How To Develop your Mobile Personal Training Business Plan
Thinking about starting a mobile personal training business? Then you have landed on the right article. You are either starting fresh or moving out of your current gym or studio space. Either way, you will need to hash out a business plan to develop a successful start to your new endeavor.
As a mobile personal trainer, you will experience unique success and challenges, so digging into your business plan to predict and plan accordingly can make your business run smoothly, consistently. Thus, here are some pointers for a strong mobile personal training business plan.
General Business Plan Items for a Mobile Personal Training Business
There are a few basics a person must cover in any business plan for any industry. The following covers the general elements of a business plan and applies them to a traveling, independent personal trainer.
SWOT
With any business plan, you must consider your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and your threats. With a mobile personal training business, you will find a unique set of the aforementioned and outline them in your business plan. So let’s break down what you might consider for each part of the SWOT analysis:
Strengths
Mobile personal trainers provide a convenient method for clients to get fit. They will not need to purchase a gym membership nor make time to get to and from the gym. Trainers also save money on gym memberships! They can choose where they want to go and the lengths they will go to meet clients.
Overall, the trainer has more flexibility which is helpful for both parties. The client will feel more comfortable in their own home or other environments outside of the gym and watchful eyes. The flexibility of training anywhere can help clients from becoming bored with a specific location and routine. Additionally, by simultaneously transcribing audio to text with the use of special programs, it will be possible to create a comfortable sports environment for individuals with disabilities.
Weaknesses
Spending on travel between locations will increase. This means mobile trainers need to set hard restrictions on cancellations and pre-payments so that time and travel will not go unpaid for.
Limitations in workout equipment require that the trainer get creative with how they vary their prescribed workouts. This depends on the type of client that the trainer targets. For example, someone who is wealthier and interested in practicing a more advanced workout regime will most likely purchase more equipment. On the other hand, the average client might not have the expendable income to purchase an array of equipment.
Mobile personal training businesses do not necessarily have a place of business as a landmark for recognition. This means marketing efforts will have to go beyond the help of a brick-and-mortar landmark that people can see on their way to work.
Opportunities
In this case, the flexibility of going mobile makes trainers more attractive to clients. Therefore, trainers have more opportunities for client acquisition if marketing efforts succeed.
Outdoor personal training is growing in popularity in part because of Covid and people generally enjoy being outdoors when the weather permits. In fact, we see this trend reflect in gyms like West Wood in Ireland where they have just commissioned a huge project to add an outdoor studio for conducting fitness classes.
Threats
Your mobility is your business, so if you have any issues with transport, then you will not be able to conduct training as usual. For trainers, this could be the biggest threat to business.
Many factors play into this like weather, having your car stolen, getting into an accident, or taking your car to the shop. Therefore, you must have a backup -plan for transportation. In this day and age, ride-share services are a lifesaver, but the cost adds up quickly.
Executive Summary
An executive summary in your business plan is an important part for investors, but you most likely will not need investors for this business venture. However, it is important to note your executive summary to hash out your ideas in writing and take the time to develop your goals for your business, your budget, and your target market.
Your goals for your business must include the overarching issue that you wish to solve. An example of this would be:
“34.2 million people in the U.S. suffer from diabetes. Most find great challenge in managing their nutrition as well as their fitness as this is a delicate disease to balance in daily life. Though, I believe that suffering through life is unacceptable and it is entirely possible to live freely and with enjoyment as a person with diabetes.
As a mobile personal trainer, I can meet clients at their point of need, in the comfort of their home to provide specialized fitness and nutrition plans. Ideally, I want to provide my services to reduce the effects of poorly managed diabetes of people in my community to improve their overall health and inspire their own friends and family to focus on their wellness needs.”
In this example, we cover goals and the target market. However, you can thin the funnel of your target market even further to specify the demographic of those you would like to service. Moreover, you should set SMART goals that you wish to achieve in the first year of running this mobile personal training business.
Credentials and Values
Here you should establish your qualifications for personal training, your experience, and even a bit of your story for why you decided to embark on this career path.
Your story gives way to your values and the attitude you have toward achieving your business goals and how you will approach them. For a trainer working with athletes, they might value intensity and athletic character. These trainers will work to build athletic character and reinforce mental toughness.
On the other hand, trainers working with people who struggle with diabetes will most likely value building confidence and determination to reach goals. These trainers will work to develop that in their clients and be accountability partners for their good days and bad.
Unique Selling Point (USP)
What makes your mobile personal training business unique and separates you from what other personal trainers have to offer?
In reference to the example I gave earlier, a trainer could have struggled with diabetes for a good period of their life before their growth in wellness and fitness. This puts the trainer at a greater advantage for assisting clients with diabetes because they can emotionally connect and understand the challenge. Whereas a trainer who also specializes in helping clients overcome diabetes without experiencing it for themselves might seem less attractive if a client was to compare the two.
Buyer Personas
Buyer personas outline what you expect out of the ideal client for your business. For most personal trainers, the general qualities of the ideal client are good with communication, willingness to work hard and commit, punctual, and have reasonable, actionable goals for themselves.
Of course, part of a trainer’s job is to help them set those goals, but it is not uncommon for clients to unwaveringly set unachievable goals. When clients will not budge on unachievable goals and trainers cannot help them reach them, then that reflects poorly on the trainer.
For this reason, you must ask yourself what you want and need out of a client that will make sure both parties reach success. Once you have that basis, then you can establish what other qualities in clients will help you best connect with them.
Survey the needs in your community. Do research to understand where you can fill gaps in areas where people need help getting fit and well. Align this with your qualifications and specializations to identify a unique group of potential clients. These clients should be those who you think you can best attract and train.
Mobile Personal Training Business Marketing
In your mobile personal; training business plan, you need to account for marketing efforts. In part, you must budget for marketing in your financials as well as plan your startup marketing efforts.
As mentioned before, you will not have a brick-and-mortar location that people can drive by and take note of. Because of that, you will not have the advantage of other gyms and studios that provide personal training. You will need to get noticed in other ways.
Trainers often start with their friend’s and family’s word-of-mouth. Someone always knows someone who is unhappy with their health or needs to improve their fitness for any given reason. Extend this into your social media marketing efforts by creating sharable posts about your business. At this stage, your personal training business branding should be developed and accurately representative of your business mission and values.
Build a website!
GymGuyz mobile personal training is a wildly successful business with a model that any personal trainer can easily learn from. With a strong start in branding and marketing, GymGuyz was able to launch relatively quickly. Now, this company is considered one of the most successful fitness franchises! If you have no shame in decking out your vehicle with your branding and contact information, then do it!
Establish Guidelines
As a mobile personal trainer, your time is even more valuable as you travel from place to place. Because of that, develop a strict cancellation policy and a payment structure that ensures you still receive money for your time.
Ensure that clients pay ahead of time and understand your policy for cancellations. This will help you to avoid losing money for time you have put into attempting to meet with them.
Establishing where you will provide your personal training services helps you to estimate travel costs. On top of that, you can limit your travel costs. However, this factor is influenced by the wealth status of the clients you train. If you need to drive 45 minutes or more to train a client more than twice a week, then they better pay very well.
Use Software for Personal Trainers
In your business plan, budget for the money you will spend on tools that help run your business more efficiently. Let’s not even begin to consider carrying a briefcase or backpack of documents and clipboards and papers you might need to write and track workouts on. That is old news.
It is 2021 and we have a mind-boggling amount of technology that can consolidate your mess of papers and physical business items. Technology also leaves very little room for disorganization.
And so naturally, I propose using fitness training software like FitSW to consolidate the mess into a single device. You can practically manage your entire business from the palm of your hand and not worry about the workout sheets you forgot to grab off the printer. Come to think of it, you’ll save a bit of money on printer ink and paper!
Overall, mobile personal training is all about convenience, so plan for it every step of the way!
