It’s common for many fitness professionals to gravitate toward coaching and programming for clients than toward starting or growing a great fitness business. Most would even say they would happily spend hours designing the most customized and detailed fitness program. But force them to read a profit-and-loss statement or create a marketing plan and even 30 minutes seems like an eternity. But have you considered that programming for clients is actually a lot like creating a plan for a fitness business? Creating a great program, just like a business, boils down to having a long-term plan that addresses needs, goals, and a blueprint to get from A to B.

A fitness business is just like a fitness client – it has needs, challenges, and it’s constantly faced with adjusting to what’s thrown at it daily. While a client may have goals that pertain to looking a certain way or reaching a certain weight, a business owner should also want their business to look a certain way. Instead of weight or body fat, key performance indicators (KPI) are the measures of business. After setting the goals, it is then about determining the checkpoints. In fitness or business, this can be done monthly or quarterly, but setting SMART goals requires a deadline. The last piece of the puzzle is determining the actions to get there. For clients, this includes a specific number of days to exercise (frequency) and movements to perform (mode) while the equivalent in business is which key actions to perform and how often.

On the surface it seems that the business side of fitness is significantly different than the exercise programming side, but when taking a closer look, the process is actually quite similar.

·Establish needs and goals

·Determine checkpoints

·Choose the activities that will deliver results

·Assign frequency and execute consistently

By recognizing that the skill of programming not only builds great fitness programs but also a successful business, personal trainers can feel much more capable and take action on building the career of their dreams.