Why become a corporate trainer? Corporate training can offer flexible working, income opportunities, the freedom to specialize in topics you enjoy, and the chance to help employees develop. Freelance corporate trainers can also work with different clients, travel, and save preparation time by using ready-to-use training materials.
What is a Corporate Trainer?
A corporate trainer is a person who provides training for the business world, including managers and employees.
The trainer might provide training in areas such as soft skills, specific job-related training, health and safety, or a range of topics related to the business world.
Corporate trainers often work with HR and L&D teams to identify training needs, design and facilitate workshops, and help employees build workplace and management skills.
Corporate trainers often work in-house for a company, but they sometimes work as freelancers.
Corporate trainers use various methods, including workshops, seminars, e-learning, hands-on activities, and role-playing exercises, to ensure effective knowledge transfer.
Additionally, they often assess the impact of training programs by gathering feedback and measuring outcomes against key performance indicators.
Why Become a Corporate Trainer?
Corporate training can offer greater flexibility, good earning potential, opportunities to develop your expertise, and the chance to help others grow. Freelance trainers may also be able to travel, choose the topics they teach, and build their own client base.
1. Chance to Take Control of Your Own Time and Location
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, hiring a venue, and then marketing the course yourself, it is possible to make a substantial income holding just a few workshops.
For example, if a two-day workshop costs $195 per person and attracts 25 attendees, you can do the math.
Deduct the cost of the venue rental and the cost of the off-the-shelf training course 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. Develop Your Expertise Through What You Teach
Touching on the previous point about taking control of your own life, if you become a corporate trainer, it means you have the chance to really shape your own learning.
Do you have an interest in learning as well as teaching and delivering training?
If you have a deep interest in soft skills (transferable workplace skills) because you find topics such as Time Management, mental health in the workplace, and mindfulness interesting, then you can teach them.
Given that you can simply purchase downloadable training programs that come with the full trainer notes, full PowerPoint presentations, printable certificates, participant 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.
Becoming a good trainer takes experience, but everyone has 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. You Can Use Ready-to-Use Training Materials
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.
Ready-to-use training materials can cost a small fraction of the revenue from a successfully delivered workshop, while saving many hours of preparation time.
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
5. Opportunities to Travel and Meet New 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 Research 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 are taken more and more seriously.
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 skills training remains an important area of workplace learning, including for in-house training.
6. You Can Help People Develop
Being your own boss, while still 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 clients, getting used to working for yourself, and managing your own income are all part of the learning process.
BUT I can tell you that the rewards, many of which I have discussed above, are many, and if you decide to become a corporate trainer, it can be a great career path!
7. Marketing Yourself as a Trainer Is Easier Than Before
Networks such as LinkedIn make it quite quick these days to build an online presence as a trainer.
Likewise, buying a domain name and putting up a basic website is very easy these days (I can recommend people as needed if you need help here), and with the Internet, reaching potential clients has never been easier, although the market is competitive.
For more handy ideas, see our guide on how to market yourself as a freelance corporate trainer and get clients.
Conclusion: What’s Next?
If you are interested in becoming self-employed and decide to go down the corporate trainer career route, then these posts are worth reading next:
- 12 places to find jobs providing corporate training
- Best tools and resources for freelance trainers
For more guidance on building a career in workplace training, explore our Trainer Careers & Freelancing hub.
Ready to take the next step? See our step-by-step guide on how to become a corporate trainer.
Teaching Materials for Corporate Trainers
If you are good at teaching and have the confidence to work in front of people, you might want to become a corporate trainer, but are concerned about the time it takes to create teaching materials for providing workshops and sessions for companies in soft skills.
The good news is that you can buy and instantly download materials, and this saves a massive amount of time as a freelance or corporate trainer.
Just click the banner below to learn more!
