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Stronger Sundays

Dominate your fitness business with this weekly collection of strategies, tips, and tricks.
By trainers, for trainers.

03/29/2024

Quote of the week:

“I’ve never seen a gym fail because it was understaffed and over-capacity. I’ve seen plenty of gyms fail because they were overstaffed and under-capacity. Stop hiring based on best-case scenario projections. Hire when you’re busting at the seams. Hire when it hurts.”
                                                                                 - Pete Dupuis (@pete_dupuis) on Twitter
Watch for this newsletter from the Personal Trainer Development Center each Sunday.

In this issue:

  1. A business model that works for everyone
  2. Is it time to open your own gym?
  3. This week on the Online Trainer Show
1. A business model that works for everyone – Jonathan Goodman (follow him on IG @jonathan_goodman101)

It’s frustrating the way that most gyms and trainers operate.

Our goal as trainers and owners of fitness facilities is to optimize every aspect of the experience for a client.

But the business model we feel like we’re stuck with forces us into constraints that are, at best, not optimal. At worst, they’re damaging to our clients.

The most obvious are scheduling constraints. An optimal workout doesn’t begin at exactly 6 p.m. and last exactly one hour.

Think of how much of our programming is determined by things like the gym’s layout, equipment availability, and business model.

Here’s one example:

The optimal fat-loss training protocol for an intermediate to advanced client is going to be some sort of giant set (five to seven exercises in a single circuit).

This protocol is more or less impossible to do in a commercial gym because you can’t take over that much equipment or space.

We tried to solve the problem with boot camp-type training, where an entire class does the same circuit. Sometimes there’s a bit of variation at one or two stations, but everybody is still doing the same basic exercises.

It works as a business model, but as a training system it creates new problems:

1. The class still has to start at a specific time, which means people who arrive late miss the warmups.

2. There’s only one option: a large, timed, circuit. That leaves out everyone who isn’t focused on fat loss.

3. Everybody works at the same intensity, more or less, which beats the crap out of people both physically and neurologically. Burnout and injuries are common.

4. There’s zero progression. Once you adapt to the program, you don’t get stronger or develop more endurance.

I dream of a model free of constraints.

A model where the facility and training system optimize for each individual so you can have 100 people in a space all doing the absolute best workout for their current goals and fitness level.

A truly client-centric model, where fitness dictates business, not vice-versa.

And I’m going to build this model. Because this nonsense has gone on too long. Our industry is better than this. We know better. And we need to change.

You with me?

2. Is it time to open your own gym?

The past year was beyond brutal for gym owners.

Which means 2021 could be the best opportunity you’ll ever have to start your own fitness facility. You’ll have your choice of spaces to rent and there should be plenty of used equipment for sale.

But no matter how tempting your local market may be, launching a new gym is still risky. As you’ll learn in our newly updated article, it’s a big investment that requires a lot of planning combined with realistic expectations.

Are you prepared to work a dozen jobs, from marketing and sales to cleaning and maintenance? Do you have enough money in reserve to pay for all the things you didn’t anticipate?

“It never occurred to me how much printer ink I’d go through, or how expensive it is,” says author Michael Zweifel. “Or how much I’d spend on toilet paper, hand sanitizer, facial tissue, garbage bags, pens …”

If you’re planning to open a gym this year, or even considering it in the near future, you need to read this article now:

--> How to Start Your Own Fitness Facility in 2021
3. This Week on the Online Trainer Show
The Online Trainer Show is proud to be sponsored by PT Distinction. After carefully reviewing all the major software platforms, we recommend PT Distinction because it offers a unique combination of flexibility, coaching tools, and ease of use. That’s why we use it in Online Trainer Coaching, our just-launched personal training business.

Click here to get a full 60-day FREE TRIAL to try PT Distinction with your own clients.

Here’s what podcast cohosts Jonathan Goodman, Carolina Belmares, and Ren Jones talked about this week on the Online Trainer Show:

In Episode 64, What to Do When Other Trainers Steal From You, Ren makes an important point about the kind of person who plagiarizes your content or branding:

If you chase an offender down the rabbit hole in pursuit of truth and justice, what you’ll find there is … not impressive. It’s a trainer who lacks the skill, patience, or work ethic it takes to create their own content and brand identity.

Put another way, it’s not someone who’s destined for a long, successful career.

Jon agrees, saying he’d more upset if no one was stealing his material.

But there are situations when you can’t blow it off. If someone is using your identity to scam clients, for example, you have to take action to stop them and protect your reputation.  

Episode 65, Overcoming Fears of Rejection in Online Training, tackles one of the biggest challenges faced by ambitious, hard-working coaches on the way up: rejection. Disappointment. Failure.

As Jon explains, even when you’re getting a mostly positive response to your latest sales pitch, you’ll obsess over the prospects who turned you down. You’ll think more about the one who said no than the five who said yes.

Another common theme among trainers struggling to build their business is the idea that successful coaches, people they look up to, can’t relate to what they’re going through. But as Carolina says, they’ve achieved success precisely because of the countless rejections they experienced.

By viewing those failures as feedback, they learned, adapted, and steadily improved their offers and their sales skills.

You’ll find every episode here:

--> The Online Trainer Show
P.S. Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways we can help you:

1. Grab a free copy of The Wealthy Fit Pro’s Guide to Online Training
It’s your blueprint to building a fitness or nutrition business online. --> Click here

2. Join the Online Trainers Unite Group and connect with other online trainers  
It’s our Facebook community where fitness and nutrition pros like you can share insights and advice about starting or running a successful coaching business online.
--> Click here

3. Join the Online Trainer Academy
Our world-class certification course is everything you need to responsibly and profitably coach fitness or nutrition online. --> Click here


**Thanks for reading. What to do next**



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--> Learn more about the Online Trainer Academy.
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