of that other background, to make the most will say put together a curriculum that allows personal trainers to be successful. Yeah, and there's so much more that goes into being a personal trainer as I'm sure a lot of the listeners out there know then just kind of creating a fitness program and all the other elements of helping people achieve the fitness goal through habits and lifestyle changes and nutrition and and then getting them to show up for their personal training sessions and do the work and fitness and then even getting into some of the the elements of sleep and recovery and stress management. There's so much that goes into helping people with their health and fitness, you know, that that really struck a chord with me when when realizing how would I have done it differently? Or how would I've set it up for myself in learning to become a personal trainer. But But fitness mentor is basically that application of all of the experience that I've had in the industry as well as all the other team members here and their experience and how can we make the best possible learning experience? And then the most will say, or the highest ability to get that information to stick? Yeah, so in order to get to your real question within 2016, we, we were actually educating. We basically I took the 900 hour program that I that I had created and the school that I was working for actually gone out of business through accreditation something a little a little funky on the, you know, funding side, to say the least, but but was realized that that I had these such a unique skill set. And there was a missing element of online learning in the fitness industry that that was, you know, just just complete joy I was actually I was I took that, that that curriculum, and I actually taught personal trainers how to pass the nasm exam, as well as gave them a ton more insight into understanding how to become a successful personal trainer so much further beyond just getting a certification.
Cory McKane 5:45
And then with that being said, one of my questions was actually about, like, let's, let's take nasm, for example, as a certification or I say or as whatever, what is the difference between you? And you, you would them? Or are you like a continued education? Are you completely like a competitor? Or are you like an accomplice to what they do? Like? Like, what what is what is your relation to like? nasm? Now, nowadays,
Eddie Lester 6:05
yes, so So fast forward to 2021, we are now offering about 11, certifications, all fitness mentors, and, you know, approved through various accrediting bodies. And we are a, we'll say, a direct competitor, and really taking the experience of understanding the curriculum building process, my education, the hidden teaching in the classroom, really trying to apply that. And it's a lot more fun way, you know, I've written now, probably what's eight to 10 books relating to personal training, as far as the sciences and understanding psychology elements of that to business building elements. Also, we kind of primarily focused on on, you know, what are the skills needed for the future Personal Training, which is so much virtual, but helping people adjust habits and take part in fitness and health parameters, virtually to so it's really trying to move the industry in, into the future with with the skills that are going to be required for the next Well, basically, for now, but then also for the next five to 10 years where we see that industry going in.
Cory McKane 7:12
And one thing you mentioned that I've always been so curious about because like, years ago, I was like maybe we'll eventually have our own certification. It's like, I can't even imagine running a software company, and a mobile app. And then also, like doing everything you'd like I just like so that won't ever happen. Anything we'll just like throw fitness mentors in there and call it good. What What is that process like to get accredited? Because like people that are outside the fitness world, constantly asked me about like my platform, whatever, like what's we strive etc. They're like, Well, how do you know? Like, what makes a trainer like anybody want to do it? I'm like, Well, I mean, technically, yeah. But you know, there's certifications and they're like, Well, does that what does that mean? I'm like, well, there's like nasm, and Ace and fitness mentors and all this stuff. And then they're like, Okay, well, who makes those certifications certified? And I'm like, I don't know, I have no idea. So like, what? Like, is there like some, like three godly figures on Mount Olympus like approving you guys? Like, what is that process? Like,
Eddie Lester 8:04
before getting to that it's super important to recognize that that the accrediting process and the accreditation typically does not. And this is for different certifying bodies, but it does not really get into the quality of education. Okay, that's, that's one thing that that a lot of people get confused on. It's like, oh, if it's
Cory McKane 8:26
accredited, it must be good. Is it just kind of like generic, like, you must be 18 years old, you must like kind of like, kind of, but obviously way more than that, but like, you know, to an extent
Eddie Lester 8:36
kind of vibe. So what accreditation does is it's, it analyzes an exam, okay. And by analyzing this exam, and basically proving through, we'll say statistics based on this test, that it basically proves that you have the skill set to be an Enter to enter this field as a beginner. So if you can answer, you know, 80 questions, right, or I think it's 85 questions right out of 120 question test about this, these topics, you should be okay. In, we'll say, performing that industry's baseline level tasks, or for for for training, so, so for personal training, that is, you can we'll say have an idea of how not to hurt someone is that the way that I best Look at that, in the sense of you know, enough to where you won't take someone that's, you know, 80 years old and load them up with a barbell and for what 135 pounds and do that. It's kind of like well, what what is the baseline levels where they, they can effectively train someone with it by but also make sure that they're being safe and following guidelines presented by the certifying body. That's kind of the the generic way that I look at accreditation, which means that There's this giant gap between an accredited test and a quality education experience
Cory McKane 10:07
God, like like they're like you can get in with this. And then there's some certifications that have the same accreditation, but they could be like way up here. And you just like,
Eddie Lester 10:17
it's basically that there's not there's not the rankings right now, as far as like which certification is best is not necessarily based on the best education, it's really based on, they are the most popular because most people choose them, they they are the most accepted in the ER, by your, your 24 hour fitnesses are your major gym chains, and they are accredited in that respect. Those are kind of the parameters that that guide, you know, the best sort of nation, but but really, that doesn't doesn't necessarily fall into the place of what is the best education for me. And to be honest, a lot of the the large certifications, they aren't able to move as fast as as the now in the future is is getting exactly. Because they can't adapt them adapt a 700 800 page textbook to include elements of the newest online personal training software, like Exactly. They they can't just they can just add that and say, you know, how can you benefit from this? They can't do that. Exactly. So it's our job as mentors is to be like, hey, let's get practically involved with the newest technologies. And the technologies that are gonna be the most effective for the the nowaday trainer, or the trainer of the now and the trainer of the future. And let's teach them those skills in our curriculum and update it as often as possible. Yeah, and us being so virtual and online having this experience, we're able to do that. And that's, that's really what what I feel differentiates us from them. Outside of India, we're we have accreditations in that respect and approvals through Board of Education, different elements like that. But what we feel we really can do to separate us and create the better trainer and help trainers more, is through that ability to quickly adapt to education. Bring them the newest tools and technologies like we strive. And really then then teach them in a way that's fun, interactive and will actually stick. Yeah, so so much of an 800 page textbook is going to go out the window not matter at all.
Cory McKane 12:25
Yeah, page 17. And I'm already like, you know, getting a snack and eggs. Exactly. That's incredible, man. I mean, I am. Wow, you guys have a physical textbook also, or
Eddie Lester 12:36
no, we absolutely do. And that's that's available with with most of our courses. But the more being virtual and unable to, to update our textbook as often as possible in a virtual sense, via PDF. In that respect, that's significantly easier for us to do. So we the most updated versions of our textbook are definitely PDFs, but we absolutely have the version or a printed version. It's just like, you know, going through the process to make a new printed version for every update is isn't going going to happen as quickly. So for those people that like that, that handheld text, that physical copy and that weight in their hands, we definitely have that as well. Yeah.
Cory McKane 13:15
So the Do you guys have like a decision from like a project management standpoint, you guys have like a backlog of like, okay, like now you should do 12 push ups at 15. This is recommended, like so do you have like a giant backlog of like when that new hard copy comes out, you just auto update all these sentences? Or like, how do you guys manage the update process? Well, just
Eddie Lester 13:34
to touch on your first point, the science behind personal training is moving at zero miles an hour. The new breakthroughs in fitness and fitness programming and the science behind exercise is almost non existent. Yes, you have new studies that are more or less confirming the sciences that were are currently there. But when we think about you know rep ranges and sets and, and the physiology behind exercise, there's not going to be a ton of break. So yeah, when we think of the adjustments to what we do, it's not to teach or to re define what exercise needs to be. It's more to what does the trainer need to be the most successful and we have all the baseline sciences down and taught in a really fun and interactive way that make it you know, science is pretty dry sometimes and and we do do our best to make that fun and entertaining. But then, you know, when we think about updates to our curriculum, it's on. Like I said the trainer of the now on the train of the future, get your baseline sciences understood, but how are you going to help the most people? How are you gonna scale your business? How are you going to take your 20 to 30 clients in person business and then help more people on top of that, how do you create time in your schedule? make more money, there's there's so much that trainers need to learn around the business side. But also just just when we think of here or here at Fitness mentors, our biggest thing is the big picture and, and that's how can we have the biggest impact on our communities as personal trainers. And that's through incorporating not only your in person business, but group training, but virtual Personal Training, virtual group training, creating fitness will say documents and videos that are ever evergreen that hundreds of people can access even at one time, it's about the taking your skill set, and the passion for what you do as a personal trainer. And creating a business that allows you to help the most amount of people. And from a business side, when you help the most amount of people, you're also able to increase your income, have more personal freedom, have more financial freedom, achieve your life goals that are outside of your career, like a sister, you know, having your family and buying the house and we go really, really big picture and, and and that's something that that I think also differentiates us so much from the industry is, is it's not about a certification and getting a job at a 24 Hour Fitness anymore. That's just just not the industry that that we're moving into. It is the age of the fitness entrepreneur.
Cory McKane 16:21
Yeah, absolutely. And
Eddie Lester 16:22
that's exactly what we strive does is to help that person and our our goal is to provide them access and understanding of the tools and the education that leads them to, to being successful and having that impact. Ignore that chatter
Cory McKane 16:37
to set I was gonna write fitness entrepreneur, because I love that so much. And I've never, I don't know why that I haven't read it. My old podcast was called or read a group called entrepreneurs of LA and fitness entrepreneur never thought I never thought of that. I love what you just said, because we do that we try to do the same thing where it's, it's not just a software like how can I give you a community? How can I answer your questions? How can I help you with like, grow your business and actually, like, you know, retire at some point, or give you more time with your family. So I love that, like you guys are looking at it beyond like a textbook, and then you're done. So that's, that's amazing. It's beautiful, man. I love that. And I want to go back to your personal training days like what how did you like being a personal trainer? Like what like what were your favorite things about it? What did you not like about it? And then here's a good question. What would you have done differently if you had been fitness mentor certified when you were a trainer? I love it. Quite a few questions there. But let's start with with personal trainer. Yeah, my bad. Oh, yeah, no, yeah, I am still a personal trainer. I love it. This mentor certified, absolutely. I've taken my test and been certified, I failed, I feel does
Eddie Lester 17:44
know, I still train people one on one, because I enjoy because I enjoy seeing the transformation. It's it's rewarding. And I have a passion for helping others. Like it keeps you in that, like you don't want to be like I haven't trained in eight years, you
Cory McKane 17:56
know what I mean? Like it would you would it keeps you in the element like I to jump off your point, I wish that I personal train, like during the day and then read my software because I would be I'm very intertwined with our trainers, but I would be so much more if I did what you did. And I was like, every morning I had three clients, whatever. And then I ran my business like I love that. I love that.
Eddie Lester 18:14
Yeah, and but then also with with kind of what I was mentioning about this, this next the personal trainer of the future, I also still have clients or started having clients online about four or five years ago. And I still have clients all over the world as well as products that assist clients on top of you know, individual one on one virtual help individual one on one personal training help group training. So so and that's really helped me to understand the landscape a bit better into how personal trainers can truly scale and give themselves more time because not only do I do I write curriculum, do I do marketing and elements of of curriculum updates and, and basically teach and lecture for fitness mentors, but but I also literally will take that morning's training session and have something that applies to a piece of the curriculum. And later in that day lecture on this this topic that directly relates and provide examples of my training session that morning to the actual topic at hand. And the being being involved in in those sorts of ways really keeps me connected to where there's still room for me to improve and where there's education and knowledge to give that applies so heavily to the personal trainer of the now and of the future. In that respect.
Cory McKane 19:29
I love that. And I have a call at least once a day with one of our trainers or with like a new potential trainer. And there are so many other CEOs in tech that don't talk to their customers. They just kind of like they run their company while blah. And it just blows my mind. Like I every time I have every single time I have a call I've had 1000s of calls. A trainer will be like, even if they don't mean to they'll accidentally suggest the button should be moved or there. They'll suggest like I wish this pop up would lead to this page and it's just like it's just crucial feedback that I love hearing and Being involved with So I love that like you're so deeply involved in what you're doing. It's just It's awesome. And you mentioned blog articles so I want to give you some credit man because I'm we're currently working on our SEO we're relatively like five months into it already seeing like, a couple of the articles that I just bs wrote are the top five on Bing or whatever and I'm just like, wow, this is crazy. You sir, are a scoundrel on SEO it is crazy man. I took I interviewed who he used to do SEO for Airbnb. So like he was their head guy for all Airbnb SEO. So this guy knows SEO right. I took his course. And I was it's like this insane course like it's it's probably a three month course. And I've never finished because it's so intense. But I'm at a certain point, I still don't understand what he's talking about. But basically, he had me download all these tools and go through all this, like these traction are traffic funnels and all this stuff. And I was starting to do some research and it was like keyword longtail you should find short tail they should find. And fitness mentors was at the top of every single damn word that I was searching for. It was you and one other guy I remember his name. And then like, occasionally one of our competitors would be there. And I was like, Damn, man, this guy has just absolutely dominate SEO, so props to you, man, because it's, it's so underrated. Like, you've probably gotten hundreds of 1000s in marketing dollars for free. And 100%. So I mean, it's, it's a, it's no,
Eddie Lester 21:26
SEO is good and kind of I mean, when you think of SEO for personal trainers, it gets different when obviously, when you think of large company that wants to rank and invest 1000s of dollars into SEO, versus a personal trainer trying to compete in that respect, I guess one quick tip just for personal trainers, because it's because I feel like that's that's the primary audience here's that getting on a lot of the directories if you actually go to our site and search like personal training marketing ideas, that's one of one of our top blogs for trainers looking to get an edge up on just how to get more clients registering yourself for all these directories that have a specific location. Like when somebody Google's personal trainer, Manhattan Beach in California or something, if say if somebody Google's that and you are on all the directories saying that you're a personal trainer in Manhattan Beach, you're actually going to get benefit from that registries or that directories SEO and you're going to actually get ranked as one of the top profiles they're so fun, fun tip for around SEO for personal trainers but register for a lot of the directories and put your city in there because that that's when I when I was just starting out as personal training I registered for all those and was able to get you know one to two calls a week from people that were just just looking up personal trainer and then the location which in which they're at.
Cory McKane 22:40
I love that
Eddie Lester 22:41
but yeah, and I mean like like marketing and technical side is a whole different ballgame and you know really really growing our ability to connect with as many people as possible through all avenues is something that I'm primarily focused on now is just how can we and this is this is also you know why I'm here doing this podcast is let's let's get the will say information out there that is needed for personal trainers to succeed on all platforms on all all areas of the internet and, and just just just to do our best to educate and help people at all times with with my time and that's something that you know, purposefully I want to do and fitness mentors is really a platform which I can do that so let's just go going back to that bigger picture element.
Cory McKane 23:24
I love that and then and then you mentioned like of my time so like one one question I had is like what is it typical day for you? Like what is today? We'll take Wednesday, we'll take Wednesday. What did you do today? What are you gonna do the rest of the day?
Eddie Lester 23:35
Yeah, for sure. I now have three kids. So that's that's a whole nother addition to my time. I mean that that's my primary focus for those morning hours is is getting them up and getting them dressed. I've three boys a five year old, a three year old and a one year old.
Cory McKane 23:53
Okay then
Eddie Lester 23:54
it is a madhouse it is a madhouse whenever we're all together but my wife is amazing. And she's she's the absolutely the foundation for for my sanity with with helping with the kids but you know getting getting them out the door and ready that's obviously cut into a lot of the private one on one sessions that I do just because that time was was kind of utilized for or now is more utilized for kids then then training but you know, my my day really, really, really varies when it comes to the work elements. And this is kind of when I kind of want to relate it to being an online trainer. Yeah, all of my work is done virtually all my work is done on a computer. Obviously you know using this is the most powerful device. The most powerful device for any personal trainer and online trainer is your phone. There's your smartphone is your iPhone, because so much of what I do now is content creation and being kind of the the head educator and face of fitness mentors. I want to do as much as I can around that content creation. So most of my daily tasks A system of writing curriculum or or blogs or marketing materials, video recording, whether that be video video lessons for our future courses, or updating a current course or, you know, a social media post video video, I also edit those videos primarily. And then also with having kids and that sort of thing need need to get out of the house and do some exercise and activities. So, you know, an hour a day working out I golf and surf. So so those are those are my primary outlets for for fun.
Cory McKane 25:37
What city Do you live in again, I forgot.
Eddie Lester 25:39
I now live in St. San Clemente, California, gotcha. South Orange County. But I mean, just trying to work my butt off when I'm focused on work, and then try to get some free time when the kids are in school, and then balancing that free free time with watching the baby so that my wife can have free time, as well as running an online business. Like a lot of personal trainers out there are doing finding that time to really focus for those, you know, four to five, six hours in which I have that time to work, just really dive in. And like here my task, here's what I need to do manage the team, get the team's input weekly meetings with a teammate. Yeah, it's it's a very, very fun, very time consuming, but at the same time, the bigger picture, the bigger purpose is to impact as many people as possible with the thought of improving their health, improving their fitness, and really just just just living a more purposeful, you know, happy life. So
Cory McKane 26:30
yeah, absolutely. I love all that. And then what, um, so as a CEO, like, why, why do you still do the video editing and the blog writing? Like, obviously, you're killing it? So I actually didn't want to answer that. Yeah, no,
Eddie Lester 26:43
I mean, it's kind of kind of once again, staying connected, staying, I mean, being in the industry still, and still training, virtually still training in in person. And connecting that experience with this whole new experience of being the CEO of a fitness certification company. I really like I enjoy it. I mean, that that's, that's kind of the first thing I did, I edited videos of myself surfing as a kid from literally 11 years old when when the software was so terrible. And it took four hours to render a 12 minute video or 10 minute video. And so I kind of just gotten the hang of it, have some great templates that I use and builds and, and then just do that for the video editing. But also the information that I want to share, I want it to be as we'll say, connected as possible to the industry. And I feel like I can provide a lot of that input for a lot of the SEO style blogs that I have have have a company that assists me with that, but but for the informational, you know, knowledge base knowledge, gaining input for our courses for our blog, informational blog, for our social media, for those that style help, I want to be there, along with my team that are all expert trainers as well be there to kind of kind of have that input and see and see how it falls on the audience and then see how how it helps them. And that's also a really rewarding part. For me, it's just seeing that impact that that it has of my words, in my videos and things like that, too.
Cory McKane 28:07
Yeah. And I think it's a it's a blessing and a curse to be good at that stuff and to want to do it because I think like for me, I feel like I'm very good at product like our entire platform. I do all of the initial designs that I have this beautiful UX UI guy that just crushes everything. But the problem is though, is I spend so much of my day doing that, like I just addicted because I have so I could, if you gave if you were like building an app for gambling, and it's called this, I could spend a week and just design pages, and I would have the time of my life. And so for me, it's a curse anyways, I spent too much time on it. But like, obviously, for you guys, it's so beneficial that you put them in the hours and you're able to like, you know, really just hammer in your schedule. So I love that. So one last thing I want to ask you is what are the next steps for fitness mentors? Are you guys gonna like hosa Fitness competition? Are you gonna like like, we're like, Where are you guys going in the next couple of years.
Eddie Lester 29:01
Our kind of primary focus right now is to grow our reach. And you know so much. So one of the biggest things that I've learned and I know from being a personal trainers is that most people choose a certification through research on their own, but typically they talk to another personal trainer says, Oh, this certification is the best.
Cory McKane 29:27
Exactly.
Eddie Lester 29:28
And, and so so so our we'll say kind of primary focus is to have the impact on our current community that allows people to go out there and say, fitness mentors really cares. You know, why? Why are you choosing a company that that certifies, you know, 10s of 1000s of people and provides no additional support relative to your career direction and you know, doesn't really have the connection. To help and guidance, and are one of our most recent objectives is to put together a resource of materials for all of our personal trainers. And we call it what we're currently calling it kind of the fitness mentor ship, which is basically with all of our CBT certifications, all the all the newer people coming into the industry, we have a one year access to this kind of business startup mentorship, it kind of assists you in, in choosing in choosing the direction you want to go, educating you on all aspects of that direction, and then aiding you with actual support from myself and my team to help you go in that direction. Because one of the biggest things missing from the typical certification process, we'll call it and this is we'll say, over the last 10 years is what they do is they get you a certificate, you go into a gym and you get a job. Once again, that's that's not the future of this industry, pushing them out. So you know, exactly and it's, it's like this, this this wheel of just kind of monotony in that respect, or kind of kind of boring and simple and, and the thing is, though, that most personal trainers fail in that in that career path, or in that style of getting into the industry. So our job at Fitness mentors, and my purpose in doing this is to break that sort of hamster wheel of or that revolving door, we'll call it of that, you know, 20 to 40% of trainers that that get a certification paper certificate, within one year are no longer training, our kind of goals to put together the resources, which we've kind of done with our mentorship put together the resources that lead to that dropout rate being significantly less, and then also earn the trust of our community to be recommended as that top option from an education and training and support standpoint. So so so you know, like, obviously, as we grow, we're going to have major, major initiatives, I guess one of the things I should touch on is our purpose of giving back to the community, we partner with correctional facilities, addiction facilities. And really just Well, you have veteran veteran communities as well. And we're able to donate education, donate our time, to support individuals that may have had a hard time or coming off of a hard time, or just really passionate and want to get into the industry. And we're able to donate a lot of we'll say, time courses to those populations that really, we see as a way for them to break out of their old routines, or maybe maybe negative elements, and then drive them towards a future that's purposeful, in and related to health. Yeah, so that's kind of a major initiative of ours to is to establish that side of the business too, because so much of this is for us as big picture and assisting those those will say populations and those facilities and centers that help those people and partnering with them to to aid in their recovery and or their success, whichever way you want to look at it. That's something that's that's huge to us. So, I mean, don't do not go beyond that, you know that. As we grow, we're gonna have major initiatives around, you know, technology and conferences and symposiums and all of these elements that allow us to expand our reach even further. But right now, we're really, really focusing on the process. And that that reimagining the process of becoming a personal trainer. And that's, that's something that that I want to primarily focus on now. Because that's, that's what needs the most change, and what will make the biggest impact on the industry and on our communities. And, you know, the country in that respect in the world,
Cory McKane 33:42
I love all that. It's it as you were talking, I was just, it's really crazy how we're like on the exact same page as far as like our businesses go. And then the people that we're competing against are like basically the exact same, they probably have the same advisors and founders, actually, we're just in the hamster wheel just like you. Like for us. It's you get on a software, like Have a good day, like we're not getting, they don't even really some of our competitors don't even have blogs, like it's just like, they're just they just don't care. And then with you guys is the same thing where nasm and H just kind of thrown through the wheel. Like, I don't even know what Ace is doing nowadays, but like, I mean, it's just so I think it's so awesome what you guys are doing, and I have yet to start it because I don't know what I want to do. But two points on exactly what you're doing is what I wanted to do, too is the charity component. Like I wanted some way to give back like I was thinking of some sort of youth concept and actually almost launched a youth version of our app last year we didn't have the funding to do it because it would have been such a like pivot so I really want to get back to you kind of like an East 60 kind of a thing like ESPN does. So I think that's so cool. what you guys are doing with veterans and all that correction facilities is amazing. And then the second thing is I have the full plans to create a we strive you where it's like basically what you were talking about. So I would love to when once we get to that point, just basically like reference all of your guys's stuff Just pull in fitness but have you come on and do like, like the education, tag your all your stuff. So that's so cool. I
Eddie Lester 35:06
mean, I literally have like, I just we just finished the designs for our like forum and our education course all subsets. Anyways, so I just love where you guys are going I think it's an awesome cert, we'd love to hear more about it our job here is to assist you with guidance and direction and, and just like a business coach would help you lay out your plan of where to take the next step and how to take the next step and how to avoid mistakes. That's what we're really here to do. And that's built into all of our certifications. So if you know that your next step is to learn more about nutrition, join us in in that course come on to our Facebook groups get involved in our mentorships and and then ask the questions and let us help you in that respect. So we obviously if you join our email list, you'll get all of our all the information on all of what I just said. But also you know, promotions around the like Fourth of July just past we had a great promotion for for some bundles of ours that that really had a big impact on people and and you know just just just become involved because if this truly is your passion to help others in health and fitness then be involved with us follow us in all of our elements, join our email list and even even give us a call we one of the greatest things about about about us is that we you can literally call us and talk to someone right away. In that respect. It's now this automated five minutes system to connect you to the right person and the right thing because you know, yeah, press zero press nine six, select four, is this a sales call? No. Okay, yeah. So so we're always available via phone even to bounce ideas off of and, and really just help help as many people as possible so that as far as like, what what's the next step for all your listeners out there, come on our journey, grow yourself, assist us in the overall purpose of personal trainers, which really impact the health of our communities in the world around us.
Cory McKane 37:00
I love it. Love it, man. I'm so excited to see where you guys go and huge, huge fitness mentor supporter and we're going to be launching like a certifications database pretty soon for we strive and I obviously put you guys up at the top. So I'm excited to be involved there. So I'll take all your links in the post podcast. I'll put them in the information or the BIOS everyone can see them and thank you, Eddie glad we're able to reconnect. Man, this has been a great I can't wait to see what you guys do.
Eddie Lester 37:25
Yeah, Cory No, I really appreciate it and to all the personal trainers out there, keep up the good work. If you're looking to become a personal trainer, and especially virtual trainer. Definitely check out we strive as well as our certified online personal trainer course the combo of those two are going to really blow your mind as far as where you can take Virtual Training and really just once again, have your have your biggest impact on your community.
Cory McKane 37:48
Mmm boom.
Transcribed by otter.ai
