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[backtochina2017]

First, you aren't really owning your own school. You would buy into the system, and normally if things go right you sell when you are ready to leave. There is very good chance you will simply turn it over to the franchise company, getting rid of it with few students remaining.

I wanted this thread to be for both new teachers to the franchise idea who want to learn more about it and for the more experienced teachers who have already been through it.

I know of a couple franchise systems, I'll keep their names private for the moment. It's hard to give a good or bad review because it involves their way of doing business compared to the teachers who buy into it.

Instead of a monthly salary, you would be putting up money initially and then reach a break even point where the school was making enough to start earning a profit and become saleable at a later time.

That is where the gamble comes in because there are no guarantees.

I wanted to know from experienced teachers if they are aware of teachers working together either between franchises or within a community. Some students may want a teacher from Britain or America. Some students may want to meet with a female teacher instead of male. In my experiences in Japan, Korea, and China I have found that when multiple teachers are employed it keeps students coming back. A one man show like your typical franchise setup misses out on that, and that makes me hesitant to go it alone.

With that said, the location of the school is important for two reasons. One, is it going to be at the same place you reside, or are you going to go to some office to teach out of? I have only seen situations where a teacher would live and teach from the same place. There would be at least 2 rooms to accommodate this.

It's a great opportunity for a first time teacher to experience. I would jump right in and do it myself if it weren't for the fact I have already done. I would want to set up a system where two or a few teachers shared the classroom space. Financially speaking, I recognize this is silly. Each teacher would want to get as many students as possible. However, it does defray the start up costs. If teacher A teaches on Monday and Tuesday, and Teacher B teaches on Wednesday and Thursday, they can both work either other jobs or study.

Taking this office idea into account, either the location would need 2 additional rooms to live in or those teachers would have to get their own living arrangements.

On the surface, it looks like 3 times the cost. On the other hand, if a landlord rented out 2 rooms for example, one as an office and one with 2 rooms then I see a possibility of working out a deal to pay lower rent between the two. How plausible it is in Japan I don't know. My experience in renting is mostly from China agents and a little bit from Korea.

Here is a concrete example, and I hope someone might know more about the averages. Say I wanted to get an apartment in a residential area of Osaka, near at least a subway station. Figure a 45 minute transportation radius from Umeda station or 1 hour if you specifically know of a good location. Would these landlords out there allow some kind of arrangement or are they strictly one family one apartment kind of people?

[Jmbf]

I can't speak to the situation in Japan but I know a few people who have done this in Hong Kong. I've looked into either starting a small language centre myself or investing in an established franchise. After talking with several language centre owners I can only conclude that their results were variable. Some failed terribly while others were reasonably successful. What was common to everyone that I talked to was the importance of 3 factors, location, marketing and management. Get these things wrong and it's not going to work out well no matter how much effort / money you put in.

It's important to realise that being a good teacher doesn't necessarily translate into being able to run a successful language centre. There are quite different skill sets required. For example, where should you be located? How are you going to reach out to your potential students? How do you keep your teaching staff onboard? How do you keep them satisfied so that they don't run off with your students? How do you manage your lessons / courses so that they are relevant and in-demand? How do you maintain course quality and present a clear distinctive advantage over the competition?

In the end I concluded I was much better off continuing in my current line of work. I remain open to the potential of opening a language centre, but I'd be very wary of jumping into it without proper consideration of the multitude of factors that would affect a centre's success / failure.

[backtochina2017]

Thanks for the comment, I agree with everything you said and would also like to add "housing" as a 4th factor. This is something that goes unnoticed. Do we weigh our living expenses as part of living abroad or do we look it as more of an added expense?

Here I am ready to go to China because I am looking at it as part of living abroad. The school gives me a place to live and I get a salary. In Japan, it's different. In order to maintain the same relative living expenses, the money has to come through the school. If you get a franchise, then you are in the hole to begin with. If you go to another school and they give you the salary, then you never dip below a break even point other than your flight and first month's expenses.

The typical situation to deal with that then is to get an apartment you live in and there would be a room accessible without going through any living area to have a lesson. I feel this boxes in the teacher though. If instead, you went to a second location, then other teachers could team up. If you are successful, then this could be affordable. If it's not, then there isn't much point in starting one unless you are married to a Japanese person (in this case) or have a specific interest in Japan (manga fanatic, interested in the culture, etc...)

By working in China at the public school level at least, or for a language school that sends you to public schools, you are guaranteed a student base regardless what other teachers work in your area. In fact, I had one school that said they preferred another teacher over me at the time, and then that teacher decided they didn't want to teach there anymore. So, the school asked me to return, LOL (talk about wishful thinking, hey we like teacher 1 but we need to make sure we have a Prince Harry backup so a teacher is always there, let's get another teacher).

The point is teaching a franchise in Japan with 4 students per class means you have to recruit and get 10 times the amount of signups at least to equal the student base. I don't see how 1 individual can adequately do that. If you are married to a native of the country you are in, then you can start off small with part time jobs and get a student base. If you go headfirst into it, solo, as a foreigner you're looking for failure I hate to say.

I am being told to teach younger kids because then you have more of a guarantee they will continue for 3 years. If you think you can teach the older students, you have to find a way to be more attractive than going to a school that teaches multiple subjects. I have seen good successful teachers do it, but not by themselves entirely. This is why I looking into the apartment/office costs because I feel the answer would be to apply both.

[Jmbf]