Anyway as we were working out we got chatting about business and he said he was planning on putting out some flyers around the local area to build up his business and get more personal training clients.

He was gonna hit places like Tanning and beauty salons, hairdressers and coffee shops near the gym.

It's a good idea in principle with with one fatal flaw (actually two fatal flaws but we'll come to the second one in just a sec) and its a mistakes that a lot of personal trainers make with their business.

Let me explain:

This is exactly what every other personal trainer in your town is doing, so it makes it hard to stand out in a crowd.  Th main reason why most trainers compete on price by the way is that it's the only way that they know how to stand out. If you want to succeed you need to go where other trainers are not going and do what they are not doing.

That's not to say flyers won't work for you as a personal trainer, because they can, but you need to make sure you have a few things in place first.

a) send them to a website or a squeeze page to collect their email address and

b) Make sure you know your target market, what problem you are solving for them and where they hang out which takes me on to fatal flaw number 2.

If you are planning on selling high end personal training results based packages (not sessions) then the people you want to attract are probably not hanging out in tanning salons. You need to go where the money is and basically fish in a different pond.

My suggestion to him was to look at private physios he could get to know to get referrals, high end car dealers, even the estate agents as we live in an affluent area.

Of course Facebook ads make this a lot easier to find and target these people and you don't even have to print flyers but that my friend is a lesson for another day.