Upon observation, it’s become evident that when individuals ask “How do I become a trainer?”, what they are truly asking is “How do I get people to pay me for speaking?”
There is good news and bad news to this.
The good news is, there is a way.
The bad news is, there is a lot of work behind it.
So, let’s address a few things first.
1️. Not everyone who speaks has an audience.
2️. Not everyone who has an audience gets paid.
3️. Not everyone who gets paid to speak is a trainer.
From a role standpoint, a trainer and a speaker are different. A trainer is responsible to enhance the competency while a speaker aims to create awareness. This means the goal of each one is different and the required depth of the subject matter is different. Most commonly this is due to the duration of time that a trainer or a speaker has – a training course usually takes a couple of days while a keynote speech is usually about an hour. That alone limits what could be achieved.
Next, regardless of being a speaker or a trainer, you need to have substance. This can either come from formal education and/or experience. How much, doesn’t really matter compared to how well you can transfer it to another person. This is where delivery skills are crucial.
To deliver a 2-days training course would definitely require a different strategy from giving a 2-hour talk. The goal is different, therefore the approach should be different.
On top of that, who the audience is will also influence the approach – adult learning demands for a more structured and interactive session and expectations of the audience varies from one crowd to another.
Last but not least, to make money out of something, one requires to create a business around it. A person can be assigned to train other employees by their employer and that already makes them a “trainer” – (pretty sure that is not what the people meant when they ask the question of, “How do I become a trainer?”.)
Professionals are often defined as those who do something full-time as their main source of income. For this, you will need to decide on a business model, derive a plan and execute it. There may be some basic requirements by different authority bodies that you may need to fulfill to run a legitimate training business.
So, how does one become a trainer?
With knowledge, skills and credentials to impart lessons in a subject matter that is required by an audience who is willing to pay to acquire it.
Hope that makes sense.