Using a personal trainer to get fit
Many people turn to using a personal trainer in order to improve their health. The ability to outsource the organisation and planning of their weekly fitness training makes being healthy much easier for them. Personal training that meets the clients needs leads to long term working relationships. A sustainable personal training business is built upon these long term relationships. At NK Fitness we are very fortunate to have a high number of long term clients. This keeps business very steady throughout the year.
Balancing the personal training diary
Traditionally, different clients will have different commitments at different times of the year through their businesses. These tend to balance each other out. In other words, when one client is away, others are not and so the diary will remain fairly consistent. However, one period when business does dip, in terms of number of sessions is during key holiday periods. Therefore, we expect to see a slight downturn in business during Christmas and summer periods, and tyo a lesser extent Easter.
However, the summer of 2o22 saw a much more pronounced and prolonged downturn in the number of our clients using a personal trainer. It seemed that each week we were delivering less and less sessions. This is concerning when out business model relies upon us being in front of clients to generate income. Initially it looked like a post pandemic hangover:
- Those clients that typically enjoyed 2-3 holidays per year prior to the pandemic seemed to be taking more frequent breaks and for longer too. Many of our long term, regular clients were away for the vast majority of the summer and beyond.
- People adjusting to their own change in work and financial circumstances meant that we weren’t getting as many referals or new enquiries.
- People seemed to have much more hectic and reactive weekely schedules. When using a personal trainer in Windsor, sustainable training usually requires a regular slot each week. However, we’ve seen an increase in the number of people having to be much more reactive to their work and other aspects of life so they cannot commit to the same time each week.
Making the personal training diary robust
Making our business robust against these events is a real challenge. Firstly, we need to ensure that no one client takes up too much of our time. Allowing the diary to be dominated by a few clients increases the risk of a drop in income should those clients need to take time away. Introducing retainers or monthly direct debits is one way of combatting holiday lulls too. But probably the bottom line is more direct and ruthless marketing / busines development – not resting on our laurels and allow things to grow organically – making sure that business is competitive in attracting new clients has to be the bottom line.