Starting out, a new personal trainer wants to run their own business and learn how to grow a personal training business. This makes sense for anyone who’s passionate about fitness and nutrition–a healthy lifestyle–and wants to make a rewarding career helping others achieve their personal fitness goals. The autonomy and flexibility a new personal trainer sees in their career is motivating and translates well to what it’s like to run your own business. However, making the transition from a personal trainer to a fitness business owner can have some challenges.
Some things that you may not have considered include:
- How will I have time to train and run a business?
- What do I need to know about numbers, reporting, and important metrics in business growth?
- Can I offer the same great fitness services even if I’m not conducting the personal training services?
- How will I manage a team of fitness coaches, keeping them loyal and professional?
If you’re looking to transition from personal trainer to the business owner, you need to consider these questions. And, if you’re already running your own fitness studio, take a deeper dive into these points to make sure you’re doing everything you can to scale the business.
Here, we’ll provide an overview of the critical things you need to do during your transition from a private personal trainer to a flourishing gym owner. The answers lie in four interconnected pillars:
- Automate everything you can
- Make data your friend
- Maintain your personal training systems
- Hire and develop the best personal training team
Automate Personal Training Business Operations
If you’re growing rapidly enough to expand, you’re going to need more time on your hands. At one point, you probably, kept diligent fitness client records, could store in memory client session frequency, had an idea of when a training client was up for renewal, and more. If you’re looking to build out your personal training business, you need to consider what you can scale and how you can centralize information.
You’ll need to rely more heavily on technology for your personal training business because it saves time. You might even feel like you use plenty of fitness tech tools. But are you using them in the most efficient way possible to support your business model? If you haven’t already, you should be using personal training software to automate and centralize operations, even if it’s still a small business.
Here are key things to make running the personal trainer business easier and more time-efficient.
- Centralize Client Information: If you’re using spreadsheets for client data, word docs for fitness assessments, and apps for client nutrition tracking, you’re losing valuable time. Start making operations easier by ensuring all client information is in one central place. You’ll save time from clicking back and forth to entire or review info. Also, you’ll be able to search and find what you need so much faster.
- Automate Mass Client Communications: If you’re going to close on July 4th, have communication that notifies everyone. But, you don’t want to enter every client email address manually. Instead, make sure you can quickly communicate with your entire client base or segmentation of clients. Or, if you want to send out invites to a fitness challenge, client referral incentive program, or other events–make it easy on yourself with one click of a button.
- Consolidate Client Communication Platforms: You might know that one client prefers text messages while another wants an email. Still, others may wish to receive notifications on social media. It’s okay to use different modes of communication depending on the client. It offers a more personal experience and ensures they’ll get the message. It doesn’t work to click from text to email to phone apps. You waste too much time, and client interactions can slip through the cracks. Instead, use personal training software and CRM that integrates all modes of communication (email, text messaging, phone calls, and video messaging).
- Receive Notifications For Important Reminders: You’ll want to receive alerts that require action for prospective clients and existing clients. For example, if you have a lead (potential client) that hasn’t booked their initial consultation training session, this should send you an alert before the prospect goes cold. Likewise, if an existing client messages you that they need to reschedule, this notification should also be at the top of your to-do list. Similarly, renewing an existing client is easier when you know the training session package is expiring in advance. If this is all in one place, with an automated escalation system, you’ll be able to respond to the most important needs quickly.
When each of these needs is all in one place, running your fitness business becomes so much easier. It’s like having a virtual assistant guide you and take the operational weight off your shoulders. Naamly’s personal training software includes all these helpful features- all in one dashboard.
Use Data To Guide Your Personal Training Business
Your small business will grow when you can use data to make informed decisions. For example, you should be tracking:
- Time to convert a prospective client to a new client
- Average lead conversion rate and package price
- Average weekly personal training session frequency
- Behaviors that define an “at-risk” client–one who will drop off or not renew
- At-risk clients who haven’t been active at the gym
- Average pounds lost per fitness client
- Average number of days to achieve an initial fitness goal
- Retention rate
- Average client load per personal trainer (to maintain optimal balance)
All of this information will help you make projections and assumptions about your business. You’ll also be able to find weak areas in which you need to improve, better directing your digital marketing or traditional marketing efforts. Similarly, when you know more about the success of your client, you can use this objective data to establish a niche or attract new clients.
Maintaining Your System Of Personal Trainer Success
A successful personal trainer will want to start their own business. But, a successful business owner doesn’t win because they’re a great fitness coach. What made you a successful personal trainer is a secret ingredient that you need to make part of your fitness business system. While it’s good to have a variety of personal trainers with diverse backgrounds and styles of training, you also need to create a consistent experience for your clients and members.
As much as possible, you should organize the key characteristics, skills, and activities you use with your fitness clients to make them successful and coming back for more. From that list, you can determine what you can make as part of your niche and style of customer service, a development plan for new personal trainers, and an operating system for how your personal training team is expected to interact with clients.
For example, if you included online personal training features like connecting with clients between training days, make this a requirement of your fitness team. You can schedule out different communications you want them to send, frequency of engagement, and style (uplifting, educational, motivational, etc.).
Hire And Develop A Great Personal Training Team
Of the many things a new personal training business owner overlooks–or avoids–is the management of a fitness coach team. Management is easier when you hire the right personal trainers. It’s also more manageable when you have clear expectations for their roles. This is why translating what made you a great personal trainer into the daily tactics you want from your staff is so important. Without it, you’ll have frustration and confusion over why things aren’t working. Likewise, it makes the feedback loop that much more difficult.
When you have a system for your employees to reflect your personal training style, you can find the best team member and hold them accountable for carrying out the task. You should also place expectations on yourself. Consider these points:
- Frequency and types of communication with each trainer (when will you connect and what will you cover)
- Expectations and methods of evaluation (so you both know if they’re doing a great job and, if not, how to improve)
- Professional development (trainers will stay with you longer when they get more than just a paycheck)
You can think of managing a team of trainers similar to how you manage your personal training clients. You’ll set up the rules for engagement, outline the expectations, and implement a plan to help them get better. Creating personal training staff loyalty is the same as building customer loyalty.
Naamly’s product highlights how your team carries out your fitness mission. Since all the client communication will be recorded in the software, you’ll be able to see how, what, and to whom they communicate. This is valuable info to develop them into outstanding trainers. Further, you’ll be able to track their unique client progress, so you can guide them to delivering even better personal training services.
These pillars for transforming from successful personal trainer to growing fitness business owners are the foundations for our personal training software.
Our goal is to make the transition from trainer to owner easier–allowing you to grow your dream business with minimal effort.
We like to consider our platform the MBA of running a fitness business. Except, you don’t need an advanced degree. Instead, you just need the right tools in place to centralize and automate mundane work, use data to make informed decisions, replicate your personal training secret sauce, and develop and retain the best personal trainers in the fitness industry.
Want to see it in action? Schedule a Naamly demo to see how it can work in YOUR fitness business.
Use Naamly’s FREE starter version today! Making the transition from trainer to owner is easier when you adopt the right technology out of the gate.