Personal Training Inside a Public Gym – The Grass is Greener Part 2

This scenario can take on many forms. In many ways the in the gym trainer may have the greatest opportunity to organize and grow their business in just about any direction. Initially most trainers will become employees of the gym. In this scenario they will dictate your hours, your dress, possibly how you run your programming, your session rates, your wage (or portion of the session rate) and if you sell they will likely dictate how you sell and how much you sell it for.

The business within a business model can be the most flexible with the least risk, though there is one drawback...control

Of all the training scenarios, you can count on this employee position being the lowest per hour rate. Now the lower rate is really not as bad as many may seem to think as essentially think of it like the income tax we all pay to cover the costs of the social programs we enjoy. In the world of the employee personal trainer the portion of the session rate retained by your employer affords you things like the following: in house marketing and lead attraction, all overhead and expenses to stock, maintain and clean the training areas, often liability insurance, independent sales that are hopefully better at closing clients than you are, operational systems, payment and debt collection and maybe even appointment booking. If you are a solo trainer trying to do all of this on your own you likely have some measure of appreciation as to how nice it might be to be able to rely on others to handle these items for you. The downside to being an employee is your employer of course would like to make as much profit as possible which also means it’s going to be the most difficult for you to drastically increase your earning potential in a short period of time.

Now the big advantage I see to working inside of a gym is for the entrepreneurial trainer. Within a franchise this is likely difficult to impossible, but in an independent gym after establishing yourself as an employee it’s time to talk to your employer. You may be able to negotiate a position where any clients you attract through your own marketing you can retain a much higher percentage of session rates. Most employers understand that quality people may not stay long term and this is a position where working for your own gain will also benefit them, far more than if you were to open your own business. Or you may try to negotiate control of the whole personal training department so you move to begin developing and managing the systems of that end of the business providing the business owner with a steady predictable income stream with little effort or risk. These situations provide varying amount of risk to yourself but also substantial reward to the business owner. In this situation you would have many of the benefits (and headaches) of having your own studio without the huge opening costs or fixed overhead of your own brick and mortar location. The business within a business model is likely one of the lowest risk and highest reward scenarios for any personal trainer, the one factor you may find too limiting is you are still operating within someone else’s environment and for the most part they will dictate how you run your business which can be a real challenge if you don’t see entirely eye to eye. Next week I will complete this series with my own experiences of running your own stand a lone training studio.