Uncovering the Hidden Problems in Your Personal Training Business

You begin training early and are willing to take clients into the evening — you've even built up a solid client base. But unless you're taking a strategic, top-down approach to running your personal training business, you'll end up compromising your long-term success. In The E-Myth Revisited, author Michael Gerber tells the story of how Ray Kroc, a man who had never flipped a burger in his life, approached two brothers at a hamburger stand and asked about franchising their business. Go ahead, the brothers responded—they had already tried, to no avail. Ray Kroc went on to become chairman of the board of a multimillion-dollar corporation: McDonald's. What did Kroc do differently from the original owners? The brothers were too busy running the day-to-day operations to work on growing their business. Instead of working in the business, Kroc worked on it. Many personal training business owners run into the same problem the McDonald's brothers did: they become so wrapped up in the pressing tasks of the day like training clients that they simply don't have time for business development. They get to the club and before they know it they're busy doing sessions, designing programs, handling payments and hand-holding clients. Some can't see the big picture; others can't make time to address it. In some respects, their personal training business is running them. Sound familiar? If so, take a page from Ray Kroc: start analyzing your business from the outside in. Here's how to pinpoint the problems that could be compromising the long-term health of your business. Break down your personal training business Every personal training business can be broken down into four main areas, each of which significantly impacts your success: 1. Finding clientsrn2. Bringing in clientsrn3. Managing the personal training businessrn4. Servicing clients To analyze each of these areas, you need to understand which activities fall into each area and answer the following questions: How exactly do I want to run this area? Is it running the way I want it to? If not, what problems am I having? What is my exact logistical approach to guaranteeing that each area runs the way I want it to? Finding the clients This is prospecting, plain and simple. Personal training business owners who bring in a lot of revenue usually have a carefully defined approach to business development. They're also committed to sticking to this approach, which helps them make tough decisions in a way that will ultimately benefit their business. Top trainers do not let prospects into their pipeline who are not the type of clients they want, for example. If you're having trouble finding new clients, think about whether you've experienced one of the following: 1. Lost your commitment to a specific prospecting approach. Many fitness pros have found general networking or working the floor in the club unpleasant and tried alternative approaches to prospecting—seminars, lead generator sites, direct mail, and so forth. The word "tried" here is important because it shows a lack of commitment—they've "tried" other approaches, but they've never committed to one. 2. Stopped prospecting entirely. Personal training business owners who find prospecting unpleasant often begin to avoid it once they start building a client base. This avoidance process starts slowly at first—they spend less and less time prospecting and more time working on tasks for their clients. But eventually they completely gravitate to servicing clients rather than finding new ones. If your prospecting is not working as well as you would like, ask yourself these questions: Have I committed to a defined prospecting system that I work at each and every day? Or is my approach haphazard? Do I have one or multiple approaches? Have I established criteria—other than the prospect being able to afford your service—for the kinds of clients I want? (Remember that you should look for clients with whom you're compatible, who are genuinely committed to ‘making a change’, and who are able and willing to pay for your service.) What market am I trying to penetrate, and how am I reaching this market? Bringing the clients into your personal training business When you're trying to build up your clientele, taking a chameleon-like approach—altering your style depending on what prospective clients want—can be tempting. One trainer I know was very successful at bringing in clients, for example, and quickly established a $10,000 monthly income. In the process, however, he signed on clients who were incompatible with his approach and personality and made service commitments that were nearly impossible to keep. These promises caused major problems later on. He ended up having to turn his business upside down to accommodate his clients—and ultimately, his personal training business had to almost re-start from scratch. If you stray from your ideal client profile, you'll ultimately waste a lot of time haggling with clients who will argue with you, refuse to follow your advice, and generally drive you nuts. Always remember that signing on prospects who do not fit your criteria will cause you innumerable problems down the line. The law of numbers is important here; if you talk to too few prospects, you'll end up taking on too many of the wrong kinds of clients. In analyzing this area of your personal training business, ask yourself these four questions: What kinds of problems am I having with clients? How many of my current clients fit my criteria for the ideal client? What commitments have I made to my clients? Am I having trouble delivering on my promises? Managing the personal training business If you choose to manage your personal training business yourself, you must systematize everything, delegate part of the management tasks or be willing to double or even triple the amount of work you have to do. Most trainers take option three – except they don’t invest the amount of work necessary to do things well and, in turn, have a poorly managed personal training business. If you are unwilling to make the time for this approach it is imperative that you create systems to manage your business. It’s also a probability that you should delegate / outsource many of the management tasks as these are likely low ROI tasks for you. If you are doing a poor job managing your business, you are doing both you and your clients a disservice and you’ll have great difficulty keeping them long enough to be very profitable. Three questions to ask yourself are: 1. What is my business management approach? 2. How much time do I want to devote to managing my personal training business? 3. What is my financial return on each task that I perform? Servicing the clients in your personal training business Service is about keeping the clients you already have happy and delivering them their desired outcome. Keeping clients over the long term means providing ongoing service. Many trainers rely on periodic assessments to keep their clients happy – they illustrate progress and the clients stay on board. This is good in theory, but actually rather shortsighted as true satisfaction goes beyond the outcome of a body-fat analysis. Determine what your clients would perceive as the highest level of service and try to match that as closely as you can. Do you deliver the same quality of performance at each session? Do you send notes, cards and newsletters outside of scheduled appointments? Do you go over and above the call of duty with complimentary seminars, grocery shopping tours or client appreciation events? Two important questions to ask yourself are: 1. What service problems do I continually run into? 2. What causes them? Wrapping up your analysis of your personal training business Once you've broken your personal training business into these four main areas, look at your business from the top down and carefully consider the following: Which areas of my personal training business need the most attention? Which areas do I need to better define or narrow? Which areas am I having trouble executing? How can I be of more help to prospects and clients? Then, plan to revisit your analysis regularly. Strategic planning should not be a once-a-year event. Spend some time working on your business on a quarterly or monthly basis. Unless you're lucky enough to have a Ray Kroc type hanging around who can work on your personal training business for you, remember: 1. It's nobody's business but your own. 2. You won't have time during the day to work on key areas of your personal training business. 3. You won't just happen to back into great achievements, like doubling your income. The fitness industry is littered with the remains of trainers that burned out because they failed to analyze their approach and improve the areas in which they were falling short. Strategic analysis is one of the best ways to keep your business growing and avoid your own case of ‘trainer burnout.’