The Business of Fitness with The IFBA

The truth is, we're all in sales: and regardless of whether we got into this line of work to turn a profit or help others (or both), we need to get comfortable with it.

At its heart, sales is just communicating the value of what you're offering in a way that people can understand: and creating the conditions for them to buy. If your product is sound, it's as simple as that. And if you say you don't like sales, you're undermining the purpose of your entire offering – to help others with their health and fitness, and make a living doing it.

Space is often at a premium in the Modern Training Gym. In this episode, JC, Tom and Chris give actionable tips on how to design your gym layout and get the right kit for your demographic. As always, your business plan plays a pivotal role in the design process, bringing together factors such as client targeting, your pricing structure, and your training model to deliver consistent profitability.

This week Chris is joined by Sports Exercise Psychologist, Andrea Furst. Andrea's experience spans a broad spectrum: from supporting Olympic athletes to help them successfully bring home the gold; to working with W10 staff on team dynamics, motivational drivers and goal setting. In this pod, she describes how she works with individuals and teams on their goals and subsequently improving mental and psychological skills, with the goal of feeding into, and developing, a high-performance culture.

Darchy (Amy) is back with Tom and Chris this week as we come to the end of the programming season. We talk about special populations, those few who need specific programming and how it's completely possible to integrate these people into Small Group Personal Training. Covering programming, logisitics and strategy to fit within your current programming sessions. This episode covers not only injury from operation, chronic pain but also pre and post natal fitness.

Chris and Tom are joined by Amy to discuss how we write long-term programmes for our demographic. We talk about the different programming phases, weekly structure, and why your approach needs to change at certain gym milestones – like new staff members or an influx of new members.

In this week's pod, we discuss the individual elements that make up the delivery of a single coaching session.  

A lot of what we do when coaching seems to happen on autopilot: but when we delve below the surface into the components at play – timing, layout, communication, cueing, and more – it becomes clear that there's a lot to consider if we want to deliver an outstanding training experience (and successfully manage other factors like gym layout, marketing, and branding).

Chris, Tom and JC discuss the differences between SGPT and classes and why one needs to compliment the other without overlapping and making the other redundant.  The team also discuss the different approaches needed to coach these sessions.

This week the team is weighing up the pros and cons of 1:1 and Small Group Personal Training. They discuss their experiences (and share the lessons they learned the hard way) on their journey from freelance PT to gym owner, and onto running multiple facilities. They cover the reasons behind the pivotal decisions in the evolution of their programming approach – and give practical advice on finding a coaching model that works for you.

We take a walk down memory lane to follow W10's evolution over the last decade: from a 800sqft 1:1 PT gym, into a multiple-site operation running 6:1 small group PT.  JC explains how the programming's changed at each step – and how this has impacted the customer experience.

In this final episode before the team take a break for a couple of weeks, Chris and Tom outline the processes in place for continuing staff development at W10. They discuss the 'Professional Development Pathway' (PDP) and putting a framework in place for ensuring continual staff development and how the weekly meetings play a part in this.