Which way does a fitness trainer earn

Which way does a fitness trainer earn? This is one of the most popular questions among beginner trainers. Its popularity is due to the fact that for many people the salary indicator is mostly decisive when choosing a profession. And often, this question flows into the next one, no less important – what are the main and additional ways of earning for the fitness trainer in general? Today we will talk about the most popular ways of earning, that is, how many different ways are there for the trainer to earn money.

Introduction

In the previous article “How does a fitness trainer earn”, I talked about the basic principles of creating value propositions, that is, about what a fitness trainer should do in order to earn well. I highly recommend to you to get acquainted with this article. Now, in the study of ways of earning, first of all we will talk about the needs of your target audience, and then we’ll move on to specific forms of value, which means that from the general concepts given in the previous article, we will turn to specific offers that ordinary fitness trainer can create.

What customers are guided by

So, first of all, let’s define with what purpose people most often come to the fitness club, or more precisely, what needs they come to meet. According to the studies of the psychology of human behavior, there are five such needs: the need to acquire, the need to meet, the need to learn, the need to protect and the need to feel. This needs are giving the strongest influence on the decision making process, including (like in our case), the decision to visit the fitness club.

• The need to acquire. In our case, this implies the acquisition of intangible assets, such as position in society, social status or an indicator of prestige. For such a client, it is often not so much the result of the training that is important but the fact that he attends a fitness club, which in turn should be a kind of indicator for those who know him. For such a client, to lead a healthy lifestyle is a trend, it is fashionable for him to visit a fitness center, and it is prestigious also to be a member of a VIP club.

• The need to meet. Led by this need, some clients come to the fitness club because of the desire to be need by somebody, others are looking for new friends or like-minded people, others are looking for a life partner, the fourth is looking for business partners and so on. It is in the service sector, to which the fitness industry belongs the most favorable conditions are created for new acquaintances. It is easy to find a common language with such clients and they will gladly advise you to their friends.

• Need to learn. This category of clients most often includes potential future trainers, but not only. These members of the fitness club are driven by curiosity. They want to know how the club works, how much trainers are there in the club, what is their work schedule, how much one training cost, how does protein differ from amino acids, what is better, squats or leg presses and so on. Often, they can also be seen in the club at the interview, and then they become your colleagues.

• The need to protect. This is the basic instinct of any person, and everything is fundamentally simple here. To protect yourself, your family, friends and not only. Most often, such clients visit exactly martial arts classes, but no less often they are guided by the same goal – to protect themselves, to increase fear, to repulse hooligans, to visit the gym, where they can build muscles, increase strength and make it clear by their appearance that it’s better not to mess with them.

• The need to feel. This category includes those who come to the fitness club for new sensations. Who spend a lot of time without training and would like to feel a pleasant feeling of burn in the muscles again. Who doesn’t know what a high-intensity, functional or interval training is and now wants to try it. Who lead a sedentary lifestyle and want to radically change their way of living, and even those who are already constantly involved in sports, but want to change the field of physical activity.

I give this list of customer needs here so that you can independently classify them according to the purpose of visiting the club. As soon as you understand the reason why a person came to a fitness club, it becomes easier for you to determine whether he will buy training programs, personal trainings, a nutrition plan, additional club services or other products and services. In other words, you must learn to determine whether you could earn with this particular client or not. For you, the homework will be to determine and arrange in order of priority from first to fifth those categories listed above. Do this in increasing order, from the category whose representatives you think are least interested in purchasing goods and services of the club, to those who most often acquire them and use them.

Which way does a fitness trainer earn

So, first of all, we found out that people not always go to a fitness club to improve their health or change their fitness. Secondly, we also found out that there are categories of customers who are less inclined to purchase any goods or services, as well as those who use them often. It can be stated with complete confidence that only those who really care about the result will be interested in your value proposition as a fitness trainer. Your task is not to go after everyone and ask and persuade them to buy your services, but to identify and eliminate as quickly as possible those who don’t intend to spend their money. Such a person is not your potential customer. You can offer your services very natively and not intrusive, but insisting on the need to acquire them means putting pressure on the client, which they dislike. However, we gradually got to the description of what you can offer to your potential customers.

If you want to learn how to create value propositions and successfully sell them, you must understand the form in which they must be presented in order for a potential client to be willing to pay for them. For a fitness trainer, value offers, that is, ways of earning, most often take the following 8 forms: service, product, resource, subscription, resale, mediation, accumulation, capitalization. Now let’s take a look at them more precisely.

• Service. Provide some services that you can provide well (or better than others) and set a price for them. First of all, it is your personal trainings. You can also create your own program within the club, collect groups of, say, 10 people and lead them to the result during a specified period. Help lose weight, help build muscle and help keep the shape, in general, for everything you can help – take a fee.

• Product. You need to create some real, tangible thing or object and set a price for it that exceeds the cost of production. This may be some kind of information product, such as a book (in print, electronic or audio version), clothing under its brand (t-shirts, caps, pants), various branded office supplies (pens, notebooks, calendars), jewelry (bracelets, dog tags) or other items – cups, watches, phone cases and more.

• Resource. Create some value that will be interesting to your target audience and which will be available even for those who are not living in your town, and then monetize it. Most often, the resource that helps you earn is your own website, a YouTube channel or a Facebook, Instagram, Twitter account and not only. The resource is monetized either by advertising or selling your own goods or services.

• Subscription. Create something interesting and useful to your target audience and sell on an ongoing basis. Your task is for the same client to pay for the value you create from month to month. This may be a paid distribution of educational materials by an e-mail. This may be a paid access to the online fitness school. The simplest thing is to build your client base so that they will constantly buy your services.

• Resale. Buy something that will be interesting to your target audience at a wholesale price and resell at retail with your mark-up. Very often the most popular form of resale for trainers in a fitness club is sports nutrition. This also includes any product listed in the second paragraph above. But remember that the commodity market must always be analyzed in advance, so that your mark-up doesn’t scare off buyers.

• Mediation. Find something that will be interesting to your target audience (clients), then somebody who selling it, and bring them together by charging a fee. You can charge a fee either from the client, for leading him to the seller, or directly from the seller himself, for bringing a client to him. This scheme is perfect for those who don’t want to resell on their own, as was described in the previous paragraph.

• Accumulation. Gather around yourself or attract the attention of a group of people united by the same needs (for example, to lose weight or build muscles) and earn money by selling advertising from a third business. You collect people united by the problem of excess weight, then find a seller of fat burners and offer him to pay you to advertise his fat burners to your audience. You earn by advertising something.

• Capitalization. Save or earn a certain amount of money, invest it (buy a share) in someone’s business and get a fixed profit share, either in the form of a lump sum payment once a year, or in the form of monthly deductions to your account. This is a fairly popular scheme of earnings, although not cheap, in which the trainer becomes a shareholder with the owner of a fitness club and over time could even buy it out.

Conclusion

Well, today we have sorted out a rather complicated and at the same time interesting topic. Now you know that by wondering – “Which way does a fitness trainer earn?” the answer must be sought first of all in clients. The primary task for the trainer is to determine which of the clients is solvent. If a person becomes a member of the club to show off to friends or colleagues – with him you will not earn a dime. Look for those who really need a result and sell them something that really will push them towards the desired goal. Grateful clients not always but very often become permanent. They recommend the trainer to their acquaintances and bring friends to him. Whichever of the eight forms of value you choose, you will in any case directly or indirectly earn on customers. So here’s the conclusion – try to make each client permanent, and you will earn yourself both for bread and for butter and for caviar, maybe even black.

Author – Felix Palmer