MHAIRI Stewart says the thing she enjoys most about her job is helping her clients be the best they possibly can be.

The self-employed personal trainer, who graduated from Glasgow Clyde College with an HND in Fitness, Health and Exercise last year, has a particular passion for working with women to build their strength, fitness and confidence.

One of the reasons her clients do so well is that the 20-year-old knows from personal experience how fitness can be the motivation for wider changes in life. During her teens Ms Stewart, from Glasgow, suffered from the eating disorder anorexia, and despite always being interested in sport and fitness her weight dropped to just five and a half stone. But college and the offer of work with the growing fitness chain Pure Gym helped motivate her to overcome the illness and move on to a new and healthier path.

Ms Stewart’s determination certainly paid off; she now weighs a healthy 10 stone and set up in business as a personal trainer soon after graduating. She now splits her time between Pure Gym in Hope Street, where she runs classes and works with members individually, and a growing list of private clients.

“For me being a personal trainer is all about helping people,” she explains. “It’s very important that you become invested in your client as you’re going to be working with them for an extending period.

“I want them to achieve their goals just as much as they do and that’s what keeps me motivated. I absolutely love my job – I look forward to training with all my clients.”

The most important thing about setting up in business, Ms Stewart says, is learning the basics: how to keep records and accounts, and file a tax return. Her sister and father, who are also self-employed, were invaluable on this score.

And in the current economic climate she’d advise other young people to think seriously about self-employment as an option.

“It is scary making that leap into self-employment, but no one is too young as long as they have a plan for what they’re going to do and how they’re going to achieve it,” says Ms Stewart.

“Understand what is going to be expected of you and be prepared. But being your own boss is so gratifying and it keeps you very motivated.

“These days it can be really hard for young people to find jobs out of college or university. It’s about taking the initiative and my experience is that lots of young people just aren’t self-reliant enough.

“You grow up a lot being self-employed – I’d like to see more young people just take the risk and go for it.”

Ms Stewart is full of ideas about new fitness programmes and classes for both the gym and her private clients, and like many entrepreneurs, wants to use her own experiences to expand her business and help others.

“Society and social media often give women the message that weightloss should be their ultimate goal when joining the gym,” she explains. “Women should be encouraged to concentrate on increasing their strength and fitness and feeling great about themselves rather than losing weight.

“Many women feel they have to eat less when they start going to the gym – this isn’t the case at all, as I know only too well. There’s still a lot of stigma around how women train in gyms and I really want to tackle that.”

Such determination will no doubt take Ms Stewart far – possibly even to the other side of the world, which is definitely part of her five-year plan.

“I’d love to have my own gym one day,” she says. “I was born in New Zealand and I plan to travel there and in Australia, so maybe I’ll use that to build my business. I’m always looking for new opportunities and you’ve got to work hard to find them.”