Bootcamp Personal Trainer Career

In this article we’ll take a look at the bootcamp personal trainer career path.

So what’s the first thing that springs to mind when you hear the words bootcamp personal trainer?  For a lot of people, it’s an image of a hard ass, uncompromising, in-your-face military drill sergeant type trainer.

Fortunately for everyone involved, you don’t need to run your bootcamps in this way.  However, you do need a specific set of skills to be able to run bootcamps effectively so keep people coming back.  Like most business, client retention is crucial and will save you time and money in marketing your business.

What will I be doing as a Bootcamp Personal Trainer?

As a bootcamp personal trainer you’ll be running 3-4 bootcamps at different times each day throughout the week.  You’ll most likely be based at a park or in a community hall with 10-20 clients at each bootcamp.  The remainder of your time will be spent trying to get more people to come along to your bootcamps.

You could have around 80 people on your books at any one time investing around $200 per month to attend as many bootcamps as they like.  It’s a fun environment to be in charge of and you can help a lot of people at once.

If successful you may choose to set your bootcamp up in other areas of the city or country.  This would shift your role in the business considerably but its important to think about long term.

Training and Administration

As a bootcamp personal trainer you’ll need to look at:

• Who you want to train
• Where you’re going to run your bootcamp; and
• Whether you want to hire additional trainers

The answers to these questions will largely dictate how many bootcamp session you’ll run each week and when.  For example, you might have a bootcamp schedule that looks a little like this:

This timetable gives the impression that you’ll have a lot of time left on your hands, but you’ll be spending a lot of that time on:

• Session preparation
• Completing admin; and
• Marketing your bootcamp

The time you spend on creating great sessions plays a huge part in your bootcamps success.  Your bootcamp sessions need to provide entertainment and escapism in order to hit the experiential ‘sweet spot’ and keep your clients coming back.  Any decrease in client retention means you’ll then have to climb back into marketing to replace lost clients.

Speaking of marketing, you’ll be spending a good amount of time marketing to generate interest in your bootcamp.  You’ll most likely need to include a mix of marketing tactics to generate leads over the short and long term.

Marketing

There are some really effective ways of generating customers in a short period of time to get your bootcamps up and running, some of these tactics include:

• Visiting businesses
• Meeting people in the area
• Offering free trial sessions; and
• Inviting as many to come along as possible

Some effective marketing tactics with a longer return time include:

• Drop boxes
• Website
• Paid Google and Facebook ads

If you know how to do these things then your goal is to ensure that people in your area know how awesome your bootcamp is.  As you are the lifeblood of the bootcamp, your best shot at gaining followers is to do face-to-face marketing.

So you’ll be visiting businesses and meeting people in the area, offering trial sessions and getting as many to come along as possible.  You could run social media ads to people in your area, however this does take time to learn, so you may want to pay someone to do it for you.

What skills will I need to be a Bootcamp Personal Trainer?

It’s fair to say that you can’t afford to be poor in any area of marketing, sales or product in any business but this rings true even more so with bootcamps.  You are the face of the business so you’re going to be involved in everything.

From understanding what marketing you want to implement, selling the product itself right down to the environment created during the sessions themselves.  You can’t afford to have an ‘off day’ as your business will live and breathe off of referrals from existing clients.

With one-on-one personal training, you only have to deal with one client that needs technique correction.  Multiply this by 20 and this is what you’re dealing with in a bootcamp.  If want to help people get fitter then you’ll have to make sure you don’t drop the ball on exercise instruction and correcting technique.

How much does it cost to start as a Bootcamp Personal Trainer?

You can run your bootcamp off two main funding models;

• A weekly membership; or
• Pay as you go

The weekly membership allows clients to attend as many sessions as they like and pay a set amount each week.  This is good as it allows you to keep your income steady by setting up payments via automatic payment or direct debit.

Pay as you go is ok, but it will create more administration and financial tracking as you’ll have to make sure everyone is paid up.  You’ll want to make payment easy for both you and your clients so the weekly membership is probably the best way to go.

In terms of start up costs, you’ll have an initial expense for equipment as well as a vehicle to help you haul it around, especially so if you run your bootcamp in a park or community hall that doesn’t have storage.

In addition to equipment you may have to pay for any permits or rental of indoor areas to run your bootcamp.  You’ll also need to spend some money on marketing as you’ll be competing with fitness clubs and personal trainer studios.  A poster made on Microsoft Word with some clip art probably won’t cut it, so consider hiring a marketing consultant if you don’t have the capability to do it yourself.  This also will free you up to do what you’re passionate about… running bootcamps!

Recap

Here’s a recap of the time, capability and money required to become a bootcamp personal trainer:

Got Questions?

If you have any questions about getting qualified and starting a personal training career, feel free to contact us and one of our friendly careers team will be happy to help you out.