Starting a business as a personal trainer can be pretty tricky, with a couple of essential factors to pay attention to. Although the personal training business has proven to be a very lucrative niche, it is in high demand as more people look into taking their health and fitness more seriously.
Most people want to start a fitness journey for several reasons, ranging from health issues or recovery purposes to just wanting to keep fit and maintain a healthy body. However, they require motivation from others around them or from a professional to help them continue their health and fitness journey. A personal trainer fits into this role by helping clients set fitness goals, realize those goals, and be consistent in their fitness journey.
As a personal trainer, the major responsibilities are quite straightforward and focused on ensuring that the clients achieve their fitness goals, which are peculiar to each client. However, starting and running a personal training business is an entirely different ballgame. Setting up and maintaining a personal training business requires several other factors that are essential to running a successful business.
A lot of personal trainers have started up their training businesses with the idea that it would be a walk in the park, only to later find out that there are other essential factors required in running a smooth business, just as any other entrepreneurial business would require. After research was carried out, it was discovered that several factors contribute to the failure of businesses, and one of those contributing factors includes factors relating to financial management.
In this article, we will be delving into important financial factors to consider before starting a personal training business.
Table of Contents
What are the Roles of a Personal trainer?
Becoming a personal trainer involves more than just pursuing a passion; it also involves helping other people achieve their fitness and health goals. Different people have different types of fitness goals, and part of the responsibilities of a personal trainer involves creating training plans, schedules, diets, etc. to help the client achieve their fitness goals.
Creating these different fitness plans for each client might seem like a lot of work, especially with more clients in the picture; however, several personal training templates can be followed to achieve the same goal more easily and seamlessly.
Some of the roles of a personal trainer include:
Mental support and encouragement
Aside from creating a fitness plan for clients, the role of a personal trainer also includes mental support and encouragement. Most clients would love to hit their fitness goals, but it is no news that it also requires mental effort as much as physical effort.
Starting a fitness journey can be very challenging, especially when there is a fitness goal to be achieved and self-motivation alone might not cut it. This is where the personal trainer comes in as a source of motivation for the client to continue with their fitness plans faithfully until the goal is achieved.
Analyzing and assigning appropriate fitness plans
The thing is that no two clients are the same, and therefore each client has their own unique fitness goal that they want to achieve and therefore requires a customized plan to hit that goal.
It is the personal trainer’s role to analyze techniques and methods to meet the customer’s fitness goals by curating exercises and activities appropriate to the client based on their health conditions, body types, strengths and weaknesses, nutrition plan, and so on.
Tracking clients’ progress
Before the start of the fitness program, each client would’ve had the desired goal they wanted to achieve, which could also be the reason why they opted in to start a fitness journey. It is the responsibility of the personal trainer to ensure that the clients are meeting up with their exercises properly, and tracking the progress of their fitness journey in line with the desired goal or target.
Why do personal training businesses fail?
The fitness industry is highly lucrative and is gradually becoming more attractive to people looking into starting a personal training business. According to Statista, the personal training business has a market size of over 630 million British pounds.
Due to this huge market value, more and more fitness enthusiasts have looked into starting and establishing their own training businesses. The sector is also attractive to fitness enthusiasts because it permits them to establish a career in what they love while generating income and becoming self-employed as entrepreneurs.
However, several personal training businesses have been launched and failed due to several reasons. Some of these reasons include
- Lack of proper financing
Most of these businesses lack proper financing and are quick to go bankrupt or close down based on financial demands. Lack of proper funding and financial management has to be one of the major factors that lead to failure in most personal training businesses.
The truth is that some of the people who start up a personal training business do so because they are doing what they love or because it is a hobby they want to turn into a career. As a result, some do not take the time to research the financial factors they need to consider before launching their business.
Starting up a business, whether a personal training business or any other type of entrepreneurial approach, requires some essential factors, and financial management and proper budgeting are at the top of that list.
2. Lack of systems put in place
Every business requires the essential systems necessary to effectively and efficiently run the business. Setting up functional systems is the lifeblood of any successful business and the personal training business is not an exception
There should be systems in place to guide how clients are attended to, customer care policies, client management policies, payment acceptance policies, accepted methods, membership renewal, etc.
All of these systems are put in place to ensure that the business is run smoothly and professionally to satisfy clients as well as maintain the growth of the business.
3 Crucial Financial Factors to Consider Before Starting a Personal training Business
As explained earlier, starting a personal training business can be done from a place of passion and as a way of doing what you enjoy, but it is important to note that a business is not a hobby and should be treated as such.
To ensure that a personal training business is run smoothly and effectively, there are a few financial factors to consider before starting the business.
- Liability insurance.
This has to be the most important financial factor in running a successful personal training business. Investing in liability insurance helps the personal trainer not only insure their training equipment in case of an unplanned emergency but also separate the business assets from the trainer.
This is very important to separate the business assets from the personal trainer’s assets so that in the case of an emergency during the training sessions, legal actions taken do not directly affect the trainer’s assets.
Liability insurance is very vital in the personal training business, as some clients also require evidence of liability insurance before signing up with or registering with a personal trainer. There are different types of liability insurance, depending on the needs and preferences of the trainer.
2. Cost of equipment
There are several ways of starting up a personal training business, and buying equipment is not compulsory as there are ways to start the business without owning any equipment. although that would require working with or partnering with a fitness studio so your clients have access to the gym equipment in the studio.
But in the case where the trainer prefers to start personally and probably get a space to start his business, then the cost of acquiring the equipment is very vital to consider before starting the business.
Checking and budgeting for the cost of acquiring the needed fitness equipment during the startup financial planning phase will be essential in determining the success or failure of the business. Depending on the type of equipment, the personal trainer might decide to go for more quality equipment to ensure client satisfaction, safety, and ease of using the equipment.
3. Cost of transportation
While starting the business, it is important to decide if clients will come in for sessions or if the personal trainer will have to go out to meet them. Although some personal trainers can decide to host sessions online using several digital platforms, in the case of physical training, it is also important to set aside a budget to cover transportation to the different locations needed to meet with clients.
In business, every cost matters, and these are the top financial factors that should be considered when running a personal training business. There are other costs to consider, such as the cost of advertising, branding, salaries for employees, etc.
Conclusion
Proper planning and consideration of the financial factors involved in a business are two of the major steps in ensuring its success. Most personal training businesses have had to fold up due to neglect of the important financial factors needed to properly run the business.
Since personal training is mostly born out of a hobby or passion for fitness, it is still essential to run the business with an entrepreneurial approach, managing finances with the aim of making a profit.
