Sep 30, 2026 · 23 min · 9 segments
Want to start your own strength training business, but you're worried about how much you need to spend before you launch? HITuni Founder Simon Shawcross says you probably don't need as much money as…
And do you want to just start talking about, you know, one of the things that someone's asking me is who do I target? Who is my target market? And I'm guessing that the principle of figuring out who your target market is probably the same for all three options or three or four options.
I could be wrong.
How do you think about that? And how would you advise, you know, new business owners figure that one out?
So, I mean, you know, if your home's in a really rundown area, it may well be a challenge to get people who can afford personal training to come to your home to train there.
Outside of, you know, issues like that, You want to look at, well, who's the local audience? I would say what I used to do with a five mile, 10 mile radius, five mile.
Those are people, if you're doing it, say from your home, that's probably a reasonable distance people are going to be prepared to travel to you.
Now, what kind of people within those zones are there who can afford and would want a personal training service? You know, it might be that there is a private school nearby where you know there's lots of sort of relatively wealthy parents of kids who, A, are super busy, time pressed, B, have the money to pay you, who you might want to target.
So you may want to walk in through the gates of that school and look to see if you can put a poster out, a little flyer up somewhere, something that can attract that audience.
Who in your neighborhood within that region can afford your services? Because there's no point in targeting people who are not going to be able to pay your services.
One of the first promo things I did was approach some local newspapers to write a fitness column for them, which I started doing.
from uh the from from whatever i'd written in the fitness column but i would say about 50 60 of the people who called were not genuinely going to become clients because they were not going to be able to sustain to pay that amount they were just sort of interested in speaking to somebody who'd written a fitness column maybe getting a bit of extra advice You need to figure out, realistically speaking, who can afford the service that you're offering.
Once you've done that, where do those people go? Where do they hang out? So like I said, perhaps it's a local school.
Perhaps there's a very busy coffee shop where you see local office workers dive in and out.
And if it's sort of not one of those chain ones, it's more of a, so it's like, where are these people gravitating to? Where, where is your audience gravitating to already? The types of people who are going to benefit from your service and who you are going to benefit from having as clients.
Perhaps, you know, the coffee shop does something or you can suggest to do something, a fitness talk in the evening with a free coffee, you know, even if you have to bear the cost of it.
Doing that sort of PR, that promo stuff is really going to help you start off and will set you apart from people in your area who are offering any other kind of personal training service who are not prepared.
And do you want to just start talking about, you know, one of the things that someone's asking me is who do I target? Who is my target market? And I'm guessing that the principle of figuring out who your target market is probably the same for all three options or three or four options.
I could be wrong.
How do you think about that? And how would you advise, you know, new business owners figure that one out?
So, I mean, you know, if your home's in a really rundown area, it may well be a challenge to get people who can afford personal training to come to your home to train there.
Outside of, you know, issues like that, You want to look at, well, who's the local audience? I would say what I used to do with a five mile, 10 mile radius, five mile.
Those are people, if you're doing it, say from your home, that's probably a reasonable distance people are going to be prepared to travel to you.
Now, what kind of people within those zones are there who can afford and would want a personal training service? You know, it might be that there is a private school nearby where you know there's lots of sort of relatively wealthy parents of kids who, A, are super busy, time pressed, B, have the money to pay you, who you might want to target.
So you may want to walk in through the gates of that school and look to see if you can put a poster out, a little flyer up somewhere, something that can attract that audience.
Who in your neighborhood within that region can afford your services? Because there's no point in targeting people who are not going to be able to pay your services.
One of the first promo things I did was approach some local newspapers to write a fitness column for them, which I started doing.
from uh the from from whatever i'd written in the fitness column but i would say about 50 60 of the people who called were not genuinely going to become clients because they were not going to be able to sustain to pay that amount they were just sort of interested in speaking to somebody who'd written a fitness column maybe getting a bit of extra advice You need to figure out, realistically speaking, who can afford the service that you're offering.
Once you've done that, where do those people go? Where do they hang out? So like I said, perhaps it's a local school.
Perhaps there's a very busy coffee shop where you see local office workers dive in and out.
And if it's sort of not one of those chain ones, it's more of a, so it's like, where are these people gravitating to? Where, where is your audience gravitating to already? The types of people who are going to benefit from your service and who you are going to benefit from having as clients.
Perhaps, you know, the coffee shop does something or you can suggest to do something, a fitness talk in the evening with a free coffee, you know, even if you have to bear the cost of it.
Doing that sort of PR, that promo stuff is really going to help you start off and will set you apart from people in your area who are offering any other kind of personal training service who are not prepared.
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