Semi-private personal training is a revenue home run in gyms.
Our data shows gym owners can take in $200-$260+ an hour serving four clients at once, and trainers can earn more than $60 an hour.
The space and equipment requirements are minimal, so revenue per square foot goes way up.
Clients win, too. They receive personalized programs and lots of attention but pay less than they would for one-on-one sessions. (For a complete breakdown of this service, check out this resource.)
The program is a slam dunk—but you can’t just launch it and win.
To set you up for success, I had Two-Brain mentor, gym owner and semi-private expert Daniel Purington lay out the prerequisites for a semi-private personal training program.
Daniel’s resume:
- At Woodslawn Fitness, he takes in $230 an hour serving six clients at once in a semi-private setting vs. about $80 an hour serving six clients in a big-group setting.
- For semi-private sessions, he pays his coaches three times what he pays them for a big-group class.
- He can pay his semi-private coaches $11,000 a month, creating real careers for them.
- He runs CrossFit sessions in 1,100 square feet of space.
- He runs semi-private sessions in 650 square feet of space with six wall-mounted squat racks.
- He runs six-on-one and four-on-one semi-private sessions concurrently, servicing 10 people with two coaches.
- His revenue per square foot is off the charts in this tiny space.
Prerequisites for Semi-Private Training
Introductory Consults
If you just dump people into group classes without discovering their problems and goals, you will have no success launching a semi-private training program.
“You’ve got to learn why people are coming to you and what they need,” Daniel said.
If you use the Prescriptive Model, you will always know your clients’ goals and can put together high-value service packages that solve their problems. You’ll find out what they want to accomplish when they enter the gym, and you’ll check in with them every 90 days to ensure they’re making progress.
Knowing exactly what your clients want is critical. Don’t guess or assume they want what you think they want. Ask them what they want and then solve their problems. For many great clients, semi-private training solves a ton of problems. Maybe their goals have changed, too.
You must bring people into your gym with a free consultation before you can launch a semi-private program. And you should be doing regular Goal Review Sessions as part of the Prescriptive Model, too.
Avatar
Your semi-private program will flop if you can’t describe your avatar client to me right now in 20 seconds.
If you don’t know your avatar, you won’t have a clue how to solve problems with a semi-private personal training program. You’ll just offer another Olympic lifting class because that’s what you like to coach. Or you’ll try to push semi-private training on hard-charging college kids who want to do Fran in a big group for $150 a month.
If you know your avatar, you can identify common goals and pain points, then create programs that solve their problems.
Know What You Are Offering
You aren’t selling “group training with fewer people.” That’s worthless, and, really, many gyms are already selling this by accident at rock-bottom prices. We know that the average gym offering “big-group classes” only gets about six people in each session.
So if you just try to sell “smaller classes,” you’re essentially telling people, “Pay twice as much for pretty much the same service you’re already getting.”
You must realize you are selling something very different with a semi-private program: You are selling results at high speed through high-touch, personalized coaching.
“You’re selling specificity. You’re selling accountability. You’re selling speed. You’re selling specific programming to get to a specific goal. CrossFit is a lot more generalized. So the subtle nuances, they are critical,” Daniel said.
Organic Messaging on all Platforms
You must talk about your programs and services regularly on all platforms: email, social media and Google Business Profile, as well as in-house bulletin boards and groups for members.
You must know how to highlight your services. Without a well-established “publishing habit,” you will not be able to promote a new program properly.
“If you don’t have strong organic media, you don’t have an audience that’s ripe for your knowledge—and for this program,” Daniel said. “So if you deploy a semi-private program before you have those things, it will fall flat on its face.”
Staffing
You can’t launch a semi-private program if your coaches only know how to teach group classes.
If they’re most comfortable tossing a workout on the whiteboard, cranking the tunes and offering the occasional “chest up” cue while cheering people through a high-intensity session, you cannot start a semi-private program.
Semi-private coaches must have experience in a one-on-one (PT) or individual on-ramp setting. They must know how to design programs for individuals and deliver high-value service. From there, they’ll need to understand how to do that with four to six clients at once. This isn’t easy.
Yes, coaches can make way more in a semi-private program, but the demands on them are greater, too. They must be trained to deliver A+ service or your program’s value will plummet.
That sleepy, irritable disengaged top athlete who just coaches because he wants a key to your gym? He can’t be part of a semi-private program.
“We’re selling a higher level of service here, so the members should feel that on Day 1,” Daniel said.
Infrastructure
It’s a mistake to just wedge a semi-private program into a group space and assume everything will be fine.
“You don’t want to all of a sudden bring in this small group and push your big groups over without having the conversation. Animosity can develop very quickly in that environment,” Daniel explained. “Our semi-private training has a separate area. It’s got separate Bluetooth for speakers, separate weights. It’s got everything. It feels different.”
You don’t have to build out a dedicated room for semi-private training—you can, of course, but the expense isn’t needed. Daniel suggests even a row of plate trees can be used to segment a section of an open space so the semi-private area becomes “special.”
One note: A semi-private program should not be launched in a desperate attempt to fill the gym during those god-forsaken hours when no one wants to work out. This is a high-value service, and slots should be offered when demand is clear.
This is a super-weak offer: “Want to pay a bunch of money to work out with other people at an inconvenient time?”
Launching Without Prerequisites
Here’s what happens if you ignore the advice above:
“You’re going to get frustrated right off the bat,” Daniel said. “You’ll say, ‘This doesn’t work with my gym.’ But it’s not working because you don’t have the foundation set up.
“Yes, semi-private numbers are great. It’s awesome to pay a coach this much. It’s amazing to provide your members with faster results and better results, but you’ve got to lay the foundation.”
He continued: “If you don’t lay the foundation, the program won’t succeed, and you’ve just devalued that service to your members. You just showed that ‘we can’t fill it.’ Now you’ve got to backtrack and have some form of a waiting period before we can try launching it again.”
The takeaway: Don’t skip steps.
Selling Semi-Private Training
When launching this program, market it internally first. This is key.
“They’re already purchasing fitness from you,” Daniel said. “That know, like and trust continuum is ongoing. Don’t forget that member nurture is equally as important as new-lead nurture. Your members are your best clients for this program.”
The way to sell semi-private training to members: Goal Review Sessions, which are part of the Prescriptive Model laid out above.
“I cannot emphasize Goal Reviews enough. They are critical,” Daniel explained. “We built this program based on members within our gym. And it was done through Goal Reviews. If you’re not using them, it’s going to be very difficult to truly know what your members need. So be aggressive with setting up Goal Reviews.”
From there, Daniel recommends first selling an eight-week program to members who see the value in speed, specificity, attention, accountability, convenience and coaching. If that program is successful, sell an ongoing program.
Intrapreneurial coaches can even be engaged to come to you with three clients whose problems would be solved in a semi-private setting, and you can set up a slot that’s a win for coaches, clients and gym.
That is your starting point—not costly external marketing of a half-baked program. Market internally first and get it right. Daniel suggests it could be years before you’re ready to market externally.
But that doesn’t mean it will be years before you’re generating lots of semi-private revenue.
Three Examples
Daniel’s gym—”So when new people come in, they have two choices: ‘Yes or no to nutrition, and then CrossFit or semi-private training?’ That’s it. So we’re marketing that on our website. We’re marketing that in all of our emails and our social media.” Remember, Daniel’s program is well established; he started it by marketing internally only.
A very large, long-standing CrossFit gym in Mississippi—The gym was having members “age out of intensity.” The owner worked with Daniel to use semi-private groups to solve this problem with personalized programming that acknowledges the goal is no longer “go so hard that I puke.” He’s now running 10 semi-private groups in a gym that’s 12,000 square feet.
A Bay Area garage gym—They were doing just one-on-one training, and the owner’s schedule was completely full. After pairing people up, the calendar was still full. So he worked with Daniel to set up a semi-private program: He now only accepts clients in a minimum three-on-one setting. Instead of having to cover 30 clients in 30 sessions, the owner must run just 10 to 12 sessions. The clients get great results, and the owner takes Wednesdays and Thursday afternoons off now to go to gymnastics with his daughter. Revenue increased last year by 84 percent, and their overhead didn’t change.
Don’t Skip Steps
Semi-private personal training is like building a garage: It solves a lot of problems.
But if you just throw up some wood and shingles without pouring a foundation, you’ll be in trouble.
Get a base in place, then scale up. That’s good advice for any aspect of business.
Two-Brain mentors can lead your through the exact steps to add semi-private training to your model. To hear more about how we make gyms profitable fast, book a call here.
