About PT Launch Lab — The UK Personal Trainer Podcast
The UK's podcast for aspiring and working personal trainers. Ryan Robinson and guests on becoming a personal trainer, NCFE Level 3 PT qualifications and building a PT business in the UK.
Hosted by Callum Brown and Ryan Robinson (founder of Ultimate Shred Academy and PT Launch Lab), each episode features real career-change stories, business advice from gym owners and coaches, and honest answers about NCFE Level 3 qualifications, building a PT business, and surviving the fitness industry. Whether you're thinking about becoming a personal trainer, just qualified, or scaling an existing PT business — this podcast is for you. Take the PT career quiz: https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/quiz Book a call: https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/book-call
What Every New Personal Trainer Gets Wrong About Money
Jay Johnston is 22, a qualified accountant with KPMG and Grant Thornton placements behind him, a coach with a photo shoot and a marathon on his CV, and now The Fitness Accountant, working only with personal trainers, online coaches and gym owners across the UK and Ireland. Callum sits down with him to find out how those two careers came out of one gym photo shoot that ended his football, and what he actually sees when personal trainers hand him their books.
The second half is the money. The first three financial things to do the day you start a personal training business, why cash-in-hand coaching bites the moment you apply for a mortgage, sole trader versus limited company and the profit level where the answer changes, whether VAT registration is a badge of honour or a tax on your prices, what you can genuinely put through the business (branded uniform, gym kit, the business share of your phone, and the truth about company cars), why turnover is not profit, and the line between tax efficiency and tax avoidance that HMRC eventually finds. Plus the one legal tax move most personal trainers miss, and what a trainer on £30k a year changes to build a £100k fitness business.
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Take the 60-second quiz: https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/quiz (https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/quiz)
Browse our courses: https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/courses (https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/courses)
Book a call: https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/book-call (https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/book-call)
Online Personal Training Course: https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/online-personal-training-course (https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/online-personal-training-course)
Enrol now: https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/enrol (https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/enrol)
#PersonalTrainer #PersonalTrainerCourse #FitnessCareer #PTLaunchLab
28 Aug 2026
How Much Should A Personal Trainer Charge?
Ryan and Callum sit down in the new studio for the first time in months — one of them now a professional boxer preparing for his second pro fight, the other building PT Launch Lab full time. What comes out is an honest account of what it actually costs to run a personal training business while chasing something else at the same time: the self-promotion nobody warns you about, the mental load that starts long before fight night, and why coaching people all day is the fastest way to kill your own training.
The centrepiece is money. Ryan walks through every price rise he has made since starting at £10 an hour aged seventeen, why each one landed on a milestone rather than a date, and what happened the weekend a client asked him to match a £20 session at the gym down the road. From there the conversation turns to the craft itself — treating a new client the way a mechanic treats a diagnostic, why measuring yourself against who you used to be is the thief of all progression, what GLP-1s and steroids will and will not do for you, and why every armchair expert online is right about something and wrong about you.
Watch on youtube: https://youtu.be/BWEaeD3ygp4 (https://youtu.be/BWEaeD3ygp4)
―――
Take the 60-second quiz: https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/quiz (https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/quiz)
Browse our courses: https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/courses (https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/courses)
Book a call: https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/book-call (https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/book-call)
Online Personal Training Course: https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/online-personal-training-course (https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/online-personal-training-course)
Enrol now: https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/enrol (https://ptlaunchlab.co.uk/enrol)
#PersonalTrainer #PersonalTrainerCourse #FitnessCareer #PTLaunchLab
3 Aug 2026
AI, GLP-1s and the Death of the £20 Personal Trainer
Is the personal training industry saturated? Are GLP-1 weight-loss drugs a threat to coaches or the biggest opportunity the industry has ever had? And is becoming a personal trainer still worth it in 2026?
No scripts. No sponsors. The honest version.
Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pekkJVhEY8w (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pekkJVhEY8w)
ON THE PANEL
Sohail Rashid — Brawn, investor
Tom Blackman — Owner, Ministry of Fitness
Chris Duffin — Peptide & resilience specialist (USA)
Jon Baker — Operations Director, The Gym Group
Jonny Grayshon — Personal trainer & online coach
Paul Richardson — Investor, formerly Gymshark
Hosted by Callum Brown, Ryan Robinson & Miles Halstead
CHAPTERS
0:00 Welcome and panel introductions
1:31 AI and the fitness industry
4:38 Sohail Rashid: put guardrails on AI before you trust it
7:33 Tom Blackman: a million people want in-person - that's the opportunity
9:04 The sameness problem - when everyone's poster is AI
10:31 Automating the boring bits: a diet plan by the end of the call
12:02 Jon Baker: how The Gym Group uses AI operationally
13:34 "Big box gyms don't talk to their members" - the LinkedIn backlash
16:30 Jonny Grayshon: will AI replace personal trainers?
19:31 The UK gym market in 2026: 18% penetration, an all-time high
21:05 Fitness IQ and the rising expectations of members
22:37 Gen Z, the social element, and whether that growth sticks
25:31 Paul Richardson: Gen Z are fickle
27:08 The over-40s: harder to get through the door, far more likely to stay
30:06 Tom Blackman: running an independent gym in 2026
33:10 The £10-a-month problem - why discounting fails independents
36:10 GLP-1s: the biggest growth opportunity in the field
39:05 Sohail Rashid: the language we use about GLP-1s is the problem
42:03 Chris Duffin on microdosing, GIP and GLP receptors
46:33 "Everybody's still selling GLP-1 as kilos per month"
49:30 Jon Baker: gyms cannot sit and wait for GLP-1 users to walk in
52:32 The responsibility on gym operators and personal trainers
55:40 The "get out of jail card" problem
58:40 Chris Duffin: the people who damaged their health getting there
1:01:41 What clients actually admit to
1:04:38 Tom Blackman: why GLP-1s are good news for independent gyms
1:09:01 "What do I take to get X result?" - why that's the wrong question
1:10:33 Paul Richardson: the one progress metric that cannot lie
1:12:08 Is becoming a personal trainer still worth it in 2026?
1:13:32 Stop competing on price - how personal trainers should charge
1:15:04 What gym owners actually look for when hiring
1:18:10 Sohail Rashid: build the product before the personal brand
1:21:00 In defence of group training
1:24:10 Are we failing to demonstrate the value of personal training?
1:27:03 The £20-an-hour race to the bottom
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#PTLaunchLab #PersonalTrainer #PersonalTrainerCourse #FitnessCareer
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