How to Transition from Private Fitness to Group Fitness Training Sessions

Posted on December 25, 2022

To watch the full video, click here: https://youtu.be/U-FEE_gDBpk

Hey, what’s up coaches and athletes, Michael Hughes here with Gymnazo Edu. If you’re a personal trainer, I’m sure you’d agree that you love your job, you love connecting with people on a day to day basis, working them out, making sure they just improve their livelihood and improve the way that they think about themselves, their confidence, their motivation, how it carries into their nutrition, their mindset, and improves their marriages, their relationship with their kids their work life, it just has so many benefits that far outreach, just the just the session that you’re in. But your personal training business has a ceiling. The way to grow that and to reach more people has a cap, there’s only really two ways to grow your business your practice without offering group training services. And that’s one by charging more. The other one is by working more hours, well, if you charge more, great, you’re going to make more money. But you’re also going to have a ceiling on that limit your marketplace where you’re in your community will only afford so much for personal training. And if you do have those people do find those people that number of classes get smaller and smaller and smaller, who will want to afford what you’re charging to make it a lifestyle that makes you happy for the long term. And of course, just work harder, right? No, no big deal. Put some more time in there just work 18 hours, go for it. You know, just work until just sleep at the gym right now that’s not going to work out either. You’re going to reach your limit your burnout, you’re going to be just forget this job, I want to move on somewhere else. There’s also this thing called personal training schedules. Like you get more and more people training clients, you got to manage more and more schedules. And for me, what if they canceled gosh, I didn’t get paid for that hour. And you know, they canceled outside of my window. While normally charge them. Palmer didn’t have enough time to reload that spot with a new client. Because I was training the whole morning. I just didn’t know I got the text when I figured out another five minutes late. But they canceled already. Bummer. Okay, what about you go on vacation? What about when they go on vacation? What about when their kids sick? What about all these different things that chip away at your schedule as a as a one on one trainer, it certainly happened with with me, there was almost not a not a single week that I didn’t lose several hundreds of dollars by just non non done sessions, right non training sessions that are just open spots. So again, I know that you feel that especially if you’re a personal trainer. But in this video, I want to break down the high level steps that I took, and what steps I wish I took to convert my personal training business into an ecosystem of group training services. This video is really ideal for a trainer who’s working by yourself, and wants to create a team around you to expand your impact and grow your practice and your business. So expecially pay attention, you feel I’m talking right to you. Also in this video, I’m going to share with you my tips and my steps on how I transitioned from personal training into group training. What you also need to do to be successful and the considerations of each step to make that possible. And even pricing strategies that will make for a win win for your clients and for your business. And just to give you some context, I started as a personal trainer in a big box spa. And I built a seven figure that’s about a million dollars plus of sales. I have a team of 13 people working for us. And we have a clientele of growing 450 different athletes. So if you find this topic to be interesting, I would love a like, subscribe, because we want to share how we done it. We want to open source what we’ve done and share to the training end of the conditioning world. Because it’s super useful. And I like and I was coached. And I want to be a coach for those who want to take it on. And if you really want to get serious about this and understand the operations and service, the programming, the business side of training and conditioning, then check out in the description. There’s a link to our MDMC, our multi dimensional movement coaching mentorship. It’s not just an online course and mentorship with over 100 plus different videos diving in each step of what we did, from the operations, to personality assessments to movements, to training and tweak from pain and conditioning from the software from the hardware, what do you need to do to set up your facility to make it happen? And not only that, but there’s coaching. There’s nine different coaching calls that make this course personal applicable for what you need it for, versus just trying all on your own to take this content and make it happen for yourself. We’re gonna guide you through it step by step, hour by hour to make sure that is the best certification you’ve ever taken in your training and conditioning worlds. So check it out. hope you love it because I know it’s been so much so many of our clients that we’ve given it to

Okay, To get this video kicked off actually to start at step zero, because this is what I did and how I do not recommend doing what I did I what I did is I had my personal training, clientele. And I try my best to transition them all to a larger group format, like six plus one, right six groups of people in a group and more. And what I did is I did it, what we call a demographic programming method. And I do recommend this now what I mean by a demographic programming method is I defined a certain set of athletes that I want to do group training for. It was not open to everybody, and I’ll talk more about that later. So when we met demographic programming, because like it’s a baby boomer, it’s millennial, it’s youth High School, maybe moms, maybe a particular sport or activity? Well, I did it for it was the complexity of movement ranges that athletes or clients would fit into. And again, I’ll talk about that more later on. But I gotta get to step one is first, you have to identify your clients, assuming you’re a personal trainer, right? doing one on one trainings, who of your clients have similar programs, right, similar goals, but fits that demographic programming that I was talking about, you got to just pick it right? Maybe you have a lot of women, maybe you have a lot of moms Great, that’s a good place to start. Maybe a lot of baby boomers, okay, that’s a good place to start. Maybe if you’re in a youthful town, you got a lot of soccer players good. You can start with soccer players. But besides the demographic efficacy side, what type of what time of the day do those people come in, you got to consider that. Right, you don’t want to put a group of moms and put it at 536 o’clock, that home with their kids at that time, right? You don’t want to do a youth soccer and do it at nine o’clock in the morning, they’re at school. So we’ve done our research, we know that our clients are more loyal to the time of day that they come in, versus the program that’s offered at that time. So when you identify your clients, your demographics, also identify the time of day that you think you should start this group expansion for your business. So it’s a big, big deal. And as you do this, you’re just picking out these different clientele, it’s really a good start to have an individualized approach, right? Talk to each client, your personal training clients, one on one, you know, start having a conversation about where you want to convert your business to and how they think you think, excuse me that they’re a good fit. Gotta plant the seed in their mind. Remember, people don’t like change, they like hanging out with you. And they’re not like, oh, I don’t want to devalue my services. In reality, you’re going to add value to their services. And I’ll share more about that later. So offering a free demo class, somebody that kind of sparked the interest, because they got to dip their toe in the water, and the planning that preparation that you’re gonna do, they’re gonna see how this is gonna be a benefit to them, not a downgrade to them. Okay, move on to step two, you have to find and create space, I’m going to use the word space in a few different ways here. First, is when you create this space, you have to think about it as like an exclusive opportunity that you’re offering your clients that they can’t get anywhere else. Now, I started in a big box gym. So we’re literally up in the training floor, right? And I had to think about what part of the gym could I take over kind of dominate that space to create this like aha experience that people would look over like, Ooh, I want to be part of that. So if you’re in a big box gym, maybe you want to talk to management about where you could go, what corner, what little zone you can take over, because you want to be running from treadmill alley, all the way to the weight stack next to the Mears and then down to the yoga room to do your group training is to spread out it’s not an exclusive feeling that your class are going to get. If you only if you already have your own studio, how many people can you fit within your studio that you’re currently renting? Right, maybe you need to go to a park, maybe it’s summertime. And you can get three months of good weather to find some space where you can make that happen for a long term indoor permanent solution. So there’s things I want you to think about. That’s physical space, what about the other space, you have your schedule space, this is one of the hardest steps I’m going to spend a bit of time on, and really unpacking my experience for you. Because if you’re a good trainer, you have your hopefully a good five plus hours of your day, just set up for one on one training, hope it’s more like seven or so right? Where you get a lot of time to really connect with clients paying you for your for your for your time. So how do you switch that out? Well, you may have to move a client, you may have to cancel a client. Or you may have to convince that client for that time slot that you want to do your group training in to get into that group. So there’s a few hard steps you’re going to have to do to create a new time slot and you’re already full schedule. And it gets a little harder when you have a group time slot. that’s like two weeks out, and the zero people signed up for at this particular point, you haven’t haven’t convinced anybody yet to go into that time slot and you have a new client who walks in the doors and says, I want to train in two weeks at 830, your new time slot. And you have to say no to that person. Because you have to hold that time slot sacred, you have to give it just as much value. As if you had your most high price client on that spot. Even there’s zero, people sign up for that spot. Because if you don’t hold that spot, you’re just going to ruin everything you’re trying to push, you have to think long term on this one, not short term. And it gets even harder when you have a past client literally walking back into your spot again, saying, Gosh, man, I’ve missed your trainer, I’m ready to get back, my life is crazy. Here’s money, boom, I’m ready to go, you already have a built up relationship with them all that equity. And you have to say no to them. Because that time slot is for group. Maybe you convert them into group. But it gets challenging, when all these different kind of the universe is just trying to give you more business. But it’s not the business that you want for long term. I haven’t had it. In the case where I had, I’d have six people sign up for my brand new group class, I was so stoked. I have three clients converting over there, bring in friends and like yes, it’s gonna be great. I’m there. It’s 5:30am I’m got up early, I’m amped I all set up, the stations are ready to go. And no one shows up. goose egg, no joke, literally happened several times. I want to cry like I you know, like losing my mind here like dang it, I got zero money. For that hour. Well, I was used to making money for that for that hour. I did all the setup all the work, crusade. And I remember working at that at the big box gym, and the sales manager, he’s seen a lot of trainers come in through that particular gym. And he said to me, Michael, he says, I’ve seen so many coaches, so many trainers trying to do what you’re doing, I got one piece of advice for you. Don’t stop, don’t take that opportunity that you think is going to define you. And let it define you. It’s one opportunity, I remember that I’m digging with that so much. Because here I am now standing right now in my dream in my business, and I’m doing more than I’ve ever could have possibly done, because I didn’t give up when I got those goose eggs. So let’s move to step three. This is what I want you to do. It’s what I didn’t do in the beginning, this is the big step, it’s creating a semi private space or a small group option. What I mean by semi private or small group is clinic, a four Max, I want to go bigger than four, maybe two, maybe three to start, where you get individualized programming. It’s basically taking your programming with your individual client that you have. And combining that time slot with other individual clients in the same share time. What’s great way to start because they still get their personalized programming, they don’t have to switch programming, you’ve already programmed for them. So you can run off that program. It’s not does not work admin time, you have to reprogram and you get that same relationship with them, or you can still connect with on a one on one time zone. But just for periods of time in that session our so it’s a real cool cool starting, we had to kind of reboot that and build that from from from scratch, which I don’t recommend, again, start with your start with the same, don’t move there cheese, don’t leave your clients cheese too much. And it’s a great way to get your group training to be much more leveraged, and still have that one on one approach that your clients are used to. Then as you get that going to get that ramped up, now you’re ready to go to Step four, which is programming for your larger group classes. Whenever we buy large group classes, I’m talking about like 1215, maybe 20. Maybe I’m a big, big advocate of keeping it in the 1216 range, in a sense. I like even numbers is how the hello how the program goes. If you get too big, it’s just hard to manage and really provide value individual value through your clients. But this is where you got to put together your game plan of your demographic, right? Your demographic, what demographic Are you going for, you got to start building that programming. And this is hard because you’re not programmed for one person anymore. You’re programming for a team of people. So what are your What are your limits, where’s your where’s your spectrum of where you’re going to program for now, if you want help on this one, check out the link below in the description where we literally are going to show you our programming that we do for our groups from level one from level two or level three. I’ll talk about those differences a little bit later. But it’s a great starting point. Because it’s only gonna cost you like literally under $10 For that programming. If you can program that quickly. under an hour under half hour then you’re you’re pretty awesome or your program is not that detailed, but we have a very Very good opportunity here for you to get a jumpstart and learn faster from what we did. I’m all about learning from other people. So you can go faster, hence this entire video. So thinking long term, right? You can’t just think about just this one size fits all type of program. Short term, you got to start there, I totally get it. But I want you to start thinking about it long term, what other programs can you start to implement, that are going to help and kind of piggyback on the program that you’re starting off with, I started with what was the now called a program G two. It’s kind of our I call it kind of our weekend warrior soccer mom type of thing. It was it was had some impact wasn’t designed with people with with with joint pain, we didn’t do an Olympic lifting either. It’s kind of that middle of the road program. And then quickly, I built that Olympic lifting type program, because I want and my clients were getting better and better and they needed a place to step up. But I didn’t want to overtax our new people coming into our program. So I created two separate programs and ran them at different time zones. And then I built a program called what we’ve now called G one, which is designed for people to have aches and pains designed for the baby boomer plus generation who want to work out want to have sustainability but don’t have the means of doing box jumps, etc, etc. Now we have seven different exclusive large group formats. group one, group two group three levels, we have a whole kind of restoration true stretch foam rolling type of class, we have a whole kind of yoga we call mindful movement class, we have a female pelvic cord exclusive class, we do that virtually and and we also have our specialty services where we do ropes, or empty ropes where we do kettlebell, we do may stuff kind of specialty stuff that’s not deep within the schedule. Now, again, that’s designed to have a whole team support, you’re doing that. But it’s something that I’ve done over 10 years. And I bet you can do it in a way less time than that way less time. Because you’re gonna learn from my mistakes and things that I’ve done, cuz I’m showing you the steps to get this process thinking. It’s pretty crazy. Now, again, I’m gonna say this, I’m gonna re emphasize it, I don’t recommend doing a one size fits all, for a long term program. Things like OTF, CrossFit, F 45, there are long term one size fits all. Certainly, they’re there to make a lot of money and they do its max profit. But it’s minimal value for the athlete and the coach. Again, max profit for the business, but minimal value for the athlete and the coach because the athlete, they don’t get the variability that they need. So therefore, they’re only going to do that program for so long for they either get bored, they get burnt out, or the body goes through a repetitive movement pattern that as sources get chewed up on. From the coaching standpoint, think about doing high level high energy group coaching, four to seven hours, eight hours a day, week after week, month after month, year after year. Would you consider that a career that you want to do? Gosh, 9.5 out of 10 people say no, no way. It’s just not something that has enough versatility of variety in it. So therefore, these programs that one size fits all are planning on churning through clients that are planning on churning through coaches. That’s not what I would like for you to build for yourself, which is a career as a movement trainers and movement specialist, right? Get off my high horse on that one. Step five, take this one on one program that you’re still doing, you’re still doing one on one programming, just not that much, your semi private, maybe a little bit more than your group training. You know, if your group and your larger group training, you’re doing the most amount of time, that’s just if you’re a one on one coach, you can still do all three can have a team around you UI can really blow up blow it up. But turning those three programs into an ecosystem, quitting pricing options that keep people in the ecosystem of personal training, semi private training, group group training, once you have all the services turned on, you have these membership models where people are still saving money coming in more, but you’re also making making more and working less potentially depending on what you want. It’s a big deal. When people run out of money, they can’t afford personal training, you don’t have to lose them. They can go to semiprivate save money still get that personalized attention programming. But then you get the people who can’t afford that they can’t become into the image of the group training side of things. They can afford $15 per workout, but they realize they actually want more personalized attention. Because and they start saving up for that semi private, they can start to cycle through your services, never leaving your ecosystem, giving them more value and you more financial freedom because you’re making more while training less or making more while training the same amount. Both are win wins. So I want to give you an example from a membership model from a numbers standpoint because the numbers really, really are a big big deal here. Right? So here’s from a client’s perspective. Let’s have a personal client. This client comes and sees a trainer two times a week One on one. And to keep easy numbers, they pay $100 per hour. So in a week time, they’re paying $200 to that coach, saving up. Awesome, great. Okay. Now, what if that client came in and did a semi private two times a week? Okay, well, we only charge $40 per hour for for that. So two times a week, one hour, okay, got it got it 40 times 40 per hour, okay, 80 bucks to do that twice per week, okay, then they do group three times a week. And we’ll charge around $15 per hour to do that group class. So three of those 15, that’s 45. Put those together, you have $125 per week, for five hours of training, versus the $200 that we’re getting for private training for only two hours, you can see how that client is amped they save $75 per week, and got way more than double of the amount of training hours. All right, that seems like a win for the client. But the coach, right, they just lost $25 per week, not the case, for the trainer to have that same client to pay $200 per hour, or $200 for per week for two hours. But then they’re coaching that semi private. And through time, they build that, that semi private to have four clients in there per hour, paying $40 per person, we do the math on that one, that’s $160 per hour, that’s one hour. Okay, then they run off the semi private, they go to their group, and they built up their group to have 12 clients in there each paying $15 ahead to be there, per hour, that equals $180 per hour. So now you take those two hours, put them together, you’re at $340. For those two hours before, you’re just making $200. From 340 200, that’s a 70% increase in revenue that the trainer got, and the client saved $75 as well. That’s it. That’s it, we call that a win win. That is how you leverage and scale and grow your business. Now yes, I do not want a discount, there is admin time programming time that you have to consider as a coach that goes into those things. But you’re going to become much more efficient as you refine your operations for each program especially. If you check out the MDMC mentorship, where we talk about exactly what I did what we do to do that, just a little side note there. Okay, look at a little bit of a benefits a little bit of kind of recap on what’s going on, I have five major benefits that I really, really want you to understand, to push to get this part of your business and your practice, the first one is getting, you’re leveraging your time, that’s the one thing you do not get back that is the most valuable asset that you have as a trainer. The second thing is you’re going to be adding much more variety to your day, we cannot discount this thing called the mind and your passion, right? If we burn yourself out doing the same service over and over and over again, it’s not going to be a long term career. And I really love my job as a movement trainer as a career, day in week and month out year out, I love it every single day because my days, my hours they shift, I go from one on one in the morning to little semi private to two groups back to a one on one finish with a semi private, but they have variety in it, I don’t walk out drained, number three value, you’re gonna provide more value to your to your customer, there’s gonna be as in three distinct ways, you’re gonna be adding more options to their training services, right, they can go do some maybe some lower level group, they can go to some high level group that can do some, maybe some one on one, they can use some stretch classes, etc. etc. gives them options where they don’t have to go to other services to complete their Cornucopia per se, of their training that they want. Be you’re going to be saving them money. Huge when they get to do more and spend less when when no problem on that one. Then see, they’re going to see you more often. Instead of only coming to you once a week because that’s all they could afford. They can now come three times a week and still be saving, saving money. All these great brands out there. They are great brands because they have a stickiness to it. The stickiness for you as a trainer is they see you more often they become a part of you, you are part of their lives very hard to break that up as you seek clients more and more and more. fourth benefit is increasing your earning potential right we talked about just leveraging your time. Now we can leverage the the dollar bills that come into your business. It’s very important that a trainer makes good good money. Because without it you can’t sustain your business practice for the long term of your serving and helping people will be on what they can do for themselves. That’s a big point. And five, expanding your range of clientele. This is huge if you want to really expand and take over more impacts because the more clear until that you can reach, the more clientele you’re coming in. Obviously, it’s a very, very simple concept, but your one on one training, you’re limited to a clientele with a price point that they can afford. If you’re going just pure group, okay, now you’re limiting the effectiveness, the potency of your training and conditioning that one on one can offer. And of course, with that semi private, it’s a perfect hybrid blend. That really is that just that, that sweet spot that makes everything just tastes so good. So I hope these steps, give you the outline to take your personal training, practice and leverage it. Now, please remember likes, subscribe, because we want to continue to put out more more videos. And if there’s a comment, you want to put that something that we could tailor towards that you really have an interest in, let us know. And if you’re a trainer wanting to find the next level, the next step and found this this information super helpful. We got so much more of it. It’s all in our multi dimensional movement coaching program mentorship, linked below and in the descriptions. You guys are awesome. Appreciate your time. We’ll see you next time. Keep on rockin.