If nobody has any objections, I’m going to just talk out of my arse for a while. This thread is more about talking things through than expecting anyone to give me a solution on a plate. There have been many good points raised, very useful to me and maybe to others, too many to reply to specifically, so I’ll just share what’s in my head. Please, don’t anyone take this as an argument.
I should point out that I put this in B&M, not the teaching forum, because it’s not about teaching. It’s about business processes. I’m trying to figure out how to bring product to market efficiently. But first…
[quote=“Freakin’ Amazing”]:eh: Okay now I’m confused, let me get this straight:
-You don’t want to …[/quote]
Let’s put it another way.
I know people who write books and don’t make much money at it. I know people who own schools and don’t make much money at it. I know people who sell training programs to companies and don’t make much money at it. I know loads of people who work in this industry but very few (if any) are making lots of money. (1-1 classes are not replicable, so forget about them. Talk about group classes.)
On the other hand, it’s a huge industry and most of the people involved in it (as a business) are unimaginative and not very bright. It’s a business that has attracted a lot of average people in the past with the promise of easy money, and they’re not really equipped to deal with the way things are today.
There are massive amounts of money out there, and currently it’s spread very thinly among a great many mediocre people who are all doing basically the same thing. The only way to compete on those terms is to try and shave a few pennies off your costs or to attract a few more customers at the same time as everyone else is trying to do the same thing. I’m looking for an alternative business model, one that the average buxiban-owner isn’t going to come up with on his own.
The product, incidentally, is not the teaching material. It would take 15 minutes to teach any competent teacher (as defined previously) to follow my lesson plans, and the good ones would be contributing their own ideas right away. They could just look on any good teaching site, for starters. There’s plenty of great stuff out there, but very few people use it here because they’re focused on the tests.
Until you can persuade customers that they need to do something differently then it doesn’t matter what you’ve got, and once you have done that there’s no point inventing a whole new method. You can just use some of the fruits of the last 50 years of research that have passed the local industry by.
Any crappy buxiban or agent could get online, find some lesson plans similar to mine, and offer them tomorrow. Nobody will do that because they are focused on doing the same thing as everyone else and most believe that “the market wants” garbage. This is true, to an extent…
A few years back I was posting here quite regularly, asking anguished questions about how you get Taiwanesers to see sense. Many of the replies boiled down to “sell them what they want, teach them what they pay you to teach them.” I persisted, and now I’ve figured out how to bring people round to my way of seeing things. In other words, I can now do what most buxibans cannot. I can make people understand where their problems lie and get some degree of commitment to doing things differently. As a result, my hourly rate has increased.
The market doesn’t want garbage, the market wants a solution to a problem and the market knows that the current offerings are not working. But very few people in the industry have the ability to offer new solutions, partly because they actually know nothing about what they’re selling and won’t listen to their teachers. The other reason is that they don’t know anything about sales. They don’t know how to educate their customers, so they look around, see that nobody else is moving, and cling to what they know. And if you or I challenge them then they make excuses about what the market wants.The market wants a new solution, but needs to be educated before anyone will make any big decisions.
I can make the sale that other schools cannot, and to a large degree the ability to do that rests on my personal credibility. I’ve done my time, I have the right places on my CV, I have the right endorsements, and when I talk to people it’s very clear that I understand their needs and expectations. This much is not easily replicable, that’s my unique selling point, so I’m thinking of myself a brand rather than a product. People buy the brand, and trust me that the product is the right thing. They don’t buy the product, because I don’t even talk about it, they buy me.
Example:
Two years ago I was asked by a high school to help them prepare some students for an important competition. I did the class, but my advice to the students was over-ridden by the regular teacher - who wasn’t in the classroom with us - and they lost horribly. In other words, although I had some standing to begin with I was still a "service provider’. But it was clear I had done something beneficial even though nobody in the faculty knew what it was.
In the following semester they asked me to do a regular Saturday morning class, and I was pleased to find myself in a classroom next door to an agent I used to work for. He was providing his class, I was providing mine, and I was getting paid as much as his company was. The following academic year I was there again, during regular school hours, but the agent wasn’t, and the kids produced stuff that made the administration really take notice.
Yesterday I was invited to participate in the English faculty meeting convened by the Principal of the school. Instead of being a service provider, my expert opinions were asked on several topics. Instead of being contracted to provide a class, I was asked what I would like to do in the coming year, and what my availability was. In other words, they didn’t buy a product. They bought the brand and trusted me to take care of the product.
They have also asked me to give a presentation at their upcoming parents’ day, for which l will be paid. This is not a for-profit company that needs a white monkey for marketing. This is one of the top ten government high schools, which students compete to get into, showing a willingness to do things differently. In fact, this year my classes are only available to students whose test scores are above a certain level. Anybody (within reason) could teach what I teach, but I’m the trusted provider.
And my sale last week was to another government school that wants its students to do something other than pass tests. I’ll say it again: the market wants change. My brand is ‘the guy who knows the solution’ and people are prepared to buy from me.
If I keep going at this rate I could be running an agency specialising in creative and exciting High School English classes within a year or two. But that would be very difficult to do legally, and margins are not very big. You get paid per teacher rather than per student, so you could make a good living but never be secure.
So what’s the next step?
Firstly, a school of my own is a very limiting way to go about this. It assumes that I am only able to serve a given number (range) of students. Too many and the school is full, so I turn away business. Too few and I can’t cover the overheads. Either outcome is unacceptable. There are licensed empty classrooms all over the city, for rent by the hour. I could use none of them, all of them, or any quantity in between as demand dictates.
So if you get twenty students but they’re not available on the same day, you could split them into two groups and use a smaller cheaper classroom. You could hold classes in different areas of the city instead of asking people to travel after work. If you get more students for a given class, you could simply move to a bigger venue. If you don’t get enough sign-ups for a given class you can cancel it without being stuck with rent to pay.
Of course, if you’re consistently filling rooms in a particular area it would work out cheaper to rent premises by the month, but if you’re consistently filling rooms in a particular area then why not try and fill bigger rooms? I don’t believe that the market is X, or that we should build our businesses around X. The market is what you make it, and you need to be able to flex with it. (Which means that a lot of places should close and do something else instead of clinging on because they have nowhere else to go.)
Businesses outsource production to factories that can align supply with demand, instead of owning their own factories. Businesses outsource customer service to organisations that can provide the required number of operators at the required time, instead of trying to do it all in-house. Why should education be different? Families don’t do their education in-house, they outsource to specialists. Why do I need to get into real estate when my speciality is educating people?
Having said that, yes, customers expect to meet someone somewhere before committing to anything. A business offering classes at diverse locations still needs some kind of physical presence somewhere. Or does it? I’m stuck here. HELP!
Next, the HR issue. I think Okami was on the money about the difficulties with finding good secretarial support. The issue is motivation as much as competence, so both are leadership/training problems. But, with all due respect to my students, some people are more trainable than others. As a small business, I/you/we face the problem that we are not ‘preferred employers’ like Nike or even McDonalds. Before you can get someone into training you have to get several people to interview, and to do that you have to invite a great many, which requires a huge number of applicants. Here’s a quote from a thread a few years back:
[quote]Daphne Huang from 1111.com.tw showed us a pyramid representing the stages, and numbers of people involved, to hire just one average employee. She started with the claim that only 1/3 of job applicants are considered worth contacting.
So, out of 162 applicants, only 54 will even get a phone call. I guess that’s normal anywhere.
Of those 54, probably only 1/3 will be invited to an interview. So 18 people get invited to interview out of 162, 11%!
Here’s where the discouraging stuff starts: Of the people invited to interview, only half will show up. The rest may make some excuse, but are more likely to just disappear.
So, only nine people actually come to the interview, and approximately 1/3 of them will be considered hireable. So out of 162 applicants, only three are likely to be hired. And of those three, the probability is that only one will actually show up for work on the first day. The rest may make some excuse, but are more likely to just disappear.
Everybody present agreed with this assessment,[/quote]
So before you can hire one average employee you have to attract 162 applications. Then you have to train and motivate them. As I said, I seriously doubt that I could train a sales person, so for the time being it’s me doing sales. But that limits me to the number of people I can actually meet. You can’t fill classrooms if you try to meet every student personally.
The only people I know who do this are Excell English, who also make a point of teaching people what they need instead of what they want. I think they’re doing OK, but they’re not growing - despite having a unique and valuable service. There are limits to what you can do with this approach. Compare and contrast to this advice from a friend of mine who runs a chain of adult buxibans that has grown steadily. They have more sales staff than teachers, btw, consuming a greater share of the money.
[quote]It is true that mass market is what we are good at. In stead of promoting
individual teachers, we promote our school as a total English learning
environment with custom service and support… I can only tell you from my personal
experience that you need a couple of trusted partners (share holders) to
plan things and to work with you. It is really difficult to start a new
business all by yourself.
… But you need to have a solid business plan and a business model first.
I can’t see a business model from your description at this moment.[/quote]
Mass market… promote the brand not the product… trusted partners… business model.
Like I said, I’m looking for a new business model. I’m vexed by the people issue. I have the brand, or at least the embryo of one.
Oh, and Buttercup, you’re right about needing a one-liner to define what I’m selling.
She is really good at selling me and selling my program because she really believes in it. My point–find a 
Thinking 