Ep79: The Gym Could Make or Break You: What Every New PT Needs to Know

Good morning, Matt here from the PT Profit, Leverage and lifestyle show. Happy Wednesday when they hear from me right now and super exciting week for me this week. Actually. We've got our first ever in person event happening tomorrow and Friday up here in Brisbane. So we've got a number of clients of ours coming along. So I'm super keen for that. So, yeah, if you can't make it to this event and you wanted to come along, I do have a couple of guests, guest passes. But our next event is going to be a virtual one. So anyone in Australia or in the world really could come to this next event. But let's get into today's training. This is more specifically for face to face trainers on how to find the right facility for you. So why is this important? It is my belief that the location that you choose to work from has a very big impact on the success of your business. You know, for me, I had a very successful PT business myself. I had six clubs, one of them being my own gym that I paid for in cash. But that was the successful part of it. You don't get to see the failed ones that I was at as well, which to be fair, it wasn't that many that did fail because I know what I'm looking for. But you've got to be a little bit cautious with just going into any type of gym because there's a number of factors that affect how you're able to grow the business. And by having the right support network and the right business metrics in that gym that you're choosing to work from makes a very big difference. So, uh, in this episode I'm gonna go through what business metrics to work to look for and also you know what type of support you're kind of looking for as well. Because yeah, as I said, it's. You don't wanna choose the wrong gym and waste your time for three or six months and then have to start from scratching and try and transition clients over to a different gym. It's, it's not fun. I've had to do it myself before. It's not good for the clients, not good for you as the business owner, for your mental health and stuff as well. So let's get stuck into the, the content. So this is what usually happens with PTs when they first start. So a lot of the time they'll, they'll do like their qualification through like, or a lot like a lot of the big clubs, they'll do the qualification in the actual gym, like Good Life Fitness, Cartel World Gym. They have partnerships with like FIT College, aipt and they can basically have students come to the gym to do their practical side of things of their PT course. And naturally what will happen is they get comfortable with that environment and then ended up signing the contract with that specific gym to work out of that environment because that's what they're comfortable with. So great marketing for Good Life and whatnot, but. But not essentially as good for the individual trainer. The reason being those big clubs, Good Life Fitness Cartel, World Gym, some fitness clubs that very, they're very KPI driven on how many trainers they have in the club because obviously they pay. The trainers pay rent. So yeah, like the, the PT manager would get bonuses and commissions off how many trainers are in the club. So just keep that in mind when you are deciding on what type of club to go for. They are only caring about the money, okay. Because they want the extra bonus or they want the extra commissions and, and whatnot. So. So yeah, that's, that's the first thing. That's what usually happens. What you essentially want to look for is first the business metrics. Let's go through those ones first. So this is pretty standard. It's nothing, nothing too rocket science about this. But you want to know how many trainers are at that gym. You want to know how many members they've got and what the rental structure is. Not rocket science, super basic stuff. Right? So let's go through the type of stuff that you're essentially looking for. Me personally, I personally like the smaller clubs because a lot of the time you can either find a club with no trainers or maybe one trainer and still like a good member base. Maybe anywhere between 600 to 1500 members. That's still a good member base to work with if you're the only trainer or there's one other trainer in competition. So you'll have like, in comparison to the bigger clubs, you might have like World Gym, Fitness Cartel, they might have like 3,000 members, but they might have like 10 trainers, 15 trainers or something. So there's pros and cons to both. Of course, the smaller gyms means there's not as much equipment, bit more cramped, I suppose. Bigger clubs is more room, but there's also more people using the equipment as well. So you could also argue, you know, yes, it's a bigger gym, but there's also, you know, five times the amount of people using the, the equipment. So what we're essentially looking for is, is a PT ratio. The PT ratio needs to be what, what I look for when we're we're trying to find clubs for certain people is 1 pt per 400 or 3 to 400 members. Ideally 400 members. So if, if the club's got 800 members it means it could pretty much service 2 pts. If it's got 1200 it can service 3 pts and those pts would have enough leads to grow the business. This is keeping in mind there's nothing to do with social media. So it's talking about just if you were to generate leads in the gym, nothing related to social media that's pretty much what you be what you'd be looking for. As I said with, with my success in my business I was able to find locations with no trainers and anywhere between 800 to a thousand or 600 to a thousand members. So my PT ratio was really really good. So I was able to you know hire a couple of trainers and you know still do quite well. Now these days I don't necessarily help a lot of people with the hiring trainers. I more help them with the hybrid which is more face to face plus online and then transitioning to online so you don't have to pay the rent. But I can obviously also also teach you guys how to hire trainers or whatnot. It's super, super easy. Okay so we've got, we've got the basics, we've got the PC, remember the PC ratio, the rent, big talking topic with the rent. So depending on your location the rental obviously vary. Up here in Brisbane the most I ever paid for rent was 275 a week. Now I do realize some of my clients in Sydney they're paying like 350 a week in rent. Now the thing you got to understand is you pay more rent if there's more members. So there's bigger clubs, they generally have a higher rent. The smaller clubs like Jets I think Jets I was paying 220. You be you lucky to get under under 2200 these days. Now in saying that there is a couple of ways that you can reduce the rent. For example you might do a couple of classes a week for the gym and they'll reduce the rent for you. Or you might spend three hours on the desk each week and they'll take a little bit of rent off, off the table for you guys as well. So there's flexible options. So when you're first starting out you might want to look at some options like that to reduce the rent. And there's always going to be a build up phase. So usually it's, it's one month free, one month Half price and then you're on full rent. That's pretty much the standard these days. So you want to make sure there's some type of build up phase because obviously you're going to be starting from zero and you need an opportunity to build up your clientele before you start paying them a fee to use the, use the gym, et cetera, et cetera. So. So we've gone through how many trainers should be looking for and like we met, we mentor people from Good Life and World Gym Fitness Cartel. It still works. It's just something to consider when you are looking for a location is the member to PT ratio. Like for example, if there's 3,000 members at the gym, there's three trainers, it's a freaking gold mine. So that's going to be a good option. Now the next thing that's the business metrics, the next thing is the support and what you're actually allowed to do. So again the bigger clubs are a bit more strict. Okay? Strict meaning, meaning they don't like pts doing a massive amount of marketing in the club. So sometimes you're not allowed to put up giveaways, you're not allowed to promote your service apart from like a poster or a banner or something like that. Or you might, you might be able to have like a QR code on the treadmills which basically does nothing. But some clubs are a bit more strict than others. Now this is another reason why I usually gravitate towards the smaller clubs because they're a bit more flexible and you're not marketing or you're not trying to out market the other trainers in saying that if you're very niched down and you, you might specifically do powerlifting or you might specifically do rehab in a bigger club you can tailor your marketing. You're gonna be, you're gonna be like known as like the go to person for rehab or whatnot. But if you're just doing gen pop general population then it's gonna be hard to stand out from the crowd. So it's another reason why I'd usually gravitate towards the smaller clubs. They're not super small, but smaller that they're a bit more flexible and you're kind of allowed to, what's the word I'm looking for? You're allowed to kind of push the buttons a little bit in terms of what's possible in terms of what you can do to market yourself. Whereas I've had some clients tell me that they're literally not allowed to do anything, um, which is not, not what you want. Um. Cause at the end of the day, the person that is able to market the most or the market the best wins the clients. And that's just business. Doesn't matter how good of a trainer you are. If you don't know how to market the service or you don't know how to get people in front of you, then it's irrelevant. Okay, so that's the next thing. And then the last thing is do you actually get along with the club manager or PT manager? You need to make sure there is not a, they're not like a, not so much a horrible person, but you need to make sure they're like open to feedback. They're, you know, they're nice. You don't want to because at the end of the day, like in the bigger clubs, the PT managers who gives you leads, club manager who's also, who also gives you leads in the smaller club. So you need to make sure you get along with them because there's also some strategies that you can do that the club manager or PT manager can help you out with. It makes a very big difference if you have them on your team helping you. Not so much helping you, but supporting you in growing your business. Okay, so there's a fair few things that we talked about today. When choosing your location, a couple of last minute things to consider is the travel time. Usually we suggest no more than 20 minutes travel time to get to your gym because you might be doing some split shifts and stuff to start off with. But my recommendation is go through all the, all the gyms in your local area within 20 minutes. You should have like probably 10, 15, at least maybe 20. Contact all of them and basically just say, hey John, it's Matt. I'm a PT in a local area looking to start my PT business or I'm looking to get back into the industry. I just wanted to ask a couple of questions to see what's going to be a good fit for both of us. Is that okay with you? And just ask those questions. Good demand for how many trainers you got? What's the rental rental structure and demand? If I ask how many members you've got and then go, if everything sounds good there, book at a meeting to go see the club manager or PT manager in the gym and get a vibe of what they're like. Ask some questions on the marketing. Very important that you kind of be like, cool. Well, obviously I need to market my services. What marketing am I allowed to do in the gym? Do I have to follow what you guys suggest or can I do my own stuff? What's, what's the kind of go here? So you want someone that wants to be flexible with the marketing, not super strict. Okay, that's it. So I hope that was valuable for you guys. Now if you are starting from scratch and you need help finding a location is something that we do for all of our clients. So if you do want to help with that, send me a message on Instagram or Facebook. But yeah, this, this one's more targeted towards people who are just starting out in, in the industry and need help finding, finding a gym. Because, you know, some of these contracts that gyms have these days, you know the 12 months. 12 months contract with 90 day notice period, it's, it's pretty full on if you, if you get the wrong location. So we just want to make sure we take our time and find the right location for you to work at to make sure you got the most chance of being a profitable business owner. Because at the end of the day, 80% of PTEs quit within six months. So hope this helps you not be part of that statistic. Anyway, I'll see you in the next episode.