A good business plan is, above all, a good dose of anticipation, especially when you intend to be a personal sports coach.
To help you achieve yours, we provide you with four tips that, we hope, should boost your chances of success and, above all allow you to start on the right foot!
1. Anticipate seasonality in a sports coach business plan
The first point to consider when designing your sports coach business plan: is seasonality.
As a sports coach, your end customers are individuals: which means that you have to adapt to their pace of life. Your customers may be absent during vacation periods (school or other), which will have the effect of reducing your activity and therefore reducing your turnover.
Anticipating seasonality when developing your business plan means knowing when you are experiencing a peak or a drop-in activity and then adapting how your business operates.
For example, if you have employees, try to have them take part of their time off during school vacations. Off-peak periods are also a good time to take stock of administrative matters, update your website, or rework your marketing plan.
But how do anticipate seasonality? How do you know concretely during which day(s), which month(s) you risk recording a peak in activity?
The answer is: through your market research. By discussing with your future clients and professionals in the sector (other coaches, gym managers), you will get a more precise idea of the operation of your sector of activity in detail, thus increasing your chances of succeeding!
2. Take into account the time spent on the move.
The trips and their impact are necessary to look at when building your sports coach business plan.
Indeed, a sports coach works at his clients' homes, at least partly, which means going there! However, these many trips represent a significant opportunity cost because the time spent traveling is not billed (or at least not directly).
For example, if you work 7.5 hours per day, spend 1 hour with each client and 30 minutes going from one client to another: you can only invoice a maximum of 5 hours per day. So in this example, travel represents 33% of working time.
Depending on your location and the share of the activity carried out at home, this lost time can therefore represent a more or less significant loss of earnings that you must consider in your sports coach business plan.
For your activity to be profitable, your rates must therefore take travel into account by integrating both:
- the actual costs related to these: transport card or expenses related to the use of a professional vehicle
- the opportunity cost: i.e., the loss of earnings linked to the time lost on the move
3. Anticipate the risk of dependency when developing your sports coach business plan
What do we mean when we advise you to anticipate the risk of dependence in the very construction of your business plan?
The answer is simple: as a personal trainer, you may work in partnership with a gym.
Now, if most of your activity is done through this partnership, you become extremely dependent on the gym. That is to say, if it breaks your contract overnight, you risk losing a large part of your turnover.
Therefore, it is essential to consider this data when establishing your business plan.
In concrete terms, anticipating the risk of dependency presupposes two things:
- to plan a cash reserve to be able to take the time to find new customers if your contract is indeed broken
- to try to balance your activity so as not to depend on a single partnership: for example, by working with several gyms rather than just one, or by having a private clientele on the side
4. Include a sufficient marketing budget in the business plan
If you start a business, you must make yourself known to build your clientele.
If word of mouth can help you in the long term, it will probably take some time to engage and bring you, customers.
Consequently, it is important to include in your sports coach business plan a sufficient marketing budget to obtain results quickly at the start of the activity.
Many ways to make yourself known are at your disposal, and you can, for example:
- Focus on visual communication: flyers, posters, etc.
- Advertise: inserts in the local press, for example
- Communicate on the internet: showcase site, social networks, advertising, etc.
- Propose sponsorship offers: when a new client uses your services, he can sponsor a friend, allowing him to benefit from an advantage (reduced lesson price, first lesson offered, etc.)
See also on The Business Plan Shop.
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