Coach Stevo asked me a question a few months back that shook me. “As fitness/health professionals we only get to spend about 1 solid hour a week with our clients. What about the other 167 hours?” It was the type of question where you immediately had to ask five follow-up questions because your brain was kicked into overdrive. It was such an important question that it drew over 40 Personal Trainers, Crossfit Coaches, High School Coaches, Physical Therapists, Gym Owners, Nutrition Consultants, and Fitness Tech companies from all over the U.S. for Coach Stevo’s Motivate Summit this past weekend.

The event Stevo put together was purposely designed to allow all of the participants to create their own experience. Together, we decided what we wanted to talk about that day and chose which people we wanted to interact with. The questions and conversation weren’t necessarily new, but they were open and laser-focused. Throughout the day I sat with different groups to discuss questions such as:

• How can I create a stronger community for my clients? How can I make it that third place?
• What are successful strategies for encouraging behavioral change with our clients?
• What should a personal trainer be focused on accomplishing to have the biggest impact? How can I simplify what I’m doing to help with this goal?
• What experiments are you trying out with your clients right now? What’s working? What isn’t?
• Why haven’t I bought Motivational Interviewing yet? <-Heard 3-4 times 🙂

I was in awe of the people I met and talked to. Yes, they were there to improve themselves and their businesses, but the motivation wasn’t self-serving. Their motivation was to improve their ability to help their clients, present and future. They were there to help other people, which was incredible to see. The best example I could give was told to me by my brother who sat in on a group with Dan John. Dan was sitting in the back taking notes and was totally engaged with what the group leader was saying. Someone asked Dan a question and he could barely respond because the gears were turning so strongly in his head. This was a coach that had been coaching for over 30 years and helped hundreds of other coaches improve their skill set to better impact their clients. There he was, working incredibly hard to see if he could do his job better. This wasn’t only happening to Dan, it was happening to everyone that was there. That’s the type of impact this open environment had that Coach Stevo created.

After arriving back from Utah it could have been easy to get caught up in the normal day-to-day arguments that we see in the fitness industry, but I don’t think that anyone that went to Motivate will do that. Personally, I left Motivate convinced, now more than ever, that this is an industry that will continue to rapidly strengthen and grow. Most of the current fitness battles we see on the interwebz won’t have much impact at the end of the day, but the questions that were discussed this past weekend aren’t going away anytime soon. Because of those questions and the experiments multiple fitness/health professionals will do the quality of the industry is going to improve. Coaches will get continue to get better at their jobs and create stronger relationships with their clients than ever before. Fitness and Health consumers will be spoken to in ways that they’ve never been spoken to before and finally start adjusting their spending towards professionals who have the power to help them. To me it’s not a matter of if, but when.

To close this off I’d like to share my personal Mission Statement which is one of the action items Stevo asked us to do following the conference. It goes as follows:

To create a software platform that leverages the expertise of fitness and health professionals and allows them to create strong, long-term relationships with their clients.

The StrengthPortal team and I will stay focused on doing this while the rest of the Motivate participants will have to figure out the rest. They will be doing great work. I can’t wait to all of my new friends do from here.

If you’re interested in participating in the next Motivate Summit it will be held on Feb 21st, 2015 in New York. You can read more about it here: Habitry Summit