The Four Steps Every Trainer Needs to Take to Become Their Own Boss

Are you a fitness professional who has a job—maybe you work for a big box gym or for someone else—but you’re looking to go out on your own and start a fitness business?

Listen. I used to be that personal trainer. I worked in a big box gym and I hated it.

Let’s face it: not a lot of people in the big box gyms have money to afford a one-on-one personal trainer. Second, you’re not keeping all the money you earn.

You’re probably not even keeping half of the money that you’re charging for the personal training. The gym gets the money.

Third, you end up doing things that aren’t really within your zone of genius, like re-racking weights cleaning up the gym, and doing wacky little side projects for the gym.

That’s not why you got into training. Your purpose and passion is being on the floor with your clients, training them to their potential.

So, how do you transition from working a job to starting your own fitness business? There’s two ways to go about it.

Now, look. If you’ve got, let’s say, $50,000 rat-holed away in a bank account somewhere, then you can start a fitness business and secure a 2,000 or 3,000 square foot light industrial building. You could also purchase a commercial strip building and get some equipment to start training people in that environment.

The reality is you probably don’t have the money stockpiled in a bank account or know how to lease a building, fill it up with equipment, and get your business off the ground.

I’m going to show you the easy process to follow that will allow you to go from being a personal trainer/employee to being a fitness entrepreneur. That’s what we want because that’s our purpose and passion here.

Number one: you’re going to set yourself a 90-day goal.

I’m not talking about setting a one-year goal to get out of that big box gym or to stop being an employee. You just need a 90-day goal.

Over the next 90 days, I want you to start collecting 400 email addresses of members in your local community. Go to fitpronewsletter.com and start an account there.

That’s going to help you build your email list and deliver great email content. That includes fitness, fat loss, wellness, and nutrition content related to the demographic of your email list.

There’s a whole bunch of people in your gym and in your community, but your job moving forward for the next 90 days is to build 400 people on an email list through your FitPro account. boot-camp-group-exercising-300x199-YQfIxO.jpg

Number two: set up a fan page on Facebook.

Set up a fan page that showcases you as a local fitness expert

Even though it sounds obvious that you are in the business of helping people get fit and live healthy, happy lives, it’s hard to gauge who’s REALLY to be trusted for fitness advice.

Set up a fan page so that you can start doing business and, ultimately, run ads. We’re not going to run ads on Facebook just yet…

Number three: you’re going to start talking to some of your clients (unless you’ve signed a non-compete with their gym) and see if they’re willing to leave that gym to train with you for cheaper.

You might have to offer them a little bit of a deal to give them a reason to leave that gym for you.

Number four: see if you can find a place that lets you pay rent.

Before you get your own spot where you’re building it out and signing a lease and committing to it long-term, which will be your ultimate step, you want to take that baby step right in-between.

There are already plenty of private gyms out there that lease or rent out space to personal trainers. You might pay $1,000 a month in rent, and you can bring all the clients you want and train them.

Not only will you tap into your email list that you’ve been nurturing for the last 90 days, but you’ll also dig into your Facebook fan page for people.

By the way, how do you build your fan page? You add a lot of great content and videos.

Just take your iPhone or Android phone and create some awesome content: how to burn fat, how to get in shape, how to work your abs, how to plan meals, how to think right, how to be stay motivated, etc.

Think of all the different content videos, pictures, and posts that you can put up throughout the day. All it takes is three-to-five posts a day. Yep, per day.

This is going to get a lot of the community members in town becoming fans of your fan page so that 90 days from now when you’re ready to exit, you can tap into your email list and make them an offer. Say, “Hey guys. I’m doing a 21-day rapid fat loss program for $47.”

Put that on social media and send it out to your email list. You’ll have a place to train others at as long as you find somewhere to pay rent, so you won’t need to buy equipment or find a location or sign a lease or get a business license or any of that stuff. Now, you’re going from an employee to this intermediate entrepreneur place. Group-Fitness-300x225-PlVlao.jpg

Then, once you’ve built up, let’s say, 50-100 clients in someone else’s gym, then you start looking for a place nearby that you can run your training in (within three to five miles). Obviously, if I were you, I’d be a good human being and be far enough away from that place where it’s not going to be competitive.

The clientele that you’ve built at this new place, you’re going to take with you into your gym and, of course, continue to grow further using higher end marketing, sales, influence, and persuasion strategies that I teach on my YouTube channel and on Facebook.

By the way, if you’re not on my email list, just go to ptpower.com and get on my email list by downloading the free fitness business course that I have there. Not only is that going to educate you on how to grow a fitness business, but you’re going to get weekly emails from me to help you become a better fitness business owner.

What I want you to do then, in summary, is to go from being a employee to taking that intermediate step 90 days from now. You’ll do this by building your email list and fan page, and improving your local reputation in the next 90 days.

Yes, you can do it that fast.

All you have to do is go all-in, get obsessed, be relentless, and do the work. When you do, you can leave and go pay rent at another place where you keep 100% of the money. You pay rent, and you grow your business inside someone else’s gym.

Then, you ultimately get to a place where you’ve saved enough money and you’ve got enough clients to make the lateral move into your own 2,000 to 3,000-square foot business with your own logo or brand on top of that building. Of course, you’ll make a bigger impact on the community that you serve.

Committed to your success,

Bedros