if you need money DONT DO IT.....

Too many variables on a number of those questions such as hours per week, income etc but I will answer a couple for you:

Advised as a career to support wife & 2 kids? Not a chance, unless you have years of money to fall back on.

Supplemental work? In almost all cases yes ... especially if you are supporting more than yourself + mortgage + .....

When people decide to advise a few people on the side it seems fun and rewarding. When you turn it into a business it will change to an extent and it becomes a job, it can be a rewarding job, but in itself still a job. When people ask me this same advice my response is always simple "you best love coaching, teaching and interacting with people on a daily basis (not just 5 days per week) because at some point it begins to draw a lot of your daily energy."

Be happy to answer questions if you'd like to DM

Cheers,

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Dave Latourette
http://www.TTENation.com

There are many full time coaches on this forum (and outside), who make quite a lot of money, more than enough to support their family & pack it away from retirement. If you're talking straight 1 on 1 coaching that is one thing, but what you need to do is have multiple sources of income within the sport rather than just straight up coaching one on one. I know several locally who do very, very well with triathlon coaching lifestyle. I know there is a lot of Ben Greenfield bashing going on in another thread but he is an example of how he uses multiple streams of revenue & is doing quite well, despite the bashing or snake oils he's selling at times. The point is he's making a lot of $$. It can be done.

 

Very much like when I was a professional athlete, I see it as a 24/7 job. There is no break in high performance world. I could not count hours and do not wish too.... the number would be absurd.

If you are great at it, money will be great. But you can make great money working a lot less hours in a different domains. I could not think of doing anything else...I m excited to get out of bed everyday and get to work with the squad/athletes....I live for those challenge, the hard work/process/ getting the work done daily.

The most important aspect; pick your athletes wisely. Quality over quantity...

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Jonathan Caron / Professional Coach / ironman champions / age group world champions
Jonnyo Coaching
Instargram

that's akin to using madoff as an example of how to make $ in a down market....yeah, you can make $ by being intentionally deceptive to your clients.

I agree with Dave.

Read his post over carefully.

Another factor - in some markets, it has started to become VERY competitive in the coaching market/business. There is an over-supply of coaches and an under-supply of athletes looking for coaches.

Like any business, you'll need to know what differentiates you from other coaches. Also, many get caught up in the details and the technicalities of the actual physiology and the workouts. You need to know how it all works, but again, like many other businesses and services, people are looking for a close personal contact and a relationship.

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

I'll take a stab at this since I left pharma and a rather comfy mid 6 figure income to coach FT.

Hours - All the time. If you think it's an 8-5 job you're wrong. You're on call 24/7 basically if you are going to be effective in your job. To me it's not work. Since I've quit pharma I've not worked 1 single day. I've coached every single day but 6 in the 100 weeks since I quit my pharma job. 700 days - 6 with no coaching what so ever. You do the math on how many days off there has been.

Athletes - you can coach more as you get better at it. Just like a fresh from residency doc can't effectively see treat as many patients per day as a physician practicing for 15 years can, the longer you've been coaching, the more experience you have, the faster you can process information, make decisions, plan things out, solve problems etc.

Income - Millions! Just kidding. I know some of the Mommy bloggers are bringing in $30-40k from affiliated marketing off their blog. I'm not making my pharma income.

I've been coaching for 17 years now. I was coaching while working at the hospital, while getting into and through my pharma career and I'm still coaching.

What is your lifestyle like? I don't spend $150 every weekend on dinner/drinks like I did when I was in pharma. I do have a lower stress, higher quality of life. There is a lot to be said for that.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

My $.02

1. Hours are not hours but lifestyle, it is a 24/7 and not just on the phone/texting/email depending on your service. If you do local, it is training sessions you supervise, etc. It is weekends.
2. As mentioned, you can have more as you get good at it, but this depends on who you are coaching, some coaches have lots, but they are usually sliding premade workouts from TP into days. If you are devoting time and are really coaching interactively, 10-15 as an average, otherwise you will be supporting your wife and kids and yourself in separate households.
3. This depends on your market and skills...Anyone who tells you they are making "good money" is lying or designing training programs, they are not coaching. Coaches in any sport (outside of major league sports) do not make "good money". If full time coaches were polled and answered this, on coaching alone they would be bringing in 2-4000/month before taxes (which is roughly 25-30%) with a few outliers in the higher side. So 25k-45k...so per hour less than Minimum wage.
4. Most usually do, or have spouses that make money
5. To support a family as the main source...if you live frugally, sure. There are "plenty" of coaches who make good money and retirement savings is just not true, there are some and most are very entrepreneurial. Example, it took Jesse Kropelnicki of QT2systems, Seven years to go full-time in his coaching business and they are huge and charge a lot of money and have pros and many different products.
6. Yes, like mentioned before, when it is part time, you have flexibility in enjoying, limiting athletes,etc. When you have to pay bills it requires a certain level of stress.
7. As a coach for AGers your have a better chance of making money, there is very little money in coaching pro's especially neo-pros, you mainly do that for free or % of purse and 15% of 0=0 and pros generally want seasoned coaches who coach pros to coach them, so it is tougher to break in.

My best suggestion: coach AGer's, become a part-time coach to support your passion and as it grows take stock, you will know when you are able to stop your "real job" and support yourself as a coach (and if you even want to), but let it build to that. Get your family/wife on board because the build up of working a real job, training yourself and doing a second job (coaching) can be tough also.

All that being said, there are few things more rewarding that helping someone set goals and working with them and watching them achieve something that pushes them and is meaningful to them...very few things.


The opinions above are solely that of this author and will probably be shown to be ridiculous by slowtwitch experts, but are my observations from my experience. Which is 17 years of coaching, first full-time, then in conjunction with a "real job", now moving back to "full-time" (because my wife makes $100k now and we don't need my money or my grumpiness of working at my current job)

Here's my perspective on what life could be like for a "typical coach that coaches age group athletes"....

• Hours per week - you could work all of them and by that I mean you have carve out the time that you're not going to take calls, that you're not going to sit at the key board, that you're not going be on the pool deck, perform a test, do a fit, do a run gait analysis, a consultation, any and all the things you might do. Remember that you're working people who are working so you'll need to fit your hours around what are typically normal working hours. That means early morning calls, evening calls and lots of time on weekends.
• Max number of athletes - If this is just about writing programs then here's my answer: you can take on about 25-30 max and STILL provide a quality service. You could also take on 90 if you're willing to do a half-assed job. A coach is at her/his best when you crack open an email or answer a call and you know right away "oh, this Larry, he's 3 weeks out from Hanu and 13 weeks from Challenge Ranco Cordova. His left ITB is a concern, he pulls early during breath and looses power in that part of his stroke, he's a masher and the spin is coming along, his run is phenomenal and he's worried that it won't be 'cuase we're only running 30 miles per week. His family is supportive but his job is demanding due to monthly travel and long hours. He's drinking too many of his calories each day and getting down 7 lbs is going to be a critical aspect of reaching his goal." It's hard be there, at that level connection with each athlete when it's beyond 30.
• Annual income for full time coach - (again, program writing only) let's say your market will allow $250/mo for each athlete. $50 of that will go to business sustenance: phone/internet, corporate fees, insurance, advertising, etc. etc. etc. That leaves you with $200/mo at 20 athletes that's $4k/mo at 12 months is $48k per year. At 30 athletes it's $70k/yr. And from there you can decide the next question; do you need to work elsewhere to supplement income.
• Career to support wife/kids - I have the perfect wife and we are child free by choice so perhaps I should refrain from this but my answer is no and here's why: a more structured gig with regular hours would result in more time with family in the margins (after school & weekends). I think coaching triathlon often happens in that time.
• Satisfaction - I'm a teacher, a coach. It is I suspect the only thing I could do and be happy. I taught and coached alpine skiing part time while in school and then full time after. I also worked more normal jobs for a few years in my late 20s and couldn't find anything that fit. When coaching triathlon came to me it was too right. I think I could find peace in a blend: working a job that paid the bills and coaching a few athletes part time to fill the void. That could work I guess.

Other thoughts...very few triathlon coaches become coaches because they dream of sitting at a keyboard and constructing programs. For most the beauty comes from being there, face-to-face with an athlete and creating the breakthrough. Program design is the bread and butter for coaching age groupers but it's really nice to develop ancillary revenue streams that support the program and satisfy your desire to serve the one-on-one relationship. For me bike fitting and swim lessons are HUGE in this area. So investing in those other aspects can be wonderful both for the bottom line and for the quality of the service you offer. Coaches who also become bike fitters, can provide swim & run video analysis, are nutritionists, own racks and have a parking lot to do transition work, are cycling coaches who can teach bike skills, etc. etc. etc. - those are some high quality coaches who are satisfied in what they do and make a decent living.


Ian

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Ian Murray
http://www.TriathlonTrainingSeries.com
I like the pursuit of mastery
Twitter - @TriCoachIan

Not sure if this will help as I am not coaching full time but I figured I would give you my thoughts anyway.

As has been mentioned, the hours are going to a bit hard to pin down; everyday I have athletes logging workouts which I will then review and, depending on the workout numbers and details provided by the athlete, may provide feedback. Beyond this, I will generally have a couple of emails to respond to every day and, although not right now, in the past I've had athletes who I've spoken with on a weekly basis on the phone. Beyond that, typically on Sunday I will spend time reviewing the full week of training for each athlete and writing the next week of training for them, sending a weekly recap email and details of the week ahead. My athletes right now are all not local so I'm not doing anything regularly in person but in the past I've worked with local triclubs and our youth and junior development program which, depending on the time of year, was adding a couple of hours of coaching three to six days a week.

As DD mentioned, the number of athletes will depend on experience; doing this part time, when I started coaching I had three athletes and this coming season I'll have ten. This will be my 9th season coaching triathletes and have been coaching a variety of sports for the last 20+ years.

Annual income will depend on how you want to set things up, how many athletes you take on, how many months each athlete is going to be paying for coaching, if you have start up fees, what software you'll use, etc. Will you have team clothing; will you sell it for a profit, push or take a loss to get your name out there? Are you going to develop your own website; where are you going to host it; will you just use Facebook and Twitter for this purpose?

I am a teacher and love my job as well as my coaching however I can't see myself leaving teaching to coach full time; perhaps if I didn't have a wife and two kids I would consider it. However, since I love teaching and coaching, doing both works very well for me.

Shane

I'll probably just be adding on to the other's input, but here's my experience:

How many hours? to write plans and review logs - probably 25% of my time. Like others mentioned, owning a business, training when I want, etc - t's a lifestyle so not really concerned with how many hours. Some days it's 8 hours of work, other days it's 18. It just depends. But writing articles, meetings with coaches, athletes, potential sponsors, creating better systems, new projects, and so on take a large majority of time. The easiest part is writing plans. The most fun is meeting with athletes. Like someone else said, I don't consider any of that work. I've been coaching since 1989 and coaching triathletes full time (no other job) since 2001. Another poster mentioned various revenue streams, and this is where you can do well with your business. There are lots of ideas out there to expand your brand professionally (i.e. Training Camps) and not in a cheesy way.

How many athletes: for me, honestly 10-12 athletes. I also have 8 coaches and 3 nutritionists working with us too, so there's more than just managing those 10-12 relationships. I think of each athlete as a 'relationship' and like Ian mentioned, when someone emails you, you need to know all the details of that person's training. As soon as they become a number, you have too many athletes. And I went that way in the beginning - high volume - and it was too much work and not enough satisfaction. Lower numbers lead to higher quality coaching and long term retention and so on. The more you get to know an athlete, the better the relationship is and the quality factor goes way up.

Typical income - all over the place, depending on how many hours you want to work, how many athletes you want to coach, and how many other revenue streams are out there for you. For some coaches they can gross 1/2 a million and others are happy with $20-40k. It just depends on how hard you want to work and how good of job you want to do. Kind of like asking a stock broker how much money could you make if you want to switch to that career. It just depends. I remember reading an article on Joe Friel where he talked about how much he worked when he started coaching - he didn't take a day off for like 5 years or something. That sounds about right to me - I started with 18 hour days when I launched my business and worked every day. There are less 18 hour days now - but when I'm working on a new project, like now - there are more of them. Thing is, those days, although long, are fun and there's nothing else I'd rather be doing!

Supplemental income - not if you do it right!

With kids / family: Unless you had a few years saving, I think it would be tough. It takes time to build a solid resume, reputation and to grow your athlete list. If you could start part time and grow your group to say 10-15 at $400/month you'd be doing ok.

Satisfaction: Like Ian, I had a few other jobs that didn't pan out when I was younger and coaching is the one thing I love to do. It's an incredible feeling helping someone reach a goal they didn't think they could attain - whether it takes 6 months, 18 months or 3 years. It's a career that's best for folks who love to help others, and aren't worried so much about being uber wealthy.

I hope that helps.

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Mike Ricci
2017 USAT World Team Coach
USAT National Coach of the Year
Coaching Triathletes since 1992.

I agree with just about everything that has been said above.

What I will say though is how rewarding a "job" being a coach is. So much in fact that I don't consider it a job. If I had a million dollars and didn't have to work any more, I'd be completely happy talking about training and helping others reach their athletic goals all day.

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KyleKranz.com
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