PODCAST EPISODE 42: TOP TIER TRAINING

Max Rossiter joined the Upper Hand Pod to talk about his work at Top Tier Training. Max is a former professional baseball player with the Pittsburg Pirates who throughout his playing career was not only a stand out on the field but also off it. Now Max is passing along the training tips that enabled him to be a pro and the leadership traits that made him a team captain. He is the co-founder, along with Jaime Garrido, of Top Tier Training which has come a long way from his mother’s garage to their new state of the art 3,000 sq foot facility.

You can read an overview of the interview with Max Rossiter or listen to the podcast below for the full interview.

Q. What was your biggest mistake when you first started?

A. Yeah, that’s a good question. “…” But I think it was the planning, and getting the systems in place. We focus a lot on that now, getting our systems in place in terms of payments, in terms of marketing, and all those systems, where you get a new athlete in and you are like what is the client intake process. And we didn’t really, you know, we had never done it before, so that was the thing we were learning as we went. All of the sudden we were getting all these guys in and I think the communication was the toughest part. We were both working jobs and trying to communicate with all these parents and athletes while still providing the top programming for these athletes. And that was the biggest mistake I think, just, not getting the systems in place early enough, we have them in place now, but I think that was probably our biggest struggle early on.

Q. With your business model and systems, how has that been successful in a competitive market?

A. Oh, its been years, you know early on our number one goal was to be active on social media. Especially when our athletes our young athletes, high school age is primarily our focus market and what are they always on, they are always on their cell phone, they are always on Instagram. Not really on Facebook. The parents are the ones on facebook really, they are always on Instagram, Snapchat, and all that so we had to hit that. Its funny I was just looking today, our goal is to get to 1,000 followers on Instagram by the end of the year and I think we are definitely going to hit that. I remember when we first started Instagram, we were calling people to get to 100 followers. I mean just bottom of the barrel to get to 100 and it’s just fun to see it slowly progress up. We used Upleap to help us get more instagram followers. But as well I think just getting the word out and taking the time, we used to go out to high schools and we still do, to run free workouts just to get our name out there. How can we separate ourselves from the competition? You know not many top competitors are going out to high schools for free and running workouts. We are trying to think out of the box in a way and the other thing is, we were two 20 something-year-old guys working out in a garage that was tough too because parents would be like okay what do these guys really know. Once they sent their kid to us, and that was a big step for us to was going to the facility it legitimized us a little bit, where people were like okay these guys aren’t just flying by the seat of their pants here. They actually are doing something right and that reputation just keeps building and building, even today.

Q. What advice would you give to our listeners who are aspiring coaches and trainers?

A. I think the best advice is that you just gotta do it, you have to put in the work. I hear so many coaches and interns that we have had that are just like “Ah man, I am just waiting for the opportunity”, well if you keep waiting for that opportunity you are going to be waiting for a while. In this industry you have to go after it, you have to get your goals set to where you want them to be, go after it, and you have to put in the work. You can’t be afraid to work weekends, you can’t be afraid to work late hours. You have to put in the work because if you don’t somebody else is and they are stepping right past you. So, I think the best advice is you have to go after what you want and don’t be afraid to put in hard work because unfortunately we are in a society that it is harder to come by people that really put in a lot of hard work, um, so if you do put in the hard work you are just going to pass other people that are going for that same goal.

Learn more about Max Rossiter and Top Tier Training at t3az.com You can follow Top Tier Training on Instagram @t3arizona or on Twitter @t3arizona