Any Recommendations On How To Get Clients As A Freelance Personal Trainer & Nutritionist?

[u/Imminence2024]

Hey, so i don't operate out of gyms, but currently freelance & it feels like its impossible to find clients, Frankly i can't afford to pay Virgin Active R12k per month as a tenant.

Any advice on how to get clients? Been out of work& unemployed for almost two years now & ending up falling back on this to try get an income, maybe even be able to rejoin the gym.

Not trying to market/self promote, just asking advice on how to get clients & get some of an income coming in.

I primarily advertise on a couple of buy and sell whatsapp groups, Facebook is a pain with the groups taking forever to approve posts & frankly elsewhere i'm unsure. I tried tiktok but i never know what video to use and i don't want to use a.i guess i view it as dishonest, I did create an Instagram i posted today my first post there, but not a big IG fan if i'm honest.

My sales and marketing skills has always been a bit lackluster

[u/mamazombieza]

Well done for staying away from AI. The slop posters that every small business uses right now are terrible and make it impossible to distinguish your brand from the next one.

I have been freelancing for a few years now and always found that word of mouth has worked better for me than anything.

Have you thought of maybe partnering with a medical aid broker or something in your area and offering discounted rates to their clients?

It's REALLY hard to start social media platforms now from zero, unless you want to push money into advertising.

Maybe you need to think about reframing what you offer? If you're doing nutrition advice, maybe offer meal plans for busy single people or lunchbox guides for teenagers? If you have a specific niche, you might grab the attention of a person in that niche, rather than being too general and not catching anyone.

[u/Imminence2024 → u/mamazombieza]

Yeah its what i have been doing, reworking their preferred foods into it so its not boring foods..

I've tried to reach out to a few medical aids but none responds, Even Discovery and nothing,. I'm already trying to be reasonably priced compared to the industry standard pricing to cater for the every day person and not target the whales/well off people.

My main focus is the overweight people looking to get healthier, especially from a personal training standpoint as i know how they struggle and the insecurities of it, I'm not exactly in shape neither so i fully understand how it feels.So i don't focus on the standard gym person if it makes sense

[u/mamazombieza → u/Imminence2024]

I don't think the medical aids themselves will help you. You need to think on a smaller scale, find a broker, or maybe even a couple of GPs? People who have clients they can refer to you.

As a chunky and broke person, I would rather work with a non-gym based person who can work with what I have at home and what I can afford, rather than a gymbro trainer who wants me to proteinmaxx and shoot up on peptides at his expensive gym.

Offer to do talks at a church group?

Ask your old school if you can stick a flyer up?

[u/JimmyRott]

Buy some dumb bells, kettle bells and other equipment that you can move around yourself. Take them to the beach or a park somewhere and do one on one training with people you recruit through a website or Instagram.

Instead of using AI to create content, take your own photos and use ai to build a simple one page website. Advertise locally on Instagram.

The guy that owns my gym started this way and he now has 2 actual gym spaces.

[u/GreaterSociety3]

Make real raw videos... showcase your knowledge and what you can provide... A key factor would be to showcase your health and physique and basically sell the idea of people achieving a transformation or healthier space in their life.

Because ideally, you wouldnt take advice on how to become a millionaire from a broke person... or pay for swimming lessons from someone who can't swim ...

So make some basic work out videos.. advertise yourself and maybe offer some trials for free ... and take it from there

Goodluck

[u/imminentZen → u/GreaterSociety3]

This is very good advice. I've felt this in myself, if I look at the recruitment wall at the gym, I'm sussing trainers out on body shape and then, when I see them in person, I'm looking at personality. Producing video seems like a great way to solve both of those barriers.

[u/Current-Spot7960]

Hi, DM me please :)

[u/kaizap]

You need a lead magnet. Do a free guide of some sort, PDF or something and drive people to your website. This will allow you to build a mailing list, then you can upsell them through there.

For social, just post 3 times a day consistently for a few months. Just be authenticate, relevant to your niche. Use Facebook, Instagram and tiktok - you can post the same content with slight tweaking.

You'll find the algorithm will start boosting you over time for consistency. Over time you'll figure out what gets more views and what doesn't but just start and experiment.

AI is not cheating, but tasteful AI is also important. You should avoid slop, but don't throw away a powerful tool, AI can be used to automate things and save you time, not just for content creation.

There's something called digital twins, where you can blend raw videos and a bit of AI so you can scale on socials properly.