Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Taylor Rimmer. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Taylor, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
My dad used to tell me: “90% of success is just showing up.” Later I learned that it’s a Woody Allen quote, but either way, I’ve found it to be true. There are many similar quotes—the best ability is availability; dependability is more important than ability, etc—and they all lead back to the same notion.
If you want to be the smartest person in the room, good luck. Same goes for being the strongest, most attractive, what have you. But being among the most reliable people in the room…that is something that you can choose to do right now. If you show up early, stay late, and work your ass off, people tend to notice. These days, reliability has become a bit of a rarity, so that is an additional advantage for people with this mindset.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I’ve been a trainer for over 6 years now. In the early days I was doing your classic “personal trainer in the weightroom” gig at Longmont Climbing Collective. That was a great gig—weightrooms are a great place to be. When covid shut everything down, I lost about half of my income immediately.
Luckily, I was already using the Bridge Athletic app to deliver my client’s programs. So during lockdown I filmed a ton of new video content for the app, upgraded my website to process recurring monthly payments, and started getting in touch with people to train them remotely. It was a right-time-right-place situation, I guess. I ended up with as many clients as I could handle, without doing any marketing. Remember that—no marketing. All word of mouth, friends of friends, family of current clients, etc.
I was still working for the gym during this time, helping to get us through covid. With a great deal of help from my colleagues, we did get through it. These days, I’m the Membership Director at the gym, and I work on RTH in the mornings before work and on most weekends. I limit my number of clients to 25 or less to *try* to avoid overcommitting, but I still tend toward working too much. I’m not sure if there’s a way around that when you own your own business.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Honesty. This is the number one thing. If people know that you aren’t full of shit, they tend to trust you. If people can’t trust you, then you are doomed.
Reliability. Like I said before—reliability is the best ability.
Continuing Education. Someone needs to think of a better term for this, because “continuing ed” sounds really boring. But it’s not! Learning is among the most human things you can do, and in my opinion, it never ends. For example, after years of coaching, I feel that I have a strong grasp on how to write a custom training program to improve a person’s fitness toward their stated goals; so maybe studying program design is not as pressing of an issue for me (I still do it anyway because I’m obsessed with program design). BUT, what more can I learn about cueing the movements? Or interacting with clients’ different personality types? Or improving my video content in the app?
Is there a particular challenge you are currently facing?
I have the same challenge that every trainer (or anyone else who gets paid for their time) has: there’s not enough time.
I mentioned earlier that I limit the number of clients that I take to try to avoid overbooking myself. That’s just a reality of coaching people and writing custom training plans. But over time, that constraint puts a ceiling on your business, drives prices up and stagnates growth.
Maybe I don’t need more growth. Maybe the obsession with economic growth is a cancerous notion. But it still stings to turn down clients—you want to see people get stronger, and you want to grow your business, too. You also don’t want to raise your prices to the point where it’s ridiculous. I’m good at what I do, but I’m not going to start charging people $300+ a month for training. Coaches who do that are either hucksters or they’re famous. Or both.
So eventually I will release a series of pre-written program templates with high-end video content. These won’t be customized plans, but they will be very good plans and the price can be fantastic, since this will be a passive stream for my business.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.revivethehuman.com
- Instagram: @revivethehuman
- Youtube: @revivethehuman887
Image Credits
Patrick Bodnar @ Storm Chaser Creative Solutions
