Remember the classic Woody Allen line from Annie Hall ? The one where he spouts, “Those who can’t do, teach, and those who can’t teach, teach gym.” Well, Harley’s life – these days, at least – is one long repudiation of that whole wisdom. Calling him a trainer is a bit like calling Nigella Lawson a mere cook or Deepak Chopra your garden-variety guru. The guy is in the process of building a global empire, and he’s doing it one bicep at a time.

Afternoon TV chats with Oprah Winfrey. Touring with Kanye West, who he also trains. Making pretty boy Orlando Bloom even prettier for the flick Elizabethtown. Dating boldface sirens like sometime Chanel Nº5 chick and fellow Canuck Estella Warren. Invitations to Hollywood premieres coming out of his well-toned wazoo. Mounting high-five testimonials, like the one from Benjamin Bratt, who breathlessly says, “Harley has succeeded in demystifying the secret to good health and fitness.” That sort of thing.

For Harley, as most of his clients will attest, it’s always been as much about brain power as about bench presses. “My main product is my ideas. My intellectual property,” he’ll tell you, a trace of his younger more nebbish self from Willowdale, Ont., still lingering. The Jewish kid whose interest in nutrition was first sparked by a younger brother’s type 1 diabetes and an almost hyper-awareness about food in his family. The bookworm who later spent eight years at university studying health sciences and kinesiology. The grad student who conducted studies on nutrition for the Canadian Department of National Defence.

Harley has had a stellar couple of years, by any standard. While he won’t confirm exact numbers, we hear millions in change jingling in his jogging pants. (“Seventy-five percent less,” is what he coyly says he’d be making if he’d stayed in Canada as a trainer.) There was the recent New York Times bestselling book 5-Factor Fitness – otherwise known as the Halle Berry program – based on the regime of 25 minutes of exercise a day, five days a week, capped off with five meals a day, with each meal taking a mere five minutes to prep. There’s also the TV stuff, the public speaking, a follow-up book in the works and the sponsorships. (Reebok is one of them, even though, pssst… he’s got on Nikes the day we meet for coffee.)

“Alicia calls me every day to tell me what she’s eating,” Harley confides as we duck into Caffè Artigiano. “John Mayer lost 20 pounds on my program,” he adds, discussing yet another star client. Harley’s just back from Brazil, and as we grab our joe – “Double espresso machiato, no foam,” he orders for us both – he rhapsodizes about a nation so body-obsessed that he himself is the celebrity there. “I had my own paparazzi!” he exclaims. “Every woman at the age of 18 has her breasts done,” he detours. “It’s normal. Like piercing.” Harley was there to talk to a gathering of fitness instructors, Brazil being a country where you need to get a four-year degree and a licence from the government to train. “I wish it was like that here...”

There’s just a pinch of pathos in his voice. The more I talk to him, trailing him for several days, the more I realize there’s some Rodney Dangerfield I-can’t-get-no-respect thing going on in his interior life. And it’s got everything to do with the popular image of the personal trainer. Though thirtysomething Harley is at the top of his game – plus he’s got that university education – he’s still lumped in at times with the rest of the Conan the Barbarians. Except he’s so not. More Conan O’Brien than Conan the Barbarian. A geek stuck in a bodybuilder’s frame.