Most personal trainers start their careers in the employ of someone else. However, many want to be their own bosses, start their own businesses and hire their own staff. As mentioned in the post Time is Money – or is it?, hiring other trainers is a great way to earn a passive income.

Just like anything else in business, hiring staff and building a team of trainers needs to be done according to an effective system if you want your business to grow.

  1. Most importantly, you need to have a well-defined list of criteria in mind when you are looking for potential staff. For example, you may want to only hire trainers who have reached a certain level of certification and who have a certain minimum number of years’ experience. Remember to take personality into account – you can always help someone develop their skills, but you can’t shape their personality or their attitude.
  2. Write up a very detailed job description and post it on your website.
  3. Advertise the job where it is likely to be seen by a lot of personal trainers. The job advertisement should direct interested parties to your website, where they can read the detailed job description and fill in a relevant application form that covers all criteria you are looking for.
  4. Select the best candidates and conduct brief interviews with each of them. Ask yourself whether they would be able to motivate you to reach your goals. Trust your instinct on this one.
  5. Once you’ve narrowed down the candidates even more, you need to put them to the test. A great way to do this is to arrange for each candidate to give a free training session to one of your regular clients who you can trust to give you honest, constructive feedback. Make sure that you are somewhere in the background during all these sessions.
  6. After this process, you should have a pretty good idea who it is you want to hire to build a fantastic team of trainers. When you make someone an offer, be sure to outline your expectations, agreements, rates of pay, and all other relevant information so that s/he can make an informed decision.
  7. When someone is ready to accept your offer and sign on the dotted line, make sure that you have all the right paperwork in place, such as a legal employment contract.

How do you benefit? It’s simple – your business collects a commission for every training session a client has with any of your trainers.

It’s a good idea to have a system whereby trainers can be promoted and earn more per hour. This motivates them to contribute to the business by bringing in more clients. Hiring trainers to work for you creates a reciprocal relationship whereby you can help them develop their careers and they can help you by enriching your business. If you want your trainers to be great employees, then you have to make sure that you’re a great boss.