Make More Money Personal Training
How can you make more money personal training? You love it, you love helping people. You know how to make people’s lives better but don’t know how to make a living doing it. During the 25 years I’ve been a personal trainer, hired, trained, and been a business coach for trainers this is the one common denominator among us all. At one point I went back to grad school because I didn’t want to sell. Oddly, enough I ended up teaching, coaching fitness sales not long after grad school.
You can make more money personal training, starting this week, by first committing to it. Then decide which one or two of these moves you’re not doing (or ones you are that you’re not positioning or nurturing) and focus!
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Raise your rates
Christie Miller became a fitness and health coach after a career in law. Her comment after a growing pains in business was, “It’s surprising how much easier it is to sell a $997 product [than one half as much].” Make more money personal training by valuing the transformation you provide.
Your conditioning and relationship with money either enhances your ability to make money personal training (coaching, nutrition counseling, etc.). But your money mindset is not stuck wherever it is now. You can change it.
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Train more hours
This isn’t necessarily the route most trainers want to go. Yet if you’re really not taking your personal training business seriously and dedicated to filling specific hours you’ll struggle no matter which methods you use to grow your revenue. Get full to make more money personal training in the beginning so you can raise your rate due to demand in the future.
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Train pairs
Partner training doesn’t double your revenue at first glance, but if you added some of the other upsell, and affiliate promotions to this model, it could. Partners pay 60% – 70% of private client rates. So if you earn $100 for a single private, you’ll earn $120 – $140 for a partner training sessions.
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Team train
Team training is basically small group training of like-minded and ability level individuals. You can set days and times and the focus. Then take your private rate and increase it by 50%. If you want to make $150 per hour, then a team of three clients would each pay $50 and a team of four clients would each pay $37.50. The more specialized the training the better. Set up training for golf performance enhancement, or bone density, for instance so that group members are very similar in goals, status, and motivation.
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Group train
Larger group members will pay much less to attend but you should ultimately make at least twice your usual per hour rate. Make sure you determine how many you need in a large group to make your revenue goal and don’t stop until you reach it. Consider cancelling or letting interested members know this opportunity is only available if you fill the session, so they too will be motivated to find participants. Make more money personal training more people in less time.
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Virtual train
Add online services to what you’re doing. If you’ve got to be home when kids get off the bus, or are waking up, or some other conflict means you can’t be in the gym, health and fitness coaching is possible from anywhere with a phone or an internet connection. If you haven’t tapped into that revenue stream yet, you’re missing out.
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Train online
This is similar but different. Services can include anything from offering self-assessments, group training, live or recorded videos, accountability, nutrition support, emotional eating guidance, and so much more.
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Teach an online course
A course is something you can do many ways but the biggest advantage is you can build it once and then it’s ongoing revenue. It can be a solo offer, or coupled with your face-to-face assessments and services. People are busy. Eliminating the commute can mean you are far more attractive to far more customers.
If you offer a bootcamp for instance and charge $200 and you coupled an online nutrition component that offered recipes, sample meals, grocery lists within your scope that was $29, for every 100 people in bootcamp you have the opportunity to add $2900 in revenue without doing anything.
Or what if you offered this at your Point of Sale when a membership is purchased? Within the course materials you tease a personal training program. What other opportunities for a do-it-once and profit many times service are you missing?
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Upsell complimentary services
Clients who train with you are likely candidates for nutrition services. They will benefit from massage. They may need swimming lessons to provide exercise they can do with an injury or condition. Whether you directly provide these additional services or you earn commission for referring them, they each help both the customer and you. Make more money personal training without even having to deliver more services by strategic upsells that you can earn from.
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Affiliate for other services
If the services you refer people to offer a way for you to earn a commission from referral this is a source of revenue too. It may be small but passively earning additional revenue adds up. A health food coop that charges membership dues may be willing to offer affiliate commission if you’re sending a significant number of customers. If you don’t offer massage, or nutrition consultation, or lab testing, but you refer clients to these services, establish relationships with these experts and ask about affiliate relationships. Usually this simply means you get a trackable link to share with your customers. (An upcoming article I authored for ACE Fitness Business describes Affiliate opportunities in depth – it will be published summer of 2018).
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Recruit affiliates for your services
Basically this is #10 in reverse. If you have any businesses or influencers referring customers to you, it may be worth it to incentivize them to do it more often if they are 5-10% for each referral. If you’re reaching customers you otherwise would not because of someone else’s share then it’s worth it to provide them a small perk. This requires setting up some behind-the-scenes content but it’s a one-time thing with less ongoing maintenance, unless its wildly successful and worth more time.
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Coach other professionals
Have you been successful? Do you have a consistent track record and systems that would make it possible for someone to repeat exactly what you’ve done in their business? If so, why not share it with others in a business-to-business training? Create a train-the-trainer package, course, or workshops. Teach others how to make more money personal training.
What’s really in the way?
You probably have the answer to what would help you make more money personal training. It’s probably not the one you default to. Having kids is really not a reason. It’s in fact, quite a reason to be making more when you’re away from them. It’s not that you live in a small area or you’re just getting started. Small rural areas can be easier while you have less competition and be full of older adults. New is “news” and you can do very well if you capitalize on it. Is what’s blocking you one of these?
- Do you need one of these additional revenue streams?
- Do you need a better offer – so it’s irresistible when you present it to the right person?
- Or do you need a shift in your relationship with money?
If it’s the latter, and it is for so many of us that – at least first – Deborah Fryer is hosting interviews with fitness professionals who’ve made big changes around their own money mindset. Learn more here.
