In 2010, I officially became a cycling coach.  Off and on before that time, I had coached runners, triathletes, swimmers, and cyclists.  Sometimes I would get paid, other times I was just helping my friends out for free.  I began giving advice to people who got my name from a friend and would write to me and ask questions. When the questions got more frequent I would ask for some money to compensate me for my time.  It finally dawned on me that if people kept coming back and wanting to hear what I had to say, and were getting good results putting into practice what I had been telling them, that I perhaps I could become a real (paid) coach.

The two hard parts of going from a hobby to getting paid are: A. Getting athletes to sign up with me (i.e. marketing), and B. Knowing what the heck I was talking about so that I gave my athletes value.

B is actually pretty easy and the most fun part for me.  I have spend my free time for the last 15 years studying endurance exercise physiology and testing the ideas.  I have even conducted my own scientific (small sample size, unpublished) studies for my ideas.

A was a much harder proposition for someone like myself who had no experience directly selling a personal service.  I figured the first thing people would need would be some form of credibility.  I took the USA Cycling coaching license test for $80 and became a certified coach.  I then talked to my friend and former coach, Eric Kenny over at EK Endurance Coaching about becoming an associate coach with his coaching business.  After agreeing that I could add depth to his offering,  I signed on with EK and was featured on his website. Within a month, my first client had found me on a list of USA Cycling coaches, confirmed that I was a legit coach by visiting the website, and I was off the the races!

After coming to MSU and joining the collegiate cycling team here, I offered my services to the team riders .  I had two riders from the team sign up with me, which is a double win for me because I can race alongside the riders I coach! My athletes’ continued success gives me the confidence to charge for my services.

Me With The Montana State University Team Time Trial Squad at 2012 Collegiate Nationals

To help increase my visibility locally in Bozeman, this past fall with team Rockford I ran the after school kids cyclocross program.  I also started writing about cycling on this blog for example here, here, and here.  It turns out the marketing side is fun too!

So to summarize, if you want to get paid to do what you love to do, the first step is credibility.  You can talk about how awesome you are all you want, but until someone else says it, people won’t really believe you.  Second, get your name out there.  All you have to do is be on the web and send people over to check out your work.  If your offering matches up with what they want, they will contact you!  This means only the serious customers are calling, all you have to do is be confident and say “let’s do this!”