Bryan Chang on the importance of keeping connected.

Turn a passion into a personal brand with one goal in mind - breaking mental barriers and pushing the limits in physical and psychological health. Bryan started Bryan Chang Fitness in 2015 and has utilized social media - mainly Instagram - to connect with and help people reach their fitness goals. 

I caught up with Bryan and discussed the importance of keeping connected during this time of uncertainty and how he’s used Instagram and Zoom as a way to help his 12.5K followers not lose sight of their goals. Bryan has to continually develop and create unique content, which can create stress and anxiety as he tries to stand apart in an already supersaturated content world.

The stress of trying to create different content

Bryan chang

Show Notes

- Brian Chang, founder of Brian Chang Fitness

- Instagram educator with 12,500 followers

- Specializes in physical and mental health, nutrition, and boxing coaching

Episode Highlights:

• Brian's transition from Good Life Fitness to self-employment

• Utilizing Instagram as a platform for education and connection

• The impact of COVID-19 on personal training and finding blessings in disguise

• Strategies for creating unique content in a saturated market

• The importance of frequency and quality in content creation

• Brian's pivot from in-person training to online group classes

• The role of continuous education in differentiating oneself

Key Takeaways:

• Passion and Education: Success in content creation, especially in fitness, hinges on a passion for the field and a commitment to ongoing education.

• Content Quality: High-quality content is crucial. Brian recommends Final Cut Pro for video editing to ensure his content stands out visually.

• Frequency vs. Quality: While frequency is important for growth, especially when starting, quality should not be compromised. Consistent, high-quality posts are essential.

• Coping with a Saturated Market: Focus on your demographic and true fans. Even if the content is similar, your unique perspective and depth can attract and retain a loyal audience.

Brian's Tips for Aspiring Content Creators:

1. Educate Yourself: Deeply understand your niche and continue learning.

2. Invest in Quality: Use tools like Final Cut Pro to create visually appealing content that makes people stop and take notice.

Connect with Brian:

- Follow Brian on Instagram: [@brychmg](https://instagram.com/brychmg)

- Join his Zoom fitness classes for energy, music, and community

- DMs open for fitness, nutrition, and health-related questions

Episode Credits:

- Hosted by Bonar Bulger

- Guest: Brian Chang

- Audio Production: Justin Dhama

- Original Music: Justin Dhama

- Instagram: @contentcreatorsociety

Transcript

This is the Content Creator Society, an organization that exists to unite and empower all content creators through inspiration and education. Each week we bring you insights from content creators from around the world that will inspire you, educate you, and entertain you. We're all in this together. Today's guests turn a passion into a personal brand with one goal in mind, breaking mental barriers and pushing the limits in physical and mental health.

I left Good Life and then I started to become self-employed essentially. Run my own business, get the type of clientele that I wanted to work with, write and market the way I want to market and train the way I wanted to train. Brian started Brian Chang Fitness in 2015 and has utilized social media, mainly Instagram, as a way to connect with and help people reach their fitness goals.

I wanted to create an Instagram page of education. That's all I wanted to do. I wanted to teach. I wasn't even thinking about it from a business point of view. I just wanted to give value. We talk about the importance of keeping connected during this time of uncertainty and how he's used Instagram and Zoom as a way to help his 12,500 followers not lose sight of their goals.

So I just wanted to create a library of exercise, how-to's, nutrition tips, diving deeper into things like sleep, stress management, lifestyle hacks. And to do that, Brian has had to continually develop and create unique content, which can create stress and anxiety as he tries to stand apart in an already supersaturated content world.

Hello, everybody. Here we go. Welcome to episode number 10, Content Creator Society Interviews. Today, a little bit of a change over the last few episodes, most of them for the most part with a few exceptions. We've had automotive related people, but today we're going to go into fitness. So today we've got Brian Chang with us. Brian, how are you doing?

Good. How are you? Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks for coming. I am doing great. You know, people have said that COVID-19 is a time to reflect. It's a time maybe to slow down, to sort of think about where you are. I found that it's making me more busy than I've ever been in my entire life.

Yeah, I bet. I bet. I bet. Me too, honestly. At first, I obviously hated COVID and I still hate it and the idea of quarantining. But as the weeks went on, I started to realize these little blessings in disguise, I guess, that I'm starting to learn. Like, especially as a trainer, my days were packed from 6 a.m. all the way to 11 p.m. Just non-stop clients, not being able to see friends, sometimes not even having time to eat. So, you know, the quarantine has been a little bit of a blessing in disguise, where I got time to kind of step back a little bit and spend more time with my family. So it's been all right.

I bet. It's been all right. So what we're going to do today, this is an interesting one for me because you've got an audience on Instagram of about 12,000 some odd people. And there's a couple of things I want to get into here. On one hand, I want to get into your business, which was a very physically, you know, you actually had to deal and touch with people. You know, you think you could do that way back when in the before time. And now here we are going into the after time and you can't do that. So I want to sort of dig into that just a little bit. I want to talk a little bit about that audience that you have. But first, let's start with just give everyone maybe a 30,000 foot overview of who you are, what you do and your audience.

All right. My name is Brian. I'm 25, turning 26. And I am a certified personal trainer. I also coach nutrition and boxing as well. I started off in personal training about let's say it's 2020, about five years ago, January of 2015. I got my personal training certification. I joined Goliath Fitness right here in Oakville in Trafalgar. And I worked there for three years. I learned my foundation. I learned my base. But there's a point in this big option where you have to say, you know, I have to go away from it and start doing my own thing and start creating my own presence and start creating my own business. So after three years of being in with Goliath and just getting as much experience as I can, I left Goliath. And then I started to become self-employed essentially, run my own business. I get the type of clientele that I wanted to work with, you know, charge the price that I wanted to charge, right? Market the way I wanted to market and train the way I wanted to train. And then in the middle of that transition, I personally dove into boxing myself because I wanted to find a different route to do my own workouts, make it different, make it fun, make it unique. And then I just fell in love with it right away. You know, the stop on finger fell in love with it. Started traveling a little bit more all over the GTA, even traveled to the US to work with different boxing coaches. I've learned a lot. And then now I'm learning what they taught me to train the general population in boxing, changing up their workouts and introducing them to this sport of boxing and how amazing this for you. So that's kind of where I'm at right now.

And so then how did that in your group? So that's the start of your business and where you're at now. And then you've got this twelve thousand five hundred some odd people on Instagram and Instagram, obviously, like the platform you're going to gravitate towards because it's a very visual medium. How did that growth happen? Did you start Instagram as just a hobby way back in the day and then it turned into a business tool to promote your business or did you specifically sort of work on Instagram from day one to grow an audience to promote that business?

Okay, so how do I start my Instagram account? So I had my personal Instagram account where I'm posting obviously my life, got my friends on there and stuff. Right. And then December of twenty seventeen was like that year twenty seven twenty sixteen twenty seventeen was the year where I started to notice that fitness was becoming huge on Instagram. So a lot of different fitness coaches brands were coming out Instagram and posting content. But I started to realize from personal professional point of view, I started to realize there was a lot of bullshit information out there, terrible content, the wrong advice for people, especially for the general population. The wrong tips on how to lose weight, the wrong test on how to build muscle and just terrible, terrible information that I was seeing building up in the fitness industry and on Instagram. So on December, I just said, you know what, like enough is enough. I wanted to create an Instagram page of education. That's all I wanted to do. I wanted to teach. I wasn't even thinking about it from a business point of view. I just wanted to give value. And I had my buddy who was into photography and videography and he was amazing at it. So I had my guy for that. Right. So I just wanted to create a library of exercise, how to nutrition tips, diving deeper into things like sleep, stress management, lifestyle hacks that were actually good, good information, valid information back to my side. So that was the main reason why I created Instagram, my own fitness Instagram account in the first place was just for education purposes for my friends and families and their friends and their families.

Do you find out that you've got a really good audience and you're diving into a thing, a world where lots of other people, there's a lot of other fitness content out there. Do you ever feel not intimidated? That's not the right word. But, you know, this this feeling that, you know, look, this stuff already exists out there. So do I really need to create this? Do you ever have that feeling? Because I think a lot of people who are looking to create content, as you described, like, you know, providing value, I'm going to provide tips and tricks and life hacks and all those kinds of things. Then they get onto the platform and they sort of scroll around like, oh, look, this stuff is already there. Did that ever slow you down? This this feeling that, oh, man, this stuff already exists. So maybe I shouldn't bother with putting it out there.

Oh, yeah. A hundred and twenty percent. Even even to this day, because the fitness industry is so saturated, right, especially in the world of social media platforms that, you know, if you're a person who's following a bunch of different social media fitness accounts, every coach is talking about the same thing. Right. How to build fat, how to build muscle, how to build your glutes, like just a popular topic. So a hundred percent, you know, I've stressed a lot. I've experienced a lot of anxiety and high levels of stress from always trying to figure out how do I create content that is different but talking about the same thing that millions of other coaches are talking about.

Yeah, that's I think one of the biggest stressors of being in the saturated market and the world of social media. So yeah, definitely. So then how do you deal with it? Do you because I think the approach that I think a lot of people like the approach I would recommend to most people is like, don't don't look at the other stuff. Just do it and see what happens. Well, how do you how do you approach it? How do you overcome that? Like you said, as much as it stressed me out, I knew the importance. I know that I have my own so on so-called fan base, right? Let's say I have twelve thousand five hundred followers, maybe even just 10 percent of that. Those people are what we what we call social media platform is true followers, right? People that's been following me for like two fans, right? Like a true fan base. As long as I'm educating those that 10 percent, I'm happy. Right. So like you said, I had to overcome this this kind of mental block of me thinking, like, what else can I do that is different? Instead of thinking like that, I started focusing more on my demographic, what they need. And even if the content that I'm creating is same as all these other coaches, these true fans that follow me from day one, they're still going to look at my stuff compared to everyone else's stuff. Right. So I just really focused on creating this content and getting as creative as possible. Right. And putting quality into it, I think, was one of the biggest factors that allowed me to draw more attention to myself when it comes to growing my followers is I started getting creative. I started putting more effort into the content that I was treating.

How do you feel about frequency then to stay relevant? Because again, you're in this business that is saturated. Do you find that you need to be feeding the feed more often to stay relevant or do you feel like you can serve layoff? And I mean, is there a frequency game to what you do?

At first, I think frequency is super important. When you're first starting off your Instagram account, you need to post, post, post. And that's what I was doing in 2017, 2018. I was my screen time on my phone was ridiculous. I was always on my phone stories, anything from education to my lifestyle, what I was doing with my family and friends. Just consistently posting every minute of the day, every hour of the day helped me a lot, especially with this thing called the Instagram algorithm. I don't even know if it's real or not. I don't know if anybody knows. Right. But with the Instagram algorithm, let's say it does exist. It's no longer in chronological order anymore. Right? Yeah. So with that, I find when that switch happened, my engagement, I think everybody's engagement dropped. Yeah. So I think frequency is important nowadays because you need to constantly post and have people watching your stuff and have your name consistently get to show up on their account in the story area on their feed in order for them to actually look at your stuff. So frequency, I think is super important.

It's real work and it's real hard. And I don't think enough people understand the amount of effort that goes into doing that. It's especially when you have to you've got a guy who's doing some photography and video for you. So it's very difficult. Let me very quickly then change track just real quick. I want to talk about your transition from being an in-person trainer, personal trainer to the online world. How is that sort of pivot? And like, you know, it's a hard left for a lot of people or hard, hard pivot. How has that gone for you?

It's been going amazing, honestly. I love it. Honestly, I've always been a one-on-one trainer. This is the first time I've ever taught like a group class, right? With lots of people and I'm finding a lot of joy out of it. I'm finding a lot of fun out of it. It's a different switch for sure. But as long as I always tell people, like I've had a lot of people who would message me and they'd be like, look, like how do I, you know, can you give me any tips on how to become a good personal trainer? And my biggest thing was you have to be passionate about what you do. If you don't 120% love what you do, then, you know, you're not going to be able to show that to people and it's not going to. And then eventually your motivation is going to die down. So when I made the switch, I personally find that I didn't have too much of a hard time making that switch from one-on-one in person to group training stuff. And so far, it's been going amazing. Honestly, it's been going amazing.

That's good. That's good to hear. I like to hear that. So there's a couple of questions I ask everybody as we get to the end of this thing. Number one is, if there was one tip that you could give somebody you had an opportunity, someone who is either in the business or somebody who is getting into the business of content creation, if you had one tip that you could give them, what would that one tip be?

Educate yourself. Learn. And I'm not talking about learn. I'm not saying learn about social media. I'm saying whatever your field is, dive deep into that particular field. Whatever your niche is, is what we call it, right? Whatever your niche is, whoever your demographic is, you need to, especially as a trainer, you need to consistently continue your education. Take courses all the time. Like I read books all the time on nutrition, on personal training, things like sleep, stress management, gut health, right? Digest the system, right? I'm taking courses that I've spent tens of thousands of dollars on courses. And that's mainly, I think, what differentiated me from everyone else. Because I started posting content that other people were talking about, but way more in depth. Right? Because I had the backed up education because I took courses, because I traveled to the States and took courses and learned from the best experts in the world. And I came back and I started posting that learnings into my Instagram. And people were like, wow, this is so detailed. Like I've never, he's talking about sleep, but he's talking about sleep in such a different way. And I think that was one of the main reasons what attracted a lot of people to my account. So I think my biggest lesson for anybody, especially in the fitness industry, is to continue learning and never stop.

And then follow up question number two is, is there one piece of equipment? It could be a hardware, it could be software, it could be anything like that, that helps you get your production to serve together. What is it that you use? It could be a filter, it could be any of those kinds of things. If you had one thing, someone came up to you and you said, they said, hey, what's the one piece of equipment I need that you just can't live without? What would that one piece of equipment and/or software be?

That's a good question. I would probably say Final Cut Pro.

Interesting.

Yeah. So, because I believe in quality content. Right? Frequency, like we talked about a couple minutes ago, is very important. But if you're frequently posting bad content, you're not going to go anywhere. So I believe in quality as well. That's why I started learning how to use Final Cut Pro. That's why I started learning how to use Lightroom. Right? To edit my photos to make it look professional and appealing to the eye. Like you said, Instagram, it's a by aesthetic. Right? It's a visual platform. So when people scroll, you have to make them stop. You have to make them want to stop and look at your post instead of going past it. So in order for you to do that, the first thing they see is the picture or the video. So that has to be, it has to be eye popping. It has to be different. It has to be aesthetically appealing. Right? So any video, even some of the stories, I would film it. I would record it on me talking. I would go to Lightroom or Final Cut Pro real quick. Add a little music in the background, some typing stuff. Anything a little filtered to make it look professional and people will really notice the little details.

Yeah, that's, I think that's a good point. I mean, treating your feed and treating your business. I mean, treating this now as a business to drive people. It reflects the quality of work on your Instagram, reflects who you are, reflects the business that you're actually in. I mean, you're sort of in two businesses at this point. You're in a business of creating or curating an audience and then you're in the business of personal training. So you're actually putting on two hats here, which is really interesting.

Listen, Brian, our 15 minutes is up. I want to thank you very much. This has been good. It's been short. I think I could actually go on for a lot longer. Especially with this question about making a digital transformation. I want to actually maybe explore that. So maybe I'm going to find some other time to get you on because I think it's an interesting story right there.

Sure.

For now, though, where can people find you online?

My Instagram name is, it's kind of a little hard, but it's B R Y C H M G. At first it was Brian Shave Fitness and then I just decided to change it. I don't know. I change it once in a while, but B R Y C H M G. And that's where you're going to find me. I run Zoom classes Monday to Saturday. Then everyone can come to lots of fun, lots of people, lots of music, lots of energy. And yeah,