The Top 5 Ways to Ruin Your Personal Training Business

The most essential quality that cannot be over-emphasised when it comes to the personal training business is professionalism. It is that much more important for personal trainers to maintain a high standard of professionalism as it is this criterion that determines their relationship with their clients. In a job where establishing a healthy professional relationship with clients is key to career progression, it is often the lack of this very quality that becomes a major hurdle towards success in the personal training business.

Professionalism encompasses a wide range of qualities that include a thorough and deep knowledge of your craft, great interpersonal skills and the ability to get your worth – neither under-pricing nor over pricing yourself. It also includes knowing how to manage and promote your business by setting time bound goals and making systematic plans to help you achieve them.

Unfortunately many aspiring fitness professionals do not measure up to the basic standards required of a personal trainer and hence fall well short of client expectations, thus not quite succeeding in their ambition of having a flourishing career in personal training.  As people across the globe are becoming increasingly fitness conscious and do not mind investing time and money to ensure that they reap the benefits of good health and a fit body, they are also more aware of the qualifications that personal trainers need to possess and expect them to impart high standards of training. Clients will settle for nothing less than the best in the industry and anyone not up to the mark will be easily nudged aside by the fierce competition.

Here are some shortcomings to watch out for, which if left unattended to would most certainly ruin your personal training business.

• Poor quality qualifications: Doing an accredited personal training course from a recognised institute is vital if you want to optimise your employability. Ensure to earn your qualifications from a training provider that has been approved by an official accrediting body if you want in depth knowledge of the subject and the industry. The awarding stamp is essential but it is also vital to choose a course that will impart the highest quality of tuition and practical experience from tutors who have actually worked or indeed are still working in the industry. There is a big difference between a tutor that teaches a syllabus, and one that is able to relate it to how the industry actually runs. Expertise is imperative to be able to succeed and hold your own in a fiercely competitive industry so never compromise on your qualifications.
• Under-pricing yourself: Many newly certified personal trainers, in a bid to build a reputation and widen their network, begin by lowering their price or even offering frequent free training sessions. This strategy does not work in the long run as clients are reluctant to pay more for your services once you hike your fee. So trainers have to be content with under charging and not getting what they are worth. Instead, ensure that you keep up scaling on your skills, keep abreast with the latest industry knowledge and charge as per industry standards. If you are good, clients will prefer your services over cheaper, sub-standard trainers.
• Not being in step with the times: You must remember at all times that although fitness is your passion, you are after all running a business. As with any profession, you need to adapt your policies and strategy with the pulse of the time. Social Media has taken the world by storm and no business can afford to ignore this extremely powerful tool. You simply have no excuses to shy away from engaging in social media to widen your online reach and further your business objectives. So if you are not very social media savvy – take the efforts to learn the ropes without wasting any more time. You only need to set aside some time every day to read more on this topic and see how you can use the various online platforms to build online credibility and optimise online visibility.
• Negativity: It has become such an all too regular site to see fitness professionals moan and complain about others on social media sites. It’s easy to complain and crib about others but difficult to find a way out by using your creativity, innovation and ingenuity. Rather than wasting your breath and energy looking only at the others that you feel are doing it wrong why not bring a fresh approach to existing methods to make them more interesting and dynamic? It is a bad quality to complain about the methods of others, when you have nothing good to say yourself. Be productive with your time and be positive.
• Not having a business plan in place: Any business can flourish only if it is supported by a systematic plan and a vision for the future. You have to set time bound goals and make regular evaluations of your plans and strategies to ensure that you’re on the right track. A lot of smart thinking, careful analysing and calculated risks go into building a business for which you need to formulate goals that are both short and long term. You must have a dream – a vision that is grand – that goes beyond just the day to day running of the business but one that spurs you on, inspires you to stretch your limits and look beyond your horizon. Being a personal trainer is serious business with serious opportunities and it needs to be treated as such, there are many who will tread water and never achieve anywhere near their potential, will you be one of them? Or will you stay ahead of the game?