As a fitness professional, a problem you might want to have is dealing with too many personal training clients, right? But as silly as it sounds, this could actually become a problem.

The worst thing you can do as an online personal trainer is to kill it with your marketing, get a whole bunch of clients to sign up for your service, then provide them with a bad service experience because you are overwhelmed. This is something you should really think about when creating your service offerings and of course your pricing options.

If you price your services too low, you might get a lot of people to sign up, but will you be able to provide all of these people quality service? If you price your services higher, you might get fewer clients to sign up, but you might provide them with better service. This could be because you know how much they are paying for your services so you feel obligated to do a better job and also because you have fewer clients to deal with, so it’s easier to provide better service.

There are 4 strategies I can recommend to ensure you are still able to continue growing your online personal training business without sacrificing quality and client experience—or a second of your personal free time.

1. Have Systems In Place

I would recommend doing this well before you even begin to take on clients, but step number 1 should always be putting systems in place.

By systems I mean a step-by-step guide for how you will get each client started, how often you will check-in with them, what will your check-ins look like, how often you are changing programs, etc.

Having a systematic outline to follow with each and every client will make your life a lot easier when handling many clients at once and will prevent clients from slipping through the cracks. Yes, you might alter things for different client program needs, but having this basic framework will save you from having to re-invent the wheel with each new client.

2. Be Organized

This is key! And it isn’t everyone’s forte, so you may have to work at it.

When I started taking on online personal training clients, I was still training many hours in the gym and teaching group fitness classes. I had been running my own business for about 7 years and thought I was an organized person, but I had to get more organized! One thing I have found is having systems (refer to #1) helps to keep me organized and also setting reminders in my smartphone calendar helps me stay on top of everything.

Whether you are old-school with a pen and paper scheduling book or are like me and keep your life in your phone, it’s important to set reminders! The Trainerize dashboard and its client Timeline is a huge help too because it will tell you right when you log in which clients need attention, who has completed their workouts, personal bests, and if you have any new messages, etc.

Another example of how I keep myself organized and ensure I don’t miss any key client moments is by setting reminders in my phone. Once I set up a new clients program I right away set reminders in my phone telling me to check-in on a client or create a new program for example. Since I always have my phone on me, I never miss a beat with any of my clients.

3. Automate Everything You Can

While you may be tempted to try and handle everything yourself (or maybe you’re running a one-person show and don’t have anyone else to rely on), there is an amazing tool within reach that can lighten your work load, help keep your organized (see point #2 above), and let you stick to your systems (see point #1 above). It’s called automation.

A is for awesome, and automation.

Automation is exactly what it sounds like: setting specific actions or tasks to happen automatically at a pre-set time. And, lucky for all of us, Trainerize comes loaded with automation options. From your welcome emails and client messages, to client set up, program delivery, and payment collection, Trainerize lets you set up automation that eliminates admin work or easy-to-miss steps. It’s like they’ve built a personal assistant right into the app for you.

Not to mention, Trainerize also plays nicely with Zapier, one of the most powerful automation tools out there. With the Zapier+Trainerize add-on, the sky’s the limit when it comes to automation, which means you can save yourself boatloads of time and energy without leaving your clients in the lurch.

4. Know Your Ideal Client Load

As I said earlier, we all want a flourishing online personal training business, but even if you’re using tactics 1 through 3, it is still very important to know your magic number.

This is the number of clients you can take on at any given time to ensure you never sacrifice quality of service with each and every paying client. This number could be 10 or 500, it all depends on what else you have going on, the systems you’ve put in place, the level of automation in your business, and how much time you have to put into your online training clients.

If you are just starting your online personal training career, my recommendation would be to start by taking on a few clients first to see how much time it actually takes you to build programs and provide good service. Once you have put a group of clients through your program you can begin to solidify your systems and will have a better idea of how many clients you think you could manage at once.