What makes you the personal trainer that clients come to see? You’re a personal trainer in a market saturated with probably dozens of local personal trainers.

What sets you apart?

If you don’t have an answer to the question, you might want to spend some time thinking about it. And for your reading enjoyment, here’s one idea.

Visions of Sugarplums Danced in Their Heads

You guide clients in their exercise regimes. You motivate them. You help them meet your goals.

If you’re good, you might even tell your clients what to eat. And if you’re anything like me, you’re probably recommending a high quality, organic, raw, sprouted rice protein shake with almond butter and flax seed oil, and a steaming cup of organic, fair-trade coffee for breakfast.

Duh. Isn’t that what we all want for breakfast?

Here’s the thing: your clients are not personal trainers. If they were, they wouldn’t need a personal trainer. With that in mind, you have to step back and think like a client instead of a personal trainer. The majority of your clients are motivated by their goals.

They have a vision of their final state. But they also have visions of sugarplums dancing in their head. And by sugarplums, I mean beer, wings, and chocolate. Read more…

So you know what nutritional supplements are, but you’re probably wondering what the heck you have in common with Dutch Speed Skater Sven Kramer, Olympic gold medalist in the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Allow me to show you the comparison between you and Sven: (1) You didn’t win Olympic Gold in the Men’s 10,000-meter Speed Skating event, and (2) You could earn income via product sponsorships.

A Different Kind of Gold

Okay, to be fair, you probably weren’t even in the running for the Men’s 10k Speed Skate. And since you didn’t win, like Sven, you sadly lost out on about a half a million dollars. But I’m not here to tell you how to win Olympic gold medals in Vancouver.

As a fitness instructor, you probably already know what it takes to reach that level of competition, and it starts at a much younger age than you are now (assuming you’re legally old enough to have a job.) Not to mention, it’s way too late to get qualified for Vancouver.

However, I *am* here to tell you how to make a bunch of gold – of the cash and coin variety – without really trying, and it’s all related to fitness product sponsorships. Read more…

By now, we’ve been shoulder-deep in recession (and snow, for a good chunk of the United States) for way too long. It feels like forever, and it’s getting old.

Even though you know it’s good exercise, you’re still thinking that if you have to get that shovel out one more time, you’re going to break it in half across your knee and jam the splinters into the snowman in your neighbor’s yard.

And you’re thinking that if one more client stiffs you out of his or her bill, you’re going to break that client across your knee and jam the splinters into one of those coin-counters at the grocery store.

Sob Stories

You hear sob story after sob story about why clients can’t pay, why they just need you to be patient one more month, or they promise to come back to you when they can afford it. So you continue to close accounts, even though you know they really want your help and most of them would probably pay if they could.

Meanwhile, other potential clients would really love your services but they never walk through your door in the first place, because hiring a personal trainer is just too expensive. The sad truth is that you’ve got bills to pay, too, and you need all the clients you can get.

Admittedly, paying clients are the best kind. Therefore, you need all the “paying” clients you can get. Read more…

If you want to make more money as a personal trainer and enjoy what you are doing a lot more, run it like a business.

You already know how to organize and run a training session, that’s what you do, after all. What you should do is learn to organize your fitness business so it runs as well as those personal training sessions. For your clients, your goals are to provide guidance on them reaching their goals and give them an education on strength training, cardio and nutritional.

You give them a reason to show up at the fitness center and you make them accountable, while showing them how to track their progress. Do the same for your business.

Develop a Business Plan

Every successful business has a business plan made up of all the elements necessary to achieve the goals of the business. That main goal of any commercial business plan is to make a profit so the business is sustainable. The plan does not have to be some long-winded treatise with a lot of marketing buzz-words. It only has to lay out the basic goals and what you have to do to achieve them. The business plan is made up of a lot of sub-plans, much like your training sessions are made up of different exercises to tone and condition body parts. Your plan should include the following:

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Have you ever thought of marketing your fitness business to Seniors?

This niche could fill in all of the “dead-time” in your schedule. Of all the market segments in the fitness and personal training industry, there is one group of people that will work their schedule to fit yours – Senior Citizens.

Retired seniors in particular have a lot of available time, particularly during the day. Enterprising personal fitness trainers can fill in the blanks in their schedule of corporate training sessions, fitness classes and one-on-ones with the busy executives by offering special classes for retirees, classes that are tailored for their needs and physical limitations. Senior classes could be put together to fill in mornings and afternoons, when most clients are still at work.

The seniors market will run the gamut from fit-as-a-fiddle to couch-potato-with-health-issues, but programs may be devised to achieve their fitness goals. Most seniors will appreciate low-impact exercises and those that don’t overextend their arthritic joints, but there will be those occasional very fit septuagenarians who have been athletic all of their lives. These folks will have maintained some semblance of fitness and are capable of handling a more strenuous regimen. The only cautionary note is to warm them up first, then get them stretching before launching into the program.

Marketing to Seniors

Some of the means of marketing to seniors are through many of the organizations that cater to that crowd. Also, it may be possible to establish a relationship with assisted living centers to provide morning and afternoon sessions for their residents. Not only will you be building your business during normally unproductive hours, but you will be performing a service for these aging people as well.

Special Considerations for Senior Fitness

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Your Personal Trainer Business Needs a Trim Budget

A personal trainer business should not require a huge budget – it doesn’t have to. The fitness business is about marketing your unique skills to clients, and helping them achieve their personal goals.

Having low overhead costs allows you to profit without having to charge your customers unreasonable fees. However, marketing can be a massive black hole that eats infinite money if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Don’t let yourself fall into this trap. With the right knowledge you can market your personal training business without spending a fortune.

Social Media Marketing Can Promote Your Personal Trainer Business Within Your Budget

Everyone loves social networking websites. Facebook, Twitter, and the like have taken over the Internet, and chances are most of your clients and potential clients are on them.

Your customers enjoy telling people what they’re up to, or bragging about their favorite products to friends. When your clients can easily talk about your personal trainer business on a status update, their pictures become testimonials to how effective your services really are. When they upload new pictures and family and friends see the changes in body fat and lean muscle, they’ll have good reason to tell everyone how much you helped them. This provides social proof that your fitness business delivers real results. Seeing is believing.

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You Can’t Sell Just Anything

There’s a real problem with being a personal trainer that tries to go the extra mile. You want to get the best results possible for your client, and that means more than just exercise advice. You’re their source for nutrition and even some lifestyle choices, but most importantly you should be their source for fitness supplements.

At the same time, you need to make a living. What you need is a product that can work for you and your client, not a product that you work for. You need to get with a company that is as reputable as you are. You need to show your clients a supplement that has helped professional athletes and millions of other users, which can now be of help to them.

Good Enough for Them, Good Enough for You

Call it professional suicide when you start recommending products that you wouldn’t take yourself. Your level of fitness advertises the results that are possible for your clientèle. In a similar way, the supplements that you take personally are also advertised to your clients. Your own use proves they work. But how about a product line that has been used by world class athletes? Professional athletes? Olympic athletes?

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Personal Trainer Nutrition Pays.

When you are involved in fitness marketing, you may underestimate the value of enhancing your service with personal trainer nutrition. However, you know a good workout delivers the best results in combination with the right blend of fitness supplements. But there are too many products out there that are ineffective or even harmful. Your clients deserve the best products that offer proven results.

When someone commits to hours of training each week, workout supplements are an inevitable expense. Your clients will buy these products anyway, so why wouldn’t you want to help them get exactly what they need, and supplement your income at the same time?

When you find exceptional products and a company that has integrity and rewards you for promoting their supplements, you can improve the quality of your personal trainer service while introducing a new revenue stream.

Personal Trainer Nutrition Must Improve the Quality of Your Service

Ineffective products will not yield results for your clients, and could put your reputation on the line. You don’t want to hustle some supplement that doesn’t work. However, you also want to provide options that help you generate residual income. Proper research is the key to finding products that really help your clients reach their goals.
Here are some tips that will aid in your quest to make money with personal trainer nutrition:

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If you’ve been going solo, the idea of hiring someone to work for you may seem daunting. There are so many considerations. Should you hire employees on a contractual or payroll basis? What should you pay? Should you offer benefits? How do you find the right person for the job?

Reservations aside, if you’ve reached your capacity as a business, meaning that you simply can’t take on any new clients because your schedule is cram-packed already, then it might be time to consider hiring. Let’s answer some of the questions above to get you started thinking about your business expansion.

Contract versus Payroll

Contracting your employees is much simpler than putting them on the payroll. For starters, you don’t have to worry about social security, Medicare, or income tax withholding. Your employees are strictly self-employed contractors who invoice you for services rendered, and you pay them like any vendor. Contracting also offers the employee the benefits of self-employment, such as deducting mileage to and from work.

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You’ve tried everything. You’ve bent over backwards to keep this client happy, from taking calls at two in the morning to rescheduling appointments to letting him delay his payment just one more week – over and over and over again. You’ve tried writing a policy document, which the client was willing to sign, but he’s still not complying with your rules. He’s taking all your time and energy, and you’ve had enough.

It’s time to let go. What are your next steps? How to go about terminating the relationship with this client depends on your personality.

The Direct Approach

If you’re the direct type, you might just tell it to him straight. You’ve got your list of complaints, so just lay it out there. Tell him that he’s taking all of your time, that he’s not paying on time, and that you’re losing money on his business. If you haven’t had the conversation before, he might try convince you that he’ll pay tomorrow. It’s up to you whether you’ll give him that one more chance, based on your history. When and if you decide that he’s out of chances, you might want to tell him that he’ll be receiving a final invoice or statement in the mail. If he still owes you money, you want to track that down.

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