Most advice on how to start a personal training business comes from people a year or two into it. This episode of The Price Regulator comes from someone twenty-two years in. Ricky Vono of Revolution Fitness Solutions has trained more than five hundred clients, holds nine certifications, has competed on a bodybuilding stage, and has moved a hands-on business online. Jason sat down with him to talk about the business side of personal training, not the workouts.
Here is what he said, section by section.
He got every certification before he took a single client
Ricky started in the industry at fifteen. He was failing a high school class, found the weight room, and never left it. By the time he was old enough to train anyone he had already decided he would not take a client until he was qualified to.
That is the first thing that separates his story from most guides on how to become a personal trainer. He did not get one certification and start selling sessions. He collected them. Nine, over the years, and he still adds to the list. His view is simple: a certified personal trainer with one credential is a beginner with a piece of paper, and the client can tell.
If you are working out how to start a personal training business, this is step one, and it is the step most people rush.
The client's problem is never the workout
Ask Ricky what stops people from changing and he does not say the program. He says consistency. The workout is the easy part to write. Getting someone to show up on the day they do not feel like it is the job.
He splits it cleanly. Consistency is the client's responsibility. Motivation is his. The trainer's role is to make the next session the thing they do not skip, and to be honest enough that the client believes what they are hearing.
That honesty is not for everyone. Ricky says so on camera. Some people want a trainer who tells them they are doing great. He is not that trainer, and he has learned to say so early so the wrong clients leave before they waste both people's time. It is the same idea Jason calls the discipline loop: the process is what changes people, not the goal.
Learning to sell inside the big box gyms
Before he went out on his own, Ricky worked the floor at large commercial gyms. That is where he learned how to get personal training clients, and it is not a skill the certification courses teach.
The floor is a sales environment. You are approaching people who did not ask for help, reading which ones are open to it, and turning a two-minute conversation into a first session. He credits those years for everything that came after. By the time he left the big box world in 2017, he could fill a schedule from a standing start, because he had done it hundreds of times with nothing but a clipboard.
Most people who want to start a fitness business skip this stage. Ricky's view is that you should not. Learn to sell where the foot traffic is free before you try to do it where every client has to find you.
Nine certifications, and he still hired a coach
This is the part of the conversation that applies far outside the gym.
When Ricky decided to compete in bodybuilding, he already held nine certifications. He hired a coach anyway. His reasoning: knowing the material and being held accountable to it are two different things, and nobody gets to skip the second one because they are good at the first.
He placed top five out of thirty in his first show. Two weeks later he took first. He puts the result down to preparation, not talent, and to having someone outside his own head telling him what to do next.
Jason has a whole episode on why playing small is not humility. Ricky's version is shorter. If Jordan, Woods and Brady all had a coach, you are not the exception.
Where the clients actually come from
When Ricky left the gym floor, the question was where the next client would come from without a building full of them walking past.
His answer is the least glamorous version of personal trainer marketing there is. He became a walking advertisement. He looked the part every day, in and out of the gym, and he made sure the people around him knew what he did. Referrals did the rest. Twenty-two years in, most of his clients still come from other clients.
He does spend on marketing. He describes putting a little behind a post every so often, aimed at the area he wants to work in. But he is clear that the paid side is a supplement to the referral engine, not a replacement for it. A personal trainer marketing plan that starts with ads and skips the referral base is backwards.
How to structure a day around a full client load
Ricky trains around eight clients a day. That is the number a lot of trainers aim for and few sustain, and the episode is honest about why.
Eight sessions is not eight hours. Add the travel between them for the in-person work, the prep, and the gaps that do not line up, and the day is long before anyone counts the time spent on the business itself. Any personal trainer business plan that assumes eight billable hours in an eight-hour day is going to be wrong from the first week.
He also talks through what a trainer should be charging, in person and online, with specific numbers. We are keeping those figures in the video, where he gives the reasoning behind each one. The short version is that most new trainers undercharge, and the ones who last are the ones who priced their time correctly early.
In person versus online
The second half of the episode is about moving a hands-on business online, and it is the part most people came for.
Ricky's take is that online coaching is a different business with the same product. The client still needs a plan and still needs accountability. What changes is that the trainer is no longer in the room, so the systems have to do what presence used to do: check-ins, written programs, and a schedule the client can see.
His advice on how to start an online fitness coaching business is the same advice he gives clients trying to lose weight. Consistency. Post every single day, on whichever platform you have chosen, and keep putting yourself in front of people. He is direct about the fact that the online space is full of coaches with a following and no credentials, and that the way to compete with them is not to out-shout them. It is to be the one who actually knows what they are doing, and to be findable.
What sets a professional apart
Near the end, Jason asks what separates a professional from everyone else in the gym. Ricky's answer is about the small things.
A uniform, every day, so the client never has to guess who the trainer is. A written plan, every session, so nothing is improvised. Showing up on time, in the right clothes, with the work already done. He mentions trainers in slides and Crocs and does not hide what he thinks of it.
It sounds cosmetic. It is not. It is the same reason we itemized every piece of gear in our own studio and the same reason Jason spends an episode on the planning mistakes that kill businesses before day one. The businesses that last are the ones where the owner decided early what professional looks like, and then did it every day whether anyone was watching or not.
Twenty-two years and five hundred clients later, that is the whole method.