When completing their personal training qualifications, many Personal Trainers are enthusiastic, motivated, and ready to put everything into their new career. The challenge is that for many of us who are very hands on and practical, we’re just not sure where to put our time, energy, and focus. Most Trainers and Coaches that start in gyms and health clubs around the country enter into a rent-based model. This is around $300 a week, which may sound a little steep to some, but it gives you 24/7 access to a five-star facility packed with members and many of which are looking for a Trainer. The real beauty of this model is that for those that are really driven to help lots of people with their health, fitness, and wellbeing goals, but also have financial goals themselves, the income is uncapped, and they have unlimited earning potential. You pay your $300 a week in rent, and whatever else you make from delivering fantastic programs to your clients and helping them towards their goals, is yours.

Therefore, the more clients you train the more income you’ll make. This is the appealing part to many PT’s who have financial or lifestyle goals; that if they work hard and deliver amazing results, that they will be extremely well financially rewarded. With PT’s and Coaches charging on average $60 per session, there’s plenty of great money to be made! Then why is it that some PT’s are barely getting by, while some are making $3000+ per week?

One would assume that there’s some PT’s that know exactly what to focus on and do, and others that either don’t, or do but don’t have any accountability to do the things that they know they should. Here’s why a coach or mentor is so important.

I know when I was first starting, I was ambitious, driven, and ready to put everything I had into it – I just didn’t know what to do. Without understanding it, I’d be spending lots of time doing things that really didn’t make a big difference, and very little time doing the things that would have. There’s the 80-20 rule, where 80% of our results will come from the 20% of our actions. The real key that a coach helps you to focus on is that 20% for you based on your position, goals, and business model. It’s hard to know when you’ve never been in the position of starting your own business before, even if it’s one just in a gym.

How to build a client’s base, what kind of marketing to do, creating ads on socials, creating lead stands in clubs, and then creating a data base to keep in contact with these leads. Then of course there’s keeping them with great customer service and automating to take out the stress and feeling overwhelmed: what software, what apps, how to set these up and use them. There’s so much time and stress right there.

Unfortunately for me and for most Trainers, when we are first starting or once we establish that we’re not doing so well, we have a scarcity mindset when it comes to coaches and mentors. We know that this person/program will help us but we just focus on the financial cost: What’s that coach or program going to cost? Rather than with an abundant or growth mindset of yes this will be a financial outlay, but what will this help me to create? With this knowledge, accountability, and direction, what kind of business will I be capable of developing? How many more clients will I be able to help and what does the financial reward look like for me? How much time, energy and stress am I saving myself?

The cost of a really great coach or mentor will be nowhere near the cost of not having one!