As a fitness expert it might be your goal to share your knowledge with others in order to help them stay healthy or get in shape. If that is the case then you might be well suited to a career in personal training. But, you should also know that if you work in a gym as a personal trainer, the frugal pay and the tough competition with other trainers may make your life difficult. Soon you may forget your noble mission of building a fitter world and have to scrap for your own survival. This is expressly why starting a personal training business is a much better idea for you.
What it Takes…
The main attraction of becoming an independent personal trainer is that there is negligible initial investment involved. This is because you do not have to purchase equipment or rent a place to build a gym. You simply drive down to your clients’ home and train them with their own equipment.
But before starting a personal training business you need to consider the following factors which will help you understand that it is more than just sets and reps that are involved.
You will need to deal with different kinds of people, some of whom may just hate to exercise. You need to make sure that you can help them achieve their fitness goals or else your reputation might take a hit.
You will need to be self motivated and highly organized to make every hour of personal training that you impart, productive for yourself and your clients.
You will need to do a fair bit of marketing in order to maintain a steady growth in clientele and also make sure that you do not lose any.
Getting Hold of Clients
This is perhaps the biggest challenge you face when you are starting a personal training business. Here are some ideas that can help you overcome this hurdle:
Working part time at your local gym may be the only way you can get clients without spending a dime. Remember, that your goal is to impress clients who may then choose to hire you as their personal trainer. When you get a sufficient number of clients, simply leave the gym and focus on developing your personal training business. So not only do you get a lot of positive ‘word of mouth’, you can also earn some money until you have built up a decent client list.
You can print business cards and newsletters at very cheap rates from your local printers or sites such as VistaPrint. You can then leave your newsletter containing useful articles about fitness and health together with your contact information, at the local clinics and doctors’ chambers.
Inexpensive forms of advertisements may also be very helpful when you are starting a personal training business. So you can try to get a Google Adwords or Yahoo Search marketing account in order to make yourself visible to people who search online for personal trainers in your area.
You can also list yourself in as many free online yellow pages as you can.
Hopefully, you now have a clear picture of the basics of starting a personal training business. Try out the ideas discussed above and soon you may be in the middle of a really profitable venture!
Author Resource:
Chris McCombs owns http://www.kickbacklife.com/ where he offers fitness marketing advice to boot camp instructors and personal trainers.