Go from Over Worked to Working for You
Trainers are overworked and exploited by the box gym setting.
Let me tell you how your box gym career is gonna go:
(Deep inhale)
You arrive fresh-faced in your early twenties. You work hard for a few years, work the weekend, do the early and late floor shifts and gradually cobble together a client roster. You hit your pay bumps and start making money. You’re working your ass off but that’s alright. You’re young and resilient. You were a top ten trainer in your gym last month. You’re rightfully proud of the business you created. You’re actually becoming a great trainer. You help clients lose weight, gain muscle. run a marathon. Rinse. Repeat.
You get older. Life gets more expensive. You don’t want to live with roommates any longer so you get your own place. You need some more money because you want to live alone but still eat out, have a car or take a vacation. You have a life, a spouse, maybe a family. You don’t want to work the weekends or the floor shifts. You try to get a few more clients but you realize everyone wants to train the same hours, 6-8 in the morning and 5-7 at night. You’re already booked at those times and unfortunately you can’t create more hours in a week.
Right about now your gym dangles a raise in front of you. You take a continuing education class they offer, charge your loyal clients more (because you’re better now that you’ve taken this special class), you get a pay raise, but so does the gym. They take more than half of what you charge. You inherit all the risk here. If a client decides your new price is too high and what you learned isn’t valuable to them they can just stop. The gym doesn’t care because they just hired a dozen new trainers who will take your old client and work weekends and floor shifts. You can’t attract as many new clients because the new gym members don’t realize how good you are and they can train 3 x’s a week with the new trainer for what it costs to train twice with you. Your income has gone up a little, but if one or two of your steady clients moves, or loses their job, or if there is a recession, then you’re right back to what you used to make; only now you have a mortgage.
The gym dangles another class, another raise and you take it. The cycle repeats. You take the risk, lose a few clients, maybe gain one or two back, make more per hour (as does the gym) but you’re working with another dozen fresh faced inexpensive trainers who will work weekends. You want to attract a few new clients, work a few more hours and up your income but all the fresh faced trainers are taking the leads because they’re an easier sell and they don’t ask as much from the gym. Your income hovers. Your confidence takes a hit because you’re not top ten anymore. You’re too expensive. You reach out to your ‘management’ and try to figure out a way they can help you sell your skills. They’ve told you to take these classes, to charge more to your existing loyal clients, but can they support you, market you or help you sell yourself? You notice they have one sure fire sales technique: upping prices at the end of the year so your loyal clients will pre-buy at the cheaper rate. They have nothing else.
You feel like you’re asking too much of you client base. You’re way more professional, knowledgeable and safe than any new trainer but that takes weeks or months to prove and you have two comp sessions. You’re fed up because you’ve earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for the gym over the years and they just hired another dozen new trainers who undercut your price and do floor shifts. You start to look for another job, another gym, but you’re in a bit of a honey trap where you can work the clients you have, squeak by financially, and not take the ultimate risk of setting out on your own and starting over. You’re stuck.
(Deep breath)
You can’t grow anymore. You can just tread water.
You have a job. Not a career.
You feel trapped.
The only option you have is to go out on your own but that comes with a set of problems:
Where do you train?
Where do you find new client leads?
Then there’s logistical problems:
Where do you buy insurance?
How do you set up a company?
How do you report your income?
Who does your website?
How do you market yourself?
This is a lot to figure out.
First off, CONGRATULATIONS on getting this far. Most Trainers have quit or moved on to do something else. But you love the job, you’re punctual, professional and you know the body. You’re smart, you have the certs and you can sell your high ticket expertise. You’re sharp enough in business to realize you needed to move on from the predatory box gym model.
If you’re nodding your head reading all this, if you’re saying ‘this guy gets me,’ then you’re exactly who we want to work with.
TRAIN was founded by two independent trainers who worked in the box gym setting until we realized it was no longer working for us. We hustled our asses off as independent trainers, hoofing around town to work out in various home gyms, living rooms and studios until finally we made our move and created TRAIN:
A place for Trainers and their clients to maximize their potential.
We are here to change the industry!
We offer:
A beautiful, cutting edge studio large enough for you to reliably book prime time hours
A place you can make more money
A place you can better control your time
A place to market yourself
A place to film social media and marketing posts
A place to host workshops
Mentorship
A chance for you to run your business with autonomy
A place you can grow
We have made every mistake and somehow came through it. Now we’ve created a space where trainers can work for themselves and carve out a career.
Interested? Let’s work together.
Now we don't work with just anyone. If you're a fitness professional with proven sales experience who wants to grow your career then we want to work with you.