# How To Set Goals As An Online Fitness Business Owner
If you're a personal trainer thinking about moving online — or you've already started and you're not sure what you should actually be aiming for — this post is for you.
Most coaches we speak to are paralysed by the volume of information out there. They don't know where to begin, who to listen to, or what the first real step is.
This is our practical framework for setting business goals that actually make sense.
---
## Start With the Right Goal
The first goal we recommend for every trainer moving online isn't to become an Instagram influencer. It's not to hit six figures in revenue. It's not to build a personal brand.
It's simply this: **replace the income you currently make.**
That might sound unambitious. But it's the foundation everything else is built on — and most coaches skip it entirely.
---
## Step 1: Find Your Freedom Number
Your Freedom Number is the monthly income your business needs to generate in order for you to go full-time. It was popularised by Tim Ferriss in *The 4-Hour Work Week*, and it remains one of the most useful concepts for anyone building an online business.
Here's how to calculate yours:
1. Pull your last six months of bank statements
2. Calculate your average monthly outgoings
3. Add a 20% buffer
That's your target revenue. The number your business has to hit before you can make the leap.
---
## Step 2: Work Out How Many Clients You Need
Once you have your Freedom Number, the next question answers itself: how many clients do I need, at what price point, to hit it?
We recommend starting at around **£100 per month per client**.
Here's why:
- It's affordable for anyone who is serious about reaching their goals — people spend this on far less important things
- It doesn't require high-pressure sales tactics or emotionally manipulative marketing to close
- It's scalable — you can systematise and automate the delivery without it consuming all your time
- It works across a wide range of niches
So if your Freedom Number is £2,000/month:
**£2,000 ÷ £100 = 20 clients**
Suddenly, "I want to start an online business" becomes "I need 20 clients." That's a goal you can actually work with.
---
## Step 3: Identify Your Prime Lever
Your Prime Lever is the mechanism that generates customers for your business.
For most coaches, this is your **sales process** — not your daily Instagram content, not your podcast, not cold messaging people in Facebook groups. Those things might have a role to play, but they aren't the thing you can reliably scale.
A well-built sales process — whether that's a webinar, an email sequence, a challenge, or a funnel — should convert between **3–5% of leads into paying clients**.
That means:
- 100 leads → 4 clients → £400 in recurring monthly revenue
- Each lead is worth roughly £4 to your business
- If you can generate leads from paid ads for £2, you're profitable from day one
This is what we call the **break-even back-end model**. You might break even (or spend slightly more than you earn) acquiring a client in month one. But in month two, three, and four, that recurring revenue compounds — and your cost of acquisition is covered many times over.
---
## Step 4: Work Backwards to Your Lead Target
Once you know your conversion rate, working backwards to your lead target is simple.
Need 20 clients? At a 4% conversion rate, you need **500 leads**.
Now your goal is no longer vague. It's: generate 500 leads through your sales process. That's a clear, actionable objective.
---
## Step 5: Set Lead Variables, Not Just Lag Targets
This is where most people go wrong with business goal-setting.
**Lag targets** are things like revenue, number of clients, and profit. They're the outcomes — the results of what you do. The problem is, you can't directly control them. Too many variables feed into them.
**Lead variables** are the daily actions that *create* those outcomes. They're fully within your control.
Examples of lead variables:
- Managing your ad spend and reviewing performance
- Sending a certain number of marketing emails per week
- Running a set number of sales funnel launches per quarter
- Reviewing and optimising your conversion rate
When you shift your focus from lag targets to lead variables, something important happens: you stop feeling stressed about numbers that are partly outside your control, and you start feeling confident about the actions that are entirely within it.
If you nail your lead variables every day and the lag numbers still aren't moving? That tells you something specific: change the actions. Test something new. If you're consistently executing and the numbers aren't responding, you have a diagnostic — not a mystery.
---
## Step 6: Use the Right Time Horizons
Different goals belong at different time horizons:
**1 Year:** Set a loose ambition, but don't obsess over it. Too much will change between now and then.
**90 Days:** This is your real planning window. Set lag targets here — how many clients, how much revenue, how many leads.
**Monthly:** Review your cash flow and assess your lead variable performance. Are you on track?
**Weekly and Daily:** This is where you focus exclusively on lead variables. What actions can you take today that you know will move things forward? Do those. Close your laptop. Call it a win.
---
## Putting It All Together
Here's the full framework in summary:
1. **Find your Freedom Number** — average monthly outgoings plus 20% buffer
2. **Set a client target** — Freedom Number ÷ £100/month
3. **Build a sales process** — test until you're converting 3–5% of leads
4. **Calculate lead value** — total revenue ÷ total leads
5. **Set your lead target** — clients needed ÷ conversion rate
6. **Define your lead variables** — the daily actions that generate leads
7. **Measure and manage lead variables daily** — let the lag targets follow
This is the system we used to build Propane Fitness to over 3,000 clients coached over the course of a decade. It's the foundation of everything we teach at Propane Business.
---
## Want to Go Deeper?
If you'd like a full walkthrough of our sales process — including how we run ads to a 14-day automated email sequence that converts 3–5% of leads into clients — you can access our free training video below.
And if you'd like to speak to us about whether Propane Business could help you build and launch your online coaching business, you can book a call with us here.