Launching A Successful Online PT Business

Creating an online personal training platform can enable you to move beyond the time and location restrictions of servicing only face-to-face clients, write the team from KIXXFIT.

Transitioning your PT skills to an online service

You’re an ambitious and hard-working health and fitness professional and everyone knows you’re very good at what you do. While your clients love you, there’s only so many you can train in-person during the day, and acquiring new customers from social media is proving harder than you thought.

You know that in order to truly grow your client base and income you’ll need to expand online, but you’re unsure of how to do it and are worried about the commitment when you’re already so time-poor. Plus, it seems that every celebrity, influencer and big business has their own well-resourced online health and fitness service that is out to target your clients. How are you meant to compete against these big players?

Expanding your business online can be both daunting and confusing. As an AIF Warrior, however, you have an immediate advantage because you can be confident that you have a first rate service to sell. After all, you were trained by the best! The next step is to successfully transition those skills to online training.

To help you do exactly that, AIF partnered with KIXXFIT, a platform that allows health and fitness professionals to launch and grow their online services and communities.

Here, the KIXXFIT team identify the key areas that health and fitness professionals should consider before launching a paid online service.

1. Define your goals and vision

Identify what you want to achieve, and the actions you need to take to get there.

When you write your goals down, it ignites an entirely new dimension of consciousness, ideas and productivity.

Don’t be that person that fumbles through the dark. Grab a pen and paper and start writing down the first things that come to mind about your goals and dreams for your online service.

Ask yourself:

• What does success look like?
• What gets me out of bed in the morning?
• What is the daydream I constantly revisit about my online service?

You may find yourself smiling as you think ‘Yes! I want this!’

Then, create a mini action plan for each goal. Start with your milestones – what you need to achieve by when, then work backwards with specific actions to make sure you are on track to achieve it.

2. Start preparing

Time is money, so make the most of it and use it wisely.

Growing an online business doesn’t happen by itself. Many of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs had day jobs while they worked on their own business on the side.

For some, setting time aside at weekends to work on a new online service may suit. For others, there may be downtime in the day that can be dedicated to planning, creating and uploading online content.

Making an effort to work at it every day and weekend, even if it’s only for a few hours, can make all the difference. Stick to it. All of those efforts begin to add up and before you know it, you’ll be well on your way to earning an income online.

3. Choose the right technology that suits both your needs and those of your clients

Platforms, like KIXXFIT, that are simple to use are always preferable.

Providing your clients with a solution that is super simple to use and navigate is an essential consideration, and yet it’s frequently overlooked. Too often, trainers make their current and potential clients jump through countless digital hoops before they can actually start engaging with their content and services.

Putting your services on a clunky website, or building your own app, may seem like a good way to save a few dollars initially, but the longer term costs of cutting corners can make even the most hardened health and fitness professional want to cry!

This is because, soon after launching, the realisation hits that your platform comes with a lot of additional challenges, including the facts that:

• You’re responsible for ALL content

Clients have high expectations for digital content. They voraciously demand not only a lot of it, but also variety, originality and quality. Coming up with this is difficult and time-consuming.

• You’re responsible for all paid and organic marketing strategies

This includes sales, distribution, self-development and education – and you’re most likely doing it all alone. So, not only is it difficult just to get your existing clients onto your platform, but it’s incredibly difficult to access new ones as well.

• You’re also now directly competing with the ‘big dogs’

The celebrities, big businesses and influencers with their apps targeting your clients also have the budgets for experienced support teams and marketing.

In order to compete, hard-working PTs need to put in a lot of expensive, time-consuming, lonely and risky work.

The fact is that consumer sentiment has shifted in most industries away from a demand for apps for every individual and towards aggregation platforms such Airbnb, AirTasker, Uber and KIXXFIT. Not only do consumers prefer them, but they take a lot of the pressure off the time and resource-poor, everyday business owners who are providing the services that these platforms showcase to the market. 

With KIXXFIT, both trainers and KIXXFIT market to get clients onto the platform, but KIXXFIT goes above and beyond to support its fitness professionals through retargeting ads, marketing boosts, promotions, education and collaborations. Plus, the web version of the platform turbocharges how trainers can generate awareness, engagements and conversions without the prospects needing to have the app.

4. Market your KIXXFIT channel

Don’t be afraid to shout about your new services. If you feel like you’re annoying people, you’re probably doing the right amount.

Get clear on your business message, identify your ideal clients and find your niche. Easier said than done. In fact, for many PTs, marketing their services is the hardest part of their role.

One of the exclusive KIXXFIT Coach benefits is the provision of personal development and growth opportunities via education and community events with global experts.

5. Seek Feedback

Oprah Winfrey prefers conversing with her fans to signing autographs.

“For 10 years straight and every single day, I shook hands with 700 people and I signed 700 autographs”, Oprah Winfrey once said in an interview with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner.

She hated signing autographs because it was energy-draining and time-consuming. What she really wanted to do was connect with the people that had taken the time out of their day to come along and support her show.

From that point on, rather than signing autographs, Oprah worked on getting to know her audience and speaking with them for 30-45 minutes after each show to seek feedback.

Doing so allowed her to connect with her fans and learn who they are, why they watched the show and where they were from. By conducting these focus groups every day, Oprah was able to build a US$2.6 billion fortune off her talk show.

How does this relate to your online services? Well, firstly it highlights the importance of truly ‘knowing’ your customer in order to achieve success. Knowing your key target audience drives your marketing strategy, content creation and expectations.

So, overcome the fear of customer feedback and start taking note of what your clients are saying. This information is gold. Here are some ways to capture feedback:

• Send out regular surveys via mediums such as Survey Monkey or Google Forms
• Reach out directly to your clients, either face-to-face or online
• Review the your ‘KIXXFIT Coach Analytics’ data summary each month to see which sessions are doing better than others
• Use Instagram to create surveys, polls and question stickers to quickly gather the answers to some of your burning questions
• Take note of the reviews being left on your KIXXFIT sessions.

6. Have patience!

It takes time to create great things.

To successfully grow your online training business, you must plan, execute the plan – and be patient.

Perseverance is what makes your business grow. Success takes time, but if you have established the foundations for it and put the plan into action, you now need to trust the journey and have fun along the way!

Take a deep breath. You’ve got this!

KIXXFIT has a limited time offer available for referrals. Sign up as a Coach on the KIXXFIT platform for only $1 for your first 90 days with the promo code* ‘AIFCOACH20’. Set up your online service in minutes and unlock new business potential!

* AIF receives a commission on valid promo code redemptions.

• Bio

KIXXFIT Team

KIXXFIT are an official Industry Partner of AIF.

Note from the author: Where Certificate III in Fitness or Cert III/cert 3 is mentioned, it refers to SIS30315 Certificate III in Fitness. Where Certificate IV in Fitness or Cert IV/cert 4 is mentioned, it refers to SIS40215 Certificate IV in Fitness.