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I have sat across from many fitness professionals who describe their careers as a series of things that happened to them. The certification that opened a door. The client who changed everything. The manager who either made or broke their early years. What I rarely hear is a coach describe their career as something they built deliberately, with a framework beneath it that could support other people’s careers, too. Erzsi Myers is that coach, and nine years into her tenure as Personal Training Manager at EōS Fitness Encinitas, she is still building.
Myers did not arrive at leadership through a straight line. She came to fitness the way many coaches do, through loss. An injury in college ended her competitive athletic career and took away something she had not realized she depended on. Getting back into training, working with a coach herself, was the turning point that rebuilt not just her fitness but her direction.
“It helped me rediscover my why and rebuild both my confidence and direction. That personal journey is what ultimately inspired me to pursue this path for others.”
— Erzsi Myers
Fifteen years later, that original impulse, the one that said someone helped me through something hard and I want to do that for other people, is still running underneath everything she has built at EōS Encinitas. What has changed is the scale. Myers is no longer just helping individual clients. She is building the system that helps her entire team do it consistently.
Myers started at EōS Encinitas as a personal trainer when the company acquired the location. She progressed to Personal Training Manager over time, drawn by the opportunity to work more closely with coaches at the development level rather than just the delivery level. The shift looked like a promotion. It felt like a complete redefinition of what the job actually was.
“One of my biggest shifts was realizing that being a great coach doesn’t automatically make you a great leader. I had to move from focusing on my own performance to developing others, learning to delegate, trust my team, and give them space to grow, even through mistakes.”
— Erzsi Myers, Personal Training Manager, EōS Fitness Encinitas
That distinction, from performing to developing, is the inflection point most fitness professionals hit and either push through or quietly step back from. The skills that make someone exceptional on the floor are not the same skills that make someone exceptional at building a team. Myers had to learn a new craft on top of the one she had already mastered.
“Over time, success became less about my personal metrics and more about the growth, performance, and culture of the team. Building an environment where coaches support, challenge, and celebrate one another has been intentional, but seeing others gain confidence and create impact has become the most rewarding part of my role.”
— Erzsi Myers
Related: The Studios That Stopped Losing Coaches Built a Promotion Path. Here’s the Model.
What Myers has built at EōS Encinitas is not a vibe. It is a structure. Monthly trainer development seminars. A tiered progression from Level 1 through Level 2 to Master Trainer. Clear pathways for coaches who want to move into leadership and equally clear pathways for coaches who want to build an elite client-facing career without leaving the floor. The system exists because Myers understands something that most fitness operations learn too late: a team that depends entirely on individual talent and individual effort is a team that breaks down the moment someone leaves.
“We have a structured system designed to help personal trainers develop across all areas of the profession, from programming and effective training techniques to business development and client retention.”
— Erzsi Myers
For coaches reading this who are early in their careers, that structure is worth understanding as a selection criterion rather than just a benefit. The difference between starting your career at a facility with a development system and starting at one without is the difference between gaining the right experience and simply gaining experience. Volume matters. So does what the volume is teaching you.
“Early in your career, reps matter. Coaching different types of clients, building confidence, and learning how to adapt your approach. Here, you get that volume and variety, along with guidance, so you’re not just gaining experience, you are gaining the right experience.”
— Erzsi Myers
EōS Encinitas offers two distinct trajectories for coaches who stay and grow. The leadership path moves from personal trainer to lead personal trainer to personal training manager. The elite trainer path moves through the level system toward Master Trainer, building a client base and retention rate that becomes its own form of professional equity.
Myers is direct about what each path requires and what each one offers. Neither is passive. Both reward the coaches who treat their development as seriously as their delivery.
“The personal trainers who thrive on my team are the ones who take ownership of their growth, show up consistently with professionalism, and are genuinely committed to helping their clients succeed.”
— Erzsi Myers
That line is not a job description. It is a filter. The coaches who read it and recognize themselves are the ones the system was built for. Those who read it and feel uncertain about the ownership piece are getting useful information about whether this is the right environment for where they are currently.
Every gym claims culture. Few of them can describe it specifically enough to mean anything. Myers can.
“What really stands out at EōS is how invested we are in each other’s success. It’s not competitive in a way where people are guarding information or working in silos. We genuinely share knowledge, celebrate each other’s wins, and step in to support one another when needed.”
— Erzsi Myers, Personal Training Manager, EōS Fitness Encinitas
The honest tradeoff is the standard. EōS Encinitas does not offer a low-friction environment where a coach can coast on early momentum. Myers is transparent about that. The development is hands-on, the expectations are real, and the feedback is consistent. What the system gives back is proportional to what a coach puts in.
“It’s not always easy. We work hard, we push each other, and we expect a lot, but you’ll always know that someone’s in your corner.”
— Erzsi Myers
For the coach who is on the fence about applying, Myers has one thing she wants them to know.
“If you’re on the fence, the one thing I’d want you to know is this: what it actually feels like to be part of this team is that you’re not doing it alone. You’re supported, you’re challenged and you’re held to a high standard, but in a way that’s meant to help you grow, not break you down.”
— Erzsi Myers
Related: Deliberate Practice as a Business Model: Lisa Greenbaum’s 25-Year Blueprint
Myers has one piece of career knowledge she wishes someone had given her earlier. It is the kind of thing that sounds obvious until you realize how many coaches learn it the hard way.
“One thing I wish I had been told earlier is that building a real career in fitness isn’t just about being a great coach. It’s about learning the business side of the industry, too. Early on, I thought results alone would be enough. And while delivering great results is essential, long-term success comes from being able to build relationships, communicate effectively, retain clients, and manage your time and energy. Those are the skills that turn a passion into a sustainable career.”
— Erzsi Myers
That observation applies whether a coach is building their own practice or building a career inside a facility like EōS Encinitas. The technical skills get you in the door. The systems thinking, the relationship building, the ability to manage your own development as deliberately as you manage your clients’, is what keeps you there.
Myers has been at EōS Encinitas for nine years. She is coming up on her anniversary. She is still learning, still building, and still investing in the coaches around her the same way someone invested in her when she needed it most. That is not a coincidence. It is the system working exactly the way it was designed to.
FitHire — Find Educated and Committed Fitness Professionals
The coaches who build careers like Erzsi Myers describes are the coaches FitHire was built to connect with operators. If you are a studio or club looking for fitness professionals who treat their development as seriously as their delivery, FitHire by Coach360 is where they are looking for you.
What does a personal training career path look like at a large fitness club?
At a facility with a structured development system, a personal training career path typically moves through defined tiers. At EōS Fitness, that progression runs from Level 1 personal trainer through Level 2 and into Master Trainer on the coaching track, or from personal trainer through lead personal trainer to personal training manager on the leadership track. Each tier carries different expectations around client volume, retention, programming complexity, and business development skills. The key differentiator between a structured path and an unstructured one is that the criteria for advancement are specific and known in advance, rather than decided informally when a position opens.
What is the difference between being a great coach and being a great fitness leader?
The skills that make someone exceptional at coaching clients are not the same skills that make someone exceptional at developing other coaches. Great coaching requires technical knowledge, presence, and the ability to read and respond to individual clients. Great leadership in a fitness context requires the ability to delegate, provide constructive feedback, build a team culture, and measure success by others’ growth rather than personal performance metrics. Most fitness professionals who move into leadership roles discover this distinction through experience rather than preparation. Facilities that invest in explicit leadership development for their senior coaches close that gap faster and retain their best people longer.
What should a newly certified personal trainer look for in their first fitness employer?
Four things matter more than most newly certified trainers realize when evaluating their first employer. The first is access to mentorship, meaning a named person whose job includes their development, not just a general culture of support. The second is client volume and variety, because reps with different populations in the early years build adaptability that is difficult to develop later. The third is a visible career path with specific criteria for advancement rather than vague promises of opportunity. The fourth is a team culture that shares knowledge rather than hoards it. A facility that offers all four is giving a new trainer something that independent work and boutique studios often cannot match in the early career stage.
How long does it typically take to move from personal trainer to personal training manager at a club like EōS Fitness?
There is no fixed timeline, and any club that promises one is overselling. What facilities with structured paths typically look for is a combination of consistent client retention, demonstrated mentorship of newer trainers, business development skills (the ability to grow a book of business through referrals and effective consultations), and the soft skills that signal leadership readiness. In practice, coaches who hit those criteria tend to move from personal trainer to lead trainer within two to four years and into a Personal Training Manager role within three to six years. Erzsi Myers’ own trajectory is a useful reference point: she started as a trainer when EōS acquired her location and progressed into the manager role over time. The constant in those timelines is not the years; it is the deliberate development that fills them.
About the Author: Jessica Maurer is a writer covering career infrastructure and operations inside the fitness industry. She writes for Coach360 on the clubs, studios, and operators building deliberate development paths for working coaches.
About Jessica H. Maurer
Jessica is a recognized fitness business consultant and strategist focusing on transforming businesses from overwhelmed to organized. Her international presentations, workshops, certifications, and consultations underscore her commitment to helping fitness professionals and businesses realize their full potential. When Jessica takes the stage, she’s sharing fresh ideas and inspiration that spark positive change. Jessica’s international presentations and consultations are about growth, career transformation, overall wellness, and making fitness a joyful journey. Her expertise spans education, program and instructor development, and brand evolution, making her a key player in elevating the industry. Jessica also played a pivotal role in developing the Mental Well-being Association’s certification for Fitness Professionals., always striving to bring a holistic approach to wellness that’s as uplifting as it is effective.
Jessica has presented at prestigious events like IDEA World, Fitnessfest ACSM Health &,Fitness Summit, SCW Mania, AsiaFit, and more. She has worked with brands such as FIT4MOM, SFR, BOSU, Lebert Fitness, Savvier Fitness, SCW Fitness, FitSteps, canfitpro, IDEA, and VIBES music. She also has written content for the IDEA Fitness Journal, canfitpro Magazine, Mental Well-being Association, FIT4MOM, Motherly, and more.Â
I have walked into a lot of fitness clubs over the last two decades. The equipment keeps getting better. The programming keeps getting smarter. The aesthetics keep getting sleeker. What I have not found, not once, in any of them, is a deliberate strategy for why members should actually come back. Not for the treadmill. For each other.
That is the diagnosis veteran club operator Herb Lipsman arrived at after four decades managing some of Houston’s most prestigious properties: The Houstonian Hotel, Club and Spa; VillaSport Athletic Club and Spa; Golf Club of Houston; and consulting roles at River Oaks, Lakeside, and Houston Country Clubs. His conclusion is not just a product pitch. It is a read on where an entire industry has structurally underperformed.
“Our industry has done a great job of creating ever-improving facilities and equipment, more creative programs and services. But as an industry we have failed at the most obvious way of attracting more members and keeping them: making each member feel seen, heard, and like they truly matter.”
— Herb Lipsman, Co-Founder, SOZO Clubs
The numbers are starting to validate that critique. Vogue named wellness-focused private member clubs one of the biggest trends of 2026. Midtown Athletic Club’s president has called social wellness the industry’s next major opportunity. Concepts like Othership in Toronto, Remedy Place in New York, and Proper Club in Santa Monica are drawing waitlists without a single squat rack as their marquee amenity.
Category momentum and category execution are two different things. If you operate a club today, the question is not whether to add community programming. The question is whether you actually know how to build it.
Most social wellness concepts entering the market right now are being built by hospitality entrepreneurs or wellness investors. That is not a disqualifier. It does create a specific blind spot: the gap between what a club looks like at opening and what it looks like 18 months later.
SOZO Clubs, the social wellness concept Lipsman is launching with co-founders Gary Henkin and Dan Lynch, is being designed from a different starting point. Lipsman has managed P&Ls, navigated retention crises, and staffed clubs through boom-and-bust cycles. The SOZO model, built around fitness studios, recovery lounges, social settings, curated coworking spaces, and outdoor retreats, is explicitly designed around operational durability, not just design ambition.
On the revenue side, SOZO is positioned between the upper end of upscale multi-purpose athletic clubs and the lower end of traditional country clubs. That is a deliberate move to serve the 30-plus demographic that most fitness concepts have historically underserved. The specific tier structure and build economics remain confidential pre-launch, but the pricing philosophy reflects a core operator conviction: that connection is a premium product when it is delivered with consistency.
For operators evaluating whether to evolve an existing model or build something new, the economic case for social wellness is not speculative anymore. Recovery modalities (sauna, cold plunge, compression, red light) are becoming standard amenity expectations at the premium tier, not differentiators. The clubs still treating them as upsells are falling behind. The clubs treating them as the anchor for a broader longevity and wellbeing ecosystem are capturing a spending category, healthspan-focused consumers in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, that the traditional gym model was never designed to serve.
Social wellness gets operationally hard at the staffing layer. You cannot staff it the way you staff a traditional club.
A front desk employee at a conventional gym checks IDs and answers phone calls. A team member at a social wellness club reads a room, remembers that the member who just walked in lost her husband six months ago, and connects her with three other members who share her interest in early-morning yoga. That is a fundamentally different role.
Lipsman calls what he is looking for “Servant Hearts”: people who are genuinely curious about others and who find meaning in facilitating connection rather than closing transactions. He argues they exist in every market, in every job category. The problem is not scarcity. It is that most hiring processes, built around credentials and certifications, are poorly designed to find them.
“If those in ownership or the C-suite do not exemplify and model this philosophy, there is no chance this sort of culture will form and prevail. It starts at the top.”
— Herb Lipsman, Co-Founder, SOZO Clubs
This has direct implications for coaches and wellness professionals watching this transition. The role of the coach in a social wellness environment is shifting. The session is no longer the product. The relationship is. Coaches who can facilitate group experience, build member cohorts around shared wellness goals, and serve as connective tissue within a community are becoming the highest-leverage operators in any club. Credentials still matter. Relational intelligence is the new floor.
The longevity category (peptides, NAD+ infusions, GLP-1 adjacency, biomarker testing) is moving fast enough that every operator with a recovery lounge is now asking whether to offer it. The answer depends entirely on your regulatory posture, your clinical partnerships, and your willingness to build a compliant infrastructure before you build the marketing.
SOZO is among the operators thinking seriously about longevity programming as an integrated layer rather than an add-on. Lipsman frames it as an educational imperative as much as a revenue opportunity:
“We intend to become community leaders for educating the public, both future members and non-members, on the latest advances in wellness, longevity, and healthspan.”
— Herb Lipsman
That framing matters. Clubs that lead with longevity as a content and community platform, and layer in services from there, tend to build more durable member relationships than clubs that lead with the service catalog.
For operators considering this path, the structural questions to answer first are: Who is the clinical or medical partner? What liability framework governs the services? How are team members trained to present these modalities without making therapeutic claims? These are not roadblocks. They are the infrastructure that separates a sustainable longevity revenue line from a compliance liability.
When you distill 40 years of premium club management into a single operational truth, Lipsman’s is this: the industry has consistently failed at the most obvious driver of retention.
“A member who doesn’t feel seen, heard, or appreciated will be a temporary member.”
— Herb Lipsman
He has heard the line too many times: “I’m your best member. I pay my dues and never come.” Every club has them. The social wellness model, done right, makes that statement impossible, because the value is not housed in equipment or programming schedules. It is housed in relationships that members cannot replicate anywhere else.
SOZO is planning its first location in a Houston suburb, targeting a 2028 opening, with plans to leverage Lipsman’s deep Houston-area network of former colleagues, members, and community leaders as a launch engine. AI-assisted targeting and digital community-building are part of the go-to-market plan, tools that operators of Lipsman’s generation did not have access to and that the next generation of club builders would be foolish to ignore.
The social wellness category is going to get crowded before it gets disciplined. Expect luxury-end concepts with beautiful designs and thin operational depth, the ones that opened in 2025 and 2026, to begin struggling by 2027. The clubs and coaches that survive the hype cycle will be the ones who figured out what they were actually selling and built the internal systems to deliver it consistently.
Here is the honest tradeoff: every dollar you spend on recovery infrastructure is a dollar you are not spending on the staff training, member-facing rituals, and community programming that make the recovery infrastructure feel like more than a hardware purchase. The physical infrastructure is easier to build than the cultural infrastructure. Most new concepts get the sequence backwards.
For operators, the framework is straightforward: assess whether your current programming model creates structured opportunities for members to meet each other. If it does not, start there, before adding recovery bays or longevity panels.
For coaches, the question is whether your identity is built around the session or the relationship. The session is becoming commoditized. The coach who understands recovery modalities, who can speak intelligently about healthspan, and who knows how to facilitate a member community is building something an algorithm cannot replace.
The industry is moving. SOZO is one case study in how an operator is thinking about the transition with genuine operational seriousness. The question for everyone else is straightforward: what is your version of that answer?
FITHIRE
Hiring for the social wellness era is different. Wellness Director, Longevity Program Manager, and Member Experience roles require operators who can read a room, not just run a P&L. FitHire surfaces the talent the next generation of clubs is built on.
How do longevity fitness studios compete with medical spas and telehealth longevity clinics offering the same peptide and recovery services?
Most medical spas and telehealth platforms are built around a transactional visit model. You book, you receive the service, you leave. The fitness studio that wins in this space is not competing on clinical depth, it will not beat a medical office on that dimension. It competes on environment, consistency, and community. Members who come three times a week for breathwork and cold exposure are building a habit anchored to a place and to people. That stickiness does not exist in a clinical setting. The studio’s job is to make the non-clinical experience compelling enough that members prefer the club context even when the clinical service is technically equivalent. That means the room has to feel right, the staff has to know your name, and other members have to become reasons to come back.
What does the longevity studio revenue model look like for a club operating at 10,000 to 15,000 square feet?
The honest answer is that the margin structure varies significantly based on how much of the square footage is equipment-dependent versus experience-dependent. Red light panels, cold plunge infrastructure, and hyperbaric chambers carry real capital cost and maintenance overhead. The higher-margin longevity offerings tend to be programming-based: educational workshops on healthspan, community groups organized around shared wellness goals, curated social experiences that require facilitation more than hardware. Operators building a recovery floor should model both tracks: the equipment-dependent revenue that comes in fast but competes on price, and the programming revenue that builds slower but carries higher retention and lower replacement cost. The SOZO model prices membership at the upper end of upscale athletic clubs and the lower end of country clubs, a positioning that signals the value proposition is not equipment access but member experience.
How do you evaluate whether your staff culture is actually producing member connection or just going through hospitality motions?
The clearest operational test is whether your staff can tell you something specific and personal about at least half the members they interacted with last week. Not their membership tier or their preferred modality, but something from their life. A staff member who can say that a particular member mentioned her son just started college, or that another member is preparing for his first triathlon, is doing the relationship work. A staff member who can tell you that a member comes in Tuesdays and Thursdays and prefers the far cold plunge is doing hospitality. The first profile builds retention. The second does not. The difference matters because the member who feels known is not comparison-shopping your facility against the next red light studio that opens nearby.
Is the social wellness club model viable outside major metro markets?
The social dimension of the model actually performs better in mid-size and suburban markets than in dense urban ones, for a specific reason. In a major metro, a member has fifteen alternatives within a fifteen-minute commute and a different social context every day. In a suburb or mid-size city, a club that becomes genuinely embedded in the community, that knows its members, connects them to each other, and participates in local wellness education, has a geographic and relational moat that is hard to replicate. SOZO is launching in a Houston suburb precisely because that context rewards the depth of member relationship the concept is built on. The longevity modalities travel. The community architecture is harder to import from a coastal concept, which means operators who build it in secondary markets may have more durable positions than they expect.
Erin Nitschke is a Coach360 contributing editor covering club operations, longevity and recovery programming, and the business infrastructure behind high-performing fitness and wellness businesses.
About Erin Nitschke
Dr. Erin Nitschke, NSCA-CPT, NFPT-CPT, ACE Health Coach, ACE-CPT, Fitness Nutrition Specialist, Therapeutic Exercise Specialist, Pn1, FNMS, and DSWI Master Health Coach, is a seasoned college professor in health and human performance. She is a nationally recognized presenter, industry writer for IDEA, NFPT, Fitness Education Online, and Youate.com, and an active member of the ACE Scientific Advisory Panel. With extensive experience in health and exercise science, Erin specializes in holistic, evidence-based approaches to wellness. Her passion lies in empowering individuals to lead healthier, more vibrant lives through personalized coaching. Erin’s philosophy centers on education, accountability, and sustainable behavior change—guiding clients to achieve long-term success in nutrition, fitness, stress management, and overall well-being. To connect with Dr. Nitschke, email her at erinmd03@gmail.com or on Instagram: @nitschkeerin
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