Matt Roberts: A Guide To Building Your Personal Training Business

Introduction

Launching your own personal training business can seem overwhelming. It’s a huge commitment and there’s so much to get your head around in the early days.

Leading personal trainer Matt Roberts was once in your shoes. He now owns multiple gyms across the UK and has established himself as a reputable trainer and leader.

In this video, Matt walks you through the lessons he learned from building his own fitness business and gives you a checklist to follow so you don’t make the same mistakes he did.

Or, if you’d prefer, you can read what Matt had to say in the article below…

How is your business going to make money?

First things first, after you have completed your personal training course, ask yourself how you are going to make money. What is your process going to be? How are you going to trade? Are you going to be a one-man band? Are you going to work for a company? This is where I would start.

If you want to be self-employed, how many hours can you work every day? There are 24 hours in a day, so how many of those hours do you commit to being a trainer? Just think about how many hours you ideally want to work. That will help you define how much per day you could earn.

Think about the cost of how you trade. These are key aspects to get right. If you are going to be a one-man band working out of a park, it might well be there is no cost to trade. It might be, if you are working out of a gym, you have a small cost (or a high cost) per trade.

If you are an employee working for a company, there is no cost of trade, but you are giving the company a chance to earn itself money and you are paid a salary. If you are struggling for inspiration, here are six different environments you can train your clients.

1. House-to-house

This was the classic way to become a trainer. This is where I started 23 years ago. Back then, most trainers went home to home with weights, bands, and God knows what else. I would turn up and spend that hour with a client inside their house doing training. That’s fine to a point. We know there’s going to therefore be no cost to trade in that hour. It’s at the client’s house. It’s their cost. Your bag of gear you paid for is one capital asset you’ve had at one point in time. It depreciates, but that is likely only a small amount of money.

2. In-gym training

There are a number of different forms of gym-based training models. You might go to a gym and train people, you might work in a gym as a trainer for a company, or you might pay rent to work in that space. Now that is a grey area in my opinion. It is important to understand as a trainer how to build your client base (we explain how to do that in this article) and make sure you fulfil yourself.

If you are paying a set amount per month to a company to be a trainer on their gym floor, bear in mind that is a base minimum. To ensure you’re profitable, you have to achieve X number of hours of training each month just to pay the rent. That is fine, but if your deal is such that you have got to do a certain minimum number of hours for that company and pay a rent, then who actually wins? Choose your positions in the industry very wisely, and look at how many hours per day it takes for you to achieve that base minimum cut-off and threshold to earn some money.

3. Premises rental or ownership

You might want to look into premises rental or even owning a space as time progresses. I own my own venues. My gyms are Matt Roberts gyms where my training team works for the company and we train the clients. I pay the rent, rates, and all the other costs that are associated with running a company. This is a higher-risk strategy because you carry all of the risk yourself. However, get that right, and the margins for each of those sales are much higher and the gains greater. You are also creating an asset for yourself. If you aspire to create long-term value, you need to have something of real, tangible, and asset-based. Renting or owning premises is the way to create that asset. That gives you real value something you can sell later down the line.

4. Company employment

You might be employed by a company. You could be working for a gym group as an employee. This is the low-risk, medium-return way to become a trainer in the industry. It is a great way to work assuming you have the right setup and the right team to work with. If you’re part of a growing team, achieving amazing results with a wide range of clients, and being paid a set salary plus commission and bonuses per month, it can be a rewarding career.

5. Small group training

There are a number of different options here. Being a trainer now is not just doing one-to-one training. You can train a group of people. So, rather than charging a fixed amount for one-to-one training, you might have 5, 10, 20, or even 30 people in one group.

If you are a good trainer who can control a group of a good size, and you charge a small amount per person, you’ll earn more per hour. The maths are simple. If you are charging £50 per personal training session, and instead, you have got 10 people paying you £5, you net the same amount of money. But the potential for growth is much greater. Small changes in what you charge with bigger groups means there is much more earning potential, provided you can consistently get those people to come back.

6. Exercise specialist

You might want to become someone who works partially as a one-to-one trainer doing private sessions, partially in the parks doing small group sessions, and partially working with a sports team for example. Maybe you work with a sports team, a school, or an exercise referral specialist.

There are lots of ways to grow different parts of your business as a contractor alongside your base income. Sports teams and clubs increasingly bring in outside individuals to work with them. But this does require specialist knowledge and the skillset to bring extra value to that team. Don’t kid yourself. Everyone knows a lot about training if they are in sport and exercise. You are not necessarily unique… unless you are. To be unique and different means having a fantastic amount of knowledge, experience, and passion about one thing.

What is your unique selling point?

The previous point leads us on nicely. What is your unique selling point?

If you are going to be a business owner with your own gyms or facilities, ‘why you’ goes back to your cultural values. What does your company stand for? What defines you? If you are a trainer in a park, there are going to be another 100 trainers working there with their own clients. So, why you? It is always about delivering something that is a USP. What makes your session different from the next persons? Personal training is a highly competitive market, so you need to stand out.

If you are trying to attract new mothers for park sessions, you must communicate that clearly and specifically target them. Make sure you understand that specific group of people and serve them well in a crowded market. If you want to specialise in body transformations, make sure have proof of results. Use before-and-after shots. Demonstrate real, tangible results so that in a competitive market, clients know you can help them.

Without that, you are the same as everyone else in the marketplace. If you want to become a weight loss specialist, why? What do you do better than someone else who says the same thing? We can all do weight loss. But your version has to be something different, unique, and aimed at a certain group of people. You have got to have that presence, so that someone sees you as the go-to person for their goal. That is your USP. That is how you ensure someone knows you can guarantee results.

How to get your prices right

This is a really important part of positioning yourself as a brand. If you think you can charge the same as everyone else, you are defining yourself by their standards. If your goal is to make money, then you need to charge the highest rate you possibly can with value behind it. Not just charge more for no reason. Always deliver for the value you are trying to create. Here are a few points to consider before settling on a price point.

Pattern analysis

Who are your competitors? Look at who is out there similar to you. Look at small group trainers, trainers in gyms, trainers with their own facilities. How do you compare? Track 6 or 8 different people in the industry. Look at their price points. Training sometimes starts at as little as £15–20 per session (which always amazes me), and it can go up to hundreds per session.

Look at your competitors. Look at their USPs. If someone in your gym is charging £50 per session, and you want to compete for the same client base, your strategy will either be a price change – or ideally a proposition change. Price can be flexed, but only so far. Look at what else they are offering. What is their added value? How does their brand compare to yours? Are you like-for-like? Or is yours better? If it is, then you can charge a premium.

Elastic pricing

Is your pricing elastic? Or can it flex? In personal training, pricing is fairly elastic. A small change in price leads to a big change in demand. If someone is charging £50 per session and you charge £45 or £40, your demand may grow rapidly. Especially in the low end of the market. Price elasticity is a big deal.

Price can create demand, but if your USP is strong enough, your brand identity can protect you from that price pressure. If you have mastered your craft and have a great service to offer that people are loyal to, you’re in a great position. People are less likely to jump ship because of a small price change elsewhere. That means your business is less vulnerable to competitors undercutting you.

Offers and deals

Should you offer deals? I know it is tempting. Offering 25% discount deals for a short time can boost cash flow and client numbers temporarily. But the downside is you damage your pricing long-term. If people are used to paying the discount price, how can you ever charge your full rate again? You have now changed the perceived value of your service. So, I would never slash prices.

Protect your brand value by adding value instead. Instead of giving a discount on 10 sessions, give 11 for the price of 10. The face value remains the same. That technique is used in many industries—including luxury goods. Protect your price. Do not erode it.
The higher your price (with good reason and good results), the more people desire your brand. People aspire to luxury. We chase exclusivity. But it only works if the value you deliver matches the price. Once you drop your price, it is very hard to raise it again.

Build yourself an income plan

What’s your base income goal per year? You might not know right now, but there is a formula to help you understand how much you could earn across one year. Start with that annual amount (X). Then work backwards. If you know your margin per hour (Y), how many hours per year do you need to hit that target?

That calculation can give you how many hours per week, days per week, and hours per day you need to work in order to hit your target salary. Once you have hit your minimum income, you can start adding extras and expand into the possibles. Planning your time is crucially important here. Define your working week properly, build in structure, and protect your time.

Are there other ways for a personal trainer to earn money?

Personal trainers do not just trade by the hour today. You can write content, record content, sell products, and even create courses. There is a lot of opportunity out there, but only for a small group of people. Building a brand to stretch and leverage into other areas can be powerful, but it is tough.

If your aim is to do online training and make money, it is a possibility, not a probability. It takes a vast number of followers and users to get even the smallest returns. You can earn advertising money with a small following, but to make big money, you need to have built a big audience. Do not base your primary goals on the possibles. Work on the probables first. Mastering your craft, growing your brand, and getting your name out there should be your priority in the early days of your business.

Summary

Hopefully, this advice will help you get your business off the ground without any problems. Know your purpose, build your strategy, protect your price, define your USP, choose your model carefully and there is no reason why your business cannot take off.

If you want more tips, advice, and real-world lessons on growing your personal training company, our business skills CPD course builds on your personal training qualification to help you grow your brand.