If I were to start a Virtual Personal Training Biz

Good evening. Happy Thursday. Thursday. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. Good evening. I'm so excited to talk to you this evening. I had a. Excuse me. I had a really cool call with someone today who is thinking of starting a fitness business. And I was thinking about how I would set up a fitness business if I were at all certified in Pilates or personal training or what have you. And I thought I would share with you how I would do this. Just a little deep dive into how this would go for Katie McManus. So. And if you. If you have any questions on this, please do comment. I'm more than happy to answer any questions as I go through this. Also, if you have any suggestions or you just want to say hi, please do. I love this to be interactive and I just want to do some house cleaning. I've noticed that streaming yard has started doing that thing again where not all comments from all places show up. So I am going live to the Facebooks, to LinkedIn, to YouTube and to Twitter. And sometimes not all the comments come through. So if I don't call you out, it's not that I'm mad at you. I swear to goodness, you're great. Unless you do something creepy, which I don't think you'll do. But I am just not seeing the comment. So anyway. But anyway, so let's get into. If I were to start a personal training Pilates business, let's just assume I'm. Assume I'm. I'm certified in all of it. So I would plan on doing this 100% virtually. I think that one of the industries that was actually helped more than it realize. It realizes right now from the pandemic was the fitness industry. Because previously a personal trainer, it would be completely unheard of for them to be operating outside of a gym. I'm sorry, I kind of have the hiccups. I didn't have the hiccups before I started, I promise. But this is a beautiful thing post pandemic is that people are way more flexible about where they want to work out and. Hi, I think I'm pronouncing your name correctly. Garan. Garan. Hello, good evening and cheers to you. I hope you're enjoying some champagne. I'm not drinking this evening. I am having. What is this? Blood orange spindrift, sparkling water with a little juice. Anyway, good evening. So this is one of the gifts is that it's no longer strictly related to the gym. I know. I personally love working with my Pilates instructor. One on one from the comfort of my own home. And it just requires me to like buy some of the stretchy bands and, and balls and what have you and roller. But it's completely doable. Now what I would focus on first is I would pick a niche. I would specifically pick a niche of people who tend to have crazy and restricted lives. I would think career crazy or life crazy. Okay. Not both. Both would be a little too much to handle and to try to work around. Okay, I'm getting a hiccup remedy. Apparently if you rub your tongue on the top of your mouth, the hiccups go away. I don't know. I don't know if the hiccups just ended or if that worked, but thank you. I'll try that next time I have the hiccups. Just me rubbing my tongue at the top of my mouth. Okay, so back to the niche I would pick. So I'd pick someone who's like restricted by either the time that they have or by their lifestyle. Okay, so I'm thinking, so I'm thinking like either like busy corporate lawyers, people who have like high intensity stressful jobs, who need to prioritize their wellness, or and who also like kind of need the flexibility because they have to be able to do it either from their office or their home. Or like stay at home moms, people who have have other challenges throughout their day. They have to help take care of other humans, maybe caretakers. That could be another one. Anyway, I would pick a niche and I would find out where they spend time on in social media. Okay. Because I don't want to show up everywhere. You know, the goal is not to work a million hours a week. The goal is to have freedom and flexibility in your life. Okay. So I'd want to only pick one platform and that's where I'm going to show up primarily. Okay. And I would start posting there organically. I wouldn't worry about ads yet. I would just start posting organically, start building up my network, start making friends, start connecting with people who may or may not be my ideal client, but who probably know my ideal client. Now, number two, I would go after one on one clients first. And this is what I tell all of my clients. Your fastest path to cash is always going to be one on one clients. Okay? Group programs are absolutely a viable option for you down the road. But for right now, one on one is going to be your bread and butter. So what I would offer, and I did all the math, is I would do two packages. I would do one where we're working out three times a week together and I would do another one where we're working out two times a week together and I really wouldn't care which one people go with. And I would sell these packages by the month. So basically, if you were to sign up with me, it would be six months commitment because we have to commit to a certain length of time to see results, right? We're not getting results overnight and they would have to commit to a minimum of six months. Oftentimes I would expect them to continue on if we had a good relationship and if they're getting results out of it. So a six month commitment, they would get either three or two sessions per week. And you know, in those months and the monthly charge for the three times a week would probably be around 1440amonth. And the monthly charge for the two times a week would be about $1,000 a month. Now this on its own, if I had anywhere from 10 to 12 clients at any given time, which isn't a whole lot, I would a only have to work about 24 to 25 hours a week and I would make anywhere from like $12,000 to $12,200 a month. It's not too bad, right? That's actually pretty good. Hold on, I'm thirsty tonight. Okay, so I would build up my one on one coaching client. And here I don't want to work more than 25 hours a week doing one on one work. Because let's talk about step three. This is where I would roll out my group program. So my group program, this would be like a subscription. People sign up and it just gets charged every month. I'd have it actually be pretty low, like $150 a month because I'm not offering like a whole bunch here. I'm offering three workouts a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the same time. And this is for a core group of people who want to be held accountable to those workouts, you know, in those three time slots. And sure, they can watch the recording and they can do it, but let's be real, no one does that. My what I ask of my clients is that they commit to coming to all three workouts every single damn week. I would do $150 for my first 20 or so founding, founding members to really get people in the door and to build up that it's worth it, you know, because it is three slots a week that I'd be taking away from my one on one clients. But it would be a guaranteed $3,000 a month, you know, that's pretty good. So I would do that, and then the next 10 people or, you know, whoever else joined, I would bump it up to 197. So this, I mean, if I maxed out at 30 people, this would be another 3,000 to $5,000 a month on top of my $12,000 a month. Okay, so this is where things start to get interesting. And of course, if I wanted to blow this up, if I wanted to really take over, like Instagram, for instance, and do ads or maybe TikTok and do ads and, and really like pump people in there, I could absolutely do that. I could absolutely do that. And the sky's the limit. You know, at that point, when you, when you do offer that bigger experience for that, you know, broader audience, I might consider lowering, lowering the rate or making a secondary group. It's an option. But at that point, if I'm doing that, I'm probably lessening how many one on one clients that I'm taking. Now after this, after I have my one on one clients and after I have my group program up and running, here's where I would try to leverage even further, is I would look to see, you know, how many followers I have on my social media. I would go and look at the demographics, you know, who are they, how would, how would I describe them to brands and what's my engagement like? And then I would take my little portfolio of who I speak to and what they're interested in and how engaged they are. And I would start shopping around to different brands that I like. And I would go to them and I would propose to be an influencer for a dollar amount a month. And I would hope to climb to about $25,000 a month in combined revenue from all these different streams. Because I, you know, I don't want to work more than like a crazy amount a week. But yeah, that's what I would do if I were starting a personal training or Pilates business. And I just, I was so inspired by this, this woman that I was speaking with today. You know, there is possibility, like if you have these certifications, if you, if you have the ability to train on something like this, like, you have so much available to you, you don't realize how much freedom and flexibility you have available to you. All it takes is doing it. That's literally it. It just takes you getting up, you know, putting on your brave pants and putting yourself out there and doing so with a bit of a strategy. And this is kind of how I think so. If someone were to want to work, you know, anywhere from like, 30 to 40 hours a week and do their marketing and have a very robust list of people that they serve every single week, this would be an amazing way to do it. And if you're curious about this, if you are thinking, oh, my gosh, well, that sounds interesting. I'm not a personal trainer. This kind of model can work for a lot of different businesses. Okay. This is essentially a coaching model. This could also be a copywriting model. This could also be a photography model. This could also be, I mean, so many different things. I just, you know, I also just had my Covid shot, and I don't know if it's psychosomatic or if I'm actually getting a little out of it, but anyway. But with that, I am going to leave you to ponder and think of all the possibilities. And, Garen, it was so great to see you. And again, I. You didn't confirm if I was pronouncing your name correctly, but I hope you'd correct me. But thank you for the hiccup tip and for everyone else who's tuned in, who I'm not seeing in the comments, I hope you have an amazing Thursday. We'll see how I feel tomorrow with the COVID booster. I hope to go live tomorrow, but I'm not going to push it. Anyway, have a great night, everyone, and I will talk to you soon. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and leadership coach. Good night.