In episode 77 of the KIPS Podcast, we had the pleasure of having guest Anthony Wall, MS. The current Senior Director of Global Business Development at the American Council on Exercise (ACE), Anthony helps grow the education of ACE abroad through partnerships and conferences. In this episode, Anthony starts by sharing how he got to his current position and discusses how ACE has evolved over the last five years with their education. One of Anthony’s favorite topics to share with fellow health & fitness professionals is small group training (SGT). He shares why he believes so much in SGT and how fitness instructors can make a meaningful impact on individuals needing help with their health. One of the key takeaways in this episode is how being genuine as a fitness professional can help you breakdown barriers with your clients and improve the quality of the experience everyone has when they train with you. Anthony discusses programming, approach, selling, and benefits of SGT, and gives fitness instructors the ‘why’ behind each of them. Follow Anthony on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/anthonyjwall_fit/ Learn more about ACE - https://www.acefitness.org/ Learn more about KIPS - https://kipsonline.org/

With the new year rapidly approaching, what is a free resource that all health & fitness professionals can use to build their business? YouTube. You don’t have to be fully invested in YouTube to utilize the benefits, but using it can help you organize your content, learn new skills, and grow your online presence. In this episode of the KIPS Podcast, host Tyler Valencia discusses why he believes in the platform, why people end up stopping, and two ways you can use the platform. One of the biggest advantages of using YouTube is that it’s not a ‘me vs. you’ mentality, and often content creators are willing to share their tips that helped them grow their channel. If you’ve worked within any gym or health club, you know that it can be a cut throat environment and with YouTube you will find health & fitness professionals with similar channels willing to do collaborations. A collaboration is one way that you can expand your audience while focusing on creating quality content, and hopefully learn something new about your YouTube journey. If you’re already on YouTube, how has it been? What do you wish you knew more about? Take a listen to this episode and share your thoughts on how YouTube can or has benefits your business. Learn more about KIPS - https://kipsonline.org/ Follow Tyler on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tyler_kipsonline/

Going into a new year, as health & fitness professionals we have hopes of building our business, growing our client base, or consistently improving our online presence. But as life creeps in, those goals sometimes take a backseat. Sometimes that’s because we don’t know the next step for continuing to build our career. One tool to really consider is YouTube. It’s not just a platform for posting videos, but can be a useful resource for helping you market your health & fitness business. Not to mention, it’s the second largest search engine in the world. In this roundup podcast episode, Tyler starts by sharing the benefits of YouTube, then shares the top listening cities of November, and then provides a summary of the one podcast episode released in November. The episode released in November focused on work statuses for health & fitness professionals. If you know your options, you can hopefully turn your passion of helping individuals improve their health into a long-term career working as a personal trainer or group fitness instructor. Contractor vs Employee: Which route is for me? - https://kipsonline.org/fitness-instructor-job-status/ See more on the KIPS Blog - https://kipsonline.org/blog/ Subscribe to the KIPS YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfmDNflKZrsiqMuKaf_9-Lg Want us to discuss a topic on the KIPS Podcast? Send us an email with the subject line “Podcast” to [email protected]. Learn more about the KIPS Courses - https://kipsonline.org/personal-trainer-courses/

An important character trait for a fitness professional to develop is empathy. It’s important that a fitness instructor understand that exercise is NOT an enjoyable act for the overwhelming majority of humans and often getting to the point to exercise a feat in itself. Developing this trait and figuring out ways to connect with a client can elevate a fitness instructor into another earning potential. In the October roundup episode of the KIPS Podcast, host Tyler Valencia starts by discussing this reality and how making drastic claims as a fitness instructor can be detrimental to someone just beginning to exercise. This episode of the KIPS Podcast features two summaries from the KIPS Podcast, one on licensure and the other on developing a social media strategy. The first podcast episode released in October was an interesting topic for fitness professionals on licensure. Will the fitness industry ever go towards a national license in the United States? This is a topic that can affect many different populations, and has positives and negatives for all those involved. One of the main talking points discussed in this episode is whether fitness instruction will improve. Depending on your educational background, experience, and current career, your viewpoint on this subject will vary. It’s important to keep in mind that any steps towards licensure can impact those already working in the fitness industry that don’t meet the new requirements. Tyler discusses licensure from the perspective of individuals, fitness instructors, education providers, and gyms. Building a social media strategy is a business tool that can help you save time, stay consistent, and attract new clients as a health & fitness professional. Having a strategy means you’re creating content for a reason, and not spending time on a daily basis to create new content. Once you have started to utilize a strategy, this will lead to venturing into more advanced strategies and open up more marketing avenues. Tyler shares the importance of using a social media strategy and provides examples on how he creates a 7-day content schedule. Should the Fitness Industry go Towards Licensure? -https://kipsonline.org/fitness-industry-licensure/ Building a Social Media Strategy - https://kipsonline.org/social-media-strategy/ See more on the KIPS Blog - https://kipsonline.org/blog/ Subscribe to the KIPS YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfmDNflKZrsiqMuKaf_9-Lg Want us to discuss a topic on the KIPS Podcast? Send us an email with the subject line “Podcast” to [email protected]. Learn more about the KIPS Courses - https://kipsonline.org/personal-trainer-courses/

When you’re starting in the fitness industry, what are your options? Do you have to immediately become an employee at a gym? Are there other routes that might better suit your personality and current work experience? These are all items that are not typically covered in an entry-level educational course for fitness professionals but should be a regular topic to consider. If you know your options, you can hopefully turn your passion of helping individuals improve their health into a long-term career working as a personal trainer or group fitness instructor. While working in the fitness industry can be a nice career, it often takes time to make a decent wage. That is often because fitness instructors work when clients have free time. That is usually before their work day starts or after it ends. This leads to a non-typical work day that some are not used to but all of this can change as you gain more experience and grow your client base. In this episode of the KIPS Podcast, host Tyler Valencia, PhD(c) goes over the benefits of being an employee and contractor. These options can differ by location and by what you feel more comfortable with at that point in your career. You can typically work through both statuses and grow your work day. If you are a veteran of the fitness industry, don’t hesitate to share your input on this topic, as your experiences can hopefully help a new instructor gain knowledge and stay longer within the industry. Blog Post - https://kipsonline.org/being-a-fitness-instructor-contractor-vs-employee/ Learn more about KIPS - https://kipsonline.org/

Growing within the fitness industry is a process. Things like education and experience can help improve the process, but ultimately there is a process that each fitness professional goes through. The way the fitness industry has evolved over the last few years has brought some new resources for fitness professionals but also showed how the industry continues to stay stagnant in some areas. In this episode of the Best of the KIPS Podcast September 2022, host Tyler Valencia, PhD(c) discusses the two pieces of content released in the previous month and how they both impact the industry. In the one podcast episode, guest Emily Stewart shares how she advocated to move the fitness industry towards unionization and shares information about the survey she has procured to help gather more information for this young industry. While Emily admits that the fitness industry isn’t ready for unionization, she discusses how her survey can help gather more information and move the needle towards more favorable work environments for fitness professionals. Any fitness instructor that listens to this episode can likely empathize with the stories shared regarding working environments and contribute their own experience in the same area. The survey that Emily discusses has areas to provide feedback for these situations and hopefully all listeners will be compelled to spend 30 minutes to complete the survey. There are many videos on YouTube on how to get monetized and the “secrets” to growing your channel, but not many focus on just the fundamentals for fitness professionals. The uniqueness of our industry slightly varies how we approach YouTube, but at the same time it comes back to the biggest one… making quality content. In this video, Tyler shares insight from his YouTube journey over the last year. Tyler is also the owner of Time 2 Train Fitness which has met both requirements to be monetized on YouTube. See more on the KIPS Blog - https://kipsonline.org/blog/ Subscribe to the KIPS YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfmDNflKZrsiqMuKaf_9-Lg Podcast with Emily Stewart - https://kipsonline.org/creating-better-working-conditions-for-all-fit-pros/ Five Tips for Starting a YouTube Workout Channel - https://kipsonline.org/starting-a-youtube-workout-channel/ Want us to discuss a topic on the KIPS Podcast? Send us an email with the subject line “Podcast” to [email protected]. Learn more about the KIPS Courses - https://kipsonline.org/personal-trainer-courses/

Building a social media strategy is a business tool that can help you save time, stay consistent, and attract new clients as a health & fitness professional. Having a strategy means you’re creating content for a reason, and not spending time on a daily basis to create new content. Once you have started to utilize a strategy, this will lead to venturing into more advanced strategies and open up more marketing avenues. In this episode of the KIPS Podcast, Tyler Valencia, PhD(c) discusses the importance of using a social media strategy and provides examples of how he creates a 7-day content schedule. One of the strategies that Tyler shares is YouTube Centered Digital Marketing. With this strategy, an individual makes content for YouTube and divies it up for other areas of their business. For example, after filming a video for YouTube using it for your blog, newsletter, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and even LinkedIn. Right there are all the major social media platforms that businesses use and more. Keep in mind that this strategy assumes that you are creating content for YouTube following all the best practices and then using that content for every other platform. This type of strategy creates a starting point for how to market your business and how you can have a purpose for each idea. In this episode concepts such as “filler posts”, Reels, Stories, and YouTube best practices will be discussed but know that this is just a starting point. There are other free resources available to any health & fitness professional on YouTube or even in the KIPS Blog. Learn more about KIPS Courses - https://kipsonline.org/personal-trainer-courses/

An interesting topic for a variety of fitness professionals is licensure. Will the fitness industry ever go towards a national license in the United States? This is a topic that can affect many different populations, and has positives and negatives for all those involved. In this episode of the KIPS Podcast, host Tyler Valencia, PhD(c) discusses licensure from the perspective of individuals, fitness instructors, education providers, and gyms. One of the main talking points discussed in this episode is whether fitness instruction will improve. Depending on your educational background, experience, and current career, your viewpoint on this subject will vary. It’s important to keep in mind that any steps towards licensure can impact those already working in the fitness industry that don’t meet the new requirements. Does this group get grandfathered into the new regulations or do they have to meet the new regulations to continue? Those are tough questions to answer and one of the key reasons why no progress has been made. Another key point to keep in mind is the perspective of the individual looking for help with their health. The individual needing help with their health most likely doesn’t go to the gym and doesn’t have exercise planned in their immediate future. So would better fitness instruction help this demographic? Isn’t helping this demographic the goal of all fitness professionals? This demographic that doesn’t exercise probably needs help that isn’t changed by a national license within the fitness industry. These are things to keep in mind as you listen to this episode and move forward within the fitness industry. Give this new episode a listen and share your feedback on your favorite social media platform or in the KIPS Facebook Group. Learn more about KIPS - https://kipsonline.org/ Join the KIPS Private Group - https://www.facebook.com/groups/323517692505416

If you are searching for ideas on how to grow your fitness business or need a tutorial to help you, check out the KIPS Blog and YouTube channel. On there you will find 100% free reviews and tutorials made for fitness professionals. These range from making your own booking system, reviews of royalty free music sites, using a USB music interface, and others within the online workout realm. In the month of August there were two new episodes released in the KIPS Podcast. The first guest, Kate Finamore pulls from her 30+ years within the fitness industry and shares issues and experiences centered around instructor inequalities. These issues might stem from current pay wage, access to career growth, or even health benefits. In this episode, Kate discusses one of those topics, proper wages. She shares a story about how she was supposed to hire new instructors for a gym, despite the payment scale being the same as 15 years prior. This issue is one that instructors have become numb to due to the perception that asking for a better pay is selfish; but in truth, it is one that ensures you are creating a lasting career. The second guest on the KIPS Podcast was fitness YouTuber Courtney Andersen. Courtney’s Channel currently has just over 17 thousand subscribers and provides viewers with kickboxing, HIIT, and strength training workouts. Creative freedom and building your own brand are two of the biggest reasons fitness professionals create online workouts for YouTube. Courtney shares her journey from teaching in-person to starting her own workout YouTube channel at the end of 2020. Full episode with Kate Finamore - https://kipsonline.org/instructor-inequalities-within-the-fitness-industry/ Full episode with Courtney Andersen - https://kipsonline.org/using-youtube-to-build-your-online-workout-career/ See more on the KIPS Blog - https://kipsonline.org/blog/ Subscribe to the KIPS YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfmDNflKZrsiqMuKaf_9-Lg Want us to discuss a topic on the KIPS Podcast? Send us an email with the subject line “Podcast” to [email protected]. Learn more about the KIPS Courses - https://kipsonline.org/personal-trainer-courses/

How does the fitness industry move forward from its current state? How do employees start to get benefits and how do we learn more about the individuals that work inside the fitness industry? These are topics that seem like regular items for other industries but are still being discussed and debated within the fitness industry. In this episode of the KIPS Podcast, guest Emily Stewart shares how she advocated to move the fitness industry towards unionization and shares information about the survey she has procured to help gather more information for this young industry. While Emily admits that the fitness industry isn’t ready for unionization, she discusses how her survey can help gather more information and move the needle towards more favorable work environments for fitness professionals. This episode is an interesting listen for all types of fitness instructors. As discussed by Emily, discussions in the past have pitted fitness instructors versus gym management, but it is both parties that should be working towards better conditions that will ultimately improve the quality of instruction that fitness professionals can provide. Any fitness instructor that listens to this episode can likely empathize with the stories shared regarding working environments and contribute their own experience in the same area. The survey that Emily discusses has areas to provide feedback for these situations and hopefully all listeners will be compelled to spend 30 minutes to complete the survey. THE SURVEY: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/fitnessprosurvey Freelance Solidarity Project (Twitter @fsp_nwu): https://freelancesolidarity.org/freelance-isnt-free/ Yoga Teachers Union UK (IG @yogateachersunionuk): https://yogateachersunion.co.uk/ Follow Emily on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emilystewartfitness/ Emily Stewart Fitness: http://www.emilystewartfitness.com/ Group Fitness Instructors United website: https://www.gfi-united.org/ Learn more about KIPS - https://kipsonline.org/