If personal training is stuck at 10% of your revenue, look at your on-ramp or onboarding package before you blame your members.
Most on-ramps work like this: A new prospect buys five one-on-one sessions. They get taught the basics, then “graduate” into group classes, which is the real product.
This teaches every new member that coaching is a hurdle to clear, not a service worth paying for.
Ask most owners whether the on-ramp is a means to an end and they’ll say yes. That’s the problem. When you present coaching as a toll you pay to reach the good stuff, the client learns to treat it that way. Nobody buys more of something you told them was a warm-up.
Then owners wonder why they can’t sell PT to their existing members.
The Fix: Positioning
Instead of “do five PT sessions, then join group,” try this:
“I know this looks like a lot. Here’s why we’re different: We’re a true coaching gym. That doesn’t mean we sell you access to coached classes. It means a coach owns your outcome, holds you accountable and picks the right classes for you. So we’ll start with one personal training session a week and two curated group classes for the first four to five weeks. Then we’ll look at where you are and make a plan.”
For someone who’s nervous about walking into a gym, that’s a very different pitch. And it’s easy to deliver, because your group programming already exists.
“Curated” just means the coach picks the classes. If the client wants strength, send them to the strength class. If they’re scared of gymnastics, keep them out of the snatch ladder in week one. If one coach is better with beginners, steer them there. And never drop a brand-new member into a class of 30.
The change also makes the gym feel more premium. You’ve stopped saying, “Here’s the schedule, good luck.” You’re saying, “We’ll coach you across the whole process, not just the movements in today’s class.”
The Math and the Downsell
Say your PT session is $80 and your 2x/week group membership is about $150 a month, or roughly $40 a week. Your new starter package is about $100 to $120 a week for a four- to five-week commitment.
That’s around $20 a week more than a typical five-session on-ramp, and it asks for a shorter commitment.
At week four or five, the coach asks, “Are you enjoying the coaching?” If the answer is yes, keep going. If the client says, “I love it, but my budget is tight,” you offer a downsell:
One PT session a month plus 3x/week group.
If your 3x/week group membership is $189 and PT is $80, that’s $270 a month, or roughly $60 to $70 a week. It’s about half the price of the starter package, and the client still has a coach who knows their goals, their schedule and their creaky low back.
And if they say no to that? They buy just the group membership. The worst case in the new system is the best case in the old one.
To know if you’ve gone too far, watch your price objections. If more than 30% of prospects push back on price, dial it back. If you’re well under that, you have room to test.
Watch Your Coach Pay
If PT becomes the anchor of every membership, your coach comp structure matters a lot.
Many long-running gyms still pay PT commissions set years ago. When 60% or 70% of every PT dollar goes to the coach, and PT is now a core part of your revenue, very little reaches your bottom line after processing fees, rent and everything else.
At Two-Brain, we recommend paying your coaches four-ninths (about 44%) of the PT price.
Here’s how it plays out on an $80 session:
- At 70%: the coach gets $56 and the gym keeps $24.
- At 4/9ths: the coach gets about $35.56 and the gym keeps about $44.44.
You don’t have to stop rewarding your coaches. You do have to make the model sustainable for you too. Put your own oxygen mask on first, or nobody has a job.
Expect the transition to take more work up front. Change is hard, and delivering more PT takes more coach time. But it compounds quickly. Six to eight new members who each start with weekly PT add up fast.
Gyms That Have Done It
- Darren Thornton went from $9,000 a month with two part-time staff to three straight years of more than $1 million in revenue. He now has seven full-time coaches, and starting pay is $60,000 a year.
- Dan Purington was in the mid-$20,000s, the same place a lot of long-running gyms plateau. He’s now hovering in the mid-$60,000s. The only thing he changed was his on-ramp, and it’s very similar to the model above. He added two or three full-time coaches, and every full-timer makes over $60,000.
Try It for a Few Consultations
Don’t overthink this. Run the new on-ramp for your next few consultations. If something breaks, you can revert to what you’re doing now and lose nothing.
If you want a second set of eyes on your onboarding process, book a call here.
