Jonathan Goodman is the founder of the Personal Trainer Development Center and author of multiple bestselling books for personal trainers. 

In addition, Jon founded the first-ever certification for online fitness trainers, the Online Trainer Academy.

When Jon started Online Trainers Academy, how did he know we were going to have a pandemic in 2020 that would turn every one online? (1:18)

• Jon thought this was funny but says he did not know. However, it is not inconceivable to assume that there was going to be some large scale interruptive event in the future.
• The world changes very quickly and historically, in unpredictable ways. 
• Anyone who was paying attention from a few years ago would’ve noticed the upward trend in technology-driven business.
• But what ultimately led Jon to turn towards online himself was an injury that put him off his feet for two weeks, effectively killing his income for that time period, and that got him thinking that he had to build something else. 

The Concept of Anti-fragility. (3:48)

• One of the key elements of anti-fragile is the concept that the more chaos ensues, the stronger things that are anti-fragile get. 
• Jon encourages making yourself familiar with the concept of anti-fragility if you want to set yourself up for the future. 
• You need to understand anti-fragility, asymmetrical risk and you need to understand how to mitigate loss and maximize gain.

What’s going on in the online training game? (16:38)

• There are a lot of people doing it that have no idea what they are doing. These people are hacking together not well thought out solutions and doing horribly because of it. 
• Jon relates it to you going to a gym after googling a bit and bringing a video camera and now you’re going to train people. 
• Big training companies have thrown together online training programs and Jon’s own clients have said that the models fall short and are terrible. 
• You have to really do the research and spend the time to understand the core of online training for example:
• • What works from a financial and business standpoint.
  • What works for actual training clients as humans.
  • How to get people to want to do the workout and to continually adhere to the workout?

What does Jon think is going to be centralized within actual gyms? (22:26)

• Gyms are going to radically change, there is no doubt about that.
• The fitness industry is relatively young.
• In the past gyms have sold personal trainers as people who are not commoditized but treated and paid them like they were commoditized people and the truth is more personal trainers are commoditized.
•  To be a truly great personal trainer you need to exhibit a lot of traits that are very hard to find in any single human for example:
• • You need to be in good shape, energetic, motivational, empathetic, great at science programming, and interested in entrepreneurial aspects along with about 15 other things. 
• However, with collaborative pairing and work, you can take multiple people with different skillsets and put them together to form something unique and powerful. 

The PTDC

The Personal Trainer Development Center creates solutions for fitness and nutrition professionals. They do this by helping you do a better job, build a better business, and live a better life at every stage of your career. 

They have the World’s Premier Certification for online training and are an internationally recognized leader for education and guidance within the fitness industry. 

Resources

Connect with Jonathan: LinkedIn

The PTDC: Website

Connect with Eric: LinkedIn