Frankie G Clark Coaching

Personal trainer turns admin pain into revenue gain with GoCardless

Frankie G Clark is a personal trainer based in Morpeth, Northumberland, in the North East of England. Her services include physical training plans, nutrition programmes, competition specific training, such as for boxing fights – even life coaching.

When Covid lockdowns intervened to close down gyms and health clubs, she decided to take a shot at a long-held dream of being her own boss and started an online fitness business. 

But, as her client base grew, so did payments admin around collecting and tracking bank transfers from clients soon became a source of anxiety.  “A business coach I had worked with at another gym saw how stressed I was and told me plainly that I needed to sort my payments systems out and recommended GoCardless,” said Frankie.

Frankie was able to use GoCardless in two ways: directly with her 1:1 private customers and through TeamUp - a cloud-based calendar app that can be used to help organise monthly sessions for groups - which integrates directly with GoCardless.

For the love of payments

Frankie said that once she was able to put in place an automated system for requesting, tracking, and reconciling monthly collections, stress around payments became a thing of the past.

“Most PTs start out selling blocks of say 10 sessions and collect payment upfront via bank transfer,” Frankie said. “But that can quickly make forecasting income and business planning difficult."

Now, Frankie said, she’s also a better businessperson as a result: “The more I used GoCardless the more I fell in love with it – I think it's actually given me the ability to earn more money. The more I've learned about how to use it, the more I've started to strategize about the business and how to generate revenue.”

Everybody’s happy, from accountants to customers

Instead of creating her own invoices, Frankie can now set up a training plan in the GoCardless platform and add 1:1 customers to that plan to automatically begin billing them monthly via direct bank payment.

“Invoicing is a lengthy process and not what I got into business for,” she said. “I was struggling to keep track of my finances and my income but now it's all there in GoCardless for me to download any time I need to. My accountant is very happy with me since I've been using it!”

And they’re not the only ones. Frankie also believes putting GoCardless in place has had a positive effect on both her and her clients. “The integration with TeamUp has been really useful too, it helps me manage the admin of group classes and has saved me so much time."

She said: “When I have to ring up a bank it’s frustrating and puts me in a bad mood for the rest of the day. I just want a good, easy experience and GoCardless offers that. It never negatively affects my mood, my days, or my business. Clients are happy too now that I can offer them a convenient payment experience that they don’t really even have to think about.”

Instant access to funds, with Instant Bank Pay

Frankie collects one-off payments from customers using Instant Bank Pay from GoCardless, a simple, convenient way to collect individual payments, powered by open banking.

“It allows me just to send out a link to the customer, they follow the instructions, and the payment arrives immediately. It makes life a lot easier, takes the stress off, and it's something that I think should be a standard across all payment channels.”

Building a future, one payment at a time

Confident that her finances are on a steadier footing, Frankie has been able to pursue other life goals including saving for her own home.

“I never really set out thinking I could build a business like this but it's actually starting to work and GoCardless has been a massive help,” she said. “I've not been able to save much in the past but now that the business is gaining traction, I’m saving for a house deposit using the Nude app. And I was actually very happy to discover recently that they take my payments via GoCardless, too. I’ve had such good experiences with both companies, so it just gives me a feeling of even more security. And, hopefully, with Nude and GoCardless I’m building a more financially secure future for myself too.”