How I Found My Calling and How to Find Yours Too
In nearly every aspect of life, we need some sort of infrastructure. A house without a foundation would blow over in a breeze. A city without pipes, roads, and power lines would crumble. A body without bones would be a fleshy blob of goo.
So why do we have almost no structure in the health and fitness industry?
Sure, there are lots of choices: a buffet of books, websites, workshops, certifications, and friendly (or not so friendly) advice to randomly gorge on. But while there’s an abundance of options, almost no one’s connected the dots. There’s no curriculum, no path to follow, no guidelines for what to do and how to act, no steel girders to give you the structure to launch yourself into a successful career.
If you work in health and fitness, you’re pretty much on your own.
Sure, you may know a lot about exercise or nutrition or the inner workings of the body. But where will you learn how to choose your specialty, attract clients, run a business, manage difficult situations, protect your reputation? Where will you be exposed to the inner workings of success?
Herein lies one of the biggest problems I see in the health and fitness industry: Too much information, too little context. It’s easy to get overwhelmed or to focus on the wrong things. And that can lead to unclear vision, frustrating (or no) personal development, and—ultimately—lots of good professionals feeling stuck in careers they once dreamed about being a part of.
To illustrate my point, there’s currently a 40 percent annual turnover rate among health and fitness professionals—meaning that by this time next year, four in ten will have left a field they were once deeply passionate about.
This book is designed to change that.
In Change Maker, I’ll share a road map, a curriculum, a way to connect the dots that’ll help you achieve success on your own terms. Of course, defining success depends on your perspective, your goals, and your stage in life. But the way I define it is:
CHOOSING A PROFESSIONAL PATH
that brings you the most meaning,
MAKING ENOUGH MONEY
to be financially secure,
HAVING THE FLEXIBILITY
to create your own schedule,
BALANCING YOUR PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL LIVES
so they support one another, and
SEEING PHENOMENAL RESULTS
with your clients and patients.
That last one is why you’re in this business, right? It’s certainly not because the industry is full of trainers, nutritionists, and functional medicine docs driving Maseratis and doing biceps curls with gold bricks. Instead, you’re probably here because 1) you were called (by someone or something) to help change lives and/or 2) the health and fitness industry changed your life, just like it did mine.
How health and fitness changed—no, saved—my life
Maybe it’s because I was small and weak, always sneezing and wheezing. Or maybe it’s because skinny kids like me got picked on a lot growing up. Whatever the reason, by the time I got to high school, I had a chip on my shoulder and was mad at the world. I skipped a lot of classes; I was always drunk and high; I wasn’t that fun to be around; and I had no prospects for continuing my education.
Then, one night, after drinking and driving with friends (go ahead and judge me; I deserve it), we crashed a car. As we spiraled out of control into a wooded area, I had one of those cinematic near-death experiences: Everything slowed down. I saw visions of my childhood. I watched myself being lowered into the ground while my parents loomed overhead, grieving and ashamed.
But, miraculously, we narrowly missed the trees. We didn’t hurt ourselves or anyone else. All we did was scrape the car and knock off a side mirror during the crash. When the dust settled, we sat up in a whoa-what-was-that? stupor. “Let’s get the car out of this embankment,” said the driver. “My parents are gonna kill me.”
I had a wholly different reaction. Holy shit! I thought. I have to do something different with my life.
Although we were miles from my house, I decided to walk home. My buddies drove away, getting arrested later that night.
I agonized over what to do next. I knew I needed to do something. But I had no skills. All I knew was the party lifestyle, and I was so small and weak that my upper arm and wrist circumferences were nearly identical. Even so, I was unmistakably drawn to the idea of living better. Part of me wanted to get more sleep, eat better food, and start working out to build some muscle. So I joined a local gym.
I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t know what to do. I just showed up.
You’ve probably heard the saying: “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.” Well, that’s what happened next. One day, while I was flailing around on a leg-press machine, the gym’s owner, Craig, approached. He shared some tips, and I guess I took them well, because he invited me to work out with him the next day.
Craig was every young guy’s hero. He was big and strong, a 230-pound bodybuilder. He had a business degree and owned a few well-respected gyms. He was well-read. He drove a nice car. He was handsome and girls loved him.
What Craig saw in me, I have no idea. However, during the next two years, he became a trusted coach, a good friend, and my greatest mentor. He gave me books to read. He taught me about health and fitness. He talked about the business of owning a gym. He even gave me a job at the front desk and showed me how things worked.
Craig’s mentorship didn’t just change my life; it saved my life. I didn’t go back to partying. Instead, I went to a community college. To pay for school, I took personal training and lifestyle coaching courses and started working with a few clients at Craig’s gym.
I’d found my calling.
I went on from community college to study medicine, biology, chemistry, psychology, and philosophy as I progressed through advanced degrees at five different universities. While working on my mind, I also built my body, entering bodybuilding and powerlifting competitions. I eventually went on to win a national bodybuilding championship, earn a PhD, and co-found Precision Nutrition, which is now the world’s largest nutrition coaching, certification, and software company.
When I discovered health and fitness, I needed a makeover
When I started working out, I needed to build a new body, mind, and perspective.
Later on, I needed to rebuild my perspective again.
I paid my way through ten years of postsecondary education by coaching clients. Yet, halfway through the journey, I was feeling unsettled in my work. This was strange because the health and fitness industry saved my life. I believed in the power it had to save other lives too.
At the same time, when I looked around, I saw a big disconnect between the people working in health and fitness and the people we were supposed to be helping.
It seemed as if the entire field was set up to cater exclusively to people like me and my fellow fit friends: the people who already worked out in gyms, shopped at organic markets, and had a commitment to living a healthy lifestyle.
Think about the implications of that.
We were putting all our energy into serving a tiny percent of the population—the small segment of people who, ironically, needed our help the least. Not only did this present an ethical dilemma, it also presented a business problem. How was I supposed to stand out when competing with everyone else trying to serve the same market as me?
In addition, we were ignoring the people in pain, the millions who didn’t have any experience with health and fitness, the ones who needed our help the most. This really hit home for me when I realized that no matter how “expert” I was becoming, I still didn’t have the necessary skill or ability to help my loved ones, the people closest to me, avoid fads and make positive changes in their lives.
Once I had this realization, I couldn’t unrealize it.
Again, I knew something had to change
I needed to learn a different way of seeing my clients—plus a new way of thinking about my work.
That’s when I decided two things.
First, I didn’t want to only help fit and healthy people get more fit and healthy. I also wanted to help everyone who was ready and willing to make changes in their lives—no matter who they were, what they looked like, or where they were starting from.
Second, I wanted to make sure that my help was the real deal—the kind of help that facilitates lasting, meaningful change in a person’s life. No quick fixes, no Band-Aids, no solutions that only work when the conditions are perfect.
Sadly, early in my career, I wasn’t doing either
I wasn’t doing either of those two things—helping those who most needed it, and offering lasting change—on my own. And I wasn’t even doing them during the early days of Precision Nutrition, which I started with my friend Phil Caravaggio in a basement in the early 2000s.
Precision Nutrition began as a passion project, a fun way to indulge our love of health and fitness while expressing our geeky science- and technology-loving genes.
In our early years we wrote articles, created educational DVDs, sold e-books, and otherwise ran what people call an “information product” business. During this time we collected lots of testimonials and people told us we were doing great work.
But I wasn’t quite sure.
Phil and I started to suspect that articles, books, and DVDs—while offering some value—could only do so much. We were beginning to realize that people who want change in their lives don’t benefit from big chunks of information dumped into their laps at once.
Careful, patient, compassionate coaching makes the real difference
Phil and I started to realize that this kind of deep-level coaching was almost entirely missing from the health and fitness industry. So we set out to find better ways to reach more of the people who needed us—especially the people who weren’t yet “into” health and fitness.
THIS BEGAN WITH REALLY LISTENING TO PEOPLE and, in turn, speaking to their deepest needs when describing our programs.
THEN, ONCE THEY BECAME CLIENTS, COACHING THEM BY USING NEW METHODS—borrowed from more established fields like behavioral psychology—known to facilitate sustainable change.
FINALLY, IT MEANT COMMITTING TO BUILDING A BETTER BUSINESS, one that’d be around for a long time—long enough to help create industry-wide change.
Thankfully, we’ve made great strides.
Today, Precision Nutrition is on its way to directly help millions of people eat, move, and live better while also empowering health and fitness professionals to do the same with their own clients and patients.
As of 2019, we’ve worked with more than 150,000 coaching clients and mentored more than 75,000 health and fitness professionals from all over the world.
We’ve coached professional sports teams and Olympic athletes at the highest level of sport.
We’ve consulted with some of the most respected companies in the world including Apple, Equinox, Nike, and Virgin.
Our methods have been validated in several peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Our team has been recognized by Fast Company as one of the world’s most innovative organizations.
Our co-founder, Phil Caravaggio, has been named one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40, recognizing outstanding, visionary young achievers in Canadian business.
And I’ve been repeatedly named one of the 100 most influential people in health and fitness.
Now, I’m not bringing all this up to brag. This track record of success, I hope, will help you trust me to guide you toward a more fruitful, empowering career yourself. Because that’s exactly what I plan to do.
How can you become the ultimate change maker?
While I’m hopeful for the future of the health and fitness industry, I’m frustrated by all the noise out there today. I’ve watched too many change makers get stuck in the matrix—minds influenced by the bad thinking of pseudo experts, the persuasive power of unscrupulous marketing, and the short attention span of health and fitness media—unable to figure out what’s true, useful, or important.
But if you think it’s bad on the professional side, consider what it’s like for the public. These are the people who desperately need our help. In an industry full of diet books, late-night infomercials, and a million diagnoses from Dr. Google, they don’t know where to turn, or who to turn to.
Of course, I want them to turn to you.
But only if you’re willing to think differently about who you are, why you’re here, how you can make a great living, and how you can make a real difference.
Because, if you can do that, I know you’ll be able to:
turn your passion into a rewarding, life-changing career that you’re proud of;
make enough money to do (and have) the things you want;
learn whether the things you want (and have) are actually the right things for you;
make your own schedule, work on valuable projects, and make a difference; and
surround yourself with people who push you to be better and celebrate your successes.
Even more:
You have the opportunity to change, even save, lives
Think about all the people out there who are suffering, or in pain, or frustrated.
Maybe they’re shooing their daughter away at the park, saying, “I can’t play right now; Daddy’s knee hurts too much.”
Maybe they’re giving their mom her first shot of insulin, saying it’s just going to be a little pinch.
Maybe they’re sitting in the middle seat of an airplane, trying to ask the flight attendant (as quietly as possible) for a seat belt extension and avoiding the judgmental eyes of everyone around them, wishing they could somehow shrink and disappear inside themselves.
Maybe they’re sitting on the wax-paper-covered table at the doctor’s office, hearing how they’re not going to live to see their kids finish high school.
Lucky for them, you’re here. Lucky for them, you’re ready and willing to help.
But let’s do it right
Let’s turn your passion into something real. Let’s put you on track to becoming the ultimate professional, one capable of making change for others and for yourself. Let’s put a structure in place where you not only learn to help others live up to their potential, but where you live up to yours.
With this book, I hope to offer that structure.
To begin, Change Maker is organized into seven chapters that’ll teach you how to turn your love of health and fitness into an invigorating purpose and a sustainable career. Whether you’re already working in the field or you’re thinking of switching from another one, it’s my goal to help you avoid the burnout and lack of direction that, unfortunately, can be all too common in this young industry.
To support what you’re learning, I’ve also compiled end-of-chapter Q&As that are full of real, thoughtful questions I’ve gotten over the years. In each one I share my unfiltered take on the challenges you’ll undoubtedly face as you grow your career. These are available online, and you can download them (for free) at www.changemakeracademy.com/questions.
Finally, as you read through the book, you’ll notice a number of exercises, activities, questions, and worksheets. These are absolutely essential to put what you’re learning into action. So I recommend downloading them now (again, free) at www.changemakeracademy.com/download able-forms. There are both printable and fillable versions of each form, and the Quick Reference Guide at the end of the book lists them all.
I hope you’ll take my advice and grab these resources now. I also hope you’ll work through them in order as they’ll greatly enhance your learning experience. Even more, they’ll help you move from “knowing” to “doing”—the hallmark of every successful professional I’ve met.
With that said, if you’re ready to become the ultimate change maker, let’s begin.