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The fitness industry is in massive grow right now. The opportunities for personal trainers or other fitness professionals are astounding.

But, if you haven’t clearly defined your niche within the industry, chances are you’ll simply be lost in the ever-growing fitness industry.

Niching down allows your marketing efforts to have a more significant impact and a much better chance of growing your business quickly.

People tend to seek out personal trainers because they have specific goals in mind. Maybe they want to burn fat, bulk up or get ready for their sporting season. When those prospective clients start their search for a personal trainer, they are more likely to search for a niche trainer instead of a generalist who claims they can do it all.

The first step to answering this question is to ask yourself right now, “What do my clients value?”

Your value as a personal trainer is  obviously important to your short- and long-term business growth, but take note that your client’s valuation of your business starts with their first interaction, before they actually speak to you. These things must always be considered in your analysis of ways to improve the value of your business and coaching.

The most direct way to increase your value, in general, is actually very simple and straightforward: build on top of and improve your pre-existing value.

It is the responsibility of the trainer to only advocate eating habits they know well. Nothing is black and white.

Even common vitamins can be beneficial for some and toxic to others.  Supplements compound the issue. If your trainer recommends you take a supplement, I recommend you do your own research before buying it — especially if the trainer is the one selling it to you.

Large commissions are paid to trainers who sell supplements to trusting clients. Multi-tier marketing schemes are rampant in gyms across North America. Whether or not the products are effective is not up for debate here. What’s important is that full disclosure is given if the trainer is receiving compensation in any way for the recommendation.

Gaining new clients can be easier than you think!

Creating a short-term challenge through your business is a great way to bring in new clients and keep existing clients motivated.  Fitness can be a hard sell but introducing a FREE short term challenge may actually be beneficial as it has a very low barrier to entry. You may hear that giving away services for free devalues your business, but we must remember that fitness can be a very hard sell for the majority of the population.

The following tips to run a free short-term challenge can actually be less work than you think.  All you need is an email list of prospects and daily challenge emails!

The physical nature of personal training is one of the many appealing benefits for those of us who become trainers.  However, the downside of relying on our body as a primary tool to do our job is that we only have one, so if we break it (literally!), it could be out of commission for a bit.  Luckily, there are a few ways we can work around injuries that prevent us from being our typical physical selves and help us continue to provide value to our clients. 

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Just because we can’t demonstrate an exercise, doesn’t mean we can’t have someone else step in!  There are many quality videos and websites with exercise tutorials from established professionals that can be shared.  As you are programming your client’s session, have a few links to these videos pre-downloaded and ready to use as needed.