Developing a Successful Personal Trainer Business Plan

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:

Mission Statement

What you want to accomplish with your business should be laid out in a one paragraph, i.e. “I want to work at something I enjoy and I’m good at and make enough income to support myself (and family) in a comfortable manner. I will focus on and grow my business by providing a service appreciated by my clients. I would like to expand when the opportunity is created by my efforts and eventually employ other trainers.”

Financial Plan

Most personal training businesses don’t require much in the way of venture capital beyond advertising costs and business cards. If you plan on opening your own facility instead of working with local fitness centers and corporate clients, you will require capital to lease space, acquire equipment and provide daily operating funds, you will have to develop a plan to acquire the money and a schedule of how to pay it back.

Depending on your funds and risk tolerance, you may want to start small with less overhead and keep your business simple.

Marketing Plan

You should explore every means of attracting customers to your service. This may be done by affiliating with one or more fitness centers where you will train their clients for an hourly fee. You will also have to promote your business to attract your own clients.

You can make an arrangement with your local clubs to receive a percentage of any business you attract to their membership rolls by your services. You can devise promotions to create a flow of “hot prospects (more on that in a later blog).

Your promotions should focus on what makes you different from the rest of the herd. Tell them why they should use your services: Your expertise, the results achieved, testimonials, that you make it fun and how you encourage your clients.

Market Demographics

You should know your competition, what they charge and how much you can expect to receive for your services. You should also know the socio-economic make-up of your market area: Average income, types of professions and business represented by the population, the number of residents and any other data available.

Business Reporting

Just as your clients should keep a record of their program and the results they realize, you should accurately record your business results by keeping a business ledger that lists income and expenses. This will serve to tell you how you are doing, and it will also help you prepare tax returns.

Follow The Plan

When your plan is ready, take action; initiate the plan and stick to it.

More detail will be provided on each aspect of running your personal trainer business in future blogs. Each area will be covered and suggestions offered on marketing approaches, generating leads and how to handle them.

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