Episode 92: Trina Gray on The Business of Fitness
“Be Amazing, Wherever You Are Planted”
About Today’s Guest
Trina Gray is the 2018 IDEA Fitness Leader of the Year. She is an internationally recognized fitness entrepreneur who owns two health clubs in rural Michigan, where she has lead a crusade against obesity and sedentary living. Her clubs, Bay Athletic Club and Bay Urban Fitness, transform lives and celebrate people. She created the Corporate Fit Challenge workplace wellness program and is sold worldwide. She founded an online coaching team for women in fitness through Beachbody, called Team Rockstar Fit, and is one of the top coaches in the country. She is a mom of two amazing teenagers and teaches others to live their life with purpose and freedom.
Stay In Touch With Trina
Mentioned In The Show
The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy
How successful people think by John C. Maxwell
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
The Mastery Sessions Podcast by Robin Sharma
The Life Coach School Podcast by Brooke Castillo
Show Notes
We begin the conversation as I normally do, by going back in time to how I first my guest. I really only met Trina quite recently, when we were both speaking at a Women’s Leadership Event at World IDEA and I was immediately a fan.
Trina shares that she originally went to school for journalism, envisioning herself on 60 minutes as a famous broadcaster and journalist, traveling the world. She was on that path in college writing for her local school newspaper and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, but along that journey she realized had lost sight of her own personal self-care habits, not eating well, not exercising and not sleeping enough.
Deciding she needed to get herself in shape she went to the University of Wisconsin Recreation Center for Students but her first experience was one of not fitting in, feeling out of place and so she turned around and left. This first impression memory would serve her well down the road, as she built her own career in fitness many years later.
It took a personal invitation from her mother to a family owned community health club that began her exploration into the world of fitness. With her mom beside her, Trina went to a high-low class at Prairie Athletic Club in 1997. While she went to the back of the room she felt as though she fit in and became a regular. Through another invitation, this time by an instructor she eventually moved from taking the class to teaching the class.
Trina eventually moved from her home town to a rural town in Michigan and I found herself as a young married woman, now unemployed in a community where she knew no one and no one knew her. So she did the only thing she did know how to do and that was to teach group fitness classes.
She built incredible relationships through her classes and fast forward several years she expanded her career to span across the United States as Master Trainer for Turbo Kick, whose creator we had on the show recently – Chalene Johnson.
By traveling across the USA and seeing many other clubs, a seed was planted that maybe one day Trina would own a club. A few years later, through relationship building, a ton of heart and hustle Trina opened the doors to a large medical-based health club. In the preparation phase, Trina understood that she had no experience in running a club and so she reached out across the country to the people she had met on her travels and asked them two questions:
If you could do it all over, what would you do differently?
What are the biggest complaints you get from your members?
Throughout our conversation, Trina talks about how to move through the negatives and the disappointments. She reminds us to keep asking the important questions:
Why am I doing this?
Who am I doing this for?
Where am I going?
She also encourages us to remember the importance of creating more than one revenue of income. She shares that it was never her vision to live paycheck to paycheck and do fitness just because she loved it. She believes (as do I) that wellness should pay well. Wellness is as important as acute care that and that if you’re going to be in the fitness industry, don’t be in the fitness industry to be broke.
Trina is also a Beachbody Coach and she leveraged her coaching by teaching what worked for her in business to other women in the industry. Through her experience and skillset she shows others how to make an impact and an income, without always have to show up physically in person.
Trina shares a fantastic exercise for the times when you are searching for more clarity:
Pull out a blank piece of paper and write down:
What would your ideal day look like and be something that you can get behind right now? What time would you get up? When would you do your own workout? Who would you work with? Where would you be working? What would your schedule look and feel like? When would you have time off? What kind of time would you spend with your family?
This is a terrific way to get super clear on your personal values and vision for the future.
Trina ends our conversation with a fantastic reminder that “you have to find discipline over motivation.” So perhaps take some time to do the self-reflection exercise above and use that as your discipline driver for your future.
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