Thousands of affiliate owners made the same mistake over the last 15 years:
We thought our programming was our product, and we spent hours creating workouts while our businesses sputtered.
I was guilty of this, but I’m not alone. I know many, many people who couldn’t read a profit-and-loss statement but could crank out incredibly detailed workouts for large groups.
In 2024, it’s very clear that your workouts are not your product. Your product is coaching, and the workouts are just tools you use to get results for clients. You sell results, not squats and push-ups in various combinations.
Further, companies now specialize in programming and employ large teams to create detailed plans that include warm-ups, coaching notes, cooldowns, video instructions and so on. Access to these plans isn’t costly at all.
So what should you do: Keep programming in house or farm it out?
Here’s the answer.
1:1 Programming
You have to do the programming for PT clients. You work backward from their specific goals to create the workouts that will generate the swiftest progress toward those goals.
You must measure clients’ results constantly and improve their prescriptions. This is time consuming but simple and financially rewarding if you’re an experienced coach who charges a premium rate for personal services.
PT clients should understand that the best program they’ll receive is always the next one because it’s based on an ever-increasing pile of data. The longer you work with a client, and the more closely you track results, the easier it is to create the perfect plan to accomplish goals fast.
Small Group Programming
The trainer or a head trainer can do the programming.
In this scenario, the coach has an intimate familiarity with a group of four to six members and can emphasize certain things to move the group forward.
Some coaches will even solicit feedback so clients feel heard. They know what they want and the coach knows what they need, so if they want some biceps curls before beach season, the trainer can easily work that into the plan.
Large Group Programming
It doesn’t make a lot of sense to do programming for large groups yourself anymore.
Your programming isn’t your product, yet you’re probably spending a lot of time on it. If you spend more than one or two hours a week on programming, I’d advise you to consider buying back your time so you can work on growing your gym.
I’ll say that another way: If you’re making less than $100,000 a year from your business, your need to buy back some hours you can use to improve your business. The more time you spend on programming, the more outsourcing makes sense.
For about $100 or $200 a month, you can get access to well-considered, carefully planned programming that comes with detailed instructions that double as professional development for team members. These programming services often link up seamlessly with gym management software, saving even more time.
Even if you love-love-love programming, purchase workouts and use the free time to build the business. Learn how to market and sell, hire and train a client success manager to improve retention, create high-value services to increase average revenue per member, and so on.
If you reach $100,000 net owner benefit and have an urge to take the programming back, do it!
(I did, and I’ll tell you how I do it quickly in the next post in this series.)
When It Makes Sense to DIY
Doing it yourself is fine in the early stages of business.
Many of us bootstrapped our way into business by making plyo boxes and medicine balls, renovating warehouses, handling the accounting and answering the phone.
But when we did that, we spent our most precious resource: Time.
As you evolve as an entrepreneur, you must offload jobs so you can do increasingly valuable work.
When you’re a passionate coach who loves fitness, it can be very difficult to imagine letting someone else do the programming.
But when you open a gym, you’re not a coach anymore. You’re a CEO. And CEOs make time to work on their businesses by offloading tasks.
No matter how attached you are to programming, I’d recommend you do a time audit: How long does it take you to do the programming every month?
Now put on your CEO hat and ask this question:
If you bought back those hours for just $150, could you use them to push your business to the next level?
(Yes.)
