Be smart about how you choose your clients and don’t be afraid to say no to people. Time spent on travelling is always going to be better filled with something closer to home. If clients do not fit into your schedule or travel plans, don’t be afraid to give them up. You must be smart about the clients you choose otherwise you may end up spending more time travelling than working. Choose clients that work with your schedule and location so that you are not wasting time on a subway or in your car. Travel time is often overlooked, but it can certainly add up over the course of a day. You may be surprised at what time slots you can fill by simply recommending an off-peak hour. To maximize downtime, offer the times that you want to fill before asking the client what times work best for their schedule. When he got a new client, the first question he should have asked is whether they could do a time slot immediately before or after something that is already scheduled at that location as opposed to first asking what time is best for them. In the example given above, Joe should have tried to fill spots that are directly before or after existing clients or classes at a given location. Look to fill obvious holes in your schedule around existing clients or classes that you already teach. ![]() There are some best practices that will help you with choosing clients that are the right fit for you. A large part of the reason you may end up with long days and big gaps in between clients is because you let your clients choose their schedules. So what could have been done to prevent this? How do you build a viable business that fits within your schedule?įirst of all, you have to choose your clients wisely. Don’t get me wrong, Joe is a fantastic trainer, he simply fell into a common time trap that we all should be more cognisant of and avoid at all costs. Everyday he travelled for a total of 5 hours, had only 6 hours of training with clients, and 5 hours of downtime in between (not including travel). He would put in 16 hour days of which he only actually got paid for 6 of them. ![]() It was common for his day to start at 6:00am and end at 9:00pm. He had clients and classes in three of the different facility locations across the city. He was a perfect example of how schedules can get mismanaged even with the best of intentions. When I was managing a gym with multiple locations, I had an experienced trainer working for me (let’s call him Joe). Experienced trainers will try to fit clients into their downtime or do their own workouts, but there often remains a lot of untapped potential. There may be less downtime, but there are still natural gaps in between peak training hours (7:00 - 9:00 am,11:00 - 2:00 pm, 5:00 - 9:00 pm). Phase 2 occurs after having a regular or consistent client base.It is common to have a 7:00 am client and a 6:00 pm client on the same day just to start filling up your schedule. In this phase, there tends to be a lot of downtime and new trainers tend to take on whichever clients they can find, at whatever times are best for those clients. Phase 1 happens before you have a full client base and are just starting out.There are two phases of having free time in between clients, depending on where you are in your career: This may seem counterintuitive since you usually only get paid when you are in a training session, but there are very viable ways to minimize your downtime and also make the unavoidable downtime more worthwhile. However, using your time productively also means maximizing your downtime in between clients in order to make that downtime more profitable. We’ve already looked at making the most of your time when you’re with your clients ( how to do a proper assessmen t), and the importance of presentation and preparedness when it comes to fitness programming. ![]() Similarly to how you encourage your clients to take a long term perspective instead of a short sighted approach with their fitness goals our aim at Trainer+ is to encourage you to adopt new solutions that allow you to take a more effective and long term approach on how you manage your business.Īs part of our 4-part series on how you can save time and make more money by taking a long term approach to managing and executing your business, let’s explore the best ways to use your time productively. ![]() Workout? Write fitness programs? Work toward your latest CEC? Or is it more like: Nap? Shop? Facebook? There are many ways to spend the downtime in between clients, and depending on how you manage your business as a trainer overall, there may be more of it than you would like.
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