PT RENT

[jimjim83]

I guess it as far as rent goes it depends what you think your worth. At the end of the day a PT course is for 6 months. Its not a degree your not a Dr, you know a bit about nutrition and how to motivate fatties.

The rent might be a few hundred which isnt bad and your making 800-1000 a week thats pretty good considering its basicly a unskilled job compared to a builder or accountant ect who train for years before being qualified.

You need some where to work much like a mechanic has to invest in tools you need to invest in a place to PT. What other costs do you have? The nicer the gym the more the rent I would have guessed.

for the gym referring you clients I think as a business you need to be more active instead of waiting to be given clients or moaning that the gym doesnt do enough.

An accountant cant complain that the landlord of their rented space doesnt get them enough clients, I see it as the same thing.

[Optimass]

Agree with you Mike LMs are the marketing giant but you need to be pretty switched on to be successful in that environment. IMO not a good place to start if you are in your first few years of learning to market yourself etc.

I used to charge a flat rate of $168 from memory - PTs cop a bit of sht on the forum but for a gym owner they are a key retention tool. If you are paying more than $250 per week you shoud be getting some kind of lead generation. I prefered to bring noob trainers in as club trainers and offer leads to help them generate a business of their own - when they had enough clients to go to contractor and were confident enough I would gladly let them switch. Starting out in your own PT business direct from a course is not easy - not many people have the skill, confidence and marketability.

I often laugh at ads on seek.co.nz posted by local gyms that ask for trainers to apply in the 80k+ bracket - takes a special person to generate a sustainable income through PT alone at those numebers.

I think another key is knowing how to leverage your tax as a contractor - lots of this you can claim as a PT contractor :wink: .. you can make $400 per week work in your favour with good tax advice. (something that has eluded me from time to time in the past :doh: )

[tomsammce]

agree with jimjimi, what makes you think you are worth x amount per hour? i learnt how to count to 8, 10 and 12 when i was 5 years old. pt-ing isnt exactly hard and worthy of a good wage when you think about what they do. anyway you are having problems getting clients... why dont u drop your prices and offer free trial sessions. i did this when i worked for BTS for 2 years the other ppl in there didnt like me for it but f*ck them did i care no... u gotta get ruthless and think about urself, competition is good and anyone who says that is not on is lazy and just jealous they cant do it themselves. soon i had pretty much the all the pt clientele comign to see me for such a cheap rate it wasnt funny... sure i had to work more hours to make up the money i had cut off my rate but how hard is standing and counting to 10 20 times over...

earning $600 with 20 clients is better in the bigger scheme of things than earning $600 with 10 clients even if you are giving up twice as much time with the 20 as you would with the ten, by being so cheap your allowing people into the pt market that would have not been able to afford it before making your market even bigger, your also training 20 people as opposed to 10 so already your potential network for referals is bigger... sometimes at the beginning you gotta sell yourself short and put in some hard yards for not alot in return.

im definitly not saying run yourself like this long term because you would always want to make the most money out of every hour... but in the short term when you have spare time a cheap session is better than no session