I would argue that one of the biggest reasons strength coaches leave the profession is a lack of money. We often hear people say things like, “It’s not about the money,” but the reality is that money matters. Strength coaches deserve to have a nice life, take vacations, drive reliable cars, own homes, and provide for themselves and their families. If we cannot make enough money to create a sustainable life in this profession, eventually some coaches may feel forced to leave and find a “real job.”
I believe learning business and entrepreneurship can be just as valuable for a strength coach as learning programming. Understanding sets, reps, periodization, speed development, and conditioning will always matter, but those skills alone do not necessarily create financial stability or career opportunities. Learning how to manage money, communicate value, market yourself, build relationships, negotiate, and create additional income streams can help coaches remain in the profession longer while improving their quality of life.
A lot of strength coaches already work side gigs just to make ends meet. Personal training, private sessions, camps, speaking engagements, writing articles, bartending, DJing, driving for Uber, and other jobs are common ways coaches supplement their income. In my case, I run NPWR Training, a private sports performance business where I train youth and high school athletes in the evenings and on weekends and host youth sports camps. I also DJ on Friday and Saturday nights.
Those businesses have helped me financially, but they have also made me better at my primary job. Training youth and high school athletes through NPWR has improved my communication, creativity, and ability to coach athletes at different ages and ability levels. DJing has helped me in a completely different way by giving me another opportunity to connect with athletes and become involved in campus culture, including DJing university events. Business, sales, marketing, networking, negotiation, and entrepreneurship may sound separate from strength and conditioning, but I have found that each of them translates directly to being a better college strength coach.
Learning Business
Running a budget is not rocket science, but you do have to be strategic about how you spend money. Before I make a purchase, I try to determine whether it is actually going to move the program forward. Will it get used consistently? Will it make an impact? Is it something our athletes and coaches will benefit from throughout the year? Those questions help separate purchases that are useful from purchases that simply look good.
Running NPWR Training helped me become comfortable thinking that way because every purchase in a business affects what you have left to work with. You cannot buy everything you want at once, so you have to decide what is most important, what will create the greatest return, and what can wait. The same approach applies to a collegiate strength and conditioning budget. When resources are limited, I would rather invest in equipment that multiple teams will consistently use than buy something simply because it would be nice to have.
Forecasting is another business skill that has helped me as a coach. I try to know approximately how much money will remain after each significant purchase rather than simply buying things as needs arise. Tracking the remaining budget allows me to plan for future needs and avoid getting halfway through the year and realizing that I used too much of the budget early. Having experience operating a business has taught me that every financial decision creates another decision later, so I try to think several steps ahead.
Learning Sales
Whether strength coaches realize it or not, we are constantly selling. We are selling our program to athletic directors, sport coaches, athletic trainers, athletes, parents, recruits, and sometimes even our own staff. That does not mean giving everyone a traditional sales pitch. It means being able to clearly explain what we do, why we do it, and how it benefits the person we are speaking with.
For example, if a sport coach questions why their athletes need to spend time in the weight room, I usually bring the conversation back to performance and availability. Injury prevention is a major part of strength and conditioning, but so is the reality that skill alone is not always enough to win games. When two teams are similarly skilled, the team that is stronger, faster, more physical, and better conditioned can create a real advantage. The goal of the strength program is not to take athletes away from their sport; it is to help them become more capable within their sport and healthy enough to compete.
That is sales in a strength and conditioning setting. It is communicating value in a way that matters to the person you are talking to. Learning how to communicate my own value has also helped me move into leadership roles within college strength and conditioning. You can be an excellent programmer, but if you cannot create buy-in or explain why your work matters, it becomes much harder to grow professionally.
Learning Marketing
A lot of the work strength coaches do happens behind the scenes. Parents, recruits, administrators, and even sport coaches may not always see what takes place during a normal training session. Social media gives us an opportunity to show people what is happening inside the program and communicate the culture we are trying to create. I tend to use three types of content consistently: athlete spotlights, team lift videos, and humor.
Athlete spotlights give us an opportunity to recognize athletes who are putting in the work. That recognition can help athletes feel valued while also showing parents, recruits, and sport coaches that the program is athlete-centered. It is also a simple way to celebrate progress that may otherwise go unnoticed outside the weight room. When athletes improve, I think it is important to give them credit for the work they have put in.
Team lift videos serve a different purpose. They allow people outside the program to see the energy, culture, and training environment we are trying to build. A recruit or parent may never have the opportunity to watch a normal training session in person, so social media can give them a window into what being part of the program actually looks like. Public posts can also create pride among current athletes because they highlight the team and its members.
The third type of content I use is humor. I post a lot of humorous content because I want my personality to come through and people to understand what athletes can expect from me as a coach. Strength and conditioning does not have to appear serious all the time for the program to be effective. Humor can make content more relatable while still showcasing your personality, your coaching philosophy, and the culture you are trying to create. Marketing is not simply promoting yourself; it is helping people understand your program.
Learning to Build Relationships
Programming matters, but relationships matter too. Strength coaches often see athletes multiple times per week, which gives us an opportunity to get to know them beyond the context of their sport. Taking the time to talk with athletes, ask questions, remember what is happening in their lives, and actually listen can help build trust over time. Sometimes having a meaningful conversation with an athlete during a workout can be just as important as the sets and reps you wrote for that day.
Athletes want to know that the person coaching them actually cares about them. That does not mean lowering standards or avoiding difficult conversations. In many cases, strong relationships make it easier to coach athletes hard because they understand that the expectations are coming from someone who has invested in them. The same principle applies to relationships with sport coaches, athletic trainers, administrators, and other staff members. One conversation rarely builds trust. Consistency over time does.
Learning to Network
One of the best examples of networking in my own career happened almost by coincidence. I had previously interned at Newman University and later began working as a private trainer. One day, the athletic director dropped her kids off for training, and we immediately recognized each other from my time at the university. I ended up training her kids for nearly three years.
During that time, she would occasionally joke with me about coming back and coaching at Newman. I had actually pitched the idea of a 1099 arrangement earlier, but the timing was never quite right. Eventually, an assistant position opened, the opportunity lined up, and we were able to make it work. By that point, we had already established a relationship and built trust over several years.
That experience taught me that networking is not always about walking into a room, handing someone a business card, or introducing yourself because you want something from them. Sometimes networking is simply doing a good job, being consistent, treating people well, and staying connected. I trained her kids for years before the opportunity ever materialized. By the time it did, the relationship already existed, which made the opportunity much more natural.
Learning to Negotiate
At the time I entered collegiate strength and conditioning, I was running NPWR Training full-time. I was contacted and encouraged to apply for an assistant strength coach position, but instead of immediately pursuing a traditional employment arrangement, I proposed structuring the opportunity as a 1099 contract through NPWR Training. Each month, I invoiced the university a set amount for coaching four teams. I would come to campus, run my team sessions, and leave, spending roughly 10 hours per week or less on campus.
The structure worked well because I could coach my university teams early in the morning or during the afternoon and still train my NPWR clients in the evening. It gave the university a flexible way to bring me into the department while allowing me to continue operating the business I had already built. Most importantly, the arrangement got my foot in the door in collegiate strength and conditioning. I felt like I had success during my first year, built strong relationships with athletes and sport coaches, transitioned into the interim head position, and eventually became the full-time head athletic performance coach.
Looking back, that 1099 agreement was much more than a financial arrangement. It created an opportunity that may not have existed in the same way under a traditional structure. That experience also taught me that negotiation is not always about trying to get the highest salary possible. Sometimes negotiation is about finding an arrangement that creates value for both sides.
Salary is obviously important, but there are situations where a school simply does not have much flexibility in what it can pay. When that happens, coaches should look at the entire opportunity. Can the schedule allow you to train private clients or work another job? Is there funding available for continuing education, certifications, conferences, or apparel? Can the department provide graduate assistants, interns, or other staff members to improve the workload? Are there resources available that may help you grow professionally?
Those things have value. A slightly higher salary may not always be more valuable than a schedule that gives you flexibility, additional staff that improves your quality of life, or professional development opportunities that increase your earning potential later. The important part is understanding what matters to you and being willing to ask for it.
Creating Opportunities
Entrepreneurship is about creating opportunities for yourself. Strength coaches can write articles and submit them to publishers, speak at conferences and clinics, host camps, start podcasts, build social media platforms, start side businesses, develop personal brands, or learn completely different skills outside the profession. Not every coach needs to do all of those things, and I do not think everyone should try to become an entrepreneur. The larger point is to create options rather than relying on one job or one source of income for your entire professional future.
I also think strength coaches should ask themselves how they can ethically leverage their current position to strengthen their professional brand. Working in college athletics can provide experience, credibility, relationships, and exposure that increase your value outside your primary job. That does not mean using your employer’s resources to promote your private business or blurring professional boundaries. It means recognizing that the work you do, the relationships you build, the content you create, and the reputation you develop can all contribute to your long-term career.
For me, coaching at the collegiate level has strengthened my credibility as a coach, while running NPWR Training has allowed me to apply what I learn in the college setting with youth and high school athletes. The two roles have complemented each other rather than competed with each other. NPWR has helped me improve my coaching, while college athletics has exposed me to different coaches, athletes, ideas, and environments that I can learn from.
I do not think every strength coach needs to start a training business or become a DJ. I do think strength coaches should consider developing additional skills that can create greater financial stability and more career opportunities. Private training has improved my coaching. DJing has helped me connect with athletes and campus culture. Running a business has helped me better understand budgeting, sales, marketing, communication, and leadership, and all of those lessons have made me better at my primary job.
Business Skills at a Glance
| Business Skill | How It Helps a Strength Coach | Example From the Field |
|---|---|---|
| Business | Helps manage budgets and prioritize resources | Forecast purchases and invest in equipment that will get used and make an impact |
| Sales | Helps create buy-in with athletes, coaches, and administrators | Explain how strength training improves performance, availability, and physical development |
| Marketing | Helps showcase the program and its culture | Athlete spotlights, team lift videos, and humorous coaching content |
| Relationships | Builds trust with athletes and staff | Learn about athletes beyond sets and reps and consistently invest in people |
| Networking | Creates opportunities over time | A relationship built while privately training an athletic director’s children eventually helped open a college coaching opportunity |
| Negotiation | Helps improve compensation, flexibility, and resources | Negotiate schedule, continuing education, staffing, resources, or alternative work arrangements |
| Entrepreneurship | Creates additional income and career options | Private training, camps, speaking, writing, or developing another skill outside coaching |
Learn Outside the Weight Room
I think strength coaches can sometimes become too focused on consuming only strength and conditioning content. Training knowledge obviously matters, and we should continue learning about programming, speed development, strength, power, conditioning, recovery, and everything else that helps us develop athletes. At the same time, there is a lot we can learn from people who have never coached a squat or written a sprint program. Business owners, salespeople, marketers, negotiators, and leaders all solve problems that strength coaches encounter in different forms.
Some of the resources that have influenced the way I think include Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss for negotiation, Go for No! by Richard Fenton and Andrea Waltz for sales and handling rejection, and Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller for marketing and communicating value. None of those books are about strength and conditioning, but the principles apply directly to situations strength coaches deal with every day. We communicate value, manage money, build relationships, lead teams, market programs, and negotiate for resources whether we think of those activities as “business” or not.
Learning from industries outside of strength and conditioning can help us think differently about our own profession. A great business owner may teach you something about budgeting. A salesperson may teach you how to create buy-in. A marketer may help you communicate your program more effectively, and a strong leader may change the way you manage athletes and staff. Becoming a better coach does not always require learning another exercise; sometimes it requires becoming a better professional.
Conclusion
Strength coaches need to understand programming, but I also believe we need to understand business. I am not claiming to be the best strength coach, entrepreneur, marketer, salesperson, or negotiator. I do believe, however, that developing business skills and business acumen has helped me create opportunities and experience success in this field. Those skills have allowed me to think differently about my career and create options that I may not have had otherwise.
If we want to stay in this profession long term, continue doing what we are passionate about, and improve our quality of life, we have to learn how to create opportunities, communicate our value, build relationships, and increase our income. Being passionate about coaching is important, but passion alone does not pay your bills or guarantee that you can remain in the profession for 20 or 30 years.
Passion for coaching matters; but we should also be able to make a living as coaches.
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