A personal trainer & coach business plan is about the last thing some fitness and health professionals will want to focus on.
Have you got a plan? Are you running a business or a hobbyist? And there is nothing wrong with how you answer that question. Unless… you have the income and revenue of a hobbyist and feel as if you spend the time and energy of a business. If you work with midlife women, I can help. I can help you recommit to definitely doing more of what you love, and doing it in a way that rewards you. Because when you make more money you have both more influence and freedom.
The Money Dilemma
If you want to do more good, it requires money. You can change things with money. Whether that’s through scholarships, and donations or it’s through your own freedom to create more programming to support more individuals, the influence you have on the world, your family, will be in part due to money. This Thursday I’m holding a special master class for personal trainers, health coaches and women in midlife who would love to be involved in a healthier career choice.
By the time we’re off the class you’ll know if this is the right choice for you, and how to really start, grow or scale your business .. you’ll also know why now is the right time. Link in the show notes.. or visit flippingfifty.com/specialist-masterclass for details.
Personal trainer & coach? You need a business plan! It’s called a proforma in most circles.
A Business Plan?
If you’re just now getting serious about what you need to do now to succeed or start for the first time… yet you’re already falling in love with the idea of becoming a personal trainer & coach you may think that a business plan is something entirely different than what I’m about to share.
This business plan is for those trainers who feel like this is all gyms, equipment, exercise, and motivation. Really, you will have to have a business plan. One that outlines how many customer you need and how you’ll get them. You’ll need to project how much the advertising and marketing will cost you and how much it costs to get every single lead.
You’ll have to project the amount of revenue from each client, the average time each client will remain a client, and if they’ll pay you monthly, annually or another frequency. Because, hey, banks like to know that. And even if you aren’t going to use any borrowed money and you’re going to invest very little to start your online business, you’re going to want to do your homework.
Be Heard Above the Other Personal Trainers & Coaches
It’s busy out there. Loud and noisy trainers want the same customers you do. So you’ll need to pay somehow to get your message in front of them unless you’re a celebrity.
Nervous? Well, you can relax. Although those things are definitely things you’ll need to think about before you really declare yourself a business. Before you incorporate, and decide if LLC is the best for you, if you can secure the business name you want, or whether someone has already trademarked it and could sue you. Just relax about all that… we’ll talk about that another time. You may be interested in walking through it with the Flipping 50 Fitness Specialist 2.0 10-month program. I’ll link to that in the show notes.
This business plan I’m about to share is more down to earth.
Your Personal Trainer & Coach Business Plan
This is not your typical business plan, so if you’re hoping I’ll give you a personal trainer & coach business plan like a proforma, let me get clear. It is the plan most out of balance if the proforma business plan is going to happen it has to be in order.
Listen, if you’re driven to success, in your own personal fitness, and your fitness business goals, there’s a chance when you begin working on your business you’ll let other assets you need to build it, slide. Here’s how to keep this three-legged stool in balance. There are three critical parts. Some of us may have felt these slipping away in 2020. There was so much business pivoting that more creating, more keyboard time, more learning time, more online meetings all had to happen. That squeezed something out. What was it for you? Exercise? Good food prep? Sleep?
Or did you go the other way? Focus on your own physical plan. Flirt with over exercise, under eating and hyper diligence to an extreme?
If you’re going to be your best for the long run, which is business, you need all of these. Here they are.
There are 3 Critical Parts to this Plan:
First in your personal trainer & health coach plan is …
Critical Part #1: Physically Planning–
Are you exercising in your sweet spot? Are you planning your own meals ahead? Are you prioritizing the amount of rest that you need?
Look, most first time trainers, health coaches, fitness instructors work a few hours a week. But they exercise an astronomical amount of time. They think they’ve got to look better than anyone else, be fitter than anyone else, and do more than anyone else as if that somehow qualifies them. In someone’s eyes it does.
Let’s look at this though. First, fitness comes from the right amount of exercise and right amount of rest. A few repetitions done to muscular fatigue, the right amount of protein- veggies – carbs and fat for the individual, along with the right amount of rest is more potentially specific to fitness than more volume.
Personal Trainer & Coach Beware and Be Smart
I won’t get into some research circulating right now that women over 40 need more volume, but I will share with you that without assessing an individual women… who also needs more rest between workouts simply giving a blank statement about volume is going to create more problems of over exercise and under rest. That trainers is what we’ve been trying to break through for years. With one article in IDEA magazine containing one small line about rest and recovery, we could set women back for years.
Read Between the Lines
Trainers are too willing to blindly read an author’s interpretation without reading the primary research and thinking through it themselves. Number of subjects, how was the research conducted? And all the details – like current hormonal status and nutritional compliance matter. Okay, end of rant! If you do take a look at it, read with consciousness that this is not about more volume alone.
There are many ways to achieve volume: weight, or increased reps, or increased frequency, and you must not do any of them alone in isolation without looking at rest & recovery including sleep, time between reps-sets-and workouts, and nutrition while understanding the signs a women’s hormones are messaging you and her.
Critical Part #2: Mentally Planning –
Are you allowing yourself what you need in order to be creative?
I had to guard that creativity by not taking any appointments until noon. I block off full days to do planning for events or several days to do year planning.
Recently, I took 2.5 days to work on a specific project where I could work, hike, eat, and sleep with no distractions. It took me a while to figure out that if I don’t, I’m working more but working poor. I’ve tried to work this into a purposeful trip, and I’ve learned that never works. There’s always something spontaneous that comes up. You’ve got to be fully present and fresh to do good work.
Even this last week, I got away for 2.5 days to work on my next year plan. I know I have to do that. I have to block it off and out. I’ve gotten about 15 months of planning done – into forecasting January 22 as it’s the beginning of November 2020. But that couldn’t happen without time, space, mental bandwidth to focus on and evaluate.
You Need Time To Evaluate Your Business
You want to evaluate what you love doing, what gives you energy, those clients or tasks that suck the energy from you, and the value of your time and what you could train and pay someone else to do so you have more time yourself. You get into business for two or more reasons. You want freedom. Freedom to do the kind of work you want, but freedom of time and money to do it. So, if you’re simply working around the clock or you’re broke, something is not working.
You may need to dig into where your revenue came from last year. What flowed to you easily, how much time it took, what does that mean for the amount of time and energy you place on what you do and the amount of revenue you generate? Are you earning your hourly worth? Or are you just working a lot without a real profit and loss statement that works for you?
For You, If You’re Just Starting
If you’re not creating a course, or program or package, this might sound a little foreign to you. Yet, maybe it’s time for you to take a look at how you will scale your business. So, that it’s not all you leading personal training sessions or bootcamps or group fitness. It’s not all you coaching by phone. But you’ve got a program, a group, some passive income from a course and you have products that help you make money when you’re not required to be there to make the money.
Unless you can continue to raise your rates and charge $100-$200 an hour or more, it’s going to be hard to make a good living training exclusively and also have a life. No matter where you live, you’ve got to have free time, and be able to enjoy yourself.
And finally,
Critical Part #3: Spiritually Planning –
Fill yourself up. Maybe for you that’s something specific or alone time. Maybe it’s partly your exercise or outdoor time. Whatever it is for you, acknowledge it and then guard it.
I am more spiritual than I am religious. I do pray, but more so I mediate, and I enjoy quiet time, and time in nature. You will find me in church on Christmas eve and giving thanks before family dinners. I won’t be in church regularly, but if someone asked me to teach Sunday school or help with Bible School, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
Know You
You need to know what fills you up in this way. Belief in something beyond you and this moment is sometimes necessary in business to keep going. Seeing this just as something, something others have gone through, you might go through again, something with meaning and meant to lead you to the next step, that can make all the difference when things are hard.
And if you’re really running a business, not a hobby, it will be hard. There will be hard decisions. Decisions about people. People who let you down or disappoint you. You’ll make business decisions not on emotion but on numbers.
That’s three legs I told you about. But there is another consideration in your personal trainer & coach business plan.
The Extended Part of Your Business
If and when you’re ready to hire a team, or even a virtual assistant for the first step, you’ll want to check on whether they’re taking care of themselves. Do they get enough sleep, exercise, and take their vitamins?
Do they have all 3 legs of this stool working for them?
There you have it 3 Critical components to a personal trainer & coach business plan that don’t include your revenue, assets, marketing plan, but instead includes the foundation from which you’ll be able to make objective decisions about that business.
Questions? Comments? Leave them below show notes at fitnessmarketingmastery-dot-com/business-plan
If you’re working with midlife women (and hey, who’s not) especially if you are one .. or if you’d like to start, I’ll link to a special master class I’m teaching about why right now… is the absolute best moment in history to start and or grow and scale your business.
The Master Class will cover:
Fitness Specialists #3 Secrets About Now, You, and How to coach women in Menopause [Save Your Spot]
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