We get to know Tyler Argento in this Trainer Spotlight episode of FITLETE Radio.
GEORGE: Introduce yourself and tell us a little about what you do and your background.
Hi, everyone. Well, my name is Tyler Argento, and I am a personal trainer and yoga teacher and online coach. And I graduated with my degree in exercise science and sports administration. I went to Radford University in Radford, Virginia. Best four years of my life. As you can tell, I had a great time in college from my last story. But no, on a real note, everything always works out the way it's supposed to. And it's funny because it totally led me to exactly where I am today, which I have been a personal trainer for about 10 years now. And I've been teaching yoga for about 10 years now as well. I simultaneously got my degree or my certifications at the same time shortly after I got my degree, my bachelor's degree. And I worked in the bank, Wells Fargo, for two years and I became a manager eight months into me working there. So it's kind of really cool because I run a business today and my business is called Power Flow. And it's just really interesting how, again, everything works out because working in the bank. I live in Newport Beach, California, and it's a very business heavy city. And I was able to work with a lot of really cool people when fresh out of college and just kind of see how business works and banking works and understand like what accounts and business accounts and IRAs and all the things. So it really helped me learn the behind the scenes of a business. And I apply that all to my business. So not only am I, I guess, the founder and CEO of Power Flow Fitness, but I'm also the head coach. I'm the photographer. I'm the videographer. I'm the administrator. I am the marketer. I'm the banker. I am the financial advisor. And it's crazy because now I do delegate a lot of that stuff out to people and I have relationships with those people for Power Flow. But it's really fun. And I'm obsessed with Power Flow. And the mission of Power Flow is literally how it sounds. It's to stay strong and stay mobile. And it was the beautiful marriage between strength training and now power lifting and yoga and marrying the two and just becoming the best version of you, strong and mobile and powerful.
GEORGE: Tell me a funny or interesting story about yourself that helps us get to know you as a human.
Okay, this is definitely a funny story, and this definitely makes me human. I was being silly in college, and I was in a sorority, and there was this thing where there could be sweethearts for another fraternity, and I wasn't necessarily officially a sweetheart for this fraternity, but these were all of my really good friends, all of my really good guy friends, and we hung out all four years of college. So this was my senior year of college. It is the first Saturday night of college and of senior year of college, and I was really excited, and it's so funny because I wasn't doing anything bad, of course. I know everyone says that, but truly I was not doing anything bad. I was sitting on the bar at the fraternity house, and it was a mixer between my sorority and this fraternity, and I was so excited that all of my favorite people were in one room together, and my friend and I got on the bar, and of course we were dancing on the bar, and I am going to add I was not dancing dirty at all. Just wasn't. I'm just not like that. So just to put a little bit more context into this because this story is kind of embarrassing, but you know what? There's a happy ending. I'm going to let you know. So I'm dancing on this bar, and unfortunately I fell off the bar, and my knee cap hit the edge of the table because I took a step back, and there was no table left, and so my knee hit the edge of the bar, literally split my ACL in half, and I landed with my knee bent on my back. It was so scary. I remember every second of it. My friend, thank you, DJ, if you're listening to this, picks me up off the floor and walks me home and helps me, and shortly after that I got an MRI, and I realized I tore my ACL. So I've been an athlete my entire life, and I was a competitive figure skater. I was the captain of my basketball team. I played field hockey and was one of the top scorers of the team. I'm telling you, I did it all athletically, and I never hurt myself. So leave it to my first Saturday night of senior year of college, being too excited and hurting my knee. But little did I know back then, I thought it was the end of the world, and it was actually the catalyst to me becoming into the personal trainer and the coach that I am today.
GEORGE: What strategies do you use to attract and retain clients in your personal training business?
This is such a great question because running a business is heavily relied on sales. Especially when you work for yourself, you are running the show, you are running your own paycheck, which is kind of scary in a way, but it's true. So for people like myself who struggle with the idea of having to sell something or that they don't want to come across as salesy or it makes them uncomfortable to try to approach or pitch or sell personal training, um, or just anything in general, but personal training, it's hard. I understand that. So the way I look at it and the way I've looked at it is I'm going to humbly say this, but this should explain a lot. I have had a lot of my clients from anywhere between four to 10 years. So I've retained almost 95% of my clients. In the entire time I've been training and I'm really lucky and I'm really grateful for that. But the way that I do that is I don't look at personal training as sales. I am so passionate about what I do and I think if you were trying to sell something, if you're passionate about it, it's not a sale. It's, it's kind of like the saying you'll never work a day in your life when you love what you do. And it's true because I just eat, breathe, sleep, live personal training and coaching and a healthy lifestyle. It's just in my blood. So I passionately can have that conversation with people and it doesn't come across as salesy. It's truly just me explaining something and a method and a philosophy that I truly believe in that I believe that everyone needs in order to stay healthy because I do it every single day and I have a story and I came through that story with this method. So I think to attract clients is truly to be authentic to yourself. Open up, share stories, listen, know when to empathize and when to share those stories so that you can be relatable because I've noticed the stronger and the stronger I get in my business and in my physical life, it can be a little bit intimidating to newer clients if I'm just getting to know them. And it's good to remind people that we all have a story and that we all start from somewhere because that's authentic and that's true and anyone can relate to that. So I think just being authentic is truly how I've retained my clients and just loving on them.
GEORGE: What is your process for assessing a new client's fitness level and addressing their goals?
So there's two different ways that I do this. If I am assessing a client in person, I'm going to go through all the major directions of movement. So I'm going to go through a squat pattern, a hinge pattern, a press pattern, a pull pattern, a carry, some sort of conditioning pattern. I'm going to watch how they walk, their gait, those types of things. And then also, before we even get into the physical, I'll sit down with them and I'll have either a phone call with them or we'll sit down and talk for like 20 to 30 minutes and just collect some data and get to know each other. Luckily, a lot of these clients I've had have been referrals. So I've luckily already have known a lot of these people before I have them sitting down in the chair in front of me. But typically, I'll go through five things with them. I'll ask them, what is your sleep like? What are you eating? What is your stress level like? What's your water intake look like? And what is your physical activity currently? And then I'll assess their movement patterns. And I'll go from there and write a program and I'll communicate what that is to them and what that looks like, how long it's going to take and what are the sustainable lifestyle habits we need to create in order to hit those goals. I'm really real with my clients. I honestly, as soon as I talk to someone, I plant the seed immediately that this needs to be something that you do forever. And I don't do that in a pushy way or an aggressive way or in a drill sergeant type of way, but I really plant the seed that this is going to be the medicine that will cure a lot of your problems for the rest of your life, as long as you can stick with this. And what I'm going to do is help you create a sustainable lifestyle in order to do that as easy as possible. And we're going to mold it into your current lifestyle and everything else is onward and upward from there. And then if it's an online client, I actually have a type form about, it's like 10 to 15 questions. And I encourage them to tell me as much as they can because it's online. So I get to know them as best that I can. We'll have a phone call or a zoom call. We'll get to know each other in person more. And then I will either put them in power flow standard programming, depending on what their physical level is after our conversation, or I will write them a one-on-one program. And I check in with them once a week through a loom video to do the exact same things I do with my in-person clients.
GEORGE: What certifications do you hold, and how do you stay updated on the latest fitness trends and research?
I love learning about anything health and wellness, personal training, coaching, physical therapy, you name it. I am obsessed. So I hold a few certifications. Like I said earlier, I have my degree in exercise science and sport administration. And then after college, I took my personal training certification through NASM. And then I also was simultaneously working on my RYT, which is my registered yoga teacher training certification. I took my 200 hour. And then after that, I started working at Equinox and you go through their own intensive schooling and certifications and training. So I went through that, learned a lot through that. And then after that, I started working for myself officially, and I was able to kind of pick and choose what I wanted to start learning and dabble in things, which was really fun. So in the past two-ish, two and a half years, I've taken a few things. I took my PPSC pain performance specialist certification, which was a lot of fun, met some good people. And then shortly after that, because I wanted more, I took my PPSC programming and training modalities, which is basically just another certification learning about effective training and programming and why you do certain things and when you should do certain things and when you should progress and regress and all the things, which was super fun. I love stuff like that. And then just throughout that few years, I was doing some weekend certifications to kind of stay up to date on my yoga. And I was doing 10 to 12 hour weekends. I did four or five of those. So I have an extra 50 hours in my yoga training. And then I took Katie Dabrowski. She is an amazing physical therapist, doctor. And I met her. She's great. She's awesome. She's super smart. She is the goat of physical therapy, but I am honored. I took her certification about six months ago, which was a lot of fun. And then just because I'm obsessed with health and wellness and coaching and physical therapy and all the things, I listened to a lot of podcasts from really credible people. I try to dabble in a lot of nutrition articles. I'm not a nutritionist, but I am very, very interested in it. And then I have my coaches and my mentors that I follow and just my own experience in sport and athletics and personal training.
GEORGE: How do you envision your personal training business evolving in the next few years?
This is a loaded question and I love it, but I love thinking about the future of Powerflow. So currently I do train 20 to 25 in-person sessions per week, Monday through Friday, and I run the online business in the other hours of the day. But what I envision is possibly taking on maybe two to four more in-person clients, as long as it fits into the schedule, because my schedule is typically 5am to 2pm and that's outside of my own training, which is powerlifting. And that's definitely part of the business too, so that's important that I make time for that as well. But anyways, I envision maintaining the in-person schedule and growing the online side even more. And I plan for Powerflow to blow up and to get as many amazing athletes and people and clients of all ages, because I currently train literally all ages. My current client, my oldest client, is 84 and my youngest is 16. So I plan on just trying to help people learn how to use the online app, because I want everyone to be able to use this app and not feel intimidated because it's very user friendly. So I would love to get people of all ages to follow these programs, the group coaching, the one-on-one, it depends, whatever best suits the client, and to have them in Powerflow. And hopefully I get so busy that I need to hire some amazing coaches to help me train these athletes and clients. So I eventually would love to have a small studio for Powerflow too, which is kind of like the hub, the headquarters of Powerflow, where I can currently train my own clients that I'm currently training there in the studio. And then if I have online clients that would like to drop in, if they're local, then they can do a drop-in session in the headquarters or the hub or whatever we want to call it, the Powerflow studio. So I plan on Powerflow just blowing up and me needing to hire people and find a space to run the business out of in person and online, and just hopefully everything flourishes and we help as many people as possible.
GEORGE: What do you think are the biggest challenges currently facing the fitness & personal training industry?
There's definitely challenges in the fitness industry and the personal training industry. I think a big one, at least for me, is I struggle with misled information on the internet. It's really exhausting combating misled information every single day with clients, in-person clients, online clients, possible clients, talking out in just regular conversations out in the wild with people. It's really tough combating that. And if the client doesn't trust you, it can be really exhausting because you might feel like you're like a broken record, repeating yourself. And even clients that trust you, or my clients that trust me, they've been training with me for a decade, they'll still throw a random thing at me sometimes. And I'm like, where did you hear that? And let's have a conversation. Like what? So, which is great. I'm glad my clients do that. And they come to me and they ask me questions. And thankfully I have amazing clients and they listen and they converse with me and they ask questions. And I'm also not afraid to say, I don't know, and let me go check and let me do some research. So I'm happy to also do that too. So my clients keep me on my toes too, as they should. It's my job. But I think a big one is just like influencers online. I understand everyone's trying to make a living out here and I think it's great. But if you are not a professional in the industry, I think you should not be giving expertise or advice to people. And people that are not in the industry aren't supposed to know this information. So when they're fed this type of information, again, it's just really exhausting combating those conversations and misled information is just really frustrating. And also social media, it's such a beautiful thing and it's amazing. And I run a business off of it. And I also love it for entertainment and fun, but it can be really hard comparison, comparing yourself to someone else's body, comparing yourself to someone else's business, comparing your client roster. I mean, things are just elevated on the internet. So it can be really tough on your mental psyche. So I think those are the things that I mainly struggle with, but you just got to keep doing you and just got to keep educating yourself so that you can keep educating your clients.
Want more Tyler Argento in your life? You can find’em here:
Visit: https://linktr.ee/tylerargento.fit
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tylerargento.fit/
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