The Future of One-to-One Personal Training

Dear Soul-o-Preneur,

This letter is especially for you if you are a Personal Trainer, who offers one to one services.

I’ve been watching trends in personal training for years and if you go back to every prediction I ever made about what was coming to the personal training industry, you will find that I have NEVER been wrong.

Never.

The average hourly rate for personal training has been declining even since before Covid. Don’t listen to what the blogs are telling you. Listen to and watch what your peers are doing.

The rate is declining.

What this means is that most personal trainers are not able to make a full-time living only offering one to one personal training services.

And what has been happening is that personal trainers have been lowering their rates, lower and lower and lower to try to compete for the market. It has literally been a race to the bottom and no one is winning. Even some of your most acclaimed, formerly “most highly paid” personal trainers are now making the majority of their money, coaching other trainers on how to be trainers.

Sound familiar?

So today I come to you with some advice that you could choose, or not choose to take.

The problem is that it is no longer enough for a one-to-one personal trainer to just provide personal training.

You MUST provide a PERSONALIZED EXPERIENCE. Now I have been saying this for years and year after year after year the DESIRE in the market for those experiences grows higher, while the WILLINGNESS for personal trainers to provide that experience gets lower and lower.

In this new age of technology, any lack of desire to provide a highly personalized experience to your one to one clients is absolutely unacceptable.

Now, I have said this before, however, in 2023 there is something else that I must add.

Years ago, I talked about the importance of adopting and utilizing technology to support your clients as well as provide the personalized experience. They are looking for in your one to one relationship. In the past when I spoke of this, I spoke of this is something that was coming.

Now, it is here. And at this point, being unwilling to partner with technology to provide the experience that your clients are looking for is also absolutely unacceptable.

So let me be frank.

PDF forms? Unacceptable.

Paper waivers? Unacceptable.

Cash app payment? Unacceptable.

Having clients manually search for open timeslots to book their appointments with you? Unacceptable.

Training your clients in fitness facilities with dirty and or broken equipment? Unacceptable.

Using that basic scale you purchase from Walmart to track your clients progress? Unacceptable.

Sneaking into a Gold’s gym, Lifetime Fitness, or a planet fitness to sneak and train your clients without management finding out? Unacceptable.

Having yourself, your team, or your clients do anything that could have been automated? Unacceptable.

Refusing to explore how technology, specifically, AI, can support you and your clients in your 1 to 1 training business? Absolutely unacceptable.

If you desire to be able to make a full-time living, providing one to one personal training services, you are going to have to change the way that you do business, the experience that you provide, and the way that you provide that experience to your clients.

And allow me to be CRYSTAL CLEAR….

I don’t care what any of these personal training coaching gurus are telling you

This is NOT just about arbitrarily raising your prices to “High-Ticket” prices so that you can pretend to increase the perceived value of your services. If you increase your prices to $197 an hour, (which was my rate right before I stopped training) you are going to have to raise your level of SERVICE to warrant that investment.

This means that you will have to significantly step your game up so that you can play at a higher level

And that higher level includes TECHNOLOGY.

So let me give you some things that you can do right now, to elevate the experience you are providing:

✅ Automate EVERYTHING in your business they can be automated. There’s absolutely no reason for your clients to be filling out their waivers or their contracts on paper.

✅ If you are currently training at a gym, that has old, OUTDATED, and or busted up equipment find another gym to pay rent to. Even if you have to pay higher rent.

✅ Get yourself an app. There are plenty of personal trainer apps that will allow you to WHITE LABEL their software.

✅ Purchase, higher quality water that you can give to your clients. In fact, if you have your own facility, spend AT LEAST FOUR figures to install a high quality water refill station. While this may seem like an aspect of the experience, that does not matter, trust me, it does. I definitely notice when I go into a fitness facility, and they hand me a bottle of grocery store brand water. It won’t make sense until you actually put it in practice.

And here is my biggest PRO TIP for you

✅ Find a TECHNOLOGY to partner with that will bring an AMAZING VALUE to your clients.

For example, there is a company called ZOZOFIT (no, I’m not an affiliate, but YOU can be) that sells a technology that allows your clients to get a 3D scan of their bodies. Basically, they put on a bodysuit that, then they use the app on their phones to scan the suit, and the app gives them all the same measurements you would normally collect by using measuring tape. PLUS a 3D image of their body. It saves all their data and tracks progress. If you are approved as an affiliate, you get a discount code you can offer to your clients PLUS a commission for each sale,

But more importantly, you would be adding something to your Client experience that is NOT COMMON.

So, there you have it.

You can LITERALLY take all of this right now (provided that you are actually an excellent trainer) and almost DOUBLE the VALUE of your services. And you can do this IN LESS THAN A MONTH.

I can’t wait to see what you do with this.

Your Silent Supporter,

A’Tondra Jones

Real quick, before you go,

If you haven’t joined our free facebook group, The Soul-o-Preneur’s Enclave, then you should. You need a space and a community that understands the unique challenges YOU face as a solo-preneur that other business owners who have teams don’t experience.