How to Start A Successful Personal Training Business

June 18, 2021

How to start a personal training business

Deciding to start any business requires a leap of faith. Business ownership appeals to those who value freedom over security. It is for those who believe that the product they offer is worth more than an employer can compensate them for. It is for those who want to express their creativity and control their destiny.

Unfortunately, personal training is an industry where many enter the field with grand ambition. Then quickly leave the profession after finding out it lacks the glamor they had originally thought.

Why You Should Not Start a Personal Training Business

With all the appeal mentioned above, there are reasons not to start a personal training business. Earning a personal training certification does not make you an expert in the field.

Personal Training Experience

One of the main reasons not to start a personal training business is because experience has equal, if not greater, weight than does education. Going to work for an employer can give you access to a much larger pool of potential clients to gain experience from. These clients will offer you an education in personal relationships, unique individual needs, and outcomes using different workout and nutrition strategies.

Business Experience

Personal training is serious business. As with any startup, there are general business principles that you should know before you begin. A short list of broad categories includes:

Sales
Accounting
Marketing
Legal
Strategy

You might bite off more than you can chew when trying to learn these skills while becoming a fitness professional at the same time. Learning to operate a fitness business requires two separate areas of expertise.

Why You Should Start a Personal Training Business

The most obvious benefit is the income potential but it comes at the cost of increased risk and less financial security. Given the same amount of floor time, running a fitness business may provide over double the income you would receive as an employee of a gym.

An independent personal trainer who runs their own business may also find more opportunities to grow their brand. Having your own brand identity gives a fitness business other income streams such as writing, instruction, inventory, nutrition programming, and more. There is more potential to increase the lifetime value of a customer when you are in charge of the products you offer.

Create an Ideal Training Business

Dr. Stephen Covey suggests we should begin with the end in mind. This not only applies to our life but also to our business. Thinking about what your business looks like at full scale will help you make the first steps for that dream to become a reality. It will help you learn what to say yes and what to say no to.

Who is Your Ideal Client?

Being as specific as possible about what your ideal client profile is will help you decide needed as you set up your business. While we should accept a broad range of clients as we build our business, focus on one particular client. This helps you choose your business location, environment to create, music to play, and other factors that attract a particular client.

“If you try to please everyone, you will please no one.”

What is Your Ideal Personal Training Scenario?

There are many ways to become a successful personal trainer. You can focus on individualized training, small group instruction, limited boot camp classes, or group fitness teaching. Deciding on the specific class size will help you understand the space you need, how to best schedule client sessions, and what equipment you may need.

Setting Up Your Personal Training Business

There are steps you need to take in order to operate your PT business. Here is a short list of potential actions you may need to take:

Setup a city business license
Get a fictitious business name
Register with the state
Setup a county resale license
Open a business bank account
Sign up for personal trainer insurance
Find the right general or public liability insurance

Each city, county, and state will have their own specific requirements for starting your business, so consult with each department before you begin operations.

Finding the Right Location For Your Personal Training Business

Location is everything! Deciding on the right location will help unpack many more decisions you need to make, such as how many people you can train and equipment you need to purchase. Here is a short list of potential locations where you can train clients.

Gym that allows independent trainers.
Business location that you lease.
In a client’s home gym.
Out of your own home gym.
Outside at a park, beach, or appropriate setting.

Being a small business owner, you will need to consider the financial impact and potential of your location. A park might allow for a greater number of clients but you limit yourself to using equipment appropriate for a mobile personal training business.

There will always be pros and cons to each, but consider eliminating any option that creates a serious financial strain on your business. It is hard to give your heart to a client if worry about money is consuming your mind. Complete dedication to your clients’ results is the most important factor in building a successful personal training business.

Online Personal Training Business

While most of this article focuses on in-person training, we should not forget about the potential income from online personal training. While it may seem like the easiest path to success, this is the most crowded space in fitness. Many believe that they can simply get certified and promote on social media to build a successful business.

This strategy worked for many in the beginning, but now that many fitness professionals use social media, it takes more than a few posts to build a business. To build a strong online presence that leads to customer acquisition you will need to know:

Public speaking
Copywriting
Software integrations
Search engine optimization
Pay per click marketing
and more

Building an online training business is not free from the general principles of sales, accounting, marketing, legal, and strategy. While there is less barrier to entry, it is still a business and requires a lot of knowledge, expertise, and effort to make it a successful personal training business.

Purchasing Equipment For Your Personal Training Business

You are ready to invest in fitness equipment once you have decided your location and business strategy. While it may seem like you need every fancy training tool out there, you really only need a few essentials to get started.

As you probably already know, a client can get a great workout by simply using their body weight. While this is the least expensive way to start your business, an equipment free gym will not satisfy most clients. They will want to see that you have the appropriate tools to help them get the results they are hoping to achieve.

To make the right decision which equipment to buy, follow these steps:

Create your equipment budget including shipping costs
Create an equipment list based on the needs of your ideal client
Look for ways to consolidate your fitness equipment with multi-purpose tools.

How Much Should You Charge for Personal Training?

With your business ready for operation, it is time for you to get firm on your personal training pricing structure. Hopefully, you have been doing research and considering this along the way. Creating a structured pricing plan will make doing business with your clients easier. Your time is valuable and you should not negotiate on your rates. Discounting your rates will lead to a discount in the effort you give to the client. It’s a lose-lose situation for everyone.

The amount of people you train will help you determine the rates you charge. Take into consideration the following before you establish your pricing:

Going rates in your area for personal training that resembles your business model.
The amount of education and experience you have with personal training.
Other services and amenities that you offer that give your business a USP (unique selling proposition)

Marketing Your Personal Training Business

Being a personal trainer and having the appropriate gym setup is not enough to build a full client list. This is not the “Field of Dreams” where if you build it, they will come. You must learn to market your business unless you want to become the best kept secret in personal training that doesn’t make money.

Guerrilla Marketing For Personal Trainers

One recommendation you will hear us frequently recommend to personal trainers is to focus on Guerrilla Marketing. This form of marketing focuses on low-cost and unconventional ways to promote your business. Methods that separate yourself from the competition. Examples of Guerrilla Marketing include:

Flyers inside of smoothie stores
Free workout classes at a busy location
Giving a free educational seminar about working out
Creating referral cards for your clients
Working with a business to hold a transformation contest for their employees

Creativity is a Guerrilla Marketer’s best friend. Sure, not all of them will work but because they are low-cost, the major investment will be your time. If we are honest, at the beginning of our personal training career, time is something we have more of than money.

Grant Cardone has said that social media marketing is the most cowardly form of marketing. However, he also says it is a vital tool that all businesses should be using. While it may seem that he is contradicting himself, Uncle G (as he likes to be called) brings up a good point.

Many personal trainers depend upon social media for their success, yet think too highly of it for it to be effective. They give each post’s worth too much value and assume that a post a day will keep the creditors away. For this reason, many personal trainers fail at social media marketing.

Social media marketing is the fuel you put on the fire. It enhances your non-social media marketing efforts and lets the fire burn a little longer. Unfortunately, each piece of social media content is not enough to bring the fire to where it spreads. A personal trainer will want their social media marketing efforts to spread to new potential clients. Not just their friends, family, and existing clients.

Here are ideas to increase your social media efforts:

Change a post so that it is unique for each platform.
Shorten the duration of your content but increase the amount of posts you make per day.
Make your social media about your clients and not business.
Create content that gets your clients to engage by answering questions or providing feedback.
Find other people to create synergistic social media content to share audiences.

Seeing Your Business Through the Dip

Expert marketer, entrepreneur, and business strategist Seth Godin wrote the book on this subject. His book acknowledges all businesses go through a dip once the initial excitement of this new venture fades away. Successful businesses are not the ones that avoid the dip. They are the ones that acknowledge it, take steps to mitigate it, and fight until on the other side of it.

Not being blindsided by this issue we as business owners all face is the first step to making it through. Setting up your business with the end in mind is another way to minimize the impact it has on you and your business. But perhaps the most important action you can take is to create a business that is more than yourself and has a positive impact on the lives you touch. Holding on to your purpose gives you the ability to persevere, even in the most dire of situations.

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