The five numbers every PT business runs on

You run your training on feel, and your feel is good. You can read a room, spot who's about to drift, tell who needs an arm round them and who needs telling. That instinct is most of the job. It just isn't the business.

A business runs on about five numbers. Not a spreadsheet, not an accountant's brain. Five. And most trainers have never written a single one of them down, which is why the good months and the lean ones both feel like weather, something that happens to you.

Here they are. Ten minutes with these and the guesswork goes.

That last one catches everyone. A client at £45, twice a week, who stays a year and a half:

Once you've seen that number, you stop treating the people who pay you like one-off transactions, and start looking after them like the assets they are.

What they're actually for

Each number points at a different move, which is the whole point of knowing them. A capacity that's half full says fill slots before you chase strangers. Short retention says look after people better. A rate that hasn't moved in two years says, gently, raise it. You can't fix what you've never looked at.

Why a feeling isn't enough

Feel tells you how today went. It won't tell you that you're quietly £400 a month down on last year, or that your best client is three sessions from drifting, or that your rate has lost a tenth of its value to inflation while you weren't watching. Numbers catch what the room doesn't.

You don't need to become a numbers person. You need five numbers, once a quarter, and the honesty to act on what they say.

That's the difference between running a business and hoping one keeps running.