Is it profitable to start an in home personal training business? Or, is it smarter to have fitness training clients come to your location for training? This location question is something every fitness professional has to tackle at one time in their career.
In this article I am going to breakdown the good, the bad, and the ugly regarding an in home personal trainer business, as well as having clients visit you. Read carefully because the information I am about to reveal needs to be considered before deciding where you want your fitness business to operate.
Here are 6 points to consider before starting an in home personal training business.
1. Who is the guest?
In home fitness training you, the fitness trainer, become the guest in the clients home. This is their comfort zone, and can sometimes lead to distraction for the client. When you enter a training clients home the dynamics all change. However, when they visit you in your gym they are your guest.
It can be a challenge keeping clients focused in their comfort zone. They have the phone, television, and other family members to distract them. As a personal trainer it is your job, in a kind manner, to keep them focused. It is much easier to do this when they are a guest in your gym. The control shifts.
2. Travel
Your in home personal training business forces you to travel to clients. There is cost involved (car, fuel, insurance, time). The biggest cost is the loss of time. You are not making money while driving to the next appointment. Therefore, you have to charge accordingly.
Having fitness training clients come to you saves valuable time so you can book appointment after appointment without stopping. Saving time equals impacting more clients, and greater profits.
3. Cost
The good news about training people in their homes is you can charge more. Home personal training attracts clients who don’t mind paying for the convenience of having a trainer come to them. The bottom line is you can charge more to make up for the lost travel time.
Your personal training business expenses for home training are fuel, car, maintenance, and car insurance. Of course, you will save money on gym space rental.
Now let’s turn to in gym training. You will need to either own your own facility, or rent space. This is an expense. The positive is you don’t have the travel time, an can train more people.
4. Money
As previously mentioned, your in home personal training business will generate a high per session fee versus in the gym training. This is all because of travel time. A smart personal trainer will account for travel time.
In the gym pros won’t be able to command the fees as in home trainers, but they can make it up from training more people. It is possible to train more than one, or more people in an hour. Home personal training makes it hard to do this as a result of travel time.
5. Equipment access
As a result of the functional training movement there are many options for equipment in your home personal training business. However, a highly stocked fitness facility provides even more options. The bottom line is you can get a phenomenal workout either way.
6. Motivation
I have found that the group dynamics of a fitness facility trump in home training. Seeing other people exhibit effort tends to motivate people. Clients who train in their homes will not experience this group dynamic motivation. However, having you, a personal trainer, coaching them will motivate clients enough to get results. In home personal training business clients enjoy the privacy of their home gym.
So which is better in home personal trainer business, or in the gym? The answer to your question is neither. My vote is a tie. There are positives, and negatives regarding both. It is your job as a fitness professional to see which fits best into your personal training business plan. Consider the points above, and take action to build your fitness business.
Click here —> In home personal training business to discover a blueprint on exactly how a celebrity trainer created a six figure fitness training business.
