We were lucky to catch up with Nick Snow recently and have shared our conversation below.

Nick, appreciate you joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

Thank you for having me! Looking back, the biggest risk I ever took was a decision that I knew would reverberate forever in my life – and I was only 21 at the time.

It was when I dropped out of college and decided to move out of my home state.

A little bit of a back story: I was a gifted student, but I was lazy and unorganized. I was nearly failing out of school and completely burnt out. I wanted nothing to do with my major and nothing to do with school. I made lifelong memories and friends, but I also know that I wasn’t mature enough to fully take advantage of my time in school.

Spring Semester 2014 is when I realized I couldn’t keep it up. If I stayed, I would’ve added another year to my college career, ending with a subpar GPA which wouldn’t have been enough for me to get into grad school or an internship. I also refused to ask my parents to keep paying for my college when my brother and sister were about to enter college; I couldn’t justify taking out the loans to stay at school, either.

Eventually, I came to the hard realization that I needed to leave.

I talked to my parents, who were very supportive (Love you, Mom & Dad). I talked to my professors, who were also very understanding and supportive. My close friends were also supportive, although they were pretty apprehensive and grilled me hard. Everyone was very worried about me never coming back and honestly, I was worried, too.

To get over that, I made a plan – complete with graphics, because who doesn’t like pictures – and I left. It felt like strapping on a parachute and jumping out of an airplane. I fully expected to land safely, but damn if it doesn’t make your heart race.

Originally, I was supposed to take just one year off and become a personal trainer. Possibly move up to Boston, MA to experience city life. However, life had other plans…

One morning, my best friend called me up and told me that he got a job in Florida. He told me to go with him and offered me his couch while I got on my feet. I was excited, but nervous – accepting his offer would have me leave not just my hometown, but New England. Finishing my degree would be pushed years down the line, too.

But I realized that I was planning for something that didn’t exist. I hadn’t grown enough to be ready to go back to school. I made a promise that if I was going to go back, I wouldn’t squander the opportunity. I still didn’t have the funds to pay for it. None of my friends would be there, either. The final nail in the coffin was the fact that I was walking back into an abysmal GPA, which I would need to work very hard to bring back up to be competitive.

That parachute I relied on was too flimsy. And the ground wasn’t going to be soft, either. So, I took one more deep breath and shrugged the parachute off.

Moving to Florida was quite literally like I was freefalling. Everything happened so fast and while I had a semblance of a plan, it was nothing as clear cut as “take a gap year and go back to college”. It was scary, but it was exhilarating.

I felt excited again and my passion for health & fitness was rekindled. I had dreams of being a personal trainer in Miami, having a career that I never wanted to vacation from, while living in a city that was miles away from everything that I knew growing up.

It was a huge risk though – I knew no one. And I needed to pay all my own bills. I had no idea if I was going to go back to college either; I said I wanted to, but at the time, my heart wasn’t in it and I was still worried about failing out again. I shrugged the parachute off midlight and knew I needed to move my arms fast as hell if I was going to land safely.

Thankfully, all that time in the gym gave me wings. Eventually, all the blood and sweat that I gave to make the life I wanted worked out.

I lived in Daytona Beach for 4 years, where I founded my own personal training business: Snow Personal Training. Then I moved to Miami, where I graduated, at the top of my class, from Florida International University with a degree in Nutrition & Dietetics. On top of that, I just enrolled in grad school and recently accepted a full time off to be a Fitness Director in a South Beach fitness facility.

It all worked out, in ways that I never could have dreamed of. Nearly 8 years to date, I can look back on it all and say, “I did it.”

Nick, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a career personal trainer & nutrition coach, with plans to continue on to become a Registered Dietitian.

I fell into the gym and fell in love with it all. I specialize in nutrition and behavior change, but traditional strength training still provides a strong foundation for all of it.

As a future RD, I plan on bridging the gap between qualified nutrition education and gyms – especially when it comes to healthy aging (sarcopenia & osteoporosis).

I’ve accomplished a lot over the last decade in the industry, but easily what I am most proud of is when past clients come to me and say “I took what I learned from you and I’m helping my friend now, too.”

I learned that when I helped a man learn to fish, he did more than just feed himself – he fed his village, too.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I got into personal training because I liked exercising. When I first started out, I defaulted to the kind of exercising that I knew and was most comfortable with: bodybuilding. Obviously, not everyone was a bodybuilder or enjoyed that kind of training, and this cost me clients. Eventually, I realized what I was doing and I learned that I couldn’t treat everyone how I treated myself.

I stopped training people like bodybuilders and trained them how they needed to be trained.

I learned to put myself in their shoes and learned how to prioritize their goals – while also working with what they could bring to bear.

Over the years, I learned to connect with clients in a way that really helped me help them make the change that they wanted to.

If you could go back, would you choose the same profession, specialty, etc.?

I would, without a moment’s hesitation. If anything, I wish I had started earlier.

This is a career that I would do for free if I could afford it – I work full time and never feel like I need a vacation.

Not only has this job given me the passion to wake up every morning and grind, but it’s helped me learn and appreciate so many other facets of life. I grew in public speaking; I learned marketing & business. Behavior change and psychology helped me connect with new clients and people in general; what I learned to help others has helped me, as well.

I truly cannot imagine doing anything else or having gone down a different route.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @snowpersonaltraining
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/snowpersonaltraining
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicksnow1992/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCob6pYkoPU6v28siyGN5jAg/featured