the collapse of the online fitness coach

Summary

the large-scale online fitness coach is dead. Ozempic, TRT, AI-generated programs, and unlimited free content killed the 100k-follower coaching business. people don’t need a generic program plus a discord. they can buy the easy button.

so what’s left? what works in 2025?

1. small list, deep engagement. 500 people who actually want what you’re selling beats 50,000 who are just consuming. you cannot serve everyone. don’t try.
2. niche by effort, not modality. stop niching to “crossfit” or “powerlifting” or “running.” niche to “people who want to work hard.” effort-based audiences are loyal in ways modality-based audiences aren’t.
3. hand-crafted coaching. the value isn’t the program. anyone can get a program. the value is the human relationship, the spot corrections, the accountability.
4. stop trying to scale. maybe the whole game wasn’t supposed to be scaling. maybe it was supposed to be a small group of committed humans who train hard together.

it’s not about content reach. it’s about the depth of relationship with the people who already know you.

Transcript

why the fitness industry is screwed

The fitness industry is so screwed right now. If you think about it, the world is handing us easy buttons left and right. You have Ozempic for weight loss. You have TRT for muscle gain. And to be honest, you don’t even need a real doctor to get these things. You can have it online in an afternoon by the end of the day if you really wanted to. And then we have things like AI coming online that can perfectly track your macros and make your meal plans and then also give you a pretty solid workout program if you want to. So where does that leave the fitness or health professional when most of these things can just be solved by hitting an easy button?

easy buttons: Ozempic, TRT & AI programs

Well, here’s the deal. We know that easy buttons never actually work off in the long term, but people don’t actually know that. So they’re going to have to go through this cycle of trying to hit all these easy buttons and running into the issues that easy buttons create. Typically, there’s always a side effect for any easy button that’s hit. But I do think the death of the large scale fitness industry, fitness business is about dead. There’s going to be a few major players who’ve done it. And I’m talking about people who have like ten thousand or thousands of customers or people who have five thousand people paying fifty dollars a month or something along those lines. That type of fitness and health professional, I think, is a dinosaur and it’s dying slowly. And I think that death is actually going to speed up quite a bit. And the reason being is because you don’t want to chase that anymore. People have too many easy buttons to hit. So you can’t really appeal to the masses because the masses don’t really want what most people have to offer and what most fitness and health professional strength coaches have to offer is here’s the work.

why big fitness models are dinosaurs

I can tell you the work, the hard stuff that has to get done, and you’re going to have to do it. Nobody wants to hear that. Not a lot of people want to hear that. Ten thousand people don’t want to hear that. But 15 or 20 people, they might want to hear that. So here’s the solution. My kids just started recently dabbling with video and YouTube and all this kind of stuff.

the power of a tiny client base

And they were I show them the basics, but they started doing some video editing. And my wife is like, is this the skills like this is the skills of the future. This is what they need. And I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t know. Video editors will be a thing in the future. But here’s what I know right now. I’ve got a friend who has like four or five video editing clients paying a good amount of money to do most of their YouTube in short form content.

niche by effort, not just modality

He makes like twenty thousand dollars a month. He has four or five clients and clients are not hard to find. He doesn’t want to take on any more clients and he’s making a lot of money. How much more money do you actually need now? I’m not saying that you can’t earn more, but twenty thousand dollars a month with nobody on your team and you’re the only person and all you have to do to do a job, do your damn job. That’s a pretty good living, right? Like most people can accomplish that. Most people can accomplish that. And that’s the same case for what’s happening to the health and fitness professional. You don’t need to chase having twenty thirty thousand people on an email list or subscribe to your fitness program.

That’s not really how things are going to work out in the future. What you have to niche down to people think they need to niche down to the kettlebells or barbells or Pilates or whatever. That’s not the niche. The niche is becoming effort. You have to find the people who are saying, you know what, I know all these easy buttons exist, but I would rather put in the work like there’s there’s some value mentally. And as a human being, there’s some value to putting in the work. You have to find the people who understand that and believe it. And therefore, a few between. But if you find them and you have your 15 to 20 people and you charge appropriately, hey, maybe you’re making five, 10, 20, 30 thousand dollars a month. You have a small team, maybe an assistant to help out with email emails, and that’s all you really need to succeed in the new world. So that’s the future. It’s everything getting smaller. If you’ve been paying attention to a lot of the gurus on YouTube and in other spaces, they they’ve had these massive followings, million followers, 500000 followers, hundred and fifty thousand subscribers, whatever.

the email list: keep it small & engaged

And they’re abandoning these large channels where they were putting out a lot of cookie cutter information that appeal to the masses. And they’re starting these new niche channels specific to mentorship or business or something like that. And these channels have much fewer and smaller subscriber bases. But these smaller niched channels and these smaller niched, you know, content channels, wherever you want to put them, are making them about 100x the amount of money. And the reason is because you have the right people listening to the right message and it’s congruent with the right offer. So that’s what you’re going to have to do. You have this niche down to a specific action that people need to take, like effort as opposed to the kettlebell.

And then another thing you’re going to do, get an email list. That’s number two. And then the third thing is you want to keep that email list small. You want to keep your community small and you want to keep it engaged. We’re talking about your life’s work here. Now, what’s scalable? I’m so much less interested in what’s scalable today. I’ve been doing that for the last 10 plus years, scaling companies, and I do enjoy it. I have enjoyed it. But if we think about like just for most people, you know, maybe that ship has sailed for most people, maybe a truly massively scalable business.

maybe it’s not about “scaling” after all

And I’m talking about a massive one, tens of millions of dollars. Maybe that’s not in the cards for a lot of people with all the easy buttons that are coming online. But is making a living a really good, comfortable living with a high income? Very possible with a few people and a very niched message possible. That’s a hundred percent possible. And that’s what you should be chasing. You should be chasing down this niche channel, this niche content down to effort, the actions that human needs to take, get a small email list, keep it small. Do not try and grow it for the sake of growing it. There’s no real point in doing that. And then keep it engaged. Make sure people are replying, make sure you’re actually helping people. And if you’re doing all these things, you will survive as more and more people start to hit easy buttons. You’ll find the right people who are not okay with easy buttons and they want to put in the effort. But if you keep trying to chase and appeal to the masses, you’re going to fail and you’re going to have to try harder to get any of this done. Good luck.