Personal Trainers and VAT

So you’re doing really well and making loads of money! Great! but do you need to pay VAT and are there any benefits in you actually being VAT registered?

The simple answer is that if your business turnover is over £67,000 (correct as at time of publishing) a year then you will need to be VAT registered and pay VAT.

You will have to be an extremely busy Personal Trainer to reach this level of income, but it is achieveable. Lets have a quick look at an example. Lets take the £67,000 VAT threshold divide that by 52 weeks in a year = £1289 worth of business weekly, Say you charge £35 per session, you’d need to be doing 37 sessions per week to need to consider becoming VAT registered. So for most personal trainers, you wont ever need to consider VAT.
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Personal Trainer - Sole Trader or Limited Company

As a self employed Personal Trainer you will have to decide as whether to trade as a Sole Trader or as a Limited Company. The choice is yours and isnt determined by your income.
There are pro’s and con’s to each, however if you believe you can trade profitably for 3 consecutive years (dont underestimate this feat), then you should definitely consider trading as a limited company as the future benefits of having 3 years profitable accounts on a limited company will leave you in a very good position should you wish to grow and expand your business interests.

So, lets look at both means of trading and lets see what the difference is….

Sole Trader - A sole trader is basically a business that is a business but isnt a limited company (whereby a limited company is a ‘Company’) (dont worry, its not really confusing)

You can start trading straight away as long as you notify the Inland Revenue within the first 3 months of you starting trading and you will be required to fill in an annual Self Assessment form. The Inland revenue can be reached by calling 08459 15 45 15
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Time Management

When i first started Personal Training i set out to please everyone (except myself)
I wanted to be available no matter what time my clients wanted to train.

It didnt take me long to realise i was missing out on my quality of life and whilst i was looking after my clients, i wasnt spending enough time looking after ME.

You need to be flexible, sure, you know that, but you can be flexible and organised. Here’s just one example of how to set up your working week. It can be done in many different formats but this is just one example….
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Healthly Breakfast (Part 2)

Healthy Breakfast Options – Menu 2 (part 2)

Download the Healthy Breakfast PDF Here
and
Download Part 1 of the Healthy Breakfast Guide Here

Everybody say’s, Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!

After a good nights sleep, where you have gone for a long period of time without eating, your
blood sugar levels will be low. Missing breakfast can mean your body will start
to crave something sweet and you’ll end up snacking on unhealthy foods. So
start the day with a filling and nutritious meal and you will give your metabolism
a kick start. You’ll feel full until lunch time with no temptation to snack your way
through the morning. Here’s a selection of healthy breakfast options for you to
choose from….

Oatmeal and berries

Use oats and skim milk to make your porridge, then add any berries such as
strawberries, raspberries or blueberries and honey. This is a great way to start
the day as the oats have a low GI (Glycaemic Index) this tells us that oats do
not raise the blood glucose level very quickly, which is good as it can help
stabilise the appetite. Just go easy on the honey!
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Healthy Breakfast

Healthy Breakfast (part 1)

Download the Healthy Breakfast PDF Here

It has been said many times, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. After a long period without eating your blood sugar levels will be low. Skipping breakfast can mean your body will start to crave something sweet and you’ll end up snacking on unhealthy foods. Start the day with a filling and nutritious meal and you will give your metabolism a kick start. You’ll feel full until lunch time with no temptation to snack your way through the morning. Some studies have also shown that eating breakfast (high carbohydrate/low fat) can make you more alert and assertive to face the day.

Form the Habit

Overcome the reasons not to have breakfast and make it part of your day. If you’re too busy in the morning, prepare as much as you can the night before. If you can’t stomach anything first thing try just a glass of pure, unsweetened fruit juice, a banana, yoghurt or slice of toast. Get into the habit of trying different dishes at breakfast and enjoy it!
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Find a Personal Trainer

It’s always been hard to find a qualified, experienced and fun Personal Trainer. Not anymore!
PTHub.co.uk is a definitive solution that puts people who want a Personal Trainer in touch with there local Fitness expert and provide them with an initial FREE consultation at zero cost to both parties.

With nothing to lose (except body fat) it has never been easier to try the services of a Personal Trainer in your local area.

The concept of the Personal Training Hub is to provide Personal Trainers with an effective, low cost means, of marketing and provide potential Personal Training Clients with a resource to search and view local personal trainers before making contact.

All trainers are vetted before joining the Personal Training Hub. This includes checking they are sufficiently qualified, have appropiate insurance and all offer a FREE consultation. Other factors listed are their current pricing structure, where they can train you (in a gym, at home, out doors etc) and their experience as well as independent references.

Start your search for a Personal Trainer Now.

Personal Trainer Branding

What is Branding? Why should i do it, How do i ‘brand’ my business?

Well Branding is defined as ‘ to identify the goods and services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of other sellers‘

So you want people to be able to recognise YOU from your competition. In the personal training world this is really important as there will be numerous trainers within your gym, your local area and your city.

Image Above - Fresh Lifestyle Personal Training Branded Image.

When building your website, you will also want to take your branding into consideration so that it all ties in together.

You normally identify a brand through one of the following…..a name, term, sign, symbol, colour or design

here are a few examples of branding…
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Personal Trainer Website

These days a website is a must for any Personal Trainer. Its a valuable tool to market and promote yourself with and to help forge those first initial contacts with your potential clients.

However, there are many decisions to be made when considering the format of your website and its domain name.

Here are a few things to take into consideration when planning the web aspect of your business

1) Your Domain Name. Is it better to have a branded domain name or a keyword rich domain name?
Well whats the difference?
A branded domain name is something like the name of your business. e.g. FreshLS.com is the branded name of the Personal Trainer website for Fresh Lifestyle Personal Training. This ranks high within search engines and doesnt include ‘keywords’ in the name

A keyword name might be www.personaltrainingbirmingham.com this also ranks highly within google

So what do you choose? Either! There is no right and wrong and just because you have keywords in the domain it doesnt necessarily mean you’ll rank number one for that search term.

Its purely down to how you want to present your business.

2) Flash or HTML website?

HTML everytime is the simple answer! Currently google cannot crawl flash pages and so they wont be indexed and wont get natural free traffic! Flash may look ‘trendier’ and ‘cooler’ but wont help you get business

3) SEO or no SEO? Should you bother paying someone to do SEO (search engine optimisation) on your website? YES! If you want to feature highly within Google for your search terms, then get an expert to SEO your site. Our example FreshLS.com appears highly for many different keywords and brings that trainer many new clients each year. Good SEO on a poor looking, but good content site is better than no SEO on a flashy website. Simply put NO SEO = NO FREE TRAFFIC!

4) Email address - Free Mail or Business Name Email
free mail accounts like yahoo, hotmail and gmail dont portray a professional image. Always get an email account set up with your business domain

5) What info should i put on my site
Any basic business website should contain a home page, about me page, contact page, services page and basic price page. Your home page may well be the only page the website visitor goes to. So make sure they can contact you from that page. Display your email and phone numbers on that first page above the crease. Also people like to see what its going to cost them. Dont be afraid to show your prices, this way if they contact you they already have a good idea of costings.

6) Layout - Keep it simple and clean. Don’t just fill the space with useless info. Also dont use large, high resolution images (especially as a background) and you dont need multiple flashing images. Stick to two or three columns of well laid out useful information. Never use pop ups.

7) Keep your website up to date! - Failure to do so will cost you business. It also helps your sites position in search engines if you constantly add, fresh, original information related to your sites theme.

Good Luck getting your Personal Trainer Website set up. At the PTHub we offer you a FREE web page to help with your promotion and also a web design service with SEO built in. Feel free to contact us for a no obligation quote and advice.