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391 – How to Make Money in Fitness with High-Intensity Personal Training

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Lawrence Neal

In this episode, I share with you the lessons I’ve learned from recording hundreds of podcasts with fitness business experts and the evidence available to support why you should seriously consider a HIT fitness business (or double down if you already have one).

We’ll talk about what High Intensity Training (HIT) really is, why this fitness business concept is very lucrative, the action steps involved in starting a successful HIT business, the challenges you might come up against, and much more.

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Show Notes

  • 5:06 – What is high intensity training (HIT)?
  • 10:08 – What is a HIT business? 
  • 11:59 – Why HIT as a business model? 
  • 23:19 – Steps to starting a HIT business
  • 28:24 – Pros and cons of an online fitness business
  • 33:36 – Objections to starting a HIT business
  • 35:43 – How to acquire clients

Selected Links from the Episode

People Mentioned

 

 

Is Starting a HIT Personal Training Business Right for You?

I created this episode with specific types of people in mind — see if you fall into any one (or several) of these categories:

  • You’re passionate about exercise and you’re thinking about starting a fitness business
  • You’re interested in High Intensity Training (or HIT, for short)
  • You’re an existing fitness business owner thinking of pivoting your model
  • You’re someone already in the HIT industry looking to get more out of your specialization

In any case, welcome — in this article, I want to show you why so many people like yourself are either curious about or interested in High Intensity Training as a business concept, and how you can take that interest and build a successful, sustainable fitness business for yourself.

We’ll cover the first steps you’ll need to take to get started, we’ll talk about some concerns and doubts you might have, and we’ll discuss all the keys and fundamentals that you need to know about starting a High Intensity Training business.

So, let’s start with the basics.

What is High-Intensity Training and Why Should You Care About It?

You might think High-Intensity Training – along with its shorthand form “HIT” – is simple enough to understand, but there’s a surprising amount of ambiguity and confusion when people talk about it, So, let’s nip that in the bud by starting there.

High-Intensity Training (HIT) is NOT the same as High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT).

These two are not the same, although it’s easy to see why it causes confusion. Even after you clarify the differences between the two, you’re still left with differing definitions about what HIT – the one with just one “i” – actually is, depending on who you ask.

So in a nutshell, here’s the definition of High-Intensity Training that we’ll use: low-frequency, low-volume exercise done slowly, with strict form, to momentary muscular failure. Workout sessions usually last about 30 minutes (or thereabouts).

This is the original “type” of High-Intensity Training that – to my knowledge – was popularized by Arthur Jones around the 60s and 70s, and wasn’t being used before then.

All of this is what makes HIT intense, and that’s the reason why HIT workouts are typically done just once or twice a week. This allows you to increase your recovery time, spend less time training while producing similar (or better) results to higher-volume workout methods, while minimizing the risk of injury and bodily wear and tear. There’s a lot of science behind the HIT approach, and we’ll touch on that as we go along.

Can you imagine getting similar – if not better – results that gym lifers who spend hours every day in just 30 minutes (or less) every week? Imagine what you can do with all that extra time — you could start a business (we’ll get to this soon, I promise)!

The Who’s Who of the High-Intensity Training World

Besides Arthur Jones, there are a number of personalities who are well-known and respected in the HIT space:

By the way, if you’re new to High-Intensity Training and want to understand the science behind it, Body by Science is a great, easy-to-understand book to start with, and it really helps you appreciate just why HIT is superior to a lot of other approaches to exercise and fitness out there.

What a High-Intensity Training Business Looks Like

Now that you have some understanding of the fundamentals of HIT, here’s how that influences how a typical HIT Business or strength studio operates:

  • Focused on 1-on-1 training or small group training (3-5 clients per trainer)
  • Appointments only; walk-ins and unsupervised training are not allowed
  • 1-on-1 sessions typically last 30 minutes
  • Small groups may take up to an hour
  • Higher price points compared to non-HIT studios/gyms

The HIT Business model works really with the professional, higher-income target market who value their time, so this allows you to set higher, premium prices.

Size-wise, small boutique studios can range any from 500 to 2,000-plus square feet.

In terms of equipment, MedX and Nautilus exercise machines are popular choices. They have great resistance curves, low friction, and shorter weight travel, which means less momentum and more safety. These are high-quality machines that are safe, efficient, and highly effective, and that’s why the HIT industry is very passionate about these two brands.

Why Start a High-Intensity Training Business?

Why HIT? Why not use other fitness concepts or exercise methods as the main focus of your strength training business? There’s a number of reasons why I think HIT works best.

Here’s the quick list of all the benefits, after which I’ll expand on each one:

  1. HIT is the most efficient and effective way to work out and get results.
  2. HIT is a great way for you to channel your passion into something that’s truly meaningful and makes a genuinely positive difference in people’s lives.
  3. People who want the best will love what you have to offer, because what you have to offer is the best.
  4. People with a lot of money will like you and what you have to offer. Seriously.
  5. HIT lets you start a business with relatively low capital investment with incredibly high potential returns.
  6. High-Intensity Training Fitness Businesses generate strong cash flow.
  7. You can build a long-term, attractive saleable asset that can set you up for life.

Now, let’s talk about each of these in detail.

  1. HIT is the most efficient and effective way to work out and get results. There is nothing out there that can deliver great results as efficiently as high-intensity training can — nothing.The evidence just continues to build in support of the efficacy of training with a high level of intensity with a lower volume and frequency. Now, if you just look at Brad Schoenfeld’s recent paper on muscle mass and hypertrophy  – which actually got the attention of The New York Times, who then produced an article called “No Time to Lift?” – it shows how effective 13 minutes of high-intensity resistance training can be in terms of producing the results people are looking for from exercise. When you look at the actual research itself and the results, the benefits from higher volumes or frequencies were just marginal.Basically, less is more. You can produce pretty much all the benefits that you want from exercise, including cardiovascular fitness, fat loss, cognitive health, bone mineral density and anti-aging benefits from a very small, focused dose of safe, high-intensity exercise.
  2. HIT is a great way for you to channel your passion into something that’s truly meaningful and makes a genuinely positive difference in people’s lives.If you’re passionate about doing really meaningful work, this is the way to go — you know you’re going to be delivering the best results for people in the shortest amount of time.There are so many people out there who are high-income, busy professionals (or similar) who need this type of high-quality service that you provide. They don’t have time to work out multiple times a week for an hour session. They need something efficient and effective and nothing else out there really competes with this right now.The cool thing about this is what you’re trying to aim for is you really want to become the best part of someone’s day. When you get this right, that’s how they’re going to feel after the workout. They’re going to be so glad they came in for a session. It’s cool knowing that you’re playing a really important role in someone’s life and being the best part of their day.That would be my argument from a passion perspective in terms of wanting to pick some fitness concept out there which is going to produce best results and has the evidence to show that that is the case.
  3. People who want the best will love what you have to offer, because what you have to offer is the best. This one really resonates with me, and it will also resonate with your future clients — high-intensity training is incredibly challenging.A lot of these people we’re working with are type A — they like to be pushed. They are high performers. They want to become the best versions of themselves. They want to become unstoppable. This is a really effective way to challenge them. They will get far more joy out of their workout knowing that they’ve been challenged, knowing that they are going through a workout that’s been shown to produce best results when someone applies their best effort during each set.And it just so happens that people who want the best also tend to be the people who are the most willing to invest in getting what they want — that’s something you’ll want to think about seriously when considering who the ideal customer for your business is. Let’s talk about that next.
  4. People with a lot of money will like you and what you have to offer. Seriously. It cannot be overstated just how strongly high-intensity training appeals to a high-income demographic.Think about the key differentiators of high-intensity training: it’s super-efficient, it’s evidence-based, it’s very effective, and it’s very safe.When we train clients in HIT, we use a relatively slow speed of movement, which may range from 2 second positive, 4 second negative, out to a 10-10 movement speed so 10 second positive, 10 second negative. There are even protocols out there for a 30-second positive, 30-second isometric, and 30-second negative. It’s much slower than a lot of other fitness approaches out there which helps to produce better results in terms of putting more tension on the muscle and reaching muscular failure sooner versus other fitness methods that might throw the weight around and use momentum rather than actually recruiting musculature to get from A to B in terms of the rep.The slow speed of movement is also going to reduce the force during the workout, which makes it safer on the joints and connective tissues. Our target market really appreciates that safety — they don’t want to get injured from their exercise; they want to do something that’s going to improve them, not increase risk of injury.With the high-income demographic it allows for a premium price point. One of the many cool things about high intensity training is the 2x advantage. Now, a lot of our competitors charge a fee per-hour; they could be charging $60 for a 1-hour personal training session. Well, our session is typically 30-minutes. If you do this properly, you really don’t need more than 30 minutes to perform your workout because you just won’t have anything left in the tank.Obviously, this really appeals to the busy, high-income professional who doesn’t have time, and doesn’t want to spend an hour with a personal trainer. They get in, produce the adaptations, and get out again. We have a 2x advantage.

    You can charge $60 – again just as an example, that price point can vary – for just a 30-minute session. So, your return on time is really quite high.

    If you look at also small group pricing, let’s say you have 3 people and you’re charging them $40 per session. For argument’s sake, let’s say that’s for an hour. You’re looking at $120 per hour a day, too.

  5. HIT lets you start a business with relatively low capital investment with incredibly high potential returns. Let’s dig deeper into the nitty-gritty of how you’ll make money in fitness with your HIT Business.With high-intensity training, your studio gets high revenue per square footage versus other fitness businesses – this is linked to what I was just saying about return on time – and even in comparison to other retail businesses.The square footage of a HIT studio is typically quite small, as I mentioned — it can be anywhere from 500 to 2,000 square feet, and yet, the revenue per square foot can go up to 10x more than other fitness concepts.To give you some real numbers on this there are high intensity training studios out there that are around 1,000 square feet and less producing $1 to $1.5 million in revenue per year. That’s approximately $1000 per square foot if it’s a million a year and it’s 1,000 square feet, which is very high revenue per square footage. It requires a relatively low capital investment — you can get started with as little as $10,000 to $20,000 in terms of leasing a small space and getting some basic equipment and getting a relatively low rent.All you have to think about is getting certified and making sure that you have the knowledge and the ability to provide personal training services (that’s something that we’ll come into in a bit).

    Then, it’s really just getting some basic equipment to get started, then you have to think about utility costs, insurance, maybe basic software for scheduling and payments. That’s about it, in the beginning.

    Obviously, you can invest a lot more if you want a different start to your business, if you want to buy lots of equipment like a whole line of MedX and Nautilus, and you want a beautiful studio in an optimal location.

    If you spend around $100,000 to $200,000, then you can really start with something great. There’s a spectrum depending on the type of finances you have access to and what you’re willing to invest in this kind of business. Boutique fitness businesses are probably the fastest growing fitness concept around today, in one of the fastest growing industries. Again, another strong reason to consider a boutique fitness business.

  6. High-Intensity Training Fitness Businesses generate strong cash flow. Now this question is more framed up in the context of if you were considering different types of businesses. Let’s say you’re thinking about becoming an entrepreneur (or you’re already one) and you’re thinking about different business opportunities to get into: fitness, construction, or something completely different.Well, if you were to compare the cash flow in this business, say a construction business which is probably the most removed, think about this: with a construction company you have to spend hundreds of thousands and millions of dollars on the project and not actually be paid on that project for the next 30, 60, 90 days following completion. You’re not getting cash until long after the project has been completed.Now, compare that with a high intensity training fitness business where you’re charging clients at the first of the month — you’re getting cash revenue ahead of those sessions for that month, so it’s got a much stronger cash flow from that perspective.Now to be fair, this part of the business isn’t probably very different from a lot of other fitness concepts out there. But it’s just important to highlight this as a benefit of building this kind of fitness business.You can make good money in fitness because you get strong, consistent cash flow and you can avoid the doubts, uncertainties, and headaches that other types of businesses can give you.
  7. You can build a long-term, attractive saleable asset that can set you up for life. The cool thing about starting and building a high-intensity training studio is that successful boutique studios have been shown to have valued and sold for high multiples, especially if you have your clients on recurring subscription memberships and you have monthly recurring revenue and good systems. Those things will enable you to build for a very lucrative sale.I know perhaps you are not thinking about that right now because you’re just thinking about getting started. But longer-term and depending on your goals (or maybe you’re planning for retirement), you want to be able to sell your business for as high a figure as possible, and if you build a successful HIT studio, this is a very realistic possibility for you.

How To Get Started Building A HIT Fitness Business That Makes Money

So, you now have a good understanding of what high-intensity training is and you know why it’s an incredibly attractive and lucrative business concept — how do you actually get started?

Let’s assume that you’re a total beginner and you’re looking to start a fitness business.

  1. Buy Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman and read the whole book. This might seem like an unusual first step, but this is very important, and you’ll see why in a moment. It won’t take you long — you should have that thing read in less than a week. Do the exercises as you go through the book.This book is so important that when I ask the most successful entrepreneur in high intensity training, a person by the name of Luke Carlson, the CEO and Founder of Discover Strength, He will tell you that Traction is his most important book, which he recommends to high intensity training entrepreneurs, and, I suspect, entrepreneurs in general.Why?This book is going to help you to create a long-term vision and plan for your business. So, a high-level business plan is going to help you narrow your focus, help you with decisions around marketing, pricing, and business model, et cetera.At this point, the chapters on People and Meetings might not be that useful in the beginning, since you don’t have a team, so you won’t be running meetings every week to connect and resolve problems (you’ll likely need this later once you begin scaling your business!).You’re going to be focused on the vision component in the book, which will help you set goals for the business, define marketing, and things like that.
  2. Create a basic financial plan. This is going to help you understand the approximate investment and time to break even and generate a profit in the business.Now, if you need financial planning and cash flow templates, go to highintensitybusiness.com/free where you can download those templates and get started with your financial planning right way.These first two steps are critical, because these will inform all the decisions that you take afterwards.
  3. Get certified and build your skills in High-Intensity Training. Go and get certified (again, this assumes you really don’t have any skills).You’ve heard about this business concept and you’re like, “hey, that really makes a lot of sense as a fitness business and I want to learn how to be able to deliver those personal training sessions,” and you want to provide the best possible client experience that creates super loyal customers who keep coming back to you and wouldn’t bat an eye at talking up your business to other potential customers – it all starts with getting certified and building the skills you need that will be central to your business and your success.I would look at hituni.com for their personal training courses which are really wonderfully put together and really easy to work through, and quite enjoyable to work through, actually.If you want a 10% discount of any of those courses just use my coupon code which is HIB10 or just go to hituni.com/HIB. So definitely go through that course. You can complete that course in 3 months if you do it pretty intensely.
  4. Read Body by Science. The next thing we do is read Body by Science to really learn the science and rationale behind this fitness concept.Now, the HITuni courses will give you this information, but I just think reading Body by Science will deepen your understanding of the value of the type of fitness service that you’ll be providing.
  5. Find Somewhere to Start Your New HIT Business. Now, there are a few ways to go about this. The most obvious would be to find a location to set up shop.Alternatively, you can start your HIT business by providing virtual personal training services. You could look at building a virtual business, completely online, providing virtual 1-on-1 personal training to clients, and this can also work very well.Side note: I have an extensive course inside the HIT Business Membership called “How To Build a Profitable Virtual Training Business”, which takes you step-by-step, from start to finish of how to this successfully – join the HIT Business Membership here to access it.Another is that you could also work inside an existing facility to earn your stripes and get some experience, perhaps paying rent at a facility. Usually, they’ll charge you a fee to let you train your own clients or run your own business within their facility.Obviously, you could also get employment at a high intensity training business to learn your craft there as well, because entrepreneurship is not for everyone.You could still make a very good living and have a very rewarding career working in a high intensity training studio as well, so consider that.

    You can also train people at their homes – we’ve recorded podcasts before on how you build a mobile high intensity training business.

    There are a number of different permutations that this business can take.

Other Factors You May Want to Think About Before Starting A HIT Fitness Business

Let’s go into a little bit of some devil’s advocate questions here, some things that might be on your mind which we’ll address.

Can I Make Money with an Online Fitness Business by Just Creating Content?

Obviously, with the way technology is moving and things like COVID causing all these lockdowns, online fitness has really, really taken off.

Now, I have got some experience with this – I’ve built an online fitness business before providing people content and coaching through a private website.

Now, online fitness programs aren’t very competitive and quite hard to sell – that’s the first barrier – but they can be very profitable because if you’ve got a private website where you have content and courses. That can be highly leveraged.

You can build once, and then you could infinitely scale it and build a client base to access that content, which can be quite profitable and have a very high return on time.

It can even become an autonomous machine that runs itself and makes you money without your involvement, giving you a lot of freedom.

You could take a number of different approaches when it comes to online business – it could be things like:

  • Coaching calls
  • Email support
  • Forums
  • Online Courses

Realistically speaking, there is a technical barrier if you’re building an online platform – you need to understand some technical aspects or at least work with someone who does. You could also invest in a platform where less technical skills are required. But needless to say, this type of fitness business can be challenging to get off the ground.

Note that I do think it’s a great model – you just have to seriously consider whether you want to do an online offer or build a studio business.

Can’t I just create my own HIT Program or Course and Sell It to People Online?

For High-Intensity Training to actually work for most people, accountability is key. This means that they need supervision from another human being to be successful in getting the benefits of a good and proper workout. Otherwise, it’s really low compliance – they won’t do the workouts and that’s going to produce poor results.

I think, again, online forums, online fitness services can work well for some fitness concepts out there, along with providing things like nutrition services and for certain exercise programs. But when it comes to HIT, you really need another human to help get the most out of yourself and help keep you accountable.

I’ll give you an example of what I mean about accountability and compliance.

I have a friend who was provides an online yoga service. I would connect with him once a week on a Friday morning to do yoga. I really enjoyed it, and I find it really beneficial. Great way to start the day.

And then one week, he was on vacation in France and he said, “Lawrence, it’s fine. I’ve created a YouTube video. I’ll send you access to it so you can do the yoga workout while I’m away.” I didn’t do it. The reason I didn’t do it is because I wasn’t being kept accountable by another human. As simple as that.

Can I Offer Both In-Person HIT Personal Training and Virtual Personal Training?

Now, in-person training and online services don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Just to give you an example, many of our colleagues in high intensity training are doing in person 30-minute workouts in the studio while also doing virtual training. Same methods, really: 30 minutes, 1-on-1 via Zoom, via any device, via any location.

The cool thing is that so long as you have positioned yourself appropriately and explained that the value is in the expertise of the trainer, your target market will pay the same for virtuals as they will for studio.

Is Doing Virtual Personal Training Worth It? Isn’t That a Harder Sell?

There are benefits to virtual in terms of greater efficiency – all they have to do is switch on their device and connect on Zoom wherever they are. They could be on a business trip, on a vacation, or at home; they don’t have to travel to studios.

That could be a really nice add-on for a lot of you studio owners out there. A lot of the time, we’ve seen that clients are happy to pay the same prices for virtual training that they would for an in-person studio session.

How Much Money Can I Really Make Money Doing Virtual Personal Training?

I’ve hinted at the scale of this type of business: you could invest in a 1,000 square foot studio and you could produce to $1 million, $1.5 million, and $2 million revenue business. However, there’s probably many of you watching or listening to this who are just interested in building a smaller business, like a nice lifestyle business.

So, just to run the numbers on virtual, if you are charging $60 a session – which is probably a fairly good average price point per 30-minute session for virtual high intensity training in the U.S. – and you’re doing 60 sessions a week, that’s about 30 hours, which should be on the higher end. If you multiply that by 4.3 – so, 60 sessions per week – you’re looking at $15,480 per month.

That’s not a bad lifestyle business right there.

Is Virtual Personal Training a Scalable Business Concept?

Now, I would say that doing many virtual sessions is definitely going to give you some Zoom fatigue.

I would look to scale that business and hire people to help with the sessions and do less sessions yourself.

You can work on other aspects of the business and maybe spend some more time in-person with people. But I really just gave you that example to show what’s possible in a virtual training context.

Will My Fitness Business Be Affected by Recessions?

The other concern that might be on your mind especially where we are today is the fear of a recession.

There’s obviously fears of recession in the U.S. and in Europe, and there are certain countries which are technically already in recession.

If I have my facts correct, I believe that based on negative GDP growth in the last two quarters that the U.S. is in a recession right now. The same for some countries in Europe as well. I do need to check my facts on that because I only checked that some time ago, but obviously there’s some understandable fears around starting a business and retaining clients in this type of economic climate.

Short answer:

If you build your fitness business right, you don’t really need to worry about the effects of a recession.

Here’s the long answer:

The cool thing about working with higher-income, busy professionals is that their personal training spend is relatively small for them.

Think of it this way: when you look at yourself, perhaps, and you think of, “if I was spending $500 a month or $600 a month in personal training, I would not be able to afford that”.  

Well, it’s highly likely that your target market is not you.

That sum of money represents a much smaller percentage of their income than you think.

Your target market is actually less likely to be concerned about the cost of personal training and is unlikely to cut that expense.

Moreover, if they are properly educated by you, they should improve over time in terms of understanding the massive return on investment they are getting from their training.

They understand that the ROI in health and time is significant, so it should be one of the last things to go or one of the last things they cut.

Combined with the fact that the expense of personal training is not that meaningful to our target market, even during a recession, and the fact that it’s one of the most valuable investments they make, it’s very well protected against the recession.

How Can I Get Clients for My Fitness Business?

The last thing we need to talk about is how to get clients for your personal training business – it’s always good to ask, “if I’m going to start a fitness business, how do I get clients?”, “how do I generate leads?”, and “how do I grow my business?”

Once you’ve read Traction, that’s going to help you define a strong value proposition and a strategic niche for your business, and this will help you to create differentiators which is going to resonate with the busy professional target market.

That’s going to give you an advantage straight away from other fitness businesses out there which aren’t effectively differentiated – in fact, they are all the same. So straight away, your business is going to resonate.

However, just like any business, if you start one, you have to be comfortable with selling or you should be willing to partner with some who is.

You need to be selling all the time.

You need to deliver great workouts and service, but you also need to be comfortable and practice asking for referrals, going to networking groups and helping people with their business and asking for referrals there.

And you have to be comfortable making telephone calls to people on services like Bark.com.

If that’s something you don’t want to do, then maybe entrepreneurship is not the best thing for you so just bear that in mind. Starting a business does require yourself or someone in your team to be very good at sales in order to convert customers to train.

Ready to Start a Fitness Business and Start Making Money?

I hope you found this valuable – just to quickly recap, here are the things you need to do:

  1. Read Traction. At least complete the vision component to create your business plan, as that creates this cool document called Vision Traction Organizer (VTO) which is your business plan on a single A4 piece of paper. Keep things simple and elegant.
  2. Create your financial plan. This also provides your cash flow forecast. You can get templates for that over at com/free.
  3. Get certified. You can do this by buying a personal training course from HITuni. Go to com/HIB or use the discount code HIB10 for 10% off.
  4. Read Body by Science and then…
  5. Just get started.

Thank you watching or listening to the episode and reading through this guide – I really appreciate it.

I’d love to hear your feedback, along with any questions you’ve got or challenges in starting or improving your business – you go to the contact page on highintensitybusiness.com and get in touch.

If you’re interested in getting more support to help you start and grow your high intensity training personal training business, you should check out HIT Business Membership.

You’ll get access to training content for every aspect of growing your business, private forum coaching from myself, access to a community forum of passionate, high-intensity training entrepreneurs who connect once a month to share ideas and support you.

If that sounds good to you, check out highintensitybusiness.com/join to learn more about that.

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