“I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and question yourself.” – Elon Musk

There haven’t been many softwares that were built to deliver value to fitness professionals exclusively, but there are plenty of great tools out there that can help you and your fitness business today. This is a list of apps and tools that we’ve personally used and/or have been recommended from trusted friends. It’s important to remember that is not a list of tools that you HAVE to use, instead of list of tools for you to test and experiment with. If used properly, some of these tools could easily help you manage your time and focus on growing your business. Dedicate time to experiment with the apps that could fill big gaps for you at this moment. It may take a few weeks to transition out of your current system, but if you focus on the long-term value it will be worth it.

Productivity Tools

Asana – Team Project Management software (freemium) – Our team uses Asana for all of our business and development projects and loves it. You can easily create tasks, collaborate for projects, and track deadlines. My recommendation is to outline the different parts of your business and then create subprojects before doing anything else. Once you have your Asana account structured correctly it becomes pretty damn intuitive and useful.

Slack – Team Communication software (freemium) –  Email sucks, especially when trying to work and communicate with a team for a project. Asana does an excellent job of organizing projects, but in addition to Asana we use Slack to communicate daily and avoid email overload. The real-time messaging across web and mobile is AMAZING. They market their services towards tech companies mostly, but I think that many fitness teams could benefit from using a tool such as Slack with their business to keep track of what everyone is doing on a daily basis.

Streak – CRM tool for your gmail inbox (free) – You’re probably using folders in Gmail to organize new in-person and online leads. Stop this right now. Streak is a free app that you can add to your Gmail inbox to track leads/clients and easily view your previous interactions. Most fitness businesses probably don’t need something as advanced as SalesForce, so if you’re receiving a few leads a day and using Gmail this could be a big help. The system is still a little buggy at times, but I’ve been happily using it for biz dev deals for over 9 months.

SelfControl – Website blocker for Macs (free) –  If I didn’t use this tool when writing new blog posts and articles I would never get any work done at all. SelfControl allows you to block specific sites easily for a selected time frame so you can get shit done. If you’re on a PC there’s a similar app called Freedom.

Marketing + Social

Buffer – Social Media Management (free trial) – Fitness pro’s have a very strong presence on Facebook because it’s a great way to connect with current and future clients. This is definitely a more advanced tool, but if you have great content and very little time to spare Buffer could be a great investment for you.

Wistia – Professional Video Hosting (freemium) – If you’re just focused on putting out content than use Youtube. If you’re doing anything regarding selling services or marketing your business then you should use Wistia. Wistia videos have built-in analytics and video marketing tools to make it super easy to capture new leads. Their team produces excellent educational content if you’re looking to add more video work to your repertoire.

Youtube Capture – Mobile Youtube iOS app (free) – For creating quick Youtube videos and uploading them to your Youtube channel there isn’t a better tool than the Youtube Capture app for iOS. If you’re on Android you can already do this with any video you take. We recommend this app to all of StrengthPortal’s trainers who create exercise videos tutorials for their remote online clients.

Legal

ShakeLaw – Free Legal Agreements (free at the moment) – I LOVE this app. Shake has preloaded templates that you can fill out and send in minutes for a variety of needs. Excellent for simpler legal agreements with plenty of great tips on how to approach the process of creating legal documents for your business.

Docusign – Digital Transaction Management (free trial) – For your more advanced legal document needs you can use Docusign to send, sign and manage legally binding documents securely in the cloud. I would highly recommend that trainers and gym owners check out this service. Having been on the receiving end of signing documents online using Docusign I can tell you that it’s incredibly easy to use and your clients will appreciate signing online documents instead of paper.

We hope that several of these tools can help you save time and better manage your personal training business. If you’re looking for a software to help with remote online training we would like to invite you to make a free account on StrengthPortal to see if it’s a good fit for you. – Matt