In this article, I’ll be listing out everything you need to know about how you can keep your full-time job and still have time to provide training sessions in your spare time.
It’s not always easy, but it can definitely be done, and today I’m going to show you how. This is your own personal step-by-step guide to personal training as a side hustle.
Sound good?
Let’s go…
A lot of people love to exercise, it’s a passion that gets them into a gym five or six times a week and they love the idea of teaching others about the benefits of exercise whilst making additional income from it.
However, some of these people also love their day jobs and would not want to leave their jobs to commit to a full career of personal training.
So, I’m going to be showing you just how you can have the best of both worlds and use your time effectively to keep your 9-5 and train people outside of these hours by telling you how to do personal training on the side.
It’s not as difficult as it may sound, and there are a few options you have, so I will go through each so that you can choose the best option for yourself in terms of the amount of free time you have and also what you think would best fit your lifestyle.
I’ve split this article into two sections, firstly I would like you to read through the important factors that you need to take into consideration. You will need to decide if you will have the time, finances, and be willing to make sacrifices to your lifestyle in order to start your business.
But, I know you’re busy, so if, you’d prefer to skip straight to the “How to” section, please click the link below.
Click this link to be taken to the “how-to” section.
Things to consider when considering PT as a side hustle
- Commitment
- Time
- Fees
- Lifestyle
- Income goals
Commitment
Becoming a personal trainer is not a quick and easy thing to achieve.
You will need to study, take exams (some practical), and spend a lot of your time marketing your business.
Before you decide on whether or not you will be able to dedicate yourself enough to become a part-time personal trainer, you need to ask yourself whether or not you are truly committed to putting the additional hours in after work for the next few months in order to qualify and set your business up properly.
Don’t think for a second that because you are only looking to do this role part-time that it will be easy. Clients won’t just be knocking on your door asking for you to train them, you will need to put in considerable effort, even if you only want to pick up a few sessions each week.
Do you have the time to study and take on additional work?
Working a 9-5 job from Monday to Friday is no easy task. Do you feel that you would be fully comfortable knowing that after a hard day’s work, you will need to come home and study for a further few hours in order to gain your qualifications?
Then, after you have got them, give up another hour or two of relaxation time each weekday and a few more over the weekend?
Becoming a part-time personal trainer will take up a lot of your time, even if you only plan on taking three to four sessions per week. Remember that there is travel, administration, and marketing to take into account.
Fees
There are always fees to take into consideration, and becoming a PT is certainly no exception to the rule.
Training courses can cost hundreds, if not thousands of pounds to complete, you will also need to take into account insurance and marketing costs, which can again cost another several hundred to a thousand pounds to get yourself up and running.
Take a good look at your current financial situation to decide whether you can afford to set up a new business.
If you are confident that you can spare this money, then fantastic, but it is always important to understand that starting a business, no matter how small, will come at a price.
Lifestyle
You may be used to finishing work, coming home and having your dinner then watching the television and having a long hot bath before bed.
These habits may have to change significantly, you are more likely to be having several evenings of the week where you come home at 8:30 pm, eat your dinner quickly, have a quick shower and maybe have some time for relaxation.
The weekends are no different.
And going out drinking on a Friday night is going to be very difficult to do if you have a session booked at 8 am on Saturday morning.
You need to consider whether or not the impact that working another job on top of your usual 9-5 is something you are confident you will be willing to sacrifice.
Income goals
Are you being realistic about your income goals for your new business?
The number of sessions you can conduct whilst working a full-time job will be limited, so you need to make sure you understand what your expectations should be in terms of the income you can generate from your side hustle.
This is not to say that you can’t earn good money from taking on sessions outside of work, I just want you to decide on your price, have a good think about how much time you can dedicate to your business, and be realistic about the amount of money you think you can bring in each month.
So how are you going to build your personal training side hustle?
Ok, if you’ve read this far, I can see that you are still determined to start your personal training side hustle.
Congratulations, you’ve passed the test! …or you clicked the link to skip most of the article?
Step 1. Get qualified
The first thing you need to do in order to be a part-time trainer is to gain your qualifications (if you haven’t already got them).
There are tons of online courses that you can take where you are sent the training materials and are asked to attend occasional weekend workshops and examinations.
These courses are designed to be completed in your own time and are generally pretty affordable. You do not need to buy the most expensive course on the market. If your budget doesn’t stretch too far, you don’t need to spend £5000 on a course to get to level three qualified, when a course that costs £2000 will do just the same.
Step 3. Decide where and how you are going to train your clients
It is not easy to find gyms that will allow you to train only a few clients a week, it is much more likely that you will be looking to become a freelance trainer and using some of the methods that I mention in my article
Where Can Personal Trainers Train Their Clients?.
I would recommend you have a quick look at this article and choose the most practical option for yourself. Consider your surroundings, the amount of time you have available to travel to each session, and the additional costs involved with each location.
Step 3. Decide how you are going to get your clients
Freelance trainers do not have the luxury of any members or walk-in customers, you will have to go out and find them for yourself.
How are you going to do this?
You have a lot of options available to gain your clients, but just remember to only take on as many clients as you can handle whilst still this a part-time job.
I have written an article on the best ways you can market yourself as a trainer, so have a read of it and decide which you think will suit your personality and your current capabilities. You will want to start about halfway down the article where the tips for freelances trainers begin.
In some circumstances, you may already have friends and family that want you to train them, this is great, but remember that you may want to pick up a few more sessions along the way, so do not neglect your marketing.
Step 4. Decide on your training rates
If you are training your friends and family, they may expect you to go a little easy on them and offer “mates rates” (heavily discounted sessions).
The rest of your session prices should be based on the local competition.
Perform a Google search for personal trainers in your local area by searching for “personal trainers near me”, then take a note of all the hourly session rate prices to get an average.
I would suggest you start yourself off by charing the average rate your find for your area, and slowly increasing your prices as your confidence grows and you start to get some great testimonials to your name.
Step 5. Start building your empire
Once you are qualified, you have the logistics of training clients organized and you have got your marketing and prices sorted, you can start to begin building your client base.
Start creating your website, talking to local businesses, friends, family, and work colleagues then get them booked into a consultation session.
If you are unsure of what you should do in a consultation session, I recommend you read another of my articles
The Personal Training Assessment That Gets You Clients
It will teach you everything you need to know to get yourself a fantastic conversion rate on your complimentary sessions and quickly build up your part-time personal training business.
So can personal training be a side job?
After everything we have gone through in this article, I hope you can see that it’s perfectly possible to have personal training as a side job in addition to working your regular 9-5 role.
It’s not easy, you’ll still have to be working on promotion, writing client programs, and answering emails, messages, and phone calls from clients, but in terms of the additional cash it can bring in each month, it’s totally worth being a personal trainer part-time.
You may need to establish with your clients that you are working a regular 9-5 role whilst training people in the evenings, then you can politely ask them to hold back on any questions regarding their training until 6pm each evening so that you can work uninterrupted.
The really cool thing about working as a part-time personal trainer is that you are in complete control of your schedule. If you know that you work until 6pm each evening and can realistically only train one or two people each night, then great, go for that. If you want to do more, then great, just don’t burn yourself out.
The main point is that this is just an addition to your main role, so there is so much less pressure to try to train as many clients as possible each day. That’s important because it really lets you enjoy training people and helping them improve their health without constantly having to worry about trying to keep your business afloat if you lose a few clients.
I’ve worked in competitive gyms in the middle of the City of London, and I can tell you, working as a personal trainer as a side job would probably be my favorite way of training anyone at this point in my life. So much less stress!
How much do part-time trainers make?
Ok, so everything above is all well and good, but you’re not just training people because you’re a wonderful person (and I’m sure you are), but you’d probably like to make some money whilst you do it too right?
So let’s take a realistic look at what a part-time personal trainer is going to be making.
I’m going to be super conservative about this so that hopefully your numbers will be even higher, but I want to set the bar (and expectations low).
Taking a trainer who lives out in the suburbs, and is training people with limited equipment in parks with 1 session per evening at £20 an hour 5 evenings a week, and two Sunday sessions priced at £25, we would be looking at a weekly income of £150.
This gives us a monthly income of £600 or £7,200 per year!
Now, remember, I’ve used some seriously low numbers here, so starting off with a minimum of £7,200 per year in additional cash is looking pretty good. Just increasing the session prices to £35-40 per session would make a huge difference to your yearly income, but of course, you will need to scout your area to see if you can realistically charge these prices.
Conclusion
Being a personal trainer as a side-hustle is completely viable as long as you have taken everything in this article into account.
It doesn’t have to cost a fortune and you can absolutely start, and run a training business whilst working a full-time job.
It’s a great way of making an additional income that can help you to considerably increase your yearly income.
If you love training and your day job, a side job as a personal trainer could be just the right avenue for you.
Go get ’em!
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