How to Make Your Personal Trainer Practice or Gym More Profitable
Four Financial Must-Do's To Optimize the Fiscal Health of Your Fitness Business
I truly am a believer that if you do what you love, with grit, resilience, a problem solving mindset and a strategic plan, that you will find success. But a big portion of that strategy MUST involve a sound financial plan.
Here are my top four pieces of financial advice to help with guaranteeing that your passion becomes a profitable venture which supports you and your best life from this day forward.
1. STOP SELLING PACKAGES OF TRAINING SESSIONS
Whether you are a gym owner or independent personal trainer, transferring your personal training clients to recurring monthly billing plans is an excellent way to improve the consistency of both your monthly income, as well as the monthly cost for your clients. After speaking with several trainers and studio owners that have successfully made the transition to automatic monthly billing with their clients, most are also seeing an improvement in their client attendance and accountability leading to both financial success for the trainer and greater goal achievement for clients. Wondering if monthly billing is the right move for you and your practice and curious about where to start with this type of transition? Check out this Business Movement blog to learn key insights from four veteran trainers that have successfully made the jump.
2. STRATEGICALLY SET AND RAISE YOUR RATES
Two of the most common business mistakes I see fitness entrepreneurs making are:
(a) undercharging for their services and
(b) operating year after year without a consistent plan for raising your current clients’ rates.
If you are not earning your ideal annual income or if you have not raised your clients’ rates within the last two years, then you MUST consider the advice in this Business Movement blog in order to guarantee that you begin making more intelligent business decisions around both setting and raising the rates for your clients.
3. TRACK INCOME + EXPENSES USING A PROFIT LOSS TEMPLATE
As a fitness entrepreneur, do you have any of the following goals:
Build a retirement nest egg so that you are set for a comfortable life as a senior
Successfully forecast your upcoming monthly and annual income and expenses
Put away enough money to afford a BIG vacation trip within the coming year
Purchase a home and/or possibly open your own facility
If you answered ‘YES’ to any of these goals, then you MUST track your income and expenses (both personal and business) on a monthly basis using a ‘Profit Loss’ tracker. Not only will gain confidence in understanding both the current and forecasted financial health of both your personal and business life, but you will also sleep much more soundly each night. HERE is a LINK to The Business Movement’s Profit + Loss Template, which our interns and coaching clients use.
4. HIRE EXPERT HELP FOR YOUR FINANCIALS SETUP
One of the most valuable lessons I learned as a young business owner involved how we set up DIAKADI’s Quickbooks when we first opened in 2004. As with most new gym owners, funds were tight, so we chose to set up our Quickbooks on our own in an effort to save some money. We actually ended up creating a MESS and eventually had to pay an accountant a lot of money to go through our books and clean them up from the beginning. So I highly recommend that you work into your budget the funds to hire an accountant (CPA) or bookkeeper to handle your initial set up and possibly teach you how to maintain the books correctly on your own. It will be well worth the money. Lastly, I highly recommend working with a financial planner to help you set up retirement accounts, life insurance and maybe even long term care insurance for your future planning. This is a must do at least once a year, in order to make sure you are on staying track. With the healthy life you are living, it is quite likely that you are going to be around for a LONG while. So you better start saving for those years now.