We get to know Emma Kirchner in this Trainer spotlight episode of FITLETE Radio.
GEORGE: Introduce yourself and tell us a little about what you do and your background.
What's up? My name is Emma Kirchner. I'm an online health and fitness coach, health and fitness and nutrition coach, based out of Utah, originally from California. Moved out to Utah to snowboard. Best snow in the country, hands down. I founded my fitness and nutrition coaching company, Fit Habit Coaching, about almost two years ago. But I have an interesting background. I went to undergrad and grad school for software engineering. And up until a couple of weeks ago, I was actually a software engineer. But I discovered that my passion was helping others avoid the same pitfalls and mistakes I've made on my health and fitness journey. So I decided to leave my software engineering role and pursue my passion full time. I've struggled with everything from body image issues, my relationship to food and exercise, gut health, hormonal issues, and I've gone from fat to fit countless times. Since I've basically undergone the entire gambit of things you can experience in the industry, figured it was probably my purpose to help others avoid those same pitfalls and mistakes that I've made. So the mission of Fit Habit Coaching is to make fitness approachable and sustainable. I want to help my clients achieve lasting health, weight loss, fitness goals, and make it less overwhelming for the general population. You don't need to be in the gym hours a day. You don't need to eat a restrictive diet all year long. Fitness should support your life. Your life shouldn't revolve around fitness. It should help you live a better life. So that's my mission, and hoping to just help others with that.
GEORGE: Tell me a funny or interesting story about yourself that help's us get to know you as a human.
Okay, so this has absolutely nothing to do with fitness at all. So, when I was a kid, I was very picky. I wouldn't eat anything that wasn't bread or chicken or pasta, basically. Actually, I did like broccoli, which was kind of weird. So, we were, I was probably like five years old, and we were at my grandparents' house in Montreal, and I was at the end of a very long table. My grandpa spent a lot of time cooking a delicious meal for everybody, and in that meal was beans. To me, beans looked absolutely disgusting. And so, when I heard we were eating beans, I was really, really sad. But my dad, he thought it'd be funny to tell me they were jelly beans. So, I took a huge spoonful of the beans, assuming that I was eating jelly beans. I was like four or five, and I was thoroughly disappointed. And to this day, I will not eat beans. So, yeah, but I'll eat everything else, basically, except for olives. Olives are disgusting. So, yeah, it's a very weird, random, funny story.
GEORGE: What strategies do you use to attract and retain clients in your personal training business?
So even though I'm an online coach, I have found that the best way for me to get clients is to get involved with networking in my local community. So I'm a part of a couple different business networking groups and that has really yielded me the most success just with gaining clients, retaining clients, and just helping me learn from other business owners and other strategies for how to grow my business. Also, when you work from home, it's nice to see people every once in a while. So gets me out of the house, gets me social. But I guess more specifically with client retention, just showing that you really care. For me, that's been the biggest thing I think. I've had some clients since I started and I think because I really do care about them and about their success and I'm honest. Like if I don't know something, I'm not going to make something up. I'll say, hey, I'm not sure. Let me get back to you on that. Checking up on them during the week, even if we don't have a meeting, just touching base and seeing how they're doing, remembering their birthdays and special events, remembering what's happening in their lives, just taking an interest in your client and their lives. That's really helped me personally. But my business is very new, so not sure if I'm the best person to ask about this. But so far, this is what has worked for me, hoping that this will help somebody else.
GEORGE: What is your process for assessing a new client's fitness level and addressing their goals?
So the first thing I do when I onboard a new client is I have them fill out an onboarding form, ask them about their workout history, any pains or previous injuries they've had, what they've done in the past dietarily, diets that worked for them in the past, some that didn't, things they like, things they don't like, and that kind of gives me a good idea of where they're at now. But I also run all my clients through mobility assessments. So I'll have them record doing certain movements at home before I even assign them a workout program and specific mobility movements to address some of those imbalances. Just because I don't want my clients to get injured and I want them to move well and feel good. So really probably the the biggest assessment I do, I don't work with athletes, I work with gen pop, so it's really mobility that's the biggest assessment. And every four weeks I'll do it again just to make sure that you know no new imbalances came up and if some of them are gone we can start to address other parts and more specific things.
GEORGE: What certifications do you hold, and how do you stay updated on the latest fitness trends and research?
I'm an NASM certified personal trainer. I'm an NCI level 1 nutrition coach, an NCI stress and hormone specialist, and an NCI mindset specialist. I stay up to date on the latest fitness trends and research by attending conferences, reading the latest studies online, and trying to do at least one certification every year, just to stay up to date and to keep my brain working. Honestly, working with clients and working with different types of clients that I haven't worked with before helps me learn so much as well, because all of my clients are different and they all have different issues. It's like I'm constantly learning new ways to help address imbalances, or new coaching strategies to help them stay consistent. Oh, I read books as well. I do a lot of audiobooks while I'm walking. I listen to podcasts with coaches that have a lot more experience than I do, and how they work through problems with their clients and how they coach their clients. And I'll give a plug for an event. The Real Coaches Summit is the best fitness event I've ever been to. If you're a coach, that is a must-go-to. It's awesome, and you get to actually interact with the speakers. There's no gatekeeping or any VIP. Everybody is the same level, so it's super awesome. And that's actually what convinced me to go full-time on coaching last year, so highly recommend.
GEORGE: How do you envision your personal training business evolving in the next few years?
Honestly, I'm not sure. I just went full-time with coaching. I'm a little overwhelmed but I'm trying right now I'm trying to build out a more entry-level less expensive kind of group coaching model so that it can be personalized but there's not as much one-on-one access to me but people can still get help and assistance with their fitness and nutrition goals but just takes less of my time so I'm building out a course and then trying to build out a community and different workouts so depending on who joins they can you know ask like hey these are my goals like what workout program should I use and I'll have like different workout programs built out and over time I'll add more and more because one of the downsides with a lot of group fitness stuff is it's not necessarily individualized for the individual but to get that level of individuality it's a lot more expensive and I want to make it more accessible to more people who can't necessarily afford like one-on-one coaching so that's in the next year or so hopefully I can launch that I'm hoping to launch that in the next few weeks maybe I'm too hopeful but anyway and that's what I kind of see for now and long-term future I'd like to have my own gym and do like a kind of a wellness center so there's like acupuncturist, massage therapist, chiropractor, personal trainer, on staff, nurse practitioner maybe even to kind of integrate all the wellness spheres in one like a one-stop shop but we'll see
GEORGE: What do you think are the biggest challenges currently facing the fitness & personal training industry?
Honestly, I think the biggest challenges facing the fitness industry right now and probably the next decade are GLP-1s. I think they're super beneficial for certain people. They can help numb the food noise, just help people make better decisions when it comes to nutrition. But the amount of people that are abusing it and just... I mean, there's people who I've been chatting with that are potential clients and because what I do takes time, even though it's sustainable, they would rather go and spend $200-$500 a month on the weight loss medications than build healthy habits to sustain that weight loss. And they're losing muscle mass. A lot of people are developing osteoporosis and osteopenia. And I really think we're gonna see... Even though, generally speaking, the rates of obesity have declined because of this drug, I think we're gonna start to see a lot of cases of osteoporosis and just weaker people. Muscle is super important, as probably everybody listening to this knows. So that just kind of scares me. And the fact that there's probably going to be a quick fix that's constantly promoted in the mainstream and because doing things the right way takes time and is challenging and isn't sexy, people opt for those options instead. So there will probably be other things like GLP-1s, but right now I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges in the fitness industry.
Want more Emma Kirchner in your life? You can find’em here:
visit: https://fithabit.club/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fit.habit.emma/
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