Job Discussion Forums

[jpvanderwerf2001]

I'm That Guy who gets it into his head every once in a while that it would be much better (more profitable/rewarding/worthwhile) to just start his own English language school.
Then I usually think better of it.
But, since it's in my head again (it's nagging, I tell you!), I would like to hear from the collective Dave braintrust what one would need to start a school. I have an good idea of where I'd like to start a small school, but I'm not so sure on the how. (I've got a few thousand bucks, 5+ years of experience, qualifications--degree & CELTA in case you were wondering.)
Suggestions (besides: "Don't be That Guy")?
Pitfalls?
Experiences?
Have any of you tried this?
Peace. jp

[basiltherat]

I am actually in the position of working for an organisation that, 3 years ago, decided to open a small language centre. I was given the task of setting it up from scratch and am now just trying to keep the thing ticking over and improving things as we go along. This has meant that I have learned most, if not everything, about setting something up through simple experience. If you can get yourself doing something similar for someone, i think thats how yud solve the 'how' problem. There's no risk to you should everything go pear-shaped (except that yud be out of a job) but you wudnt be risking any of your hard-earned cash.
After a while, you could either set up in competition with the guy you work for or move to a different area to set up on your own.
Alternatively, get a position as DOS for a year or so. That will also give you a general picture of how things run.
Honestly, though, without intending to over-simplify things, a lot of the 'how' is actually pretty much common sense. The big problem is how you get your clients (students) to start and keep registering.
A problem that you yourself will need to look into is the rights you have to ownership if you're setting up abroad. Clearly, that depends on the local laws and obviously differ among different countries.
best
basil

[merlin]

Required for language school startup:

1) A savvy and ambitious wife (or "partner" you can trust) who can figure out all the local legalities and get new classes with companies.

2) Startup costs: 6 months office rent, six months salary for receptionist/assistant (see #1) and enough money for an aggressive advertising campaign at three different times: two months before student registration, during student registration (offer 15% discount if they register and pay early), and one week before classes begin to get the procrastinators.

3)Enough money to get your teachers on-site (as many as you need to cover your student enrollment) and 2-3 month payroll in reserve would be nice.

4) Enough personal savings to live off of for at least one year because its very rare for a business to make a profit its first year.

5) A photocopier (get a new one so service is included) with access codes and a ton of paper and toner.

6) A very friendly bank

Stuff like chairs, whiteboards, linoleum, electricity and running water are nice little extras also.


As for me, I've never really seriously considered opening a full-fledged school. If I want to go into management I'll pick another field but i quite often have to explain to my wife why we can't start up a school "just like that".

[ls650]

[Jizzo T. Clown]

Here's a checklist to get you thinking:

find School Director
preliminary market analysis
city information/picture of city
open website for the school
find school location
provide 'apartment specific'
teacher recruitment
apply school license
apply teacher recruitment license
obtain site approval
find a good designer for school reno.
designer study General school design guidelines
obtain approval for renovation plan
renovation starts
Employee training
school signage approval
establish course price
order text books
order supplementary books/video/cd-rom,kids books, etc
make an initial marketing plan(first 2 month)
approve initial marketing plan
renovation check
fix course price
obtain school license
hire Senior sales/sales/accountant/cashier
obtain advertisement license
obtain price approval
obtain Private-funded Non-enterprise Organization license
obtain organization ID Card
open bank account
tax registration
obtain invoice
teacher license(at lease Biz Visa or expert license)
fix apartment
print marketing materials
book media space in newspaper
invite people to newsconference
arrange for news conf and open house
draft a plan for open house
renovation finish
AC arrive
AC training
open email account for the school
AC interview local FT, PT
ads on newspaper
teacher arrival
teacher welcome package
hire LFT, PT, and give training
sales kits and files preparation
Textbook/Supplementary/office equipment arrive
send 1 sr. Sales on training
news conference/open house
signing in students
start lessons in the school
send statistics/production report
finish contents on website
make an annual marketing plan

[Guy Courchesne]

Been thinking about this for awhile Jizzo?

[Jizzo T. Clown]

Actually, there was a time when all I wanted to do was open a language school. I just copied and pasted the above post from my hard drive, though. And the source is a secret!

[Guy Courchesne]

[khmerhit]

Je croyais que tu etais cet gar, Guy!

(Just guying you.)

What you really need first before starting up yr own school is.. some

GUYDELINES!!

[Guy Courchesne]

Yeah, the irony didn't escape me...being 'That Guy".

[Justin Trullinger]

DO MARKET RESEARCH. I know this sounds elementary. But if you're opening a business, and want to keep it for a while, you need to think about who your students are going to be, how they're going to pay, how many months out of the year, and for how long. I've seen several schools started based on the "there's a lot of interest in English here!" school of market research. None of them are now in business.

In a market flooded with people asking you, "How I can English learn quickly?" it's tempting to assume that there are enough students to keep your business afloat. Don't. Know who you are marketing to. Know what other options they have for their English learning. Know whether their need to learn English is real, and will bring tangible benefits, keeping them motivated, or merely a perceived need, with no direct application, in which case they will evaporate as soon as learning becomes difficult, demanding, expensive, etc.

Also, try to project into the future of your local market. I know several teachers turned entrepeneurs who have lost their shirts do to the arrival of flashy chains to their area. It's not enough to find an area with no competition now. The competition will come. What will you offer to stay ahead of them?

Pardon me for ranting a bit. I have seen a lot of people badly hurt by starting with a poorly thought out business. I also know a few people who have started businesses, enjoyed it a lot, improved their standards of living, and retired young. The difference is the PLAN. A good idea is nothing. A good plan is what gets a good business going.

The advice of others here has been extremely good about what a school needs to run. I just wanted to emphasize the absolute necessity of knowing who you're running it for.


Best of luck,
Justin

[YanquiQuilme�o]

Excellent, excellent post, Justin.

[khmerhit]

i'LL SECOND THAT, JUSTIN. GET A NEW PLAN, STAN, LIKE DA MAN SAID.
I'LL BETCHA DAVE SPERLING GOTHIMSELF A PLAN!!

I SPEND MY NITESAT A MARKET RESEARCH COMPANY. AND ALTHO I KNOW QUITE LITTLE ABOUT THE FIELD OF MARKETING, I DO KNOW THAT VERY BIG COMPANIES SPEND A LOT OF TIME AND MONEY KEEPING ON TOP OF THESE VERY QUESTIONS--

WHO THEY ARE SERVING
HOW MUCH THEY EARN
HOW OLD THEY ARE
WHERE THEY LIVE
THEIR EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENTS
AND ABOVE ALL--WHAT THEY THINK ABOUT ----IE THEIR DETAILED OPINIONS ABOUT ----THE PRODUCT AND THE SERVICE!!!

[rossuh]

Once you got your plan, you need your contacts.

I've just been involved in setting up a brand-new school in south China, in an academic context, not a business one, but from my experience as an academic bod looking in, the amount of people wanting a 'piece' of you, the amount of people trying to rip you off, didn't exactly surprise me, but certainly made me think twice about doing something like this myself.

You need to be onside with the local polis, the fire dept (we were hit with a huuuuuuge bill just for the fire dept having a look around, telling us where to place the fire extinguishers, etc, and this is CHINA, I mean I live in the eighth floor of an apartment with no fire escape! Their concern was not how safe the place was, but how much money they could get out of us), the local mayor/governemnt jobsworths, building contractors, and so on and on and on.

This will cost you not just money but time, cigarettes and oodles of alcohol. Many dinners will be in order. Then these contacts will expect every member of their family to study for free.

If you don't speak the local language and are unfamiliar with the customs for doing business, forget it. If you do manage to get a license you'll have been ripped off so many times you wont have any money left for, like, erm, books, teachers, that kind of stuff (unless you've already made your fortune and this school is just a plaything or diversification). If you have a local business partner to take care of all this, make sure your contract is water-tight, or you could be left footing the bill, or the deportation order, if the business falls into debt.

It is a bloody minefield out there for independent foreign school owners. The only guy I know who get away with it was someone who worked in the area as a DoS at a franchise school, taught and made connections with all the local big-nobs, then did a runner and set up in direct competition, using his local knowledge to good effect, on a smaller and slightly cheaper scale, but with a similar teaching methodology (sneaky!).

I know the mayor of the city and the local visa and police chiefs where I am now due to my experience of helping set up my school, but I am still not sure if I could go it alone.

If you do, good luck to ya, but go in with your eyes wide open!

[Gregor]

This is na�ve of me, I suspect...
Why couldn't a perfectly good business start from the home?
I did this in Shenyang. I didn't keep it going, but it seems like I could have.

We had just bought a home. We were able to make payments no worries, but it ate into our income. Then we found a couple of kids there in the building who wanted to take private lessons. I wouldn't do it unless I charged an exorbitant hourly rate, and they said, "OK...how about if we brought some friends?"
My wife and I got to thinking. We decided that I could do a CLASS, and I'd want...I don't remember how much. It was unreasonable. Something like 300 or 400 kuai an hour. But they got a bunch of friends together, and we ended up doing a CLASS for my 400 kuai an hour. We worked out of (the easily obtainable and very useful) New Interchange. This text is available in divided versions, so that instead of committing to a huge number of hours for level 3, we cut it in half and did 3A, and that book was available to them.
Leslie and I set up our living room to be classroom-like (whiteboard, cassette recorder, cheap little desks for the students to sit at), and I got to work.

It was a HUGE success. A SMASH. Those students told their friends what an awesome teacher and great, funny over-all guy I was, and in no time I had quite a clientele.

And then we stopped.
It started to look like I wasn't going to qualify for my Chinese Green Card for a good long time, Leslie was likely to get HER US Green Card within the year (which she did), and I was ticked off at my then-employer for some poor treatment of a teacher. For the sake of making a statement (and largely because I had some options, I will admit that much), I declined another contract with him.
Were we to stay in Shenyang, we could have, I think, made a go of the school. Worst case scenario, I could have done stuff under the radar of the PSB out of the house - they don't really care, as long as you don't make waves. With ONE CLASS, I made about 10,000 RMB that month; a thousand more than my salary.
Mind you, I wouldn't have had the insurance I had with my full time job, or holidays off and so on, but on the other hand, I was in better shape than 90% of these wage slaves who make 150-200 an hour for freelance work.
Retirement plans in China are not hard to come by (they are set up for retirement in China, but that's not a bad way to go), we had our home, and medical insurance is fairly cheap as well.

PLUS! My "underground" success was no secret. The building where I lived offered me a unit to use as a classroom for a reasonable rent, if I were to decide to make a go of it.
Yes, even illegally, it could have become a thriving business. Once made legal, it would have been so well-known enough in our district, if not all around town, that we could have opened to a HUGE grand opening.
I even have a business plan all written out, for potential investors (and my own amusement). It includes a relatively low-cost English course, taught mostly by Chinese English teachers who would have been trained by me (and I am qualified to do this), with me making an appearance every fourth lesson or something.
If all went well enough, I would have even offered a TEFL certificate program for teacher hopefuls from western countries. This would have added to the value of the course for my students - for little more than HALF the price of an EF course, you could have a course with MY school, with well-trained (Chinese) teachers, the school director once in a while, and the TEFL cert. trainees - NATIVE SPEAKERS.

I am still in love with this idea, but my wife vetoed the idea - we're going to the U.S.

I digress. The point is, though, that there is no reason why you have to start your business with a great location on a busy street. Let things grow. Depending on where you are, of course, the business will. Grow, that is.