Transcript of Episode 494: Adam Schafer: The Shocking Stat That Explains Why Most Trainers Stay Broke

Hi, guys. It's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits & Hustle. Crush it.

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That is really tough. Really tough to date a male trainer. I mean, any sex. If you have a husband, then you're a girl and you're a trainer, that's tough for the opposite. You got to have a very confident partner that is okay with that. I don't know if people know the stats on this, but like 70 something % of trainers sleep with their clients. So it's a very like... 70 %? 70 %. The only thing that's higher in infidelity is hospitals. So doctors and nurses sleep together more than trainers and clients do. That's number one and number two. So it's a really like...

70 % on both sides, men with girl trainers and their clients and men. Who does it more?

Men. Yeah, men with women. Yeah, men trainers I bet you men and their older clients.

Totally. That for sure happens all the time. All the time.

All the time happens. And it happened a lot in my space. Now, I also attribute a lot of my success to resisting that. I had many clients. I knew I could have taken advantage of that situation, and they paid for training for me for probably years in hopes that I would one day, and I'm aware of that. But I also know that I was about my money. I was about business. I was so good. Which is why I got in a... I used to teach that to trainers, too, all the time. Listen, all of you guys, you're going to have an opportunity. The difference between you being a decent okay trainer and a very successful one is, can you resist the temptation to sleep with your clients? Because it's going to come your way and it's going to be tempting because they're going to be good looking and successful and all the things, and you're going to want to. In the back of your head, you're going to think, Oh, this exception. Then that's the beginning of the end for you. You'll never be that successful if you do that.

Anyway. I love that. Why won't they ever be as successful? Because it takes you down this weird path of then you become that trainer?

Yeah, you become, one, you open Pandora's box, right? You break the seal. Now, once you do it once, you're going to do it again, and then you've now become that person. Then you get a reputation around that, and then people know. You know what? The best paying type of clients know, and they find out. And the ones that are really good, the best relationships, the best clients, they're not looking for that. They're looking for someone who's intelligent, that's professional, that's going to help. So yeah, you might get the little floozy who just came out of a divorce, and she wants to take advantage of the young good-looking trainer. It's like, and have a great night, whatever. Okay, so you get that one. But you're going to miss out on a lot for that. And then also your peers lose respect for you. And if, in my case, I managed all my peers. At one point, we were all peers. I was a trainer. Then the next day, All of a sudden, I'm their boss, and they have to work for me. Imagine if I was a trainer who slept with all the ladies in the gym, and then now I'm your boss telling you what to do.

It's like, I get no respect for my female trainers. I'm going to get no... And most, even my male trainers may not give me respect because of who I am. It will kill your career. It really will kill career if you do something like that. I'm always telling trainers that. You have to know all this, right? That I grew up in an environment like that. I had girlfriends that would show up to the gym to see who I was training and stand out in the parking lot, do crazy stuff because they were so jealous.

Yeah, they were so jealous and insecure.

I would date these girls. I can't have a girl like this. This is my passion. This is my career. I had no intentions of leaving this industry anytime soon. I knew that I needed a very confident woman that was not going to get... And that's how I am. I'm very much so that way. This is why Katrina and I are so great like this. We both have this similar philosophy of, if you're going to cheat, you're going to cheat. Me being jealous about it and digging through your shit is not going to stop it or start it. It's like, if anything, and I've seen this, I've been pushed in that direction because I have such a jealous girl. I'm like, Man, I'm fighting over something I haven't done. I'm having to defend myself. I might as well go do it. And so I have that attitude of like, I'm going to trust my girl until she breaks my trust.

Also, I got to say, it's like a huge turn off when someone is that insecure and jealous and they put that on you. Because I have the same mentality. There's nothing you can do about it anyway. If someone wants to cheat on you, they're going to find a way. You think you by going through their phone and their email and all this bullshit is going to make a difference? And you catch them and then what? And you catch them and then what? Yeah. Okay, and so what? They're going to deny it, not going to deny it. If you even put out that energy, I won't even circle back to something you said earlier, But if you can give your kid any character trait, it was going to be confidence, right? Yeah. Again, everything that you're saying, I can just basically say me too, or I agree. But to me, confidence is really the gateway for anything. Number one, if you're even good-looking, but not really, if you're confident and you hold yourself in a certain way and you believe in yourself, you're 100 times more attractive. If you believe in yourself, everything is a projection.

And so the second that you show And not just show in a fake way, but when you're genuinely a confident person and have a high self-esteem, because there's a difference. If you have a high self and think of yourself in a certain way in a belief system, what you give to the world is such a different sense of a physical attractiveness, mental attractiveness. There's nothing that will ever surpass that trait, that quality.

A hundred % agree.

Like 100 %.

There's something I always say. I say that because in our space, motivation and hype is a real popular thing. I say motivation is bullshit. Self belief is everything.

That's 100 % true.

I believe that. If you have the confidence, you believe in yourself, everything else falls into place from there. You just got to believe that you... And you don't have to believe that you're good. You don't have to have a delusion. You don't have to be delusional about it. None of us that started the podcast had any delusion that we were good or we knew what we were doing or we're the best. But we all had this self-belief that we're going to figure this out. Totally. And we will and we'll keep trying until we do. And so, yeah, no, I'm a firm believer in self belief and confidence. I think that leads to everything else. I found that in a partner. In fact, taking it full circle from how you started this conversation, Katrina is every bit just like me in that. Like, she is the same way. Like, she just has that. She has so much confidence in herself that if I were to go out on her and do that, her attitude is just like, You're lost, buddy.

By the way, I was just going to say that- You're lost. The fact that she would even have that self-confidence, self-esteem me, you met somebody who is perfect. Yes. The fact that you recognize that to be with someone like that will surpass any other type of person. The fact that you had the... Again, I hate to keep on saying the word self-awareness is so key because it's changing the trajectory of your entire life for the good.

100%. And the part that nobody told me about that I still today have this, it blows my mind. Katrina and I are on 13 We're 13 going on 14 years now. It's been 13, 14 years. Oh, wow. Yeah, that we've been together. And this is no bullshit. I am more physically attracted to her today. We have better sex today. The love has just grown and grown and grown and grown and grown. It just keeps getting better and better and better and better. The older we get, the more time we spend together. I had no idea it would be like that. In my experience, every other girl I ever dated during the honeymoon phase, the flame is going, the desire is going, the lust is going, and it's like, and that would always fade. It would always fade after six months or a year. It didn't necessarily always go completely away, but it just wasn't there the same way. Her and I were the opposite. It was like, I don't even know if this is the girl for me or I'm really into her. It's like, okay, I really like her. Now I like her more.

It's just grown and grown and grown and grown the longer we stay together. The more things that we go through and we build and we do and the more challenges that we have and we see how each other handles it, like, oh, yeah, there's no way that I'm at where I'm at today if I didn't meet her 13 years ago. She's allowed me to be way, way, way better than I would have ever been for sure.

That's amazing.

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You know what I think? I have a lot of guy friends who are very, very successful, especially in this culture we have, like LA, New York, big city places who are good-looking guys, super successful in their 40s, still have never said all down. They say in words, I really want to meet somebody and have this blah, blah, blah life, fill in the blanks. And yet they still can't get out of their own way and still dating 20-year-old bimbos or 22-year-old people who have nothing in... They have Nothing in real life in common. When I meet these people, it goes on three dates, six dates, and then they repeat the pattern over and over again. These are people who are, again, which is interesting, self-aware, really intelligent, very successful. You would think that they would have the wherewithal after doing this for 30 years, that they would stop the pattern and then be able to do what you did. Now, I guess this is my question. How do you... I don't even know if you can answer it. When you have the wherewithal and you were cognizant to know that the ones that you were dating were not the right ones and you wanted to have that life.

The pushback I get with people or when I talk about this is you can't force yourself to be attracted to somebody that you're not attracted you? Yeah. How do you tell people or help people get out of their own way so they can actually find real love and happiness in a real way, not just frivolous and silly and be alone?

That's a really good question, and I have thought about it, and I do think I have some thoughts around how that worked or what I did, because like I said, when I first initially started to date her or even date the two girls before, I wouldn't have thought I would be attracted to them. But if you have become self-aware that you're attracting the wrong person, and you're at least at that stage, because that's obviously the first step. Because a lot of people are stuck, they don't even realize they're in this lust phase, and they're attracted to all their insecurities, right? So They're attracted for all the wrong reasons to all the wrong people, and they still don't even realize it. That's a lot of people for a long time, sometimes their whole life. But if you at least got to the point where you realized, I'm broken. I attract broken people. This is bad for me. What do I do from here? Well, you have to build with the things that you want. I knew I wanted this queen. I knew I wanted this badass, confident chic who was this solid partner that was going to be a good wife and a good mother and was going to be growth-minded.

So I knew I wanted all those attributes. So then I stopped putting the other ones at the top. Like, oh, she's got to be a 10 at this, and she has to look this way with this color eyes and hair. I was using that. That was still at the top. It was just like, wait a second, what if I flip that? All these other characteristics that are really, truly important, what if I went after that first and then see what girls fell into that category and then be open to at least dating? And listen, I dated a couple of girls before her that I tried that, and it didn't work out. But it was a good learning experience for me that, okay, I know that I'm starting to notice that I care. I like these qualities. I like these qualities that I didn't have in all the other ones that I was dating where I was the daddy in all the other ones. So I'm liking this strong, confident woman that's independent, has her thing, her shit together, doesn't necessarily need me, but I'm liking some of that. But then I'm starting to formulate what that looks like.

So you have to at least be open to dating in a direction that you probably don't think that you would date in. So it starts there. It starts with one becoming aware, and then be open to looking at the straight. Listen, you don't have to go marry the person right away. Just go on some dates and go have some conversations and see what happens and see if that sparked something else in you or at least makes you go, You know what? I'm going to go on another date. Let's see what happens in the next date.

Can I interrupt for a second? This is what I think happens, though. You are lucky enough to catch yourself early enough where you can pivot and change. What I think is happening a lot more and more now with what's happening with social media all the apps and people aren't socializing and going out as much. They're really using... They're looking at social media, they're looking at fitness influencers, looking at girls who are not even realistic. That's the first part. They are now past the point of no return, where they've been doing their pattern for so long, where now they can't even... It's too hard because you've been so used to doing things the way you've been doing it, the people you've been doing it with. You can't even get your mind to change the neuroplasticity where you can be attracted physically to something that's more appropriate for you because you're not wired that way.

It's more because right now it's a drug. When you have an insecurity, when you're broken and you're attracting the wrong type of person from you. It's like getting a hit of a drug. Yeah. And so you have to want to change that. Just like somebody who is addicted to a drug who says, I know this habit is bad for me. I need to quit. It's going be hard. And you're going to want to fall back in those behaviors because you're addicted to those behaviors. You have to become aware that that's what that person is for you. For me, it was that I had insecurities around being smart and successful and powerful. And so getting a woman that I could teach and lead and show her all the things like that, fulfilled that, like a drug. It gave me... Because the initial connection was awesome. It was like, yeah, I felt so good. Like a man. Yes. All this feeling security and confidence, and I'm the man, would come rushing in and be, This is the right chick for me. For sure. You think that is just like you probably think when you're on high, that this is great.

This is so good for me because you're on the high. You're on the high. Then the come down and the hangover and the, oh, my God, I feel so embarrassed because I'm this person again. That's all it is. It's so true. They don't want to break the addiction bad enough that they're willing to go through the pain of the withdrawals. And so you have to be willing to do that first. Yes. And by the way, just like a drug, the longer you are aware of this issue that you have in partnering up with people, and the longer you've done that behavior habit, the harder and the greater the withdrawal is going to be when you get out of it. If you've been doing that like I had been doing that through a lot of different girls till I was 27, it was a hard pattern to break. And being completely honest and transparent, this was also one of the things I loved about Katrina was when we first started dating, she was patient for me to catch up on that.