There are so many benefits of opening your own personal trainer business you may find yourself overwhelmed on when and how to begin. The truth is, like any other business, there are essentials to get down in order to make your business thrive from day one.
But there may be no better time to turn your passion into your income if you are a personal trainer. Fitness and weight loss are currently worth more than $60 billion annually in the United States alone.
With an online personal trainer business, you can tap into a global market as well. With a great blog and a heightened social media presence, you can also appeal to fitness buffs around the world!
But as they say, a house is only as strong as its foundation. Just like strong legs are the key to a winning physique!
Let's make sure you are getting your business started right. Here's our handy guide to make sure your personal trainer business soars:
1. Consider Your Brand
So many personal trainers scramble to start their business. They see the big potential for earnings and jump in with both feet.
But just like a new exercise in the gym, you need to have goals and proper form to make the process work for you. Before you rush out and build a website or start marketing your services, it's important to understand your brand.
While there is much money to be made in personal training, it's also a competitive industry. Rest assured, you aren't the only one trying to capitalize on the public's desire to get in better shape.
The best way to get competitive is to ask yourself what your brand is. Are you trying to appeal to seniors? Or are you hoping to work with the future Arnold Amateur USA Champions?
The answers to the type of business you are trying to build-- an online platform, a small local boutique, or a training center for athletes-- will help you build your brand.
A brand is more than having an iconic logo or a catch phrase. It is the mission and goal of your company.
Stay true to your brand in all of the building of your personal trainer business and you may be surprised at how easy the rest falls in place.
And there is no better way to build your brand than playing to your strengths.
2. Play To Your Strengths
All of us can have stretch goals. This is true in training as well as in life.
But in terms of getting your personal trainer business off the ground, it is important to play to your strengths.
If you study the hottest fitness Instagram stars you will notice they all have unique strengths. This is also true in any facet of a business.
Are you better one-on-one or in group settings? Do you excel in working with those who need to lose weight or build mass?
Take a good inventory of your experience in personal training and fitness. In addition to your brand and mission, you will build a personal trainer business by getting honest about your strengths and weaknesses from day 1.
Knowing your strengths is similar to knowing your most comfortable parts and exercises in training. It doesn't mean you neglect other body parts or your cardio routine.
But it means you have a good starting point to build a well-rounded personal trainer business.
3. Have the Necessary Background
Have you ever watched someone train at the gym who was trying to handle too much weight? Or maybe you've watched someone do an exercise with the worst form possible.
What usually happens is they get hurt. The same can be true if you aren't ready yet to open a personal trainer business.
First and foremost you will want to have the necessary certifications. Even if you are limiting your business to online personal training, you will want to be certified in some form of personal training.
Not there yet? Don't worry.
You can build your brand, begin your outreach on social media, and start working toward that certificate.
But in terms of starting to train others, you will want to hold off. Understanding the liability of personal training is part of owning a business.
It's one thing to watch someone in the gym doing an exercise improperly. It's something else altogether if you are the one who guided their form.
Having a personal training certification will help you be a better trainer and also help shed the legal liability of owning your own business.
The last thing you want to do is hurt someone you are trying to train. You also don't want to leave yourself open to costly lawsuits.
4. Get Insurance for Your Personal Trainer Business
If you have the necessary training and background you are almost ready to start working with others. But slow down before you start giving out tips to people in person or over the web.
One of the basics of having any company is being insured. This will be part of your overhead costs and a requirement for protecting you and your company.
Business insurance doesn't have to be costly and can be very simple. Asking yourself some basic questions about insurance with a broker will get you covered easily.
5. Study the Competition
One of the best ways to make gains in the gym is to study what works best. We watch the people with great abs and ask what their secret is.
Or, if you see someone with a killer cardio routine you naturally want to know more. The same is true when it comes to opening your own personal trainer business.
Plus, the last thing you want to do is learn about the competition too late. Too many fitness enthusiasts just jump into training as if it were the only important thing about the business.
But a personal trainer business is like everything else. You need to understand the market before you begin to sell.
This study will help you hone your brand, learn your strengths, and begin to form a marketing plan. If there are 3 other trainers in the same square mile who are catering to young athletes is that really going to be your niche?
The answer may be yes. But if so, you need to learn as much from the competitive landscape as possible.
Studying the competition is as important as getting honest with yourself about your personal strengths and weaknesses. You'll know what to build on, what to avoid, and which strategies are winners.
Plus, you aren't limited by geography. With digital marketing and digital research, you can learn as much about successful personal trainer business practices around the globe as you can from the business down the street.
6. Study Your Potential Clients
Understanding your brand and your competition all serves a greater purpose. It allows you to study your potential clients.
If you know the types of clients you will cater to, do you know how they like to buy? What motivates the type of client you are hoping will be the bread and butter of your company?
Or, which customers will be the protein and carbs if you prefer.
There is an unprecedented ability to do research on the buying habits of your customers with digital marketing. You can tailor your blog and digital marketing content with your web traffic in mind.
But even before you get to the digital marketing stage, it's important to know what makes your clients tick. This can be as simple as asking questions of friends at your local gym.
However, using resources like Reddit to see the hot topics in fitness, or doing an informal query to your Facebook network might let you learn a lot.
Knowing what questions, concerns, and interests your potential clients-- and people like your potential clients-- have will help you enter the market prepared.
7. Become an Expert
Once you know more about yourself, your brand, and the competition, you can begin to market yourself as an expert. For individuals who are opening their own personal training company, they become the face of their brand.
One of the reasons it is so important to know what your potential clients are looking for is that these topics can be the ones you address.
Planet Fitness is a great example of a fitness company that sought to answer a client need. Their "judgment free" gyms cater to a clientele who was intimidated by traditional ideas of fitness.
The marketing campaign is such a success they've expanded it to include a "judgment free" zone from the outside world.
They've become experts in offering a solution to the problems of their potential clients. You can become an expert too.
Using social media, blogs, and your website, you can offer content that appeals to the type of client who you will leverage to build your business and brand.
Becoming an expert doesn't mean hitting the books more or inventing some new fitness regimen like Tae-Bo.
Rather, becoming an expert means offering a consistent solution and reliable source for your current and potential clients.
8. Leverage Digital Media
If you've built the foundation of your brand, you have the solid base to create a successful personal trainer enterprise. You should now know your message and know what to present on digital media.
There are a variety of free forums to pursue before investing heavily in digital marketing. These include social media platforms, blogs, and your website.
It's important to recognize that your content needs to be interesting, pertinent, and helpful if it will help your marketing campaign. Everything you do online can either build or diminish you and your brand from here on out.
One of the best ways to leverage digital media is to make use of video content. On social media, this can include live video.
But video content is also great for your website and blog. Video content is expected to make up 74% of all internet traffic in 2017.
For a personal trainer business, there are endless possibilities to creating video content. You can give tutorials, reviews, interviews, and do question and answer sessions.
Keep the content short, on point, and shareable to pack a true marketing punch. Your web visitors will reward you in a number of ways as a result.
Great video content boosts your site SEO, creates inbound links, and gives clients content to share on social media.
One of the ways you can make yourself an expert is by making your clients stars. Their friends will see the success stories and come clamoring for more information on you.
9. Build Your Back Office
A back office doesn't have to include a huge staff. In fact, you can be your own back office resource all on your own with digital tools.
But it can be a real mistake to not consider the realities of running a business. You already have insurance and have considered liabilities.
Now is the time to also consider billing, payment, taxes, licenses, and memberships. Charging a fair market price for your services also needs to include covering your costs.
With platforms like Paypal, it has never been easier to accept payments. But before you start charging customers you need to know the basics of your rates, how you process payments, and how much to put aside for tax time.
If you don't have a solid process for signing clients and retaining them when it comes to the nuts and bolts of finance management your business could suffer in the long run.
Hammer your back office out before your first client starts stretching.
Keep Ahead of the Game
It can seem overwhelming to leverage your passion for fitness into a career. But there are few things as rewarding as becoming a successful entrepreneur.
Still, why not make it as easy as possible to stay ahead of the competition?
XeroFit can help you skyrocket your personal trainer business ahead of the competition starting today.
You can manage workouts with your videos, your workouts, and your own unique business brand using XeroFit.
For the benefit of your clients, you can easily build workouts, leverage technology, and create a fitness library using XeroFit. Plus, you'll keep your clients coming back for more.
Don't wait to get the best tools for your personal trainer business. Join XeroFit for free now.