CEO Corner: Enhance’s Tarek Mounir on Changing the Personal Training Game

Enhance, a software platform that helps gyms earn more revenue from their PT businesses, has already partnered with the likes of Crunch Fitness, UFC Gym and GymNation. It also just raised $18.2 million to drive more U.S. growth

Tarek Mounir believes gyms aren’t making enough money from personal training.

Mounir isn’t alone in this contention, but he’s leading the way in doing something about it, founding Enhance, a software platform designed to help gyms earn more revenue from their PT businesses, in 2019. 

Based in Dubai, the company already runs the entire personal training operation for Gymnation, the Middle East’s largest low-price gym chain, and has struck partnerships with top U.S. chains including Crunch Fitness, UFC Gym, In-Shape Fitness and PureGym.

Now, it’s looking to break into the U.S. market in an even bigger way. This week, Enhance raised $18.2 million in equity and debt financing, earmarking the funding to expand its presence in the United States. 

Mounir, a former media and music streaming executive, sat down with Athletech News to discuss how he got started with Enhance, what separates the company from its competitors and why he believes more personal trainers should be full-time employees for the gyms in which they work.  

The following conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.

Athletech News: Can you tell us about your background before starting Enhance, and why you decided to found the company?

Tarek Mounir: I was in corporate for a long period of time. I started at Warner Bros. offices in the MENAT region, then I worked as CEO (MENAT region) for a music streaming business called Deezer for a couple of years. I had a personal injury — I hurt my knee badly while working out, and I couldn’t find a trainer — so I realized there was something broken about finding personal trainers in the region I’m in. I created the initial concept, which was to easily find qualified trainers through an app. That later migrated to become an enterprise software for PTs. 

ATN: How did that initial concept turn into Enhance — a software that helps gyms increase personal training revenue? 

TM: When I launched the initial concept, it was like an Uber for PTs. But as we scaled the operation, we realized that we weren’t solving the right problem. We thought the problem was between the personal trainer and the client. We then realized that the actual problem was between the personal trainer and the enterprise, so we shifted our solution to make sure that both the enterprise and personal trainer are satisfied with the outcome: trainers earn enough money because the solution is helping them drive revenue, and the enterprise is incentivized to keep motivating the trainer and give them more business.

ATN: What separates Enhance from other personal training software platforms on the market today? 

TM: There’s a lot of software on the market that helps trainers manage their book of business, especially freelance trainers. Our key differentiator is that our software is a revenue solution. First and foremost, it helps gyms with the conversion funnel. When you become a member of any gym, there’s a process to go from just a member into a PT client — a big portion of our solution helps with that conversion funnel. 

The second pillar is that we help trainers service the revenue. The third is enterprise dashboards, which link the enterprise to what the trainer is doing, and gives them visibility and accountability on performance and quality standards. This helps the enterprise monitor the financial performance of the trainer, as well as the quality standards of the session and the progress of clients.

ATN: What are the biggest mistakes you see among gyms that aren’t maximizing their personal training revenue? 

TM: I wouldn’t call them mistakes; I’d just say it depends on how much experience you have in running the business. The first is focusing a lot on hybrid types of trainers who aren’t necessarily committed to full-time employment — if they’re looking for other work, they’re not committed 100% to providing service of the utmost quality. 

The second is not having management supervising the trainers — think about a restaurant that’s operating with staff and there’s no restaurant manager. You need somebody in the field, literally helping the trainers with their leads and conversion, and making sure they deliver the best session. 

The third is utilizing proper software to do that, because that can be very human-capital intensive. Without software, it’s pretty hard to scale.

ATN: How has the business of personal training changed since the pandemic? 

TM: A lot has changed since the pandemic. A big portion of the manual labor that used to be done by the trainer, such as scheduling the client, messaging them and creating programs, has become automated with AI. Since the job of the trainer has become easier, in a way, there’s been an increase in the number of personal trainers. The barrier to entry has become slightly lower. 

There’s also been a huge awareness around the importance of personal training and the importance of being healthy in general after the pandemic. So a lot of people have just naturally (gravitated) toward that.

ATN: The Middle East’s fitness market has been surging lately. What’s driving that growth, and are there any lessons for U.S. operators? 

TM: There’s been a significant increase in HVLP gyms like GymNation. The gym-going rate has become much higher, which was driven by multiple initiatives like Vision 2030 for Saudi Arabia, plans in the UAE in terms of the government raising a lot of awareness towards being healthy — there’s a big percentage of the population in the region that used to suffer from obesity. 

On personal training, I think the biggest factor over here is the labor market and how it’s structured. Personal training is only permitted if it’s full-time employment. That’s a big driver of having people entirely committed to the business. That’s why I will always advocate that trainers should be full-time employees. But you have to make sure trainers are earning enough to do full-time employment. If you can create that cycle, I think it’s the biggest driver in terms of helping trainers earn more, helping clients get better results and helping the enterprise achieve better outcomes. 

ATN: What advice would you give personal trainers looking to grow their careers in today’s market?  

TM: Approach the business as a career rather than a side hustle. The top 20 to 25% of trainers can make over $100,000 per year. 

Also, as a personal trainer, your career ladder is not just the personal training piece. It can be becoming a team leader and running an operation of 15 trainers, or becoming a district manager. Some of the biggest names in the industry  — Mark Mastrov, Jim Rowley, etc. — have started as personal trainers and worked all the way up to become very successful businesspeople.

ATN: Enhance just raised $18.2 million in equity and debt funding to scale in the U.S. What does this mean for a company moving forward?

TM: This funding lets us grow both sides of our business at the same time. On the personal training side, we’re already deploying full-time trainers into U.S. clubs and will keep scaling that team. In parallel, we’re continuing to invest in the platform — the software that helps gyms run and grow their PT businesses. The two feed each other: the trainers on the ground make the platform better, and the platform makes every trainer more productive. The U.S. gym market is where we see the biggest opportunity for both.

ATN: Beyond that, what are your long-term goals for Enhance? 

TM: I want to make sure we’re super-serving the brands. So whilst we have a very good strategy in terms of business expansion, we also want to ensure every brand we’re attaching ourselves to succeeds, both in getting better financial outcomes from personal training and getting better member retention because of the results the personal training is driving. 

If I can make a big statement, we intend to become the global authority on personal training. That’s my dream, and that’s where I see us heading. But that’s a long-term strategy.