Homefitnesspro.org : Starting A Personal Training Business l Starting A Mobile Fitness Business l Starting An In Home Personal Training Business
My name is Jeff Drock and I am the President and founder of the Home Fitness Professionals Association (Established in 2009) and creator of the Home Fitness Training Specialist Course. I am certainly quite excited and pleased to announce that our course has been approved as credit worthy for continuing education by (10) highly regarded fitness certification associations (most have approved our course for 10 contact hours) Click Here to See Who Approved Us. I would like to make it quite clear that the information contained within the scope of this course comes “almost entirely” from real world experiences and is meant to be learned and actually applied to one’s own personal trainer business situations. This course is purposely free from any difficult to comprehend or actually utilize “theoretical mumbo-jumbo.”
I would like to proceed by introducing myself to you as simply a person who has been and actually am still in the home fitness and mobile fitness training trenches. I conduct strength and conditioning sessions on a quite regular basis. These days, I work with world ranked and world champion tennis players and a 2x heavyweight boxing world champion. Gyms certainly have their place, but I do not find it necessary at all to train them within the confines of a gym setting. I train them at their homes, on a tennis court, on a field, on a beach, in parking lots, on playgrounds, at parks, and just about anywhere else for that matter. The workouts I do with them are efficient, as intense and functional as we need to make them, and we never ever have to wait to use a machine! You can see a few of the athletes I train in action on the homefitnesspro, superfittennis, or even on my personal Instagram accounts. You will notice that I am certainly not a “wanna be pretend trainer” who sits behind a desk looking at the computer all day long. https://www.instagram.com/bigjeffdrock/ and https://www.instagram.com/homefitnesspro/ https://www.instagram.com/superfittennis/
I first became certified as a trainer in 1991 and after a while I got sick and tired of making very little money as a gym trainer because I had to split my client training fees with the gym. While training clients at the gym, I also had to wait to use equipment, and trained clients that I really wasn’t enthusiastic about training. I don’t have anything against little old ladies, but I honestly don’t have the interest or patience to train them. I really wanted to work with athletes and even more specifically…tennis players. I decided that I simply needed to leave the gym setting. Unfortunately, after finishing my advanced college degree I was up to my eyeballs in debt, had horrible credit, and had no money to open up any sort of a gym. Unfortunately, I also did not have a wealthy eccentric uncle who could lend me money! The choices I had were to continue to train “little old ladies” at the gym, become a hot dog vendor on the side of the road (sort of joking), or become an in-home/mobile fitness trainer. I decided to give in-home training a try since the startup cost was very little. All I would need is a couple pieces of portable equipment and how hard could it be??? I really tried to be a successful in-home fitness trainer, but to say that I was horrible with the business side of things would actually a huge understatement. I stun at it and failed miserably! My main problems (besides everything) were having no idea of how to successfully obtain clients or efficiently run my own in-home fitness training business.
After my huge failure as an in-home fitness trainer, I landed upon a job as a “commission only” specialty home fitness equipment salesperson at Busy Body Home Fitness. I never had a sales job before and was scared to death, but I really had nothing to lose at that point so I decided to give it a try. At the time I had no idea that working there was going to be the best thing for the future of my fitness career endeavors. While at the Busy Body Home Fitness, I met with and learned from some of the most successful salespeople in the entire company (with more than 100 stores nationwide). I listened quite attentively to the superstar salespeople interact with clients. While working there, I also had the opportunity to meet with dozens of potential clients who actually were successful in-home fitness trainers. They came into the store so they could make purchases of equipment for themselves or on behalf of their wealthy clientele. I really loved my fitness equipment sales position and I think the most enjoyable part of it was getting to meet and converse with so many enthusiastic, positive-minded, and determined people. I learned to actually focus on, speak with, and learn about people instead of simply focusing on selling them a piece of equipment.
After a few years, I possessed a plethora of information about effective selling, marketing, and communicating with people. I knew that I had learned a great amount of valuable information from salespeople and successful trainers about how to run an in-home fitness or mobile business. I made a decision to give in-home fitness training another try. I cautiously decided to begin training as a part-time thing, but within a few months I was actually able to obtain and train more clients in three days per week than when I had trained 6 or sometimes even 7 days a week. It was not long before I decided that I had no real choice but to go back into training people full-time. I loved the training and knew that I finally possessed the tools to actually run a successful business.
Because I found it of personal interest, I had kept many notes about the running an in-home fitness training business “golden nugget teachings” I had learned from the trainers and salespeople I met. I had also written up information on my own personal trials, errors, and successes as an in-home/mobile fitness trainer. I guess that my wife Lori had heard me complain (one time too many) about there being no practical guides out there for those who wanted to start and run a successful in-home or mobile fitness business. She looked me right in the eye and shocked me by saying the following: “Instead of complaining, why don’t you do something about it. Perhaps you can even create one of those continuing education courses that trainers take every few years to keep their certifications updated.” I pretty much froze and replied with the following: “How the heck would I know how to create one of those courses?” She said, “Get some courage and make some phone calls to your industry friends and figure out how to create and then submit a course from someone who has done it before.”
My wife put me on the spot so I followed through and set up a meeting with a friend of a friend who was a continuing education course approval specialist for a major fitness certification organization. I told him about how I failed miserably as an in-home trainer during my first attempt and I thought that it was absolutely ridiculous that trainers wanting to do in-home fitness training had to just wing it with a trial and error approach because they could not get appropriate and practical business guidance. I asked him if he thought it would be a good idea for me to try and create a continuing education fitness business course specific to in-home training that contained practical and easily applicable information. He told me that he never saw a course like that and several certification organizations did not even accept fitness business continuing education courses. Then, he told me that he would certainly look over my notes. A few days later I got a call from him and was told that the material could be extremely valuable for anyone wanting to find success as an in-home or mobile fitness trainer. He told me that of course there were no guarantees, but I should spend some time organizing the material into chapters. After a few months, I handed him a 150 page document broken into several chapters. He then advised me to create an exam of approximately 100 questions on the material and then then submit the course to (3) credible fitness certification organizations that we would use as a trial. We were approved by all three organizations I submitted the course to in 2009. Now in 2017, we are approved by (10) highly regarded certification organizations. I am so thankful for my wife Lori pushing me to follow through with this endeavor which has been a labor of love. I would have been ecstatic to simply help one trainer find success and save them from having to go through a time wasting and money draining trial and error process. Since 2009, we have helped many trainers with their in-home/mobile fitness training businesses.
Please do not hesitate to contact me for anything. I will truly be glad to help!
Sincerely,
Jeff Drock MS, CSCS HFTS President-Home Fitness Professionals Association
Jeff@homefitnesspro.org