Do you want to become an elite personal trainer, the best
of the best? Do you want to attract top clients instead of chasing them?
To be selective and attract the best possible clients including celebrities and professional sports people takes a lot of hard work. It will mean sacrifices now as an investment for long-term benefit and rewards later. When you reach a certain level and have enough experience, the right qualifications and training, you can attract celebrities and professional sportspeople.
This is our comprehensive guide on how you could become a cut above the average, acquiring the best clients and charging the best rates, and work alongside top athletes.
Professional sportspeople need a much higher quality of training, better skills from their personal trainers, and more flexibility. They will need you to be trained in injury recovery as well as fitness training and performance – particularly strength and conditioning. By doing advanced courses and gaining more knowledge and skills, you can charge the highest rates and attract the best.
Most personal trainers get job satisfaction helping the average person lose weight and get fit. Every day, they achieve their goals and make a comfortable living from doing so. However, some want to go even higher – they want to train the next generation of world class sports personnel. This is not an easy task, mostly because it’s a small market and such training is often managed by the agent and their team. However, it does happen, and you have every chance of attracting this type of client.
If you want the challenges that go with training the elite and rising starts whose bodies need to be superior in every way, every day, because their career depends on it, you need to rise to the top of your game and remain committed to doing so.
Established pros may have a lot of money – footballers at the top of their game and Olympians, for example. However, they are likely to already have a training team in place. They will have often worked with them since before they were famous, and maybe even since before they became professional.
You are unlikely to get a look in for those who are in the market for a new trainer or putting together a new team unless you already have a great reputation. They will most likely hire from within the industry, people with considerable experience training professionals in that field.
This group may not be open to you now but look a little lower down the field and ten years from now that situation could be completely different.
They don’t have a lot of money and may be unable to afford your rates as it stands. What little cash they do have will go towards the everyday things like bills. They’ll have other jobs to make ends meet. They don’t have the budget to choose an elite personal trainer from the off. That’s why such clients should be attractive to you. However, you may need to compromise on your costs – maybe even offer free or discounted sessions to see if there is a potential great working relationship ready to realise. If the prestige of joining an elite number of personal trainers is a long-term goal, you will need to make some short-term sacrifices.
If you can play your cards right with the budding professionals, you potentially have a long-term working relationship. Working with an up-and-coming star will be an investment in you as much as their future.
How to Get Your First Famous Clients
Signing your first celebrity client requires three things:
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The better you are, and the more people know your face and name, the higher the opportunity you have of acquiring those clients. Essentially, you need to become a celebrity yourself – the name on everyone’s lips. Even people who don’t use a personal trainer should know your name by this point and recommend you to others by reputation alone.
Steps to becoming a celebrity include:
Approach local media: you do not need to approach it from the angle of promoting your business. But if you are offering something to the community – for example, raising money for a charity on an upcoming run, you are likely to get noticed.
Social media presence: Customers today expect “social selling” and slickness in using social media. Offer free tips such as blog posts, and “how to” videos on YouTube and IGTV, subscribe and follow local celebrities and traffic will arrive.
Interact and aim high: As a personal trainer, you should be no stranger to reaching out to big names through following and engagement. Don’t just follow celebrities on social media, engage with them. Reply to their tweets, and tag them in posts.
As with any career choice, some of this is pure luck. Think long-term and see every client (especially the average man and woman) as an opportunity to grow your brand. That 50-year-old company director whose GP has told him to lose weight and get active could have some amazing contacts. His daughter could be a professional runner with a genuine shot at a place at the next Olympics. His son might work in public relations for the local football club with budding youth talent. His wife might be a TV producer. His squash partner might be chair of a county sport development association.
Much of a business success is being in the right place at the right time; it means taking on the right clients at the right time and allowing those doors to open for you. This applies as much to personal trainers as to any other type of freelance or sole trader business.