1 Simple Step to Help Blow Up Your Personal Training Business
There’s certainly no shortage of personal trainers out there today. If you’re in the personal training industry you’re probably smiling and nodding your head in agreement. So how do you stand out? How can you take your current client list and more than double it in a short period of time? I have just the thing to get you there.
If you are a personal trainer, you probably have a wealth of knowledge between your ears. If this isn’t you and you have a certification that means nothing and zero educational backgrounds in anything related to your career, you might just want to stop reading here and check out the classifieds in the newspaper as I can tell you right now, it will be extremely hard for you to be a great and successful trainer in this industry. I’m sorry, but that’s the cold hard facts. You have people who want to be the best at what they do, and then you have people who want to get by with the bare minimum and have high expectations of making a lot of money. If you’re the latter, it’s not in the cards for you—sorry to burst your bubble.
So, for those of you who are still with me, you’re probably wondering what this one simple step is to help blow up your personal training business. It honestly comes down to a one-word answer…
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WRITE! Do This to Blow Up Your Personal Training Business
This is honestly so simple and when I explain to you exactly why I’m telling you to write you’re going to smack yourself. Let me guess, you look back on your day and wonder how you can increase your number of clients? It’s common if your schedule isn’t already full and keeping you busy all day long. You’re a great trainer, but you don’t have enough clients to make this a career that offers a stable income that you can live off of comfortably. Here is where writing comes into the equation.
If you work at a gym or health club (or any variation really), it doesn’t matter if it’s the largest facility in the area or the smallest—you’re going to be slammed with clients soon enough. Writing opens up many doors for you. Let me show you how.
1) Adds credibility to you and your personal training business
You have the knowledge necessary get anyone the results they desire, but not everyone knows what’s going on upstairs in your head. For that reason, when you write articles, it allows you to share some of your health and fitness knowledge and prove that you’re not just some pretty face with muscles. The articles can be as short or as long as you wish, but something to keep into consideration is that you don’t want to give it all away, leave something in the tank to force people to pick up the phone and schedule a session with you. If you give out all of your secrets, it doesn’t give the reader a reason to want to train with you if they already have all the information to follow step by step.
If you write regularly (weekly) it can be an added bonus to your existing client list. Tell them you are now writing weekly content and you would like to share it with them. You can then give them the site or blog information so they can follow your work. Or better yet, create an email list of contacts who opt in for a newsletter you can send out that contains the link to your recent articles. You could even include prospects in the email newsletter in hopes they eventually sign up for some training sessions. If your clients like what you’re writing, they might just share it with their friends and they too can become clients of yours. You should also consider writing e-books. You can publish them on iTunes and grow your personal brand.
2) Creates a much larger reach
At your gym, you can have anywhere from less than 50 clients at a smaller facility to over 1,000 if the facility is HUGE. Most, if not all, of those people will be local to the area. You’re ultimately tying yourself down to a given location/territory and then you have other trainers in the area or gym who are all competing for the same prospects. Stop selling yourself short!
You can only interact and talk to so many people during the day, especially if you have clients during the period in which you’re at the gym. Writing opens up the door for millions of people to see your work and knowledge depending on where your content ends up and the reach it has through that specific platform (website, blog, etc.). If they like what they see/read, it leaves the opportunity for them to reach out to you and set up either in-person personal training or online personal training. Think of the millions of people you can reach across the globe and set up on workout/nutrition programs through simply writing content pieces that shouldn’t take you long at all to write. Online training is a great way to give your income a nice boost and can be done in the convenience of your own home or anywhere to be totally honest.
Also, don’t forget to market your content on your social media platforms. This is a great way to engage your friends and followers who could turn into clients of yours.
3) Additional income
I don’t think you’d complain if you could write an article that not only helps you market yourself and reach a broader audience, but also gets you paid for your educational content piece? I like to call that a win-win. If you find time to write even just one article every week, that gives you 52 opportunities to bring in new clients as well as get paid for your time (meaning you get paid for your article) which isn’t a bad gig.
Something that needs to be touched on is the availability of paying content gigs. It might be difficult at first to find someone who is willing to pay for your content. Don’t give up, keep reaching out to different publications to try and get your work featured. It might take some time of giving up free content until you build a name for yourself as a writer. Don’t feel as though this is a waste of time. What you are still doing is building your “brand” which is ultimately your name and reputation in the industry. You can still engage new personal training clients by giving out free content to be published somewhere—or even on your own website or blog where you can also be promoting your training services.
7 Tips to Beef Up Your Personal Training Business
Are you a personal trainer who is either just getting started or a veteran in the game looking to take your personal training business to the next level? Below I have formed seven tips that you can implement today to start beefing up your business.
1. Never Stop Learning
One way to stay ahead of the curve is to constantly perfect your craft. How do you do that? By learning new techniques and methods. New ways to target a muscle. New ways to effectively burn fat. New ways to train athletes to help them perform at an elite level. You get the point.
Whatever niche you are in from a personal training business standpoint, find ways to improve your skillset. Maybe it’s going to get new certifications? Maybe it’s taking courses to increase your overall knowledge of the human body and how it works or even nutrition courses to add another level of authority in your space? Bottom line, never stop learning. Things change all the time, and you want to be in front of movements and training concepts.
2. Get Social
You don’t have to put your personal training business on local billboards as you did in yesteryears. Don’t bother with radio spots. Skip the flyers on windshields. What you need to put your focus on is growing your audience on social media (especially if your personal training business is online).
Related Article: Personal Training Secrets the Successful Don’t Want You to Know
Put content out on Instagram, Facebook, and even LinkedIn to help build your credibility. The more value you bring, the more people will respect you and see you as an authority in the industry. When this happens, you can grow your business with minimal effort from a financial need. Social media is free, and you have the ability to market your business how you wish. Where else can you get that type of exposure without paying a penny?
3. Be “Write” About Things
Do you have a blog on your website? You do have a website, right? Use it to your advantage rather than it simply being a boring landing page pushing your services. Leverage your ability to educate and add value through the use of a blog. Write articles (preferably weekly) and publish them on your site. Then, utilize your social media to promote your articles.
By writing content in a blog format, you can help bring people over to your website to read your informative content. Now, it’s not going to instantly bring you exponential new clients, but in the long term, it will work in your favor. They say you need to engage with someone a minimum of seven times before they trust you enough to make a purchase or sign up for your services. Blog articles published with a push on social media can effectively help grow your personal training business.
4. Think Long-Term Strategy
Some clients go to you week to week without purchasing a package of sessions. That’s perfectly fine. However, you also risk that person leaving you or falling off the wagon after a couple of weeks. That’s where thinking along the lines of a long-term strategy can help build your business and create a steady source of income.
Think about how many sessions you want to bulk into a package and discount the price slightly from your single-session pricing. Maybe it’s six sessions? Maybe it’s twelve sessions? Maybe more? This will incentivize people to purchase a package and (hopefully) stay committed.
In the contract for the package, explain that the cost is upfront, and should they quit, there will be no refunds. What this does is gives you a safety net, so you aren’t out money, along with forcing the individual to show up or lose out on the money they would pay you. Additionally, it provides a level of accountability for the client.
This also allows you to hopefully keep clients for several weeks or months, depending on the duration of the package. It also helps you build out your schedule for the next several weeks.
5. Referral Program
Do your clients love you? Do they always talk you up to their friends? Why not incentivize them with a referral program that benefits all parties? Should a client bring you a new client, reward them with a free session, discounted session, gift card, or whatever you feel is a great way to say thank you. Then for the new client, maybe you give them a free first session or a discounted rate?
What do you get in return from the referral program? Growth for your personal training business. The more people they refer, the more they and you get in return. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.
6. Name Your Own Unique Exercise
Do you have an exercise that you tweaked and works effectively? Name it! Think of the trainers out there who have their own exercise named after them going viral. The Meadows Row comes to mind, which was created by the great John Meadows.
Creating your own exercise is a great way to grow your personal training business, as it sets you apart from all of the other personal trainers out there. Creating points of differentiation is a great way to start having people look at you as an authority. A great way to help your exercise go viral is to shoot a video demonstration of it and put it on platforms like YouTube and whatever social media accounts you have. Make sure those posts are “public” and are able to be shared.
7. Do a Competition Yourself
The last tip I have on how to beef up your personal training business is for you, yourself, to jump on the competitive stage. While not a requirement, it’s always a good idea to put yourself out there showing off your physique. However, I feel all the above should take priority over this as there are many competitors out there who, after jumping on a stage, wake up the next morning as self-proclaimed personal trainers and really have zero knowledge of how to effectively help and train clients.
If you step on stage and regardless of whether you place or not (let’s be honest, most people outside of the fitness industry have no interest in following placings or even competitions), make sure you post your images online. You can also put them on your website if you market them tastefully and not in a conceited manner.
Doing a competition when you’re a personal trainer can help show you walk the walk and talk the talk. While it’s not a for-sure way to build your personal training business (and not a method I would put all your focus on), it definitely does not hurt your marketing efforts.
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