In this episode of the Marketing Muscle Podcast, host Richard Toutounji recaps a panel discussion from the Fitness and Wellness Australia Show titled “Building a $1 Million Personal Training Business in Your Facility.” The conversation featured three industry experts—Michael Kuniko (General Manager, Fitness Innovation Viva Leisure), Jeff Osborne (Performance Manager, F45 Training and former studio owner), and Tanya Donkin (Regional Personal Training Manager, Fitness and Lifestyle Group/GoodLife). The panel explored whether a single facility can generate $1 million in gross personal‑training revenue, what that revenue figure actually represents, and the operational levers required to achieve it. Key points included: the distinction between gross revenue and profit (the $1 M target refers to gross revenue), the volume of sessions and trainer headcount needed (approximately 300+ sessions per week with 14‑15 trainers, blending small‑group and one‑on‑one formats), the importance of a strong personal‑training manager to develop and retain trainers, the role of brand equity and paid digital advertising (especially Facebook ads) in attracting PT members, and the realistic possibility that reaching $1 M may require two to three locations rather than a single gym. Richard emphasizes the need for owners to audit their current session counts, trainer numbers, pricing, and to model the numbers required to hit the target, adjusting business models or expanding locations as needed. The episode concludes with a call‑to‑action for listeners to seek marketing assistance from ComMarketing via a “marketing muscle‑up” consultation.
Chapters
How do we keep trainers amazing? How do we keep them active? And when I say active, but how do we keep them active in growing their personal training business? Hey, welcome back team. It's Richard here from the Marketing Muscle Podcast Show. First-time listeners, I purchased a fitness studio at 17 and a half years old. My plan was hard work, get an A-frame sign, and a little bit of hope marketing. I should say a lot of hope marketing. I ran that for 2 years. It was successful. I paid my parents back every penny that they loaned me on their home overdraft. And I now spend all my time with health and fitness and wellness owners, how to become their own version of marketing ninjas in their business as I didn't have the time to hire an agency. I didn't have the money to hire an agency. So I wanted to go out and do it myself as a small business owner. And in this show here, we debunk and teach you the best ways to grow your health, fitness, and wellness location. If it's outdoors, indoors, leisure centers, gyms, we've worked with all locations of all different sizes over the 10 years of Com Marketing has been around for. And I also give you the real insights of what's happening at the moment in the fitness industry. Now, talking about that, I was on a panel at the Fitness and Wellness Australia Show. That was a brand new fitness show just launched. It had a mixture of education and trade show in. If anybody was there, it was in Sydney in June, and I was hosting 2 panels. And one of the panels that I was on was called Building a $1 Million Personal Training Business in Your Facility. And I'll say that again, Building a $1 Million Personal Training Business in Your Facility. Now, you know, the million-dollar mark, it's always that mark that people want to get to that we use in marketing, that it's like, oh, that magic million dollars, how do we get to that? And I also had some amazing panelists on the panel. And so I created the questions and I wanted to really drill them on what it takes to do that. So I had Michael Kuniko. He's at the moment General Manager of Fitness Innovation Viva Leisure. He's also been, um, uh, many years into Fitness First, uh, gyms as the regional manager and personal training manager, uh, there across all the locations. So great insight of what's been happening. Jeff Osborne, he's the Performance Manager at F45 Training. He's also owned his own Vision Personal Training facility in the Gold Coast. And so he had, you know, had 2 different versions as well on that. And Tanya Donkin, and she's the regional personal training manager of the Fitness and Lifestyle Group, which is also GoodLife as part of that. And really great insights, great people. Connected first time with Tanya and Jeff. I've known Michael for a while, and I wanted to understand the differences And their opinions on how to get to $1 million and if it is even possible to get to $1 million in your personal training business. Now, you know, we did a pre-call before the panel a couple days before, and the biggest thing that came out of that— the first thing Michael said, is it even possible to get to $1 million in one facility? And Richard, are we talking about gross? Are we talking about profit? Gross revenue or profit? And first of all, it was gross revenue because we all agree that in one facility, getting $1 million of profit is— it may be impossible or very hard to it. And we haven't come across that in one facility doing the $1 million as personal training. So we had to actually break down what is personal training. You see, Jeff, who manages all the F45 trainings, 400 of them, they run a studio model. As you know, there's no personal training done in F45, and so it's a studio model. So in that case there, you can think of as $1 million of personal training in your studio— group training, we should say, not personal training, the one-on-one, the traditional sense. And then, um, and then it was between Michael and Tanya to kind of like battle over, well, can we do this even in our locations? And how many sessions would we need to have done? And if we did all those sessions, how do we retain the amount of trainers that we need to do so? And so it was really interesting insights because when you think about your business and you think about where you want to get to In the personal training side of the business, what are you at the moment? What revenue are you turning over at the moment? Now, you may be up $400,000, you might be at $800,000, you might be at, you know, $300,000. Whatever number you're at, I want you to break down and think about in the personal training component. So, and again, Michael mentioned that, well, if he was to do it his way to get to the million dollars as fast as possible, and I said, if I had a gun to your head, How would you do it? He struggled to give me the straight-line answer on that, but at the end of the day, it it sort of came out with like 300 plus sessions using around 14, 15 different trainers, and they would always have to be you know pretty full to achieve that. So it was a mix between small group training and some personal training to get to that number, and and. get that number the fastest way, because otherwise there'd be a lot of trainers that we would need and to manage that payroll, HR, to achieve that. And so that's what his version came up with. And I also asked the question of, you know, how long is it going to take to get to that million-dollar mark in your business? And again, that was very hard to answer. Jeff answered that, and as a group, facility, which obviously is probably a lot easier to answer that. And their model is, you know, they go from 0 to 250 as fast as possible using a series of paid ads and a lot of brand equity. There was a question asked, you know, do you get to 250 members straight away off the bat? And he said pretty much Not at this point. However, that's the aim. And that— and they use paid Facebook ads to do that. They use paid marketing to do that. And as I said, a lot of brand equity as well. The other question I wanted to put to everybody, which I did, was, you know, how does brand— how does brand fit with all this? Because, you know, running big locations like Goodlife, Lever Leisure, F45. These are all established brands. So what happens when you get your brand and it's not that established? When I say it could be established in your area, but it's not that established to say, okay, you're bringing brand equity to the table and all of a sudden they're coming to you. So it's like seeing Nikes on sale and they're coming to purchase the Nikes. And I think everybody agreed upon that, yes, brand equity is important. However, if you are you know, running that model, it is a big part about the trainer, the business owner, and the smarts they have to get to that point. And I thought that was really interesting because, yes, they said brand is important. However, it does come down to having a really good trainer, trainers wanting to grow the business. And so then it came and talked about, well, how do we keep trainers amazing? How do we keep them active? And when I say active, but how do we keep them active in growing their personal training business? And this is referring to anybody who, um, you know, is a PT in a, in a larger gym. And the big question here is, um, having a great PT manager that's going to lead them, grow them, nurture them, train them to be the best version of themselves. And a big part of it came down to that, is having a great personal training manager to lead your team. So kind of a reminder that if you are wanting to get to that million-dollar mark in personal training, it really does come down to ensuring that you have a great, um, a great kind of mentor that can lead your trainers, some great training around them. So don't kind of fall into the trap that that's not required. That's definitely required to get to that point that you need to get to. You know, Tanya made some amazing points around, you know, how to become, you know, how to be the best version of yourself as a personal trainer. Uh, continual learning, continual growth, uh, that was really important, and that's a big part that she does as well. So I'll try to get her also on the podcast too. We can break down that a little bit more detail. But, you know, right now I just want you to think about, you know, how many sessions are you doing at the moment? How many trainers do you have? at the moment. And you might do a calculation to go, okay, based on this scenario of what I'm doing at the moment, how many sessions, how many trainers would I need? What would that look like to get to the million-dollar mark? Because sometimes we have this vision of let's get to a million dollars, but then when we work out the numbers, um, we may have to adjust the model to get there, or we may have to open another location to get there. And that was a big agreement that That kind of all agreed on that, that you may not be able to do it in one location. The perfect scenario might be 2 to 3 locations and to split that million dollars personal training business in all locations. Now remember, we're not talking about gym memberships here, we're talking about personal training memberships. So you are, if you are a gym and you want to put personal training memberships in it, you may, you may, you may need multiple facilities to do that. That was the agreeance of the panel. And if you are a studio, um, and that wants to get to that million-dollar mark, that is on the high end of where other studios are at as well. So if that's something that you're, you're on the cusp edge of that, you just want to really want to get tight in your pricing points, what you're charging, um, how many sessions are available to come to, and then work back and go, okay, what is that million dollars look like on my model. Um, but overall, again, it wasn't splitting up multiple models. It was doing the one model and, and really going with it and making it work. So, um, yeah, work those numbers out in your business. How many sessions you need? How many trainers? What's your hourly rate? What's the average hourly rate if you're doing a small group training? And then you can break down and go, what does it require to make that million-dollar personal training business in one facility. As I said, it might be 1, 2, or 3. The panel said they'd probably need 2 to 3 locations to make that happen. So just some insights on my panel, how to build a $1 million personal training business in your facility. And I guess ensuring that you know what your model is, is, is by far the, the most important thing to do. And if you don't like where your model is getting to, or you're struggling to figure out how to get to that model, that is a really good question to ask. And that's the next best question you can ask. I think it's really important to have conversations like this, to go, is it possible? How do I get there? What do I do? And then start working on that. As I said, these are 3 great panelists: Michael Kuniko, Jeff Osborne, Tani Donkin. I'll make sure I get them all on the podcast. You can really Listen to them in more detail about what their model is. Team, I hope that's helped you to get a bit of an insight of how to get to that million-dollar personal training business in your facility. It does— it is going to require great operators to do that. It's going to require great leaders as personal trainer managers, and it is going to require bringing up your A-game, your B-games to A-game trainers, and to have a model that charges the correct amount. to get you there. So again, just look at your numbers and seeing what you need to do that. You'll need to make adjustments to do that possibly, and that's okay. Once you know your goal, it's easier to get there. So I hope that helps. That was brought to you by the Fitness and Wellness Australia show, and you can find out more about that. I had Sean Krenz on the podcast here a few months ago, and you can check out his episode about what it is and, and what all that was. It was a great show, a lot of success. And that'll be on next year. You can come and visit that every year that we're running. Now, team, if you want help with your marketing, something you're thinking about, not sure where to go, jump on our website commarketing.com.au. This show is brought to you by ComMarketing. Our team do all the editing of this podcast and get it out to you guys, and we do it for free. And the reason why we do that is because we want to help more people to become marketing ninjas. We want to help more people to take their teams to be sharper and better marketers. And when we can do that, we can hit the million-dollar marks. We can make it happen. So you guys just jump onto commonmarketing.com.au and book a marketing muscle-up call. And that's what it's called. It's called a marketing muscle-up call. It takes about 15 minutes and we'll take you to the next steps and tell you what's working in your digital marketing, what may be holding you back, and then an action plan to get to the next steps. Thanks guys. I'll catch you next time on the show. Bye for now.
