How This Professional Dancer Became a Pioneer in Virtual Personal Training

Photo courtesy of Rachel Butler-Green

Rachel Butler-Green is an LA-based professional dancer and owner of Fit Mindful Body Club. She was one of the first in the industry to provide one-on-one personal training over video conferencing, which positioned her to thrive during the pandemic. 

I became a client of Rachel’s in early 2021, and I love how easy she makes it to get a personalized workout wherever I am. She is supportive yet tough, so I always feel challenged.

Read on to learn more about her career path and how she found her way to entrepreneurship. 

Q: What were you doing before launching your business?

I’m a classically trained ballerina, performing with various contemporary modern dance companies. I’ve been dancing professionally for a very long time. My degree is in fine arts and performance. I knew that I should always have a backup plan, because you never know what could happen, especially being in arts and entertainment, and in particular in dance.  I knew it may not be something that would lead to a lifestyle I wanted financially.

So I went into physical therapy. I’ve always liked to help people, and I’ve always been curious about the body and muscles. I was working fulltime as a physical therapy aide while dancing professionally. I loved it, and I learned a lot. But I knew after trying it that I didn’t want to take the time and effort to become a physical therapist. At that point in my career, I wanted to focus on dance.

Q: How did you pivot to personal training?

I knew that I wanted to do something that would allow me to have flexibility and create my own schedule, but also still have the time to go to auditions, or be able to tour or be available for rehearsals.  And then I researched the business aspect to find out if I could make a living with it. The answer was 100 percent.

That led me to get my certification as a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. It’s kind of a tough certification, much more science-based than a personal training certification. So it took me a while. I took the test probably four times before I actually passed it.  The whole time I was still working full time and performing. 

Q: How did you know it was time to launch your business?

The physical therapy office that I was working for got acquired by a large corporate gym and our department was laid off. I was on unemployment for a little while, but that was probably the best thing that happened to me. It really pushed me to start my own company. And I've been independent ever since. It was tough at the time, but it was the exact push that I needed.

I would train clients from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m., and then have dinner and rehearsals in the evening and sometimes Saturdays. But I loved what I was doing and to me, that was the ideal schedule—working for myself and still having time for rehearsals.

Q: How did you start to get clients and build your business?

The hardest part is really just that first person. Once you know that you can get that first person, then you know that you can get more. I got my first client actually right when we were getting laid off from the physical therapy department. There were a couple of people there who said they liked working with me, and they asked if I could continue to work with them. 

What worked best for me at the time was word of mouth and just kind of telling friends, “I have this offer. Do you want to try, or if not, do you know someone who might be interested?” You’d be surprised how many people said they knew someone who was looking for a trainer. 

Q: I’m amazed at how well our training sessions work over Zoom. How did you get started doing virtual personal training?

I've been doing the virtual model now for 10 years. I started training in-person for years, and then I started thinking that I wanted to offer a product that was a bit more scalable, where I could reach more people in a shorter amount of time.

Once I learned that 30-minute workouts could be tailored so that you can get a really efficient workout, I figured I could train two people in one hour. I still needed to cut down on the drive time. That’s why I thought of trying training over Skype.

I knew fitness was going to go digital. People weren’t as open to it as they are now. I had to get people to try it for free first, because everyone thought the best way to work out was in a gym with a personal trainer directly next to you. And everyone who tried it for free loved it.

Even then, I still did a mix of virtual and in-person. But the pandemic is what pushed me and really allowed me to pursue a fully virtual model. It turned out to be a great decision because I didn't really have to pivot at all when the pandemic hit.

Q: What advice would you give to someone who is thinking of starting a business?

Make sure that you're launching a business in a field that you really care about and that you really enjoy, because it is going to be hard work. If you enjoy the space that you're in and the people that you're around, or that you have the potential to meet, that will make it easier to get started. 

Every business is meant to make money. But don't do it just for the money.  Because in those slow times when you feel like quitting, or you feel like it's going slow, are you going to abandon it? Are you going to push through the tough times? 

So, assess those things first, and then just ask someone to try your product or your service. Tell yourself it takes 10 “no's” to get to one “yes.” Once you get that yes, you're going to feel more inspired to keep going. Take your time. Don't rush it. Be very strategic about why you're going into this business and what you want to get out of it.

When you are here to help make someone's life better, whatever your product or service is, then you're going to find that people are going to want it. And then you just go from there.

Q: What’s next for you?

I’m actually in the next phase now with our pocket personal trainer, Fit Mindful Body Club, where we have other trainers who work for our club. It’s no longer only me training our clients. FMBC is a more scalable model where we can reach more people to provide them with a video curriculum and a dedicated virtual personal trainer. It also has more of a community aspect which has been really important during the pandemic.

Being able to build a product where we can reach more people so that they can experience the formula that I use to train my clients and help get them in a good physical mental space has been quite rewarding. That’s what’s happening next, and I’m really excited about it.