Well, there are some options.

Since a lot of people believe the gym badges will help the Entralink work they're training Pokémon and challenging the gyms.

There's Pokémon breeding. Where you can raise them and enter them in contests. I was trying to do that but, I keep missing the contests.

[ She pauses, not really wanting to talk enough to explain everything in detail. ]

People here work with Pokémon all the time so, there's information on the details in pretty much all the towns.