Most personal trainers quit within two years. Not because they can't train people. Not because they don't love it. They quit because nobody told them this was a business — and businesses need more than passion to survive. Today we fix that.

Today I'm sitting with Marco Reyes, founder of Reyes Performance in Calgary and one of the most transparent voices on the business side of personal training in Canada. Marco went from $28 an hour at a big-box gym to running a $400K independent operation. What we're getting into today is how he actually did it — and what you can steal for your own career. Let's get into it.

Thanks Jesse. Honestly, I spent the first two years of my career doing everything wrong — undercharging, overdelivering in the wrong ways, no retention system, no referral system. I was good at training people and terrible at running a business.

That's the trap, right? The NASM certification gives you the skills to change someone's body. It doesn't give you the skills to build a business around that. When did that click for you?

It clicked when I did the math. I was seeing 25 clients a week, burning out, and clearing maybe $48,000 a year after the gym took their cut. I sat down one night, did the numbers, and realized I was worth three times that to my clients — I just wasn't charging for it.

Walk me through the pricing shift. Because this is where most trainers freeze. They're afraid to raise rates. They think they'll lose everyone.