Discovering OPEX, Building a New Business, During the Pandemic 

When COVID-19 hit, Stijn De Waele saw an opportunity to pursue a new career in fitness, as he became temporarily unemployed from his medical sales career. So he started shopping around for a potential coaching course.

He signed up for a personal training course in Belgium, where he lives, but was disappointed. It didn’t seem to offer much in terms of pointing him in the right direction on how to become a professional coach. The course was so disjointed, he explained, “almost like they just pulled these pieces from different places and put it together without a strategy,” he said.

Though De Waele also has a background teaching physical education, has coached a handful of different sports, and had spent five years doing CrossFit, he knew he needed more knowledge before he could start working with individuals on improving their health and fitness.

“Then OPEX found me. Google knows what you’re looking for,” he said, laughing.

He dug a little deeper and signed up for the OPEX Free Professional Coaching Blueprint, as well as two other OPEX programming courses, and it became clear that the Coaching Certificate Program (CCP) was the right education for him. 

“Even those three small courses I did before the CCP, I learned way more there than during the whole other course I did here locally,” he said. 

De Waele didn’t hesitate. He joined the July CCP cohort and is currently working on his final project—the project includes administering assessments, building training programs and putting five clients through lifestyle consults—and has high praise for the knowledge he has been able to gain from the CCP so quickly. 

The biggest thing he said he took from the CCP was how it perfectly laid out systems and principles that give you the tools to  help different types of people.

“It gave me really good guidelines for every category of athlete—the starter, the intermediate and the advanced athlete—and how to work within OPEX Pain, Gain and Sustain to help them reach their goals,” he said.

“For me, it’s like (OPEX) gave me a roadmap for everything, starting with the assessment...Then when you have all this information collected, and you consider lifestyle and other things, you can pull it all together and start building an (effective) program.”

De Waele added: “It gave me the tools I needed to explain what I’m doing to the client, too. So now I can say, ‘We’re going to do this because of that, and I saw in your assessment that you need this, so we’re going to do that.” Best of all, he now has the confidence when making coaching decisions. “It’s no longer a guessing game,” he said. 

Since finishing his course work, De Waele has already managed to find and sell eight clients, all of whom pay $300 Euros a month for an individual program and monthly consults. 

His ultimate goal is to turn his individual program design business into a full-time gig, but with the uncertainty of COVID, he is continuing to work in medical sales and is building his book of clients slowly.

And with the CCP under his belt, he has all the confidence in the world that he can make a real difference in his clients’ lives. 

“That’s the power of this course,” he said.

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