personal trainer

customer service representative

fitness consultant

host/hostess

fitness instructor

GoodLife Fitness

You will get out what you put in to GoodLife. 

Hustle is expected and culture can be as positive and productive as your team makes it. 

If you enjoy a clock-in clock-out job, go into a sales role at a club, or a role at head office, but still expect to hustle with a positive attitude when you're on. 

If you're in fitness and you like a clock-in clock-out job, then go to a clinical setting like a physio clinic etc., and save yourself the heartbreak of realizing you're terrible at sales :) 

If you like to hustle and earn $$ and can promote yourself through ongoing education and results, and want to build a brand around your personality and client outcomes while still having the support of a biweekly paycheque and a facility, marketing, accounting, insurance etc., an education program, training, community, and all the rest., then fitness is an excellent channel to pursue. 

If you like to hustle and earn $$ so much that you would rather keep your cut and do your own marketing, accounting, insurance, facilities rentals, etc., then start your own training business or gym! [and save your team the complaints of the cut that is taken to run all of those things for you ;)]

Overall, culture is well intentioned and can be great depending on your team. The contracts and wages are fair and reasonable for the circumstances, and the compensation breakdown expects to reward you for hustling your butt off, and keep you hungry when you don't. 

Commissions are generous and the bold will eat. The meek and lazy don't have fun at GoodLife, though there is huge support to develop yourself and work with integrity, so don't think it's toxic or cutthroat, but it is fast and real and you are expected to do everything in your power every day to deliver results. There is support to be developed and retained as a celebrated employee if you're there to put in the work, learn, and hustle. 

There is a decent education reimbursement program for ongoing professional development, some good initiatives like Spin4Kids, anniversary and appreciation events, and internal contests, travel/education opportunities, and reasonable wellness days with decent support from management on things like childcare or family emergencies, etc. 

At times the culture can feel put on and maybe a bit culty with the occasional eye-roll moment, but as corporate cultures go it's a positive and more than tolerable set of values and ideas to work within. The cultiness keeps it really cohesive, stable, and communicative, but if you hate the idea of buying in to culture then definitely look elsewhere. You'll find pockets of cynicism, and your total kool-aid drinkers, and it seems the people who stay the longest have a solid buy-in which honestly does make it more enjoyable.

Club locations range in quality and it's possible to find cultures with cringey sales tactics, poor personal health, low professionalism, low fitness education, and just scraping out their monthly sales targets doing the desperate bare minimum. Don't apply to work for whoever is responsible for that. There are plenty of locations with good general health, values-driven leadership, solid business hustle, engaged membership, and genuine fitness leaders that will want to talk to you about your passion for health and helping others.

If you want a full time role at a club: 

Spend some time at the top 3 you'd like to apply for and listen for culture out on the floor to guess your best fit. See how busy it is and where the clientele seem more like people you want to get to know and have health and fitness conversations with, and help get healthier. 

Genuinely join the culture by working out there at least 3x/wk (as you will/should anyway), get to know the front desk and fitness/training staff, and talk to the exact people you'd be working with (the more veteran/senior the better), and get a sense of the pros/cons. There will always be some new person struggling and hating their life because they don't live the values and actually hate sales, but don't be distracted by them if you know you have hustle and are good at connecting with people.

Ask for a good time to speak with a manager (fitness for training or general for sales/front desk). Front desk positions are competitive because people "do it for the discount" but clubs are always hiring for sales and fitness. By nature they're fairly high-turnover departments because it takes dedication and boldness to build your business and many people aren't willing to put themselves out there and influence. 

If management knows and has seen you connecting with the membership already, they will see you're a cultural fit for the club and would probably do well with the demographic it serves, so approaching management directly is win-win for recruitment. Goodlife does recruit from membership so you should never be turned away for asking to talk to a manager about employment.

The manager you speak with will probably do the interview and make the hiring decision, so going straight to the source and making a splash like you would with a new member or client has more impact that just quietly applying online.

If you go into a management role, you'll be exposed to a lot more middle management and they can be a rough mix; some are cringey sales slime who made it far on their numbers and to whom upper management seem to turn a blind eye, or not fully see, and some are true leaders with integrity and wellbeing at the heart of their every action. The latter gain strong professional followings of health leaders in strong performing regions of clubs that thrive and have good culture.

It's a huge company that has gone through spurts of growth and so the quality of leadership really depends on how desperately they were hiring at the time someone came on, and how they might have caught their break. Just remain agile and focused on your own outcomes, ignore people that don't make you better, and you can have a big healthy career in any position that suits you. 

Overall, GoodLife will give you everything you need to develop a solid career in fitness, sales, or management, and thrive financially with decent support, if you can keep your mindset and work ethic in positive hustle mode to make a difference every single day. 

I worked here for a year and overall it was a pretty good experience. 

A typical day would be that I would come in at either 10 or 11, make a few confirmation calls to potential clients, then a team meeting to discuss the days layouts (ie; how many appointments you had for that day, how many more you needed in order to hit your daily quota, how many appointments you had for the next day, how many people you needed to prospect for members, then you would be given your expectations (those of course being included in it but in addition; sell personal training, get extra leads,memorize your scripts, make sure you are setup for your next shift, etc.) Then you would hop into a call canvas where you would call potential members for appointments then between that meet with potential clients and sell them.

They really push using scripts and selling personal training. They do this obviously because it increases the companies revenue and you'll get more commission. Their idea on how the commission works isn't that fun personally. It's actually pretty stressful. They have you work crazy hours in order to reach new levels. There were times when you'd barely meet their "BAM" and the payout wasn't that high. You really have to keep ontop of everything as it's easy to fall behind. One of the worst things was not only did you have to worry about competition at other locations throughout town, but there were numerous times where my own management/coworkers stole my clients! That was what I had found to be one of the worst things about the job. Well that and there were times when management was two faced.They would gossip about you -personal matters to how you did your job- to the other co-workers while you weren't present and then act like your best friend when you were around. Personally I found that very unprofessional. 
Minus that experience I had made good friends at the company, as for the most they do hire good people. The district manager was also very kind, and he even shows compassion to his staff. Which I found very rare/but of course good as that rarely happens when you have someone high up that genuinely cares about all their staff. 

Overall I found working as a fitness adviser was a good experience. I learned how to become better organized, and had sharpened my sales skills. My co-workers were all very supportive and fun to work with. The company had hosted different events -some outside of the clubs and others within- which really did help keep things fun I found. Sometimes alot of hard work the commission wouldn't always quite pay out, but it also depended on the month -If it was a slower time for business that generally explained it! My only recommendation to the company would be that they try to work on the long hours thing (Seriously working from 11-9 or 10-8 with a mandatory 2 hour break that HAD to be taken 1-3 if you wanted a break that day is ridiculous, most people like to eat around 6 after not having eaten since about one, not 9. I understand that it gets busier at night, but if that persons agenda fits they should be able to take a break between 5-6:30 even if it's just a short half hour. After all we boosted that eating properly and on a certain schedule is healthy, we should practice that by allowing a 15 minute or half hour break so you can eat.
And the commission should be increased in the slow times to make it more worth working as hard. I understand the company needs to make profit but if they just increased it by say an extra 10-15 cents would make a difference. All and all Goodlife wasn't a bad place to work for. My overall experience was a good one.

I worked for GoodLife for 3 years as a fitness Advisor. The job is basically a glorified telemarketer. Overall the job was great and i learned a great deal.  I was lucky enough to work in a busy location and we got a lot of walk in traffic. This took a lot of pressure off having to leave the club to find your own business. Although they provide you with a lot of tools to get the job done the training is a little shady. You have to find what your comfortable with and find a way to make it work.  If you have a good manager they will train you everyday at the 3pm meetings "sharpen the saw", in my case this rarely happened. My manager was either out of the club, working out or dealing with personal issues during these times. When the district manager did their monthly meetings we would basically put on a show for them. 

If you work in a location that is not so busy be prepared to do a lot of extra work and long hours and not be paid for overtime. 

Room for advancement- if you apply for the assistant manager position i would strongly advise against it. The entire club is on your shoulders, the pay for the amount of work output sucks, and you will get very little support from the General Manger. The "numbers" that are reflected come from the hard work of the FA's and the AGM. If you hit your targets your GM will take all the credit for it and do very  little work. The GM receives bonuses by cutting corners and piggy backing off of the hard work of the rest of the staff.Leading by example is not something they do and if they can throw you under the bus to make themselves look better they will  take advantage of that. 

The company makes money off of the personal training packages not so much the memberships.  The personal trainers are paid by commission only and have to work very very long hours. Make sure that you ask to see there certification as some of them that have worked there for over 6 months have no certification. As a personal Trainer you are more of a glorified Sales person. 

 The company is motivated by profit only. GoodLife will try and hide behind the "caring for the members" speech that you will hear frequently. This is just not the case. They care about profit only. For members that try and cancel their membership they are made to make an appointment so that they can be resold to. They make it very difficult for the member and really lack in customer care that way.  The way they care is by directly booking them with personal trainers, some who are not certified, so they can sell big packages by using fear as a motivation. Once the member signs a contract for Personal Training they make it almost impossible to get out of it unless you move away-in B.C only. DON"T DRINK THE KOOL AID. They promote a party culture, this was taken to the extreme with the illegal drug use that was going on at both locations i worked at, namely management, so be careful of that.

I joined the company and was excited to finally work at a corporation that lives by the core values they advertise. I was constantly hammered with how much GoodLife cares, and how the core values are at the heart of everything the company does. Of course, I was naive to believe something that. 

GoodLife cares only about the dollars you make them. I have seen the emails corporate has sent to members who have had to deal with family medical emergencies, a long process, 6+ months, that end with the family member dying. The member froze their personal training they had but due to the length of the issues it went over the max allowed freeze time. There is much more to this story but the long and short of it is that if there is a policy, corporate GoodLife simply does not care. Which causes undue frustration for the managers and staff at the gyms when they have to pass on this info to these members. It breaks my heart when I have to tell people they have to pay even more money to buy out of something they want to keep because corporate would rather stick to their policies than to listen to the needs of their members who want to keep giving the company their money. 

Another fun thing is their sales targets... There are clubs that haven't hit their targets in years and are a revolving door of managers, however corporate will raise the sales targets even though the previous targets weren't hit. It's the definition of insanity - to expect different results without enacting any change or evaluating the targets they are setting. I guess someone has to justify their salary.

I would highly recommend looking at your personal values before you sign a contract with the company. While you will definitely find a handful of managers that are amazing individuals, it is without a doubt that they are not amazing because of GoodLife, but in spite of GoodLife and not letting GoodLife break them of what makes them amazing individuals.

To be fair, they do have a good management training which is worth going through if you are already in the company and have the opportunity. However the amount of BS that you must wade through to get the training makes it difficult to deal with at times. They also preach about "THE WHY" behind why they do what they do, but corporate never has an answer for things like "why is my sales target set this way?" or "why are top performers not held accountable to the company core values?" (to be fair again, it's all about $$$ and if you make it for them, they will protect you to the ends of the earth)

I would not recommend working for them if you can help it. I should have listened to my gut when I got the job offer, but it's hard to find a job in the current economy. Just don't expect to much and you might be ok.

Frustrating go at it! You can work as hard as you can talking to everyone you see but so much of this job is out of your control and it's all your responsibility because your only a number who is supposed to Bring in numbers. 
You telemarket over the phone by bugging people when their at work, most times they never answer because like I said their at work! We make are calls around 11:30-12:30 and 3:30-4.30. The names and numbers we have to use when making our calls are from what you personally got the previous day which means standing at a booth in the club talking to members who walk by. You really feel like a homeless person begging for change it really doesn't feel good when most guys don't even care to give you a second of their time. Although some girls stop for their free t shirt and the you fake numbers or just the most horrible leads. Your salary depends on what those people wrote down for names and numbers. They may never answer, they may already be members, they may live out of town, may never show up for appointments or hang up on you. I don't even have to mention standing out front of a grocery store on a rainy afternoon to try and pass out free passes to the gym and try and get names and numbers.
It really is rediculous when you do everything asked of you and out of nowhere your asked to leave and clean up your desk and walk out. That is so cold, for no reason at all, it's wrong! Busted my butt In parking lots and events and talked to everyone who passed by me when trying to give away goodlife t shirts or a chance to win an umbrella that nobody wants.
Hours are usually 10-7 or 11-8 so a pretty bad work/life balance. There was a job posting for my position 2 weeks before I was randomly asked to leave so maybe managemet was being fake for 2 weeks would be disgusting. I felt as though I didn't have a real job since if I wasn't telemarketing, I was standing at a booth bugging people for names and numbers before or after their workout and half looked down upon me, so it's not with constantly being rejected or talking to the same people everyday asking for names and numbers it really makes you feel like a shmuck.

During team meetings you have to let everyone know your numbers based on unreasonable expectations so ofcourse you always feel like a failure bexsuse you only got 13 of 30 leads and 1 appointment out of 9 and that guy didn't even show up. Again bottom line is, 70% of your results you have no control of! So it really isn't fair, so guys don't even bother it's only a stepping stone anyways but not worth the stress. Unrealistic anyways your setup for failure if you can't take walk ins and rely on leads from no frills parking lots and referall booth.

Employees are often asked to go over and beyond their job description and for the amount of money they are paid. The fitness advisors, PTs, and managers are always under pressure to sell, sell sell!  In fact, even the front desk staff are asked to place sale above all else. That's how Goodlife sees members: not as people, but as walking wallets. 

The quality of personal trainers at Goodlife is dismal. Many of them are not experts educated on the biomechanics of the human anatomy or sports sciences. I've witnessed countless cases of former-actor, former-servers transform into a personal trainer overnight. How? They just simply take  a weekend class and pay $500 to CANFITPRO (conveniently owned by Goodlife) to learn how to sell cookie cutter fitness programs and gain the authority to give bad advice to members. All the while, the said member will be paying $50+ per hour for an advice from someone no better than other gym bros lifting there.

Of course, I think the PTs see less than half of that money, so the only person enriching himself at Goodlife is Patch & his cronies in the management. And everyone from the bottom grunt to the top brass knows this. Goodlife was built on the backs of exploited workers who are paid too darn little for the work they do. 

Goodlife has often been a center of media attention in the past due to malpractices in terms of consumer protection, allowing young children to develop melanoma etc. It's not a coincidence. The upper management lacks any empathy or care towards employees or members, yet they claim to uphold "caring" or "integrity" as core values. Give me a break. 

Also, even if a member gets banned because he assaulted someone or threatened someone, that said member can always go to another club and fill out a new membership! I've had cases where the member who was banned for threatening violence to a female associate came in the next day with a brand new membership with a smug look on his face. I will never forget that day, but that's the Goodlife promise! Members, rather their wallets, always come first.

The job was sold to me as a manager position. I thought I would be managing employees (personal trainers) and sharing my many years of knowledge and experience in the industry. This was not true. It was a sales job. I was in charge and responsible for reaching weekly, monthly, and yearly sales KPI's. I was not able to bring my own experience or opinion on how I went about this. I was forced to do this using GoodLife's method (which was a hard sales tactic). A lot of their sales content came from 1970's/1980's sales. 
The culture was terrible. There was a lot of petty drama. Rumors were spread wild, people were being pinned against each other, and there was little to no assistance in dealing with this from upper management. Upper management did a good job at making it seem like they cared for me. They would sit and listen, however their actionable items abd advice was half-hearted and revolved around how to improve their sales performance rather than relationships and culture. 
They did encourage us to work on improving culture by doing group activities and such to improve teamwork, however there was no funding for this. It was on our dollar. And with the terrible pay they offered, it was not easy to afford. I had worked with staff members who did things that should have gotten them fired. But because their sales were very high, all of these incidents were brushed under the rug.
They also control how the trainers trained their clients. They were required to receive continuing education exclusively through organizations approved by Canadian Fitness Professionals (which is owned by the same corporation as GoodLife).
After over a year of working there, I left hurt and with a lot of emotional damage. I've been going to therapy for the past year trying to recover from the damage. It hasn't been easy.
If you're someone who is willing to compromise your morals, put the bottom line about EVERYTHING else, and sell a personal training philosophy that has been outdated for the past 20 years, this is the job for you. 

Unfortunately due to Indeed's review policies, I can't actually go into detail about why Goodlife is a bad company to work for. Which is unfortunate, because if you heard about the things that go on here you'd probably want to stay far away. However, here's a few vague points:

It's a toxic place to work, which was often agreed upon behind closed doors. Management and coworkers don't behave professionally, and treatment of staff is poor. Concerns raised are often met with placation and indifference rather than effective action.

Wages aren't what they should be for personal trainers. Even worse, your pay doesn't scale as much according to your skill level/qualifications as it does to when you were onboarded; meaning that senior/experienced trainers can be paid less than brand new trainers without certification.

The group health benefits that are promised upon employment aren't affordable, and don't cover basic expenses such as medications.

You'll be expected to work unrealistic hours, such as 12-14 hours every day (including weekends) for months on end. There are no paid breaks for trainers which makes eating and using the washroom costly. Complaints of burnout aren't taken as seriously as they should be by management. Turnover in all departments is high as a result.

The only positive I can say is that you'll meet some amazing clients. Unfortunately, how many clients you have really depends on what neighborhood you work in and the average income in the area. PT packages are priced for middle to higher income demographics. If you work in a rough neighborhood, you'll be expected to repeatedly push sales on people who understandably can't afford Goodlife's price tag. I was encouraged to say some pretty disrespectful things to people in order to push sales.

I worked the 9am to 5pm shift. There was always paperwork to get done, phones to answer and people to greet, we were always busy.
Having many different kinds of people come in to workout, train, go over banking problems or just to check out the club gave me the skills to appropriately help everyone that step foot into the facility.
Since it is a fitness environment some people were more shy than others so I knew it was my job, as the first face they see walking in, to make sure I am high energy, always positive and make sure they feel comfortable. Some people came in very focused and no time to talk, just get their workout in and leave. In those situations I made sure to always greet them and get what ever they needed done as efficiently as I could.
My co-workers were usually pretty great. Never had many issues with any of them. Because it got so busy at times I usually would focus on what I know I had to get done. Any serious problems I encountered I spoke with management.
The hardest part of the job was around 4PM when we would get a rush of people coming from work at once.
Having to scan everybody's key tags individually, fixing banking issues if the system told us, answering 3 phone calls coming in at once, changing television stations, grabbing Personal trainers for their clients and making sure we always had fresh clean towels for those who pay for that service. all of this at once. It did make time go by fast and alot of clients that came in were quite understanding.
the most enjoyable part was meeting all different kinds of people coming in and getting to listen to their fitness and health goals. Why these goals are so important to them and being able to encourage them everyday. I also keep in touch with some of the regular members I met and the kids I got to work with in the daycare Goodlife provided.

After attending the University of Windsor for 4 years, before I graduated I wanted to take some time off and work at home for about a year before continuing my education.  

I already had a keen interest in fitness and resistance training, which prompted me to apply at a local GoodLife fitness for a role in either Personal Training or administration.  The job was suggested to me from a friend who worked in administration at the time at another GoodLife Fitness location in Brampton.

The 8 months that I worked at GoodLife fitness were absolutely incredible - to this day, I thank GoodLife for the change in ethic, character, and responsibility it applied to my life.  I have heard so much positive feedback about my charisma and communication abilities from the training and role playing that I underwent during my onboarding at the club.  

The hardest part of the job was simply prospecting for new clients.  This took a lot of time out of my day, and I got a lot of "no's" for answers.  However, when prospecting went well, this translated into the most enjoyable part of the day - gaining a client and working with them to achieve their fitness goals.  

Training wasn't necessarily about working out 3-4 days per week.  It was about committing to the personal trainer-client relationship to develop a strong sense of work ethic, responsibility and accountability for the client.  The client then learns a lot about themselves when put in a situation like this.

I cannot thank GoodLife enough for the incredible experience I was offered and given!  I learned a lot about myself in this job, and will apply what I have taken from this job to other aspects and opportunities within my career and personal life.

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