OTG (Only The Greatest) Fitness: One on one wth Fillipe Silvas

Dive into the inspiring journey of Fellipe Silvas, the mastermind behind Only The Greatest Fitness, in this captivating one-on-one podcast. Join us as we uncover the secrets behind his remarkable success in building a thriving personal training business through the power of social media and digital marketing.

From humble beginnings to becoming a trailblazer in the fitness industry, Fellipe shares his insights, challenges, and triumphs. Discover how he leveraged social media platforms to connect with clients, build a loyal community, and amplify his brand presence. Gain invaluable tips and strategies as he reveals the tactics that propelled his business to new heights in the digital landscape.

Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, a fitness enthusiast, or simply intrigued by the intersection of business and wellness, this podcast offers a wealth of knowledge and inspiration. Tune in and embark on a journey of resilience, passion, and relentless pursuit of greatness with Fellipe Silvas, where every step leads to Only The Greatest achievements.

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What's up guys, Chris Bowen here with Level Up the Podcast. I am joined by Felipe Silvas today. Felipe runs a gym in Houston, Texas, and he's going to talk to us a little bit about health and fitness today and how it relates to business and what he's doing to kind of manage his business as well. So Felipe, why don't you introduce yourself to everybody, man. Sure, yeah. My name's Philip Silvis. A lot of people call me Felipe, which is totally cool. Yeah, no, it's good. My name, it's a mixture of English and Spanish. So even though I've never met my father, I was actually, my name is halfway spelled after him. So my name is a combination of like Spanish Felipe, like F -E -L -I -P -E, which is my father's name, and English Philip. So it's a combination of the two things. Yeah, how my name came to be. So, but yeah, I own OTG Fitness. OTG Fitness stands for Only the Greatest, where we help people become the greatest version of themselves. And we're focused on health and fitness. In the Houston area, we're currently in Webster on the South Side, but our goal, we do personal training. It's not a general access gym. We have a very specific person that we try to work with. So we like a smaller gym where we help, we have between, Currently we have 141 personal training clients. And that's really the number that we want. We're actually at the number we want. So now our next step is actually to start scaling multiple locations, not necessarily getting any one location bigger, right? Yeah, been doing it since. Yes, sir. Yeah, yeah. We believe in the in -person personal training model. You know, around COVID, I'll be honest, we did try some online stuff. It just didn't vibe with me. Maybe it's just because I'm an in -person kind of guy, I don't know. But in my opinion, the results speak for themselves when it comes to in -person personal training for sure. No, I absolutely agree with you. I'm one of those people, I have a hard time. If I'm not, if I don't have like a, like a very set structure, I'm not good at not following my program. That's just who I am as a person. You know, I've always kind of been that way, but I am very much a set program type of person that if I'm not working with somebody who has me on a set, you know, a set plan and we have those in -person check -ins, I just don't do as well. You know, I find it a lot harder. yeah, people do personal training for multiple reasons. And the number one is the accountability piece, right? It's to actually do it, right? And so when people don't show up here, we call them, like, hey, like, where are you at? What's going on? You know, you committed to this thing, right? So we help people that want to be helped for sure. that's awesome. On the business side of things, you said you guys have a content creator that works for you full time. How has that helped you kind of leverage your business and kind of create this online persona that you guys have? Oh, it's a complete game changer. I'd say for the first few years, you know, I did it all myself, like setting up the camera, setting up the tripod in the gym. I had a big whiteboard and I would do like lessons and stuff like that and then pull it in, edit it myself on top of like Facebook live, which was a little bit faster and easier, right? And then trying to keep up with with all the postings. It was just a nightmare, to be honest. And I thought. Yeah, it's so hard. It's just so much time. It is a full -time job. And that's when I decided, hey, we got to get somebody in here to do this. And really the final step, I think, was when we decided to do a podcast ourselves. So it's one thing to post on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts and all that stuff. And then when the podcast came along, I was like, there's just no way that I can continue to do this. all the video editing involved. It's all the, you know, making sure that it's posted at the right time, that you're not reposting the same stuff, you know, that you have fresh ideas. It's this right here. This is the easy part. Showing up and talking, that's the easy part. talk all day, for sure. That's what I do. And I always tell people too, it's funny you say that, our motto is that it's personal before trainer, right? So we believe in creating relationships with people and I'm very upfront with people also that like my formal training is actually in business management. My degree is in business management, but, and I worked in manufacturing for seven years. before I quit my job to do this full time. And I guess what I'm getting at is fitness itself is like not necessarily like the ins and outs of like anatomy and programming and all that stuff. Obviously I can do those things, it's what I do for a living, but I'm the personal part of personal training. That's right. relationship first, which, hey, look, I'm the same way. Like I'm a people person. It's what I like to do. I like to talk to people. I like to get to know them. I like to be relatable on a personal level. Um, and I think it's so important when you're building a relationship, especially with a trainer that you have that, um, you know, The more comfortable you are with someone, the more likely you are to say, you know, hey, this is working for me. This isn't working for me. Can we tweak this? Can we tweak that? You know, they give you the information that you need to know in order to do what you need to do. Yeah, the comfort level is very important in our industry, in our business. The fact that a client feels comfortable enough to speak up when something's not going the way that they want it to or when it is and they let you know in that way. Now I know as their trainer to double down on that thing or like, ooh, we need to back off of that thing. And if someone's not comfortable and they view you as someone that just yells at them all the time, you're not really going to get the best out of. My job is to help you become the greatest version of yourself. And... fitness is just my platform in doing that. So you're not the Wes Watson style trainer that's just yelling, F you, get off the FM ground. No way, not at all. Our clients would run out of here. Maybe it's type of people we work with or maybe it's like my marketing has attracted those types of people. But yeah, we believe it's personal before trainer. And obviously the training part is very important, but the most important part of anyone's fitness journey is that they keep doing it. Number one, number one rule, keep doing it. And if they enjoy, most is consistency in doing it. You know, I'll go six months where it's, you know, going all out, gym every day, two workouts a day, and then fall off for six months where I don't do anything. You know, back and forth and back and forth. yeah, and I don't know if this helps, but something that I tell a lot of people, it's kind of a little bit different than what you hear most of the time to be successful in something. A lot of times in most parts of our life, especially in work and business, you have to be all in. It's all in or nothing. Fitness for most people, I'm not gonna say for everyone, for most people is not one of those things. It's different in the way that sustainability. is the most important. Right. what I struggle with mentally, honestly, is I'm an all in type of person. I don't like to do anything, you know, that's not all in, you know, I don't just go halfway when I do it. I'm, you know, I used to compete in jujitsu and stuff like that. And so, uh, my mindset's very much like, I have to be a certain way and I have to do these certain things. If I'm not, you know, absolutely perfectly dialed in on my diet, then I'm just, I'm a failure and I don't even know why I'm. wasting my time doing this. You know, it is. Yeah, absolutely. of what I do, I would say, is reminding people of that. Like, hey, you're still great. You're still amazing. Look at the progress you've made and just keeping people positive and on that track. And I think that that's why the in -person part maybe is so important, that they show up and see that. part of that is that people truly do need that side of it where they have to have somebody who's like, hey, it's okay to mess up and have a cheat day or a cheat meal. It's okay if you only did a 30 minute workout versus an hour workout. I think that those things are really important and it makes a big difference. back on it. Just because you eat one piece of pizza doesn't mean you have to eat four. That's the effort mentality, right? Effort already, you know? Well, that's not reality, right? You're living in a false reality that you created inside of your mind. And let's live in real reality. The definition of reality is what's actually happening. Right? And really... Yeah, what's actually happening is it's not that big of a deal. And so who is your guy's ideal client? You guys work with, I'm sure with a very specific type of person. Sure, yeah, and personal training in general is usually dominated by female clientele, but I am very proud to say that we're almost exactly 50 -50 male to female. We're about 54 % female, 46 % male. And that, once again, might come down to my marketing efforts as a male being the face of our marketing, right? Might be part of that for sure. But ideally, most of our clients are 35 to 55. Surprisingly, we're right across the street from NASA, from Johnson Space Center. And then also there's a medical district right down the road. So because of that, we do get a lot of, we have a surprising amount of young people like in their twenties, like young professionals, that happens a lot. But ideally, usually like 35 to 55 is usually more of our ideal client for the most part, with some of those young people sprinkled in that work here at like NASA engineers and nurses and young doctors as well in their like their late twenties. But it's usually people that, don't like the bigger gyms. They don't want to go where it's crowded. They go to the gym sometimes, they feel intimidated. Maybe they worked out in high school or college and it's been five years, 10 years, 15 years since they have because career, kids, things like that kind of got in the way. They've put on a little bit of weight and now they're trying to get back to where they were. And they go to the gym maybe and thinking that they can remember what to do from like back in high school and it just doesn't work. Right. And so that's when they start looking for a more private setting, like what we have, uh, cause we only allow personal training clients. We don't allow people to purchase gym memberships. You have to be a personal training client to come here. And then the gym access is included kind of quote for free, you know, um, with that. And so it's usually someone that's, you know, gained a little bit of weight. They either have never worked out before, or it's just been a long time and they don't want to go to the bigger places where there's a bunch of people. and it's really crowded and stuff. They don't feel comfortable there, so they do feel comfortable here and we hold their hand through their fitness journey. Yeah, I think, so I've worked out at gyms very similar to that. And you know, I will say that's where I've felt most comfortable. And honestly, sometimes it's hard as somebody who's very career minded to make time to do it. And when you have a set time where you're supposed to meet with somebody, it almost forces you to go do it. Otherwise, you know, you may say, well, you know, I got to work an extra hour today. I gotta go home to my family, I really don't have time. Versus if you've paid for that hour, you better believe I'm gonna be there. Yeah, you're going to be, I tell people we hold them accountable two ways. One, they pay for it, right? And then the second one is the human piece involved, right? I'm a person that you scheduled with. You made this appointment, not me. Like I asked you if you wanted it maybe, but you said yes, right? I'm a human being. And if you don't show up on me, I want you to feel bad about it, right? Because now all you have to worry about is showing up and I will take care of the rest. You just worry about showing up. Absolutely. Absolutely. And so on kind of the business side of things, how have you found it? What's the best way you found to hire trainers? Cause you said you have how many trainers who work for you? Three. Okay. So how have you been able to find those guys or are they, you know, people that you've brought in that you've trained and they just decided they fell in love with it. Yeah, so I mean, I've had, let's say we've been open for a little over five years and I've probably had before the four we have now, I've had five or six come and go over the past five years. And I learned a lot through hiring them. The first couple, to be honest, were just like mutual relationships. And I'm still open to getting trainers like that. That's totally fine. The number one thing though that I've learned is we actually don't hire trainers, we hire people. We hire good people and I teach them the training part. We have a program, a software that I create all the programs for the clients now. And so the trainer, I just hire good people that don't have experienced personal training. Cause it's kind of funny. You wouldn't think that this is the case, but what happens in personal training is trainers really fall in love with their way. Yeah. what happens is they come in here and they do it a different way than our other guys are doing. And now the client gets confused. Well, which is the way. So we just hire really good, young, energetic, fun, obviously fit, you know, people. And then I teach them the training piece. So they can be through a mutual friend, but I usually want someone that's not a personal trainer in the past and I'll help them get their certification. and all that stuff because it once again is the personal part that I care about. that a lot of people need to be better about doing that in business in general, hiring for attitude, training for aptitude. Because if you have a good attitude, there's so much more that you can do in life than somebody who just has the aptitude for something. Especially in sales, marketing, industries like that. I think anything that you're people facing forward, you have to hire people that have a good attitude. And that's what you have to hire for. it's funny you mentioned that sales and marketing and you know, as a personal trainer, you would think that once you make that initial sale, then it's fine. But actually, I, what I tell our guys or, or what our belief is at least is that you're, you're selling all the time, right? When you're out there, we do a recurring, like they, the clients pay automatic recurring based on how many training sessions they want to do each week. So. Even though the trainer is not necessarily doing sales, every time that person comes in, they have to resell them on staying. By having a good personality, then that client wants to stay here because they're being resold every time they show up. Yeah, it's relationship -based sales. I mean, that's what it is. And yeah, if you hire people that don't have that ability to do that, then you're not gonna keep any of your customer base and you're just gonna keep on spending money and spending money and spending money in order to get new clients in versus just keeping your existing clients. 100%, yeah, yeah, we wanna limit turnover as much as possible. That's a huge part of our business, for sure. sure that it is versus, you know, like a lot of the large gyms, they don't really care about turnover because they're locked into these long -term contracts that, you know, they're just going to keep charging the people monthly no matter what. You know, I think planet fitness is the worst. Yeah, we, oh, I've heard some horror stories about different gyms and you know, that's a, I have to overcome that almost, I was about to say almost every day and that's probably true. Multiple times per week. We get on average about between two and five new clients per week and I do all the sales myself. I sit down with people when they first come in and yeah, I have to overcome that all the time because gyms have a bad reputation. buyer. You know, I mean, that's a realistic fear because you hear it so often in the fitness industry. But it is different and they need to realize that, that when you work with these smaller gyms that, you know, that's not their style. It's just not, you know, it's no different than, you know, if you're shopping at Walmart versus you're shopping at, you know, let's say Whole Foods. You know, what's... Just because you had a bad experience buying something from Walmart doesn't mean you should never go to the grocery store again. Yeah, exactly. That's a great analogy and it is difficult. And so we don't require any contracts. We do offer contracts if people want it and we'll give them a discount. But they don't have to. And it's just all about communication, right? That's what we're a personal business. It's in the name personal training. It's right there. Right. So just, you know, communicate, let us know. We're very flexible, very easy. But yeah, that's a tough one that unfortunately our entire industry has to overcome all the Yeah, absolutely. And then you said that you guys have a podcast. What's that podcast and what's it kind of about? Only the Greatest Podcast and at Only the Greatest Podcast, we want to help Houston make its way up the ladder of health and fitness. So we actually started, it was just my best friend and I, we've been best friends since third grade. It was him and I just playing around and we did that for a year. We did over 75 episodes. Just, yeah, him and I, like, you know, we would talk about fitness stuff, life stuff, how to be better. Like, All kinds of good stuff and it was really fun, but we didn't really take it that serious. It was just fun. It's on YouTube and all the podcast platforms and everything, but here in the past couple months, that's when we came up with the slogan, we've invested a lot. We're invested into this podcasting. Yeah, we're invested into this podcast. It's really fun too. I actually moved just for this podcast. you really? Yeah, I moved because I needed, we needed a bigger room. So I moved into a house that has like an actual media room and we turned the media room into a podcast room. Yeah, it's really cool. It's myself, my best friend, Darryl, Sean, who is our, who is our content person, right? And then sometimes we have guests and sometimes we don't. We recently, we've been trying to get as many guests as possible. And it is, strictly health and fitness related at this point, right? We've really kind of narrowed down and the goal of our podcast is to help, obviously help Houston become a healthier city, because it's really not right now, unfortunately. But really it's also to help me establish connections around the city. So we interview doctors, we interview mental health specialists, to talk fitness related mental health, right? Yes. telling me. Exactly. Yeah, nutritionists, other gym owners, I'm cool with that. Fitness can be shared with everyone, right? So I'm not afraid to bring a competitor on, you know? So that doesn't bother me at all to talk with them and hear their philosophy and things like that. So yeah, strictly health and fitness based and in Houston as well to try to raise the fitness awareness in our city. No, I love it. Yeah. I grew up in, uh, in Colorado. And so moving to Dallas, um, Dallas just isn't as much of an outdoorsy city as, you know, Denver is by comparison. I mean, growing up in Colorado, everyone's outside all the time. You know, you can't drive down the road without, you know, a swarm of bikes, you know, uh, being on the side of the road. versus, you know, we get a little bit of that here, but it's not nearly the same as there. I mean, everybody's hiking, biking, running. in Houston, I don't know if you ever come down to Houston, man, it's all about the food, dude. It is. And that's great. I'm like, we preach a flexible lifestyle. My girlfriend and I, we love to eat out. We like Asian food especially. So we do eat out. Not a lot, I'd say once a week, but when we eat out, like we eat good. You know? Yeah. And so we do preach a flexible lifestyle and want people to do that, but... It can't be like every day. And that unfortunately, like in our culture, that's kind of what it's become. You know, it's almost like fast food is the thing. It's all convenient. It's like, what's the fastest and easiest. And sometimes a really good friend of mine told me one time that eating is inherently inconvenient. And when you accept that for what it is, you will improve your health. Yeah, for sure. before we go, I want one tip for the business -minded person for what they can do for meal prep, and then one tip for fitness -related for the business -minded person. Okay, yeah, so for meal prep, I'll just kind of tell you what I do and it really works really well. I meal prep once per week, pick a day. Everyone has one day where you have at least an hour or two. Use the grill. Grilling is an amazing way to meal prep. It will keep you from getting bored. It'll keep it fun. You can change your meats. So yeah, use the grill and just find one hour, and the grill's fast as well, right? That's a good one. up a lot of sirloin and a lot of New York strip steak. And I mean, I can grill up a grill full dude in less than an hour, you know, and I have meat for like the whole week. And then I supplement it with an actual meal prep service as well. So yes, because that keeps just a lit allows you to have a little more variety, right? And it's easy. So, you know, when it comes to meal prep services, Maybe don't rely on them for all of your food, but use them as a supplement. So that's the number one thing that people that are busy, fast lives, carve out the time, do the meal prep, use the grill, because it's very fast and easy cleanup. You only clean it once every couple of months, not every time, right? So that's really nice. And then use a meal prep service to supplement your own meal prep. That can be really helpful. And then what was the other one? some sort of fitness or workout tip for people who, you know, don't have time to go to the gym. What's something that they can do? Number one, frequency over duration. So don't feel pressured to spend an hour, an hour and a half in the gym. You're totally fine. 20, 30 minutes, 30 minutes is really great. But you have to work, dude. You have to do work. If your workout's lasting 90 minutes, I guarantee you, you could have worked harder. Because it's too long. So frequency over duration. So don't feel pressured to work out for so long. Shorten your duration, right? So you can fit it into your schedule easier, right? And then if you can, up the frequency. So like three or four days a week is an amazing, three or four days a week, 30 minutes of good intense work is an amazing place to be. And you don't ever, unless you want to be competitive, right? With a sport or something, you don't ever, for the healthy person, if you're a business owner and you want to better your life and feel better. You never need more than three or four days a week, 30 to 45 minutes. That's all you need. Well, awesome, man. Philip, we much appreciate you coming on here with us today. Any last closing words? How can people get a hold of you? Um, yeah, I mean, just thanks so much for, for having me on. I really appreciate this. And, uh, yeah, you can follow us, follow us anywhere. You can find us anywhere online. Just OTG fitness. We're on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram. Um, otgpodcast .htx is our podcast Instagram. And then, uh, the podcast on all podcast platforms and on YouTube, it's a video based podcast, uh, is only the greatest podcast. And then on Instagram, otgfitness, otg.phil is me, and the podcast is otgpodcast.htx, but we're on all the platforms. Awesome, brother. Well, I appreciate it. You have a wonderful day today. Yeah, man, you as well. Thank you so much again. I really appreciate your time. Absolutely.