It is much easier these days to take control of your own career path and to work for yourself and one opportunity that you might want to consider is to become a freelance trainer! Why? We’ll give great reasons below.
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1. Chance to Take Control of Your Own Time and Where You Work From
It can be a wonderful feeling to take control and manage your own time, workdays, where you work, and for whom.
As a self-employed corporate trainer, you will only spend a percentage of your time in the actual classroom teaching and providing training.
The rest of the time, you can literally be working from anywhere. You can have your own home office without any need to commute every day.
You can also decide to find clients abroad so that you can spend time working in a different country for a while. Today it is easier than ever to build an international profile, using the power of the Internet.
2. Opportunity for a Good Income
It does take time to build up a client base, but being a classroom trainer can be a profitable business, and one as stated above, that can afford you the time and finances to craft your own work/life balance.
There are two key ways to work as a trainer and these are:
a) Organizing Your Own Workshops
By organizing your own workshops and hiring a venue and then marketing the course yourself, it is possible to make a substantial income holding just a few workshops.
A two-day workshop that costs £195 per person, for example, with 25 attendees, you can do the maths. Deduct the cost of the venue rental and the cost of the off-the-shelf training materials package and you are all set.
b) Being a Freelance In-House Trainer
The other option, if you want to be a freelance corporate trainer, is to get contracts to work for companies as a trainer who comes in as a specialist to provide training.
Develop a few contracts and you can find a steady source of income without the stress of marketing your own courses directly to attendees.
3. Chance to Develop Your Own Expertise Based on What You Teach
Touching on the previous point regards taking control of your own life, being a corporate trainer affords you the opportunity to really shape your own learning.
Have an interest in learning as well as teaching and offering training?
If you have a deep interest in soft skills (transferrable workplace skills) because you find topics such as Time Management, or mental health in the workplace and mindfulness interesting, then you can teach it.
Given that you can simply purchase downloadable training programs that come with the full teacher notes, full PowerPoint presentations, printable certificates, students handbook, and so on, it is possible to begin to teach topics that you yourself learn before teaching them.
Being a corporate trainer means that you really DO get to choose what topics you teach and train others in, to whom, and where.
To be a good trainer it is true that you will have years of experience as a corporate or classroom trainer BUT you have to start somewhere.
Having taught for several years myself in various countries as a trainer, the trick is often to stay one step ahead of your students. It’s all about being well-prepared and organized and showing confidence as a trainer.
You get to spend your time immersing yourself in subject areas that you yourself find interesting and that you are keen to learn about.
4. It Is Easier to Become a Corporate Trainer than in the Past
In the past, it would have been much harder to portray your skills and presence as a corporate trainer.
These days though the presence of the Internet means that you can really quite easily set up a website and market yourself online, as a corporate trainer.
An excellent online course that you can study as a trainer that we recommend is from Promarketingonline.com – click the banner below to learn how to set up a blog cheaply and easily.
They also have excellent courses for you to learn How to Market your site and How to Understand SEO (search engine optimization basics)
5. You Can Download the Training Materials Packages
You do NOT need to spend weeks and weeks developing your own high-quality training programs because you can just download them instantly.
Yes. They do cost money to buy but think about it.
Is it worth spending £95 – £140 to instantly download everything you need if you can charge say £995 a day for providing in-house training or make several thousand a day if you offer your own training workshops in hired venues?
I have a feeling you have quickly come to the conclusion that absolutely, yes, it is absolutely worth it.
You need to buy quality though! You will need a training package that includes:
- a Powerpoint set of slides that are well-designed and look good on a large monitor or display
- a full set of trainer notes so that you have a full and clear idea of how to run and time the sessions
- all the sheets you need such as sign-in sheets, feedback forms, etc
- printable certificates to provide something tangible for the attendees
- easily purchase the training (an easy business to start/made easy)
6. The Chance to Travel and Meet Interesting People
As a freelance self-employed corporate trainer, as highlighted above, you have the opportunity to shape your lifestyle in terms of what you yourself also learn, what income you generate, and the hours you work.
In addition to these great benefits though, if you have the desire to travel, you can also guide where you are invited to give training. Let me explain!
We get inquiries at Symonds Training from countries including China, the UAE, the USA, the UK, Australia, and Canada. We get these inquiries because we sell training that is of interest to companies in those locations.
So the point here is that if you, for example, run classes on ‘Disability Access in the Workplace‘, this is a specialized topic but one that is becoming of interest globally as disability rights to access is taken more and more seriously (you can download the DDA training with trainer notes).
Such a workshop is very topical and there are relatively few trainers who teach this area. Likewise, teaching ‘Chinese Business Etiquette’ or ‘Korean Business Etiquette’ training is not commonplace so if you do offer such workshops, there is a global appeal.
It’s a balance, of course, between not being so niche that what you offer attracts too little interest, versus running the training programs that afford you the opportunities that might excite you personally.
Soft Skill training is always in demand and in-house training is a business that will continue to grow.
7. You Can Help People Develop
Being your own boss, yet being able to help others, is incredibly rewarding!
As a self-employed corporate trainer, you can be your own boss, yet this is not a solitary or self-centered career at all. You can be an independent professional and still interact with a wide range of people.
Actually, one of the best aspects of being a trainer is that you can help other people develop new skills and improve their own lives.
Whether you teach soft skills and self-development topics, or more practical subjects such as marketing, you will give people the tools to improve their own lives.
There are, of course, some aspects that, at first, involve a steep learning curve as a freelance corporate trainer.
Finding the clients to provide training for, getting used to working for yourself, and managing your own income, yes, it is a learning process.
BUT I can tell you that the rewards, many of which I have discussed above, are many, and being a freelance trainer can be a great career path!
Conclusion – What Next?
If you are interested in becoming self-employed as a freelance trainer or corporate trainer then these posts are worth reading next:
- How to become a freelance and corporate trainer
- 12 places to find jobs providing corporate training
- Best tools and resources for freelance trainers
You might also want to download the free training day checklist below!
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