After working for years as a corporate executive, you may have an urge within you to realise your entrepreneurial dreams and change the world.
You may have accumulated sufficient knowledge and experience, and cannot wait to share it with the younger generation. You wish to spend more time with your loved ones and to pursue your interests.
One option you may want to consider is a second career as a trainer. The Government is proactively promoting Singapore as a regional training hub for short courses. Visitors from surrounding countries can join short courses and enjoy a short vacation here, at the same time.
Starting up
Training is a high value-added education industry. It is a relatively easy service business to set up. The training consultancy can be started as a one-man-operation. Another plus: The Housing and Development Board allows you to start a training business from home.
Starting costs are also minimal. As a training consultant, you get to work flexible hours. Training is a very fulfilling job as you impact and change peoples’ lives with your technologies. When the job is well done, it is gratifying to see participants come forward to express their appreciation.
The training market is segmented into various categories —preschool children, primary school students, secondary school students, junior college students, undergraduates, home makers, foreign workers, clerical and technical workers, executives, senior management executives, singles, parents, grandparents and retirees.
The market is as big as you can explore. Trainers should survey the market, find a niche appropriate for their skills and specialise in it. Apart from Singapore, surrounding countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, India and China present burgeoning opportunities.
Training areas
Which area do you want to teach? You can choose a specialty area based on your educational background. If you studied accountancy, for example, you can train non-finance executives in finance.
You can also offer courses based on your own training. If you are trained as a sales executive, you can teach others selling skills. If you have worked as a human resource manager, you can facilitate topics such as interviewing skills, appraisals, performance feedback and so on.
Alternatively, you can offer training inspired by your hobbies or areas of passion. For instance, if you have a passion in nutrition, you can teach others about dietary habits. We develop new interests all the time.
Of late, many people have wandered into alternative medicine, holistic living and spiritual areas such as aromatherapy, colour therapy, nutrition, yoga, Rolfing and graphology.
Makings of a trainer
Both human resource managers and participants like to engage mature trainers with a breadth of working experience and depth of technology.
You must have a burning passion and an urge within you to articulate it to the rest of the world. You must have fire in your belly to engage others through instruction.
A respected trainer possesses high EQ, likes interacting with people and has a lot of patience. An engaging trainer, in many ways, is an entertainer. Come what may, the show must go on. Trainers are drawn from a big reservoir of people with different backgrounds and experiences. They include mid-life executives who want a change of careers and those who have completed overseas job assignments.
Others include the self-employed (tutors, real-estate and insurance agents) as well as retirees from the civil service, uniformed services and the private sector. Human resource executives, teachers and pastoral care workers are ideal candidates.
On the other hand, there are “Plan B” executives who are still working in corporations but learn to be trainers. Such training skills will prove handy in the event their companies are restructured.
How to be a trainer?
The first step is to enrol in a “train-the-trainer” workshop or get a diploma in training. It will equip you with the necessary training skills to facilitate your maiden workshop. Delivering speeches and conducting mini-workshops let you experiment with your instructional design. The rest is up to you.
The more workshops you facilitate, the more you sharpen your skills. As you acquire more experience, you can widen your repertoire of subjects.
Where do you go from here?
Once you are a trainer, you can also dabble in related activities such as being a master-of-ceremony, game master, writer or counsellor. The more entrepreneurial ones can organise seminars, establish a commercial school, own training franchises or go on training engagements overseas. It can be a satisfying profession that you need not retire from.
You may have accumulated sufficient knowledge and experience, and cannot wait to share it with the younger generation. You wish to spend more time with your loved ones and to pursue your interests.
One option you may want to consider is a second career as a trainer. The Government is proactively promoting Singapore as a regional training hub for short courses. Visitors from surrounding countries can join short courses and enjoy a short vacation here, at the same time.
Starting up
Training is a high value-added education industry. It is a relatively easy service business to set up. The training consultancy can be started as a one-man-operation. Another plus: The Housing and Development Board allows you to start a training business from home.
Starting costs are also minimal. As a training consultant, you get to work flexible hours. Training is a very fulfilling job as you impact and change peoples’ lives with your technologies. When the job is well done, it is gratifying to see participants come forward to express their appreciation.
The training market is segmented into various categories —preschool children, primary school students, secondary school students, junior college students, undergraduates, home makers, foreign workers, clerical and technical workers, executives, senior management executives, singles, parents, grandparents and retirees.
The market is as big as you can explore. Trainers should survey the market, find a niche appropriate for their skills and specialise in it. Apart from Singapore, surrounding countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, India and China present burgeoning opportunities.
Training areas
Which area do you want to teach? You can choose a specialty area based on your educational background. If you studied accountancy, for example, you can train non-finance executives in finance.
You can also offer courses based on your own training. If you are trained as a sales executive, you can teach others selling skills. If you have worked as a human resource manager, you can facilitate topics such as interviewing skills, appraisals, performance feedback and so on.
Alternatively, you can offer training inspired by your hobbies or areas of passion. For instance, if you have a passion in nutrition, you can teach others about dietary habits. We develop new interests all the time.
Of late, many people have wandered into alternative medicine, holistic living and spiritual areas such as aromatherapy, colour therapy, nutrition, yoga, Rolfing and graphology.
Makings of a trainer
Both human resource managers and participants like to engage mature trainers with a breadth of working experience and depth of technology.
You must have a burning passion and an urge within you to articulate it to the rest of the world. You must have fire in your belly to engage others through instruction.
A respected trainer possesses high EQ, likes interacting with people and has a lot of patience. An engaging trainer, in many ways, is an entertainer. Come what may, the show must go on. Trainers are drawn from a big reservoir of people with different backgrounds and experiences. They include mid-life executives who want a change of careers and those who have completed overseas job assignments.
Others include the self-employed (tutors, real-estate and insurance agents) as well as retirees from the civil service, uniformed services and the private sector. Human resource executives, teachers and pastoral care workers are ideal candidates.
On the other hand, there are “Plan B” executives who are still working in corporations but learn to be trainers. Such training skills will prove handy in the event their companies are restructured.
How to be a trainer?
The first step is to enrol in a “train-the-trainer” workshop or get a diploma in training. It will equip you with the necessary training skills to facilitate your maiden workshop. Delivering speeches and conducting mini-workshops let you experiment with your instructional design. The rest is up to you.
The more workshops you facilitate, the more you sharpen your skills. As you acquire more experience, you can widen your repertoire of subjects.
Where do you go from here?
Once you are a trainer, you can also dabble in related activities such as being a master-of-ceremony, game master, writer or counsellor. The more entrepreneurial ones can organise seminars, establish a commercial school, own training franchises or go on training engagements overseas. It can be a satisfying profession that you need not retire from.
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