Jess, 28 — The Nutritionist-Trainer Hybrid Who Doesn’t Believe in Cheat Days

Jess Hartley holds both an ACE personal training certification and a registered dietitian license, which means her clients have nowhere to hide — not in the gym and not at the dinner table. She runs an eight-week total body transformation program out of Nashville that combines periodized lifting with a flexible macro protocol, and the before-and-afters her clients post are the kind that get accused of being fake. (They’re not. She makes everyone photograph their food for the first three weeks, which is the actual secret, and also the reason some clients quit.) Jess charges $3,500 for the full eight weeks and waitlists fill in under 48 hours. She’s currently writing a book, which her publisher is already calling “uncomfortable” in the best possible way. But that’s a story for next month.

Dana, 34 — She Quit Her Investment Banking Job to Train People. No Regrets.

Dana Wilkes was making $340,000 a year at a Manhattan firm when she quit, got her NSCA certification, and moved to Denver to train people for a living. Her colleagues thought she’d lost her mind. (Her salary dropped by about $280,000 the first year, so technically they had a point.) Four years later, she has a fully booked private training practice, a digital program with 40,000 paying subscribers, and a lifestyle that would make her old boss cry into his bonus check. Her “Executive Edge” program — designed for high-performers who have 30 minutes and no patience — has been called the only fitness program that actually fits inside a real person’s life. Dana will tell you the hardest thing she ever trained was her own patience. Everything else, she figured out pretty fast.