A Step-by-Step Guide to Starting an In-Person Training Business

The following is adapted from Breakout Blueprint.

Picture yourself waking up at sunrise. You go to the commercial kitchen where you teach a cooking class and start prepping food. Around noon, your students arrive, and you get to share your passion for an activity you love. After the class is over, you collect the payment you decided on, and you get to enjoy the rest of your day free. 

If setting your own work hours, choosing your clients, and setting your price sounds ideal, then an in-person training business might be the perfect opportunity for you. From sales training to yoga instruction to a cooking class, you have an opportunity to share your passion and expertise in a variety of settings. 

With four simple steps to decide who your clients are, where you’ll train them, how you’ll deliver your services, and how much clients will pay, you can get your new business running in no time. 

Step #1: Figure Out Who Your Clients Are

To make the business-planning process easier to grasp, let’s continue to use the example of a personal chef. 

Imagine that as a personal chef, you have identified that the parents you work for are too busy to cook good meals for their families of four. Their kids are picky eaters and need to eat before they get “hangry.” You have around twenty meals that are fun to make and that you can prepare and cook in less than thirty minutes. 

Now, you just need to figure out how to get people to your training. Fortunately, there are a number of ways you can offer your program. 

At this point in the process, it’s important to identify your clients and decide whether they’ll receive training in groups or solo. Option one is to start a “cooking class” at a local culinary studio or country club and invite one or both of the parents to participate in a group setting. Option two is to do one-on-one home training with families. 

Step #2: Decide Where You’re Training Clients

Next, decide where your training will take place. To help make the choice, let’s look at both options from the previous step in more detail.

Option one requires you to find a host and/or venue. If you are going down this route, it is worthwhile to partner with some vendors and figure out how to exchange services or establish a revenue share with them. Option two simply requires you to show up with the groceries and likely some sharp knives.

In either case, look for quick wins. This is not to say you should always take the easy way out, but understand that when you are starting your business, it is important to find where you can provide your ideal customer with the biggest value in the shortest amount of time.

Step #3: Determine How You’ll Deliver Your Training

After you’ve decided on a target audience and venue, you need to determine what form your training will take. As a general rule, your delivery should match your personality.

If you hate talking in front of groups, don’t design a large, lecture-style class. Find more intimate settings where you can be yourself. Eventually, if you want to scale in-person training, you will need to get comfortable with larger audiences, but you do not need to start there.

Note that how you deliver your training is closely tied to your compensation. The more exclusive the training, the more likely someone is to value the attention and pay you. If I had someone in my home teaching my family how to prepare easy-to-cook meals, I would expect to pay more than restaurant prices; for a class with twenty people, I’d expect to pay less.

Step #4: Set Your Price

Lastly, you need to set the price for your training sessions. Start by following this tip from Tim Ferriss about using your target income to calculate your hourly price: if you want to quickly understand what to charge per hour, simply take the income goal and divide it by 2,000. 

Be cognizant of your income goals when you price things hourly, because for most in-person training opportunities, you will not be able to work a full forty-hour week (which is what the above calculation is based on). Plus, you may only want to work 30% of the time. In which case, you can simply adjust as follows: 

$50 per hour divided by the percentage you want to work (in this case 30%) = $50 divided by 0.3 = $166 per hour.

Each private cooking class for a family of four will likely take two hours of instruction, plus one hour of meal planning and grocery shopping. Therefore, $166 times three equals $500 for a cooking class. You can adjust that up or down to suit your market, but remember, you are only as valuable as what you are willing to accept as payment.

Build Your Business Around Your Passion

I’ve used cooking classes as the example in this article, but I encourage you to build your training business around whatever you’re passionate about. Decide what brings you fulfillment, whether that’s personal training, massage, photography, sales training, or another interest, and find ways to make money doing it. 

By building your business around a passion, your enthusiasm and expertise will shine through, and your clients will be happy to pay premium prices to learn from a trainer with your deep appreciation for the field. 

Once you launch your company, find clients, define your training, and set prices, there is no limit to your income potential and the flexibility of running a business on your own terms. 

For more advice on building your business, you can find Breakout Blueprint on Amazon.

Doug Foley is a media entrepreneur, podcast host, and digital pioneer who is known for pushing the boundaries of digital platforms to create unique solutions that drive growth. He’s an innovator with a drive and a passion for helping others thrive, succeed, and think outside the box. As the host of the hit podcast The Happiness of Pursuit, he teaches listeners how ordinary people followed their passions to create extraordinary lives. He launched two six-figure agencies in less than 18 months, and he’s now using that experience to help others find fulfillment through a lifestyle business.