Being a personal trainer is certainly not your standard ‘9-5’ job. It’s demanding, and sometimes you need all the help you can get. Luckily, the best management software for personal trainers can help to give you bit of a breather.
Life can be tough for personal trainers
Personal training involves you being at your best during the most unsociable hours of the day. Those 5am starts and 11pm finishes are achievable when it’s the odd day here and there, but when that’s your standard working day, it’s simply not sustainable – not if you also like some form of work/life balance, anyway.
Not only are your days long as a personal trainer, they can also be extremely exhausting. On-your-feet, active, traveling from one training base to the next if you are freelance, constantly having to provide high levels of motivation and encouragement, remaining attentive, adapting your coaching technique to suit each individual, and doing so hour after hour – being a personal trainer is tiring stuff!
And, on top of that, you need to keep on top of your own training too… “practice what you preach,” and all that! Being a freelance personal trainer can mean leading a highly pressured lifestyle, which is dangerous to our health. We need to offer the best service we possibly can, but we also need to make it sustainable.
So, while you may love training your clients, the question is, do you want this current lifestyle? Is the way you operate your personal training business sustainable? And do you have a healthy work/life balance? If the answer to any of these questions is no, then you need to change something if you want to remain successful in the industry for any length of time.
Personal training survival tips
When your days look rather jam-packed with clients, that’s great and it’s what we all want as trainers. And, being on the gym floor is, in my opinion, the most enjoyable aspect of our jobs. But once you’ve scheduled in session planning, done all the admin and updated your social media, can you put time aside for your own personal development and training?
More importantly, what about your personal life and quality time spent with family and friends? If anyone out there is reading this as a freelance PT ‘lone ranger’ and has all this nailed, then please tell the rest of us how you do it. Myself and all the trainers I have spoken with agree that sometimes, there are quite simply not enough hours in the day!
However, hiring staff incurs a substantial cost, and can often be more of a hindrance than a help as management responsibilities build up. Below, I have suggested a few alternatives that can help to enhance our work/life balance:
- Reduce the number of clients you take on – this also means a reduced income.
- Employ a member of staff – that involves cost.
- Offer partner and small group training – that way, you get to see more clients during one hour, increasing your hourly income and freeing up time elsewhere.
- Implement management software for personal trainers – this enables you to better manage your time and organise all of your business activities.
The benefits of management software for personal trainers
If you implement the best management software for personal trainers, you have potential of gaining a much improved work/life balance. Below are a few benefits of this technology:
- Maintain consistent engagement with clients, using minimal time and resources. This can include sending mass emails to your clients and prospects, as well as automating client communications such as class reminders.
- Manage any employed staff using personal trainer management software as one interface for all communications.
- Encourage prospects to sign up online, making your PT services as accessible as possible. The best management software will provide this service, and even enable you to take direct debits and credit card payments.
- Generate more business by including client referral programs in the software. After all, one of the best forms of marketing is word of mouth, so this is a great way to grow your personal trainer business.
- Avoid any appointment errors and double bookings. Personal trainer management software can allow you to set the timeframe in which clients can cancel sessions.
- Streamline your program design. Once you have a few programs developed, a little tweaking can make them work for new clients.
- Save the earth and operate a paperless business! Personal trainer management software stores all the important stuff, so no more hours of filing!
- Follow up any interest whilst a prospect is still ‘hot.’ The best software for personal trainers can capture prospect information, so you can send out personalised offers.
Naturally, we believe that Membr is the best management software for personal trainers on the market today. If you’re interested in learning more about our technology, check out our fitness solutions.
