How I would turn the personal training/gym business model on it head

A Flawed System

The life of a personal trainer is glamorized by social media, and every gym bro dreams of getting his license, getting some clients and going into business for themselves, with the ultimate goal of opening their own gym. Those that do are typically disappointed, and find themselves out of the business within a year or so. The numbers and pay look good at the outset. The average personal training fee is something like $60-80 an hour, depending where you live and who is training. I have even worked for high-end physical therapists who won't talk to you for less than $150 an hour.

But, gym's regularly take half of that hourly rate, or more. I have seen gyms take as much as 75% of what a trainer charges an hour. Plus, most trainers have to function under an LLC or as an independent contractor, meaning they pay double in taxes compared to what a W-2 employee makes. Combine that with the fact that it takes awhile to build up a client base, and you end up sitting around the gym a lot, not doing much.

Plus, you are limited by the amount of hours you work, making it difficult to scale, unless you branch out into classes and group training, which are less personal, and less individualized, which can lead to retention issues. Regardless of the way you go about it, making a living as a personal trainer is hard.

The only way to break out from under those heft gym fees is to start your own gym. But that takes hundreds of thousands, often millions of dollars to start up, and the gym business itself is full of problems as well. Churn is a huge issue, and most gyms face a lack of differentiation. Plus, most gyms can only really market to the surrounding area, since nobody wants to drive more than 20-30 minutes to work out. As a result, overhead is high, revenue per customer is low, lifetime value is low, your client pool is small, and your expenses are only going up.

I was so desperate that after my semi-failed venture as a personal trainer, I looked at buying a local gym. This gym was a franchise, and it was a relatively turnkey operation. It was an established gym with a large customer base. Despite all this, the financials looked... not great. I can't go into detail on this because of the NDA I signed but lets just say I would be making less than I did as a personal trainer.

So after exploring both the gym and personal training ecosystem, I had arrived at the conclusion that the whole business is flawed and inefficient. As I reflected on the whole experience, I tried to come up with a system or a solution that would make the whole operation a viable business venture that someone could make a decent living off of. Here is what I came up with.

*Concessions: I live in a small town, so most of my ideas are centered around making this work in a small-medium market. I also am assuming that I already have a gym somehow, and this is how I would go about marketing it and making it profitable. The whole process of getting the gym itself is a topic for another blog. Also, this is also all theoretical, and unproven. I am doing a lot of guessing here. I do not have a gym myself, but I was a personal trainer for awhile and a college wrestling coach, so I have some insights.

The Solution

First, I think a general population (gen pop) gym is a dead end. Most of the problems with the traditional business model revolve around not the fact that the general population does not value the gym enough to pay very much for it, and their commitment rarely lasts longer than a few visits, which leads to predatory business models like Planet Fitness. As a result you get low ticket price, low LTV, and high churn. That is not the relationship I want to have with my clients/members.

Plus, I am an athlete, I coach athletes, and I want to work with athletes. I don't really want to work with Susan the middle-aged mom, or Bob the senior citizen. This is what ends up happening to most of my friends who go to PT school. They picture themselves working with pro athletes, and end up working Becky who tripped over her 11th cat and broke her hip. Sorry Becky, there's a trainer out there for you, but its not me.

I believe that the solution is positioning. If you position yourself as a lower-end solution, you get lower end returns. However, if you move up market, and market a high-end solution, what do you get? High end returns. Luxury products demand luxury prices.

So for me personally, my solution is not to start a new gym, but an athlete performance facility. So that right there makes a huge difference. Athlete performance facility, that just sounds fresh and fancy as hell right? Just by positioning yourself as such, you are automatically gearing yourself towards serving a segment of the market that has needs and desires that align with yours. Your typical member of a gen pop gym is there because Doc told him he has to lose a few pounds, and this was the cheapest gym in town. Rarely is that person motivated enough to fork out real money. By January 10th they are gone. The dream of losing 10 pounds is not powerful enough to motivate them to take real action, and pay for it.

Athletes on the other hand, are naturally dedicated. They operate on timelines of years, even decades, and they know the importance of consistency. If you convert an athlete into a client that is a client with a high LTV. If you do a good job you can have that athlete for years. They are also goal oriented, which comes from years of trying to crack the starting lineup or win state. If you are working with high school kids especially, those are kids that are trying to go compete in college. The shiny vision of competing at a high level while getting school paid for is a powerful one.

Plus, your real client with a high school athlete is the parent, not the athlete themself. And sports parents are notorious for paying big money if they think that something can get their kid to the next level. This is where you sell the dream. Come train with me, and I can help get your kid a scholarship. Isn't a personal training (sorry, performance training) cheaper than college tuition?

So that is my ideal target demo, high school athletes. Or rather, their parents. They are willing to pay and they are willing to be with you for a long time. Plus, it is so much cooler to run an athlete performance facility than a gym. But how do I get clients? And not every athlete can afford the prices I want to charge at my fancy facility. There are probably only a handful of families in any given town that can afford it, and I don't know these families. So how do I locate these families, and how do I get them in my gym?

Easy. Make them an offer you can't refuse.

The Loss Leader

Ever heard of a loss leader? This is when a company provides a product or service for free or at a greatly reduced cost in the hopes of persuading customer to buy larger ticket items based off their positive experience with the free product.

Think of printer. Cheap at first, but printer ink is more expensive than gold. A free trial for a streaming service is another good example.

That is how you are going to get these kids in. I would go to every high school coach in the area and say that you are offering free access to your gym for high school athletes only from 3:00-5:00 or a similar time when you can expect to get high school kids in. The only catch is that they have to be able to prove that they are an athlete, and that their parents or guardian have to come in and sign a waiver in person and put their card on file in case of damages. Tell them that each session will include a workout led by you, a proven strength coach.

Now, I have never done this before, but I bet that if you do it right, your gym is going to be chuck full every single day. Every high school athlete wants to workout, and if they can go for free, I would hazard to guess that they would take advantage of that. I would guess that your only limiting factor is going to be space at that point.

Now, here's where you make your money. When that parent comes in to sign the waiver and put their card on file, that's your sales opportunity. Tell them who you are, what you do, and ask them a few questions. What do they do for work, what sports does their kid play, etc. The point here is to get information about their goals. Ask them if they as parents want their child to play sports in college. Based off the info they gave you, you now know if they work in a career that can likely afford high ticket personal training. You know if college athletics is a goal of theirs. You have their contact info so you can set up a marketing campaign targeted at them.

Now all you do is sell the dream. If you are any kind of salesman this is like shooting fish in a barrel at this point. You want your kid to play college football, but he's 5'9" and benches 150? He's a junior and the only offer he has is from the local community college? Let's fix that. He's welcome to come to the large group workouts, but there's going to be 50 other kids there. If you are serious about your goals, I offer small group training where we can get more personal for $X, or if you really want, I can do one-on-one sessions for $X.

They will have to think about it, they'll say. I need to talk to my husband or wife. But if they are serious, then they will come back and they will pay. Or at least I hope they will.

The Experience

However, I do think that there are a lot of parents out there who don't see weights training as worth the investment. So again, I would go up market and position itself not as one-on-one personal training with Spencer. But I would call it the College Athletics Development Program, with former college wrestling coach, Coach Humpherys. Spots are limited, and it is by application only. Create scarcity in their minds.

This is where you have to craft an experience for your clients. Any kid can go to the gym and pump iron for an hour. But I think that to truly be worth a really high price, it needs to be marketed as a comprehensive experience designed to prepare a kid to go to college. In addition to weight training, I would offer weekly seminars on important topics like goal setting, college recruiting, mental performance, nutrition, mindset and other topics. I would invest in an InBody and meticulously track their progress, and offer nutrition help. There are a ton of things you can offer here, but I think that it is important to go above and beyond. Do some crazy stuff, bring in guest speakers, create super in depth programming, supply them with journals, give them homework assignments, etc. I also believe that this should be small group training, with no more than about four or five kids. I think that I would have an early morning crew, and a night-time crew. If you charge each kid say, $1-2,000 a month, you are making maybe 10k or more a month off of this group.

I would have it be a year-long program or maybe six months to allow for sports seasons, with applications re-opening every so often. That way the kids are locked in long term, and you can create an air of scarcity and exclusivity. Or maybe its a three month program, and you have one every quarter. There are a lot of different ways to do it.

By crafting an experience it becomes more than just weight training, it becomes a direct path towards their goal of getting their athlete to play college sports. Sell that dream and I think you can have a great outcome, and make a ton of money.

Other Revenue Streams

The thing with working with high school kids is that they have a very set schedule, which is a blessing and a curse. Most kids get to school around 8:00AM and are out around 3:00PM, and are out of school in the summer. Knowing this, I would block out the gym from 3-5:00 or so for the free kids, and then have the paid cohort of kids come in from 5-7:00. There is also a possibility that you can get a few kids in the morning maybe at 5:00 AM, but that might be a tough sell for some kids.

The downside to this is that your gym is going to be unoccupied for 18-20 hours a day, and peak usage hours for the public (normally between 5-7:00) are blocked out for your athletes. So that leaves you with the morning, early afternoon, and evening with nothing going on. So here is how I would go about making sure my facility gets used during those hours.

Sports Club/League for Adults

Personally, I am a wrestling guy, so I would start up an adults MMA or BJJ class in the evening from 7-9:00. It is common to pay more than $100 a month for a BJJ membership, and all you need are the mats. Plus, combat sports and BJJ are getting more and more mainstream, I believe that you could get a pretty large group pretty quickly. I am not the authority on this, nor would I want to run it, so I would subcontract it out to someone in the community who wants to get it started.

Classes for Mothers and Seniors

These demographics like to exercise in the morning and so they would slot in neatly in the morning slot, maybe from 8-10:00. They are not difficult to plan and program for, and don't need a lot of equipment. Again, I would subcontract this out to a local expert, it's not hard to find a fit mom who wants to run a Zumba class. Moms and seniors aren't going to pay as much, plus whatever you pay the instructor, so these aren't big moneymakers, but it's better than lying vacant.

Gen Pop Fitness

Again, I don't want to work one-on-one with this demographic, but I'll take their money if they want to train in my gym. I would do the same thing I do with the rest of my services, price it as a high market product because they get to use a high level facility, probably double what most other gyms are charging for a membership, and limit them to strict hours outside of my athlete hours. This is kind of a take-it-or-leave-it option. I'm not trying to serve these people, and I'm not going to go out of my way to get them so if they aren't interested in paying, then they can go to Planet Fitness.

Social Media

This is a product that is begging to have content made about it. I would publish a ton of social media content about what I am doing and then upsell products from their. Maybe I put the whole College Athlete Prep program online and sell it as a course, or I sell the programming or the journals I use. Maybe I start recording a podcast about it. Regardless, this is something that needs to be posted about.

Sports Leagues/Clubs

If your facilities can handle it, start a sports league. Matter of fact, even if your facilities can't handle it, start one. Maybe it's a powerlifting club, or maybe a pickleball league for seniors, or a competitive wrestling/BJJ club. This is another funnel for your future clients that will help build relationships and trust in the community. Bonus points if your club gets big/good enough that you can start attracting kids in from surrounding towns. Vertically integrating the youth sports to high school sports to college sports is a great funnel.

Conclusion

Sorry if this was a little unorganized, but if you can get past that, I really think the ideas could work. My goal is to someday do all of this, but as I said in the beginning, I need to get a gym first. I believe that done well, this is a gym that could bring in over 100k a year, but I am not sure what the margins would be on that. I think the key would be to go digital with it, and turn it into a productized service online, with the gym being the main test subject and proof of concept to the rest of the internet.

That's all folks, this is the dream, let me know your thoughts at @coach_spencerh on X