Have you always had a passion for fitness? Perhaps it’s time to turn this passion into profit. Becoming a personal trainer is not only a good business idea but also an opportunity to make a fulfilling impact on the lives of others who are striving to improve themselves.
A personal trainer is someone who assists customers in reaching their fitness and health goals. They either work at a health club gym or fitness centre, or own their own business. These individuals are certified in a personal trainer certification, sports science degree or similar. It is wise to be certified, not just becoming a coach because you like to gym. This is important for the safety of yourself and others.
Types of Personal Training Businesses
When you are investigating what type of business your personal fitness coaching will be. Here are a few to investigate.
1. In-house personal training
2. One-on-one personal training
3. Group training
4. Multi-trainer
5. Online personal training
Always Start With Research
Research is vital as the information collected will direct the rest of your steps. Research should answer the following questions:
- Who is your ideal client?
- What type of fitness coaching are they interested in?
- Are they looking for a coach to come to their house or to go to a facility?
This will tell you what type of services you will offer, whether or not you need to find a physical location for your business, and if you need to invest in equipment or not. Equipment can be expensive, so on top of rent, you will need to consider the cost of obtaining specialised equipment such as rowing machines, but if your clients aren’t interested in this type of exercise, you don’t need to purchase it either.
Compliance and Legal Regulations
You need to set up your business by registering a company, registering for tax and opening a business account. Always keep your personal finances separate from your business finances.
During this process, invest in liability insurance. Fitness equals activity, and clients can easily become injured. It thus protects your business against liability claims if you are covered. Once again, being a certified personal trainer helps in this process, because it shows that you weren’t reckless and caused injuries out of ignorance.
Work with a law practitioner to create service agreements that will waive your liability as well as outline what services you are agreeing to.
Tailor Your Offering
Your offering can consist of anything as long as it shows that you understand your target audience and their fitness goals.
You can consider offering a set workout routine, or you can work closely with your clients in developing a plan that works for them. This includes the strictness of the programme, the number of days you see them per week, the type of exercises you help them with, as well as the goals they have (such as running a marathon, living healthier or weight loss).
This offering also includes whether or not you need to provide equipment (if you go to their houses), and you can even add specialised add-ons like meal plan recommendations.
Pricing and Payments
Pricing and the strategy behind it are important parts of any business. When you work for yourself, you risk undercharging clients for the time you put in. A personal trainer, for example, doesn’t start and stop working when the client’s session is in progress. Instead, the time spent on administrative tasks, developing a workout plan and even learning new skills all count as work. Yet, a client won’t understand if you bill them for these tasks. It’s therefore important that you include the value of your services per hour or type of service.
Additionally, you need to consider how you will receive payment. Your options include EFTs, Cash, Debit Orders or even payment services such as a gateway or POS system.
Booking software that integrates with payment gateways is a useful way to not only make the booking process streamlined and easy, but also to conveniently collect payments.
Marketing And Make Money
Finally, market your business so you can start generating an income. Again, working from the research you have collected, you should know which places your clients frequent. This can be physical places, such as shopping malls, where you can place marketing materials, or via social media, where you can employ a combination of targeted advertising and organic social media engagement. E-mail marketing might not benefit you if you don’t have a database of clients to market to yet.
