What Kind of Personal Trainer are You?

The path to success isn’t a straight line. It’s full of twists and turns and unexpected obstacles. To be a successful personal trainer you must have a business plan. But before you can have a business plan, you must first understand who you are as a personal trainer. When you know yourself and what you enjoy, you can broadcast it to the world through your business. I wouldn’t be doing what I do if I didn’t love it – so the question I have for you is: What do you love?

Find Your Specialty

You probably have a pretty good idea of what niche you find most appealing as a personal trainer. But after you’ve identified your niche, you now must understand which segment of that market your personal training services appeal to most.

A great example is corporate wellness. Perhaps you’ve determined that working with corporate executives is your niche. Now, you must identify what needs of this market you want to target. It could be their time constraints, their work environment, or a combination of the two. You could specialize in corrective exercises to help counteract the sedentary lifestyle of the executive. Or perhaps you could offer customized, time-saving 30-minute circuits or group exercise classes. Specialization like this allows for people to find you and then benefit from your area of expertise.

Our industry supports diverse opportunities, allowing you to specialize in all kinds of areas. When you choose a specialty for your personal training business, make sure you will have access to a pool of potential customers and that the area you live in will support your chosen specialty. Remember – the possibilities are literally endless!

A Business Plan

I have seen more than one personal training business go bust -- not because the personal trainer didn’t have the passion or the education to be successful, but because they didn’t have the right tools to merge their knowledge, education, and experience into a business that works. I have a background in business and I meld that knowledge with my personal training know-how in my new book, Your Fitness Career.

When you first start out, you may be satisfied simply working with your clients and see no need for a plan beyond that. But I think you will find as time goes on that a business plan becomes more and more essential to grow your fitness business.

For your business plan, you will need to identify a few important things. Think about what product or service you offer (or hope to), the market for your services, the buying habits of your potential clients, the strategy needed to successfully market your target audience, who your competition is (and what sets you apart from them), how you’ll deliver services or products to clients, and how much you’ll charge for your services and products.

Don’t get too overwhelmed! You’ve already taken the first step toward being a successful personal training business owner by trying to learn more about what direction you should go. As long as you can work to identify what kind of personal trainer you are, you’ve already taken the leap that will ultimately – with a little diligence -- lead you to success!

Looking to become a successful personal trainer? Make it possible with my book. Your Fitness Career