A friend of mine is a personal trainer and former bodybuilding competitor. We used to work together.
We were working on a fitness product, and on this particular day, we were on site at a gym, shooting fitness videos. Every 30 minutes or so, she’d stop and turn to her phone to take a selfie or shoot some video explaining an exercise. Then she’d spend a few seconds publishing the content to Instagram and Snap.
“Hey, can we focus on this?” a project manager asked.
My friend glared at him.
“This is my job,” she shot back.
The selfies and Snapchat stories continued, and nothing else was said about it. Months later, the project was killed, and my friend was let go. It was a big surprise, and it was frustrating.
It was also the best thing that happened to her career.
After that, she was free to focus on building and engaging with the audience she built on Instagram and Snap. She turned her fitness side hustle into her full-time job, and the business is doing incredibly well.
It’s easy enough to write off her success as luck. She happened to be standing at the intersection of fitness and influencer marketing, just as these platforms started to blow up. “Right place, right time,” and all that.
It helped there was product channel fit between fitness and Instagram/Snapchat… but she put in the time to constantly publish and engage and study what worked. There are plenty of trainers who use the same hashtags and publish the same #MondayMotivation photographs, yet haven’t gained the same traction.
Does being fit and beautiful help? Of course — attractiveness will always be a competitive advantage… but there’s plenty of good-looking guys and gals who won’t ever reach her level.
I don’t correct anyone dismissing her success. I just remember those words: “This is my job.”
The professional vs. the amateur
I remember the first time I trained with her. I’m not going to win a Crossfit competition or anything, but I know my way around the gym. And I thought I knew I how to train hard.
I was wrong. We followed her training plan and she wiped the floor with me.
After an hour, we ran out of time “Well,” she sighed, “guess we won’t finish the workout.” All I could do was nod, as the rest of my body cried a sigh of relief.
Before we left, she asked me to record a video of her running through a circuit. I flopped my arms into place and shot her video. By the time we got to the elevator of the hotel, she was choosing the background music to the video, and by the time we went to dinner, she posted it and it was racking up hundreds of views. Somewhere in the midst of all that content production, she scarfed down her post-workout supplements, showered, and got ready for dinner.
I used to think what separated the professional and the amateur was simple: the professional got paid. But looking at my friend, I realize she was a professional before she made a cent off any of these platforms.
A professional says, “this is my job,” and acts accordingly. She shows up every day, no matter where she is or how tired she feels. Then she puts in the work.
Joe Rogan put it this way on his podcast:1
“You have to have like real rigid requirements of yourself where you don’t allow yourself to back out of things and you don’t allow yourself to slack off.
I don’t think people put those kinds of requirements on themselves as if it is a daily principal of life, like what you must get done…
There are very few people who have that kind of discipline, so because of that, they come up with excuses, and excuses are a giant part of the problem.”
He was talking about fitness, but the same principle applies to anything we want to do, any behavior we want to change.
If there’s something about your life you want to change, or some pursuit you want to chase (a side hustle, getting in shape, spending time with your family, etc.) there are a plethora of tactics to try or apps to download and hacks to implement. If those things work for you, then terrific.
But if they’re not working, if you’re not seeing traction, the problem might not be the tactics, but the religion.
Ask yourself, “Am I treating this like a job?” Figure out the answer. Then act accordingly.
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Photo Credit: Miss Sloane
