Episode 32: Shahin Safai
Shahin Safai is the Founder and CEO of Royal Personal Training (RPT), one of the premier private training facilities in Beverly Hills, CA. In a town like Beverly Hills where people are obsessed with looking good, being seen and crafting a perfect physical image, making it to the top of the fitness and wellness world is no small feat to achieve. You have to have a tenacity of spirit to stay alive and beat the odds.
Shahin is of Iranian descent and born in Norway. When he arrived in California 2011, he spoke no English, had no job, and had no formal education. He had come up the hard way in Scandinavia. Leaving school in just the seventh grade to help support his family, he began making the myth of his life as a young teenager delivering newspapers. That ability to fight and survive would serve him well as he came to a country that he had only seen on television. Starting as a valet at Mr C Hotel in Beverly Hills where drunk guests would make fun of him, he would use his persistence of mind and relentless work ethic to enter the competitive world of personal training at Equinox Fitness Center. Made fun of and underestimated by his fellow trainers at Equinox, Shahin would grow his client base until he was one of the top personal trainers for Equinox in the United States. From that rarified perch, he launched RPT and began a journey that changed the trajectory of his career and his life.
If you think Shahin’s story reads like a script for a Hollywood movie, you’re right. There is a journey to a new land, starting at the bottom and climbing to the top of an unforgiving industry, and of course, a pretty girl. But this movie is no frivolous, made-up story. His life is the result of overcoming multiple failures, getting knocked down and forcing himself to get back up, almost losing his business and living to tell his story another day. In short, it is the American Dream writ large. As he tells us his story, the tears will flow from his eyes, but they are not a sign of any weakness. They are the ocular proof of a life forged in the fire of experience and built on a character that says, “I always had a work ethic in me, and I’ve always been competitive. People work 10 hours a day? I work 16 hours, 2 days in a day.”
