
Personal Training business thrives on helping people gain back their confidence and stay healthy.
In fact, with designed personal training templates, improved skills, and nutrition guides, you could win the respect of your clients.
With an annual global projection of $12 billion in the personal fitness industry. Indeed, personal fitness is an oil well for the passionate few.
For some, the personal fitness business is a passionate adventure while for others it is a full-scale business. Regardless of what category you fall into, this post is for you
10 minutes is all it will take you to deep dive into our step-by-step guide to starting a personal training business. If you do this right, you could earn anywhere from $24.46 to $46.39 per hour.
Let’s get to it.
Carry Out A Market Research
You already have plans in place and the skills. However, starting a personal training business without first carrying out necessary market research only sets up for failure.
Extensive market research will help you understand:
- What do people need?
- Their fitness goals
- When they want to achieve each milestone
- What their setbacks are
If done right, you can accurately position yourself, and figure out the best way to help them crush each milestone in good health. The market research also helps you figure out if you’re cut out for the personal training business or not.
You’ll also extrapolate the cost of equipment, rent for facility, and average income flow. This way, you can take charge of the affairs and prepare yourself for inevitable circumstances.
Decide Your Target Audience
An accurate understanding of the demographics of your clients is key to the success of your personal training business. Here, you’ll be able to figure:
- Their age
- Are they stay-at-home moms or working moms
- Career options
- Their gender
- How often do they move
- What form of exercise do they prefer?
- What is their daily schedule like?
- Have they attempted surgery before?
- What is their fitness or body goal?
- Do they have health challenges: in the past or presently
So, whether your personal training business is online or physical sessions, you need to have these details at your fingertips.
For instance, your target audience might be a single mom who is struggling with her diet and lost her confidence. You’ll need to draft a workout template she can follow at a healthy pace.
They could be online participants which could mean that they barely have time to visit the gym. Hence, you have to put that into consideration before signing them onto any package. In summary, an accurate definition of your target audience helps you stay focused and on the right track.
While some personal trainers focus on every gender. Others may decide to focus on a certain gender based on preference, passion, and skills. There are yet personal trainers who help patients in therapy or ones with special diet needs-obese and all.
Define your target audience from day one and save yourself the pressure of catering to everyone at the same time.
Invest In Legal Permits, Insurance, And Paperwork
If you want to escape the terrors of law enforcement agencies disrupting your business, you need to get your legal work in time. Not just that, permit and insurance protects your business from harm and hazards.
To get this done, conduct your research or visit the local offices in charge. Gather information concerning their requirements: the documents you’ll need. Then, process them with the help of a legal practitioner.
There is no joy in running a business without business insurance. Certain hazards may jeopardize the smooth running of your facility. But if your business is insured under a government-recognized agency, you’ll have no issues bouncing back in a couple of days.
Protip: Before you commit money in the hands of any agency, make sure they’re certified and recognized as a legal operating body in your locality.
Build Your Team
A formidable team is the honeypot of your business. If you have trained willing hands on your team, they can grease the smooth running of your personal fitness business.
Some hired hands are often unproductive and care less about the progress of the establishment. However, there are yet a few others who are willing to commit time and skills to see that people achieve their goals and get results. These are the kinds of hands you need on your team.
A great personal training team is formed on skills, tenacity, focus, results-oriented, and loyalty. Since you’ll be guiding everyone during team training. You don’t need people who come to only gain and take off like a tornado.
Hence, before you hire anyone on your team, scrutinize them. Find out if they’ve worked elsewhere-if they have, why did they leave? What are they bringing to the table?
Since you may not be able to handle every aspect of the business, you also need accountants to manage the finances. You’ll need people with management skills for the smooth running and management of equipment.
You also need someone great with social media management and digital marketing. All these areas are important for proper organization.
When you’re just starting, you may be able to manage these things on your own or hire one person. However, as soon as the business expands and attracts more clients, you need to put your eyes on the ground for proper recruitment. While you focus on the administrative work or training.
Decide On Your Location And Facility
Some locations are usually occupied by busy people. What this means, is that they seldom visit the gyms except during the weekend. While other locations are mostly busy all day and you’ll often have legs walking in for training sessions.
So, before you pay for any facility, find out the demands of people in that location and how willing they are to spend money on gym registrations.
Likewise, before choosing a facility for your personal training business, ask yourself these questions:
- What type of support does the facility provide? Do they handle any part of the furnishing or do you paint and reconstruct from scratch?
- Do you need to take over a facility formally owned by a personal trainer? This way it’s easier to start on a better foot. This means fewer expenses.
- Will you be sharing the space with others? Or do you need to pay for a self-owned facility?
- Is the facility properly managed? how clean is the environment? What security measures do they have in place?
Establish Your Expertise
This is the most interesting aspect of starting a personal fitness business. Directly related to choosing a target audience, you need to define your expertise.
This is because clients are likely going to relate with someone who has a defined specialty over a versatile personal trainer. Choosing expertise or niche, if you may, doesn’t have to be boring. Ask yourself:
- What skills are you comfortable with?
- What core training helped you achieve results?
- How do you define fun in training?
- What forms of workout sessions do you enjoy?
- How do you intend to help your clients?
- What kind of people do you want to cater to?
This is also the point decide what type of personal trainer you prefer:
- An online personal trainer
- A hybrid personal trainer
- On-demand personal trainer
- At-home personal trainer
- Group personal trainer
- Private personal trainer
You may also want to consider attending to:
- Busy entrepreneurs
- Senior citizens
- Disabled
- Stay at homes
- Individuals on a Weight loss journey
- People going through therapy
- People interested in bodybuilding
It may take some time to figure everything out. However, it is a solid foundation for success in your personal training business.
From day one, you can hit the ground running with your preferred audience. Thus, concentrate on your training to help them achieve their fitness goals.
Furnish Your Facility With The Right Equipment
Choose the necessary and right equipment for your facility. By now, you have defined your target audience and expertise. So, this phase should be easy and fun.
Depending on your choice, you’ll need to furnish the facility with the right equipment for your clients. Your style of training and core exercises will also determine what equipment you need to start with.
Since you’re not running a full gym service, you may not need to buy every exercise gadget. The basic ones will do for a start.
Offer Payment Option And Packages
Versatility is the spice of life. This applies to your payment packages and options as a personal trainer. You’ll often meet clients who need only a template for personal training
Regardless of what service you offer, you need to design your payment method. How do you want clients to pay you for your personal training programs?
Nowadays, you have several payment options: Venmo, Stripe, direct transfer, or Paypal. Carefully, structure your services to meet the commitment fee. Hence you run the risk of running a deficit or scaring clients off with high pricing options.
You can automate payment with platforms like PayPal, Venmo, Square, or any other service so that you can be sure that you are adequately compensated for your time and efforts.
Protip: Always have a versatile choice of payment.
Spread The Word
Here comes the fun part! This is the time to carry out insane publicity for your personal training business.
Whether online or offline, marketing is the bloodline of your personal training business.
Gradually, you may not need to spend so much time on marketing. Once your results start to speak for themselves.