When you start out in the personal training industry it’s every coaches dream to be fully booked up!

I remember when I started LEP Fitness (nearly 7 years ago!) at how desperate I was to find clients. I knocked on peoples doors, handed out flyers, posted ads on Gumtree…

Basically I was desperate Dan! 

Willing to take on everyone and anyone!

If you persist in the personal training industry and work hard you can make a very good living for yourself…

BUT eventually you hit a glass ceiling where you’re fully booked up and can’t take on anymore clients!

I remember at one point in my career doing 60 sessions per week, that’s frickin crazy when I think about it (WTF was I thinking!?!?) I couldn’t say NO to people back then! and I ended up burning out and having to re-asses my priorities because my life sucked and I felt knackered all of the time!

Over the years I’ve grown my personal training business in other ways, i’ve lowered down the amount of sessions I do (I only do 30-35 sessions per week), I charge more, and have developed new ways of generating income without having to spend hours and hours slaving away! 

In this post i’m going to share some tips for those of you out there who are fully booked up. 

If this post only helps one person out there… and stops them from burning out… then it’s been worth my while writing it!

What to do as a personal trainer when you get fully booked up…

#1 Hire Another Personal Trainer 

One way to grow your business is to take on another coach. If you’re fully booked up and have a good lead generation strategy i.e. facebook, google ads, e-mail campaigns (or whatever works for you!) and are generating 10-30 enquiries per month then you could take on another personal trainer and pass new clients onto them.

You could either take a commission, let’s say 50% off the package they sign up to and then give the trainer the client, or you could employ the trainer and have them part of your team. 

It’s important to have a business plan in place before doing this. Taking on another trainer can be lucrative but it can also be a DRAIN. You need to have the right people working for you, and make-sure that it’s profitable for your business. 

#2 Ebook

A couple of years ago I designed the 28 Day Keto Challenge – which is basically a small 28 page e-book that users can follow to help them lose weight. In the e-book there’s a nutritional plan, training plan, and some picture demonstrations…showing users how to perform the exercises. 

I started the keto plan as a fun project and to try and help more people BUT it’s ended up taking off and spreading like wild fire! It’s helped lots of people lose weight and also increased the turn over of my business by around £4k per year (not bad for a project that only took me 40hrs to put together!) 

Creating an e-book is a great way to reach more people, especially when you’re fully booked up. You can advertise your e-book on social media, in your blogs, in forums, etc, etc. 

#3 Group Training 

Another way to scale up your business is to train more people in a session. For example instead of charging £40 for a 1-1 session you could do a small private group PT session (let’s say 4 people) and charge £20 per person, that means you’ve just doubled your hourly rate to £80 per hour!

This type of training also suits your customers because they are spending less per hour too. 

How to implement? 

1) When one of your clients finishes their personal training with you… you could help them maintain their results by placing them in a group personal training class. That way they save money and you retain them as a client. 

2) You could run separate group classes 3x per week and create a new business. If you have free slots either during the morning or daytime…

For example when all I was doing was 1-1 coaching I typically worked 10am-2pm and then 5-9pm. This meant that I could start a group personal training business before work hours (7-8am). Once this was up and running I then hired a personal trainer to take these classes for me.  

#4 Waiting List

Another thing you can do is just have a WAITING LIST. That’s what i did initially. Of course not everybody waits..some people just want to start! But you do get people who are prepared to wait. 

For example last year I was only able to take on 5 new clients throughout the year, as my retention rate for customers is very high. When one of my clients moved to a new job in London I had about 10 people on a waiting list. I e-mailed the first person, left it 24hrs but got no response, then e-mailed the second person…again got no response, but then the 3rd person I e-mailed came to a consultation and then signed up!

It can be a great way to save business for the future. 

Thanks for reading,

Nick 🙂

If you’ve benefitted from reading this post please share your feedback, my e-mail is nick@lepfitness.co.uk – i’d absolutely love to hear from you! 

Also if you’re an ambitious personal trainer looking to grow your business then head over to the PT blog section on my site