From Struggling Personal Trainer To Software Developer In Less Than 2 Years

Dec 10, 2023

The Struggle

In 2019, I was broke and exhausted. I worked as a full-time personal trainer in San Ramon, CA. For a year and a half, I worked 12-hour days 6 days a week starting at 5 am to build a sustainable clientele. The life of a personal trainer is cutthroat, especially at a big box gym like Equinox. Before you can train clients, you’re required to spend countless wasted hours getting in-house certifications and minimum-wage shifts as a “floor trainer” which is just a glorified janitor who is in charge of cleaning benches, picking up weights, and annoying the people working out on the floor trying to sell training.

After months of hard work, I was ranked top 3 trainers at my gym, month after month. Many times, I was ranked number 1. I could finally afford an apartment with a roommate, but after food and other misc bills, I didn't have much left over. I was working a lot and was making very little. My love for fitness and helping people quickly turned into a job of a slave making crumbs on the dollar. I was miserable.

The Pivot

In the second half of 2019, I realized this lifestyle wasn't sustainable for me. I knew I wanted more, but didn’t know what or how. That was until one of my clients and I started chatting about his work during a training session. He was a Software Engineer at Workday. He had a happy balanced life and a family. Money did not seem to be an issue. His life was admirable, and it was one that I could see myself living.

That interaction was a pivotal moment in my life. After some research and a few courses, I realized quickly that coding was something I could see myself pursuing as a career and began to go all in. I stumbled upon web development and thought that was a bit more up my alley, so I began to learn basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I knew it would be a slow and maybe painful process trying to learn a new life-changing skill while simultaneously trying to make an income to survive, but I was motivated to do anything it took to create a better life for myself.

The Miracle

It was March 2020 when a miracle happened. COVID caused the world to pause and all gyms suddenly had to close. I don’t mean to be insensitive, I’m aware that this was an incredibly hard time for many around the world, but I felt I was gifted an opportunity to focus full-time on learning web development. For 9 months I lived off of any little savings I had, trapped myself in my office, and taught myself how to code like my life depended on it (I convinced myself that it did).

I eventually got to a place where I felt like it was time to apply for jobs. As you can probably imagine, my experience applying to jobs as a self-taught engineer with zero experience was pretty disappointing. I must have applied to 100’s of job listings and I got rejected from everything. I began asking for advice from some developers I found on Twitter and one individual advised that I should stop applying to big-name companies and instead focus on small start-ups.

The Opportunity

I applied to every single web developer job listing on Angel List and was encouraged by the responses. After a few weeks of more denial, I finally caught a break and a company gave me a shot. A small start-up based out of Virginia with a company size of about 12. That feeling of getting the offer letter will never be forgotten. My initial salary was 90k (which is about an average salary for an entry-level web developer in the SF Bay Area) and I thought I had hit the jackpot. I knew that there were a ton of people in the industry who were easily taking home double what I was making, but I didn't care. I knew that possibilities were endless for me now that I had my foot in the door. I was officially a software developer.

I worked on this company's web application for about 5 months. It was a great experience and took me from hobbyist to software developer. I was using React which is a JavaScript framework to build web applications. They soon began working on a mobile application that was built with React Native and I got offered to help out with the project. This was another pivotal moment in my career as mobile app devs are on average paid much better than web developers.

And so after a few more months of learning mobile app development on the job, I decided to leave and quickly got a role as a full-time React Native dev with another (much bigger) startup for double the pay. I was on cloud 9 and it felt like I had finally made it to the big leagues.

The Lessons

I was incredibly fortunate to make a change in my career so quickly.

1. Making Good Out Of The Bad: My life as a personal trainer was tough, but I saw an opportunity for change. Once the seed in my head was planted, I made it my life’s mission to become a software developer and did anything I could to make that my reality. Any free time that I had was spent learning software development and mastering my craft. When the pandemic hit, despite its challenges I decided to use it as an opportunity to double down.

2. The Power Combo of Self-Belief and Grit: The thought of changing careers can be incredibly intimidating. If you want something, let that burning desire dominate any self-doubt. I had no clue if I was going to be a software developer, but in retrospect, my ignorance is a hidden superpower. I’m not that smart. I barely graduated high school (2.2 GPA). I am however a believer that I can do anything that I set my mind to. You have every reason to think the same about yourself too.

3. Preparing For The Opportunity: It’s been said that the definition of luck is when preparation meets opportunity. I couldn’t control whether or not a company was going to give me an offer, but what I could do was get better at my craft every single day. The harder your work, the luckier you will be!

Postcard

Yosemite aka Disney World for adults.

Bye for now,

Brandon