I don’t think many were. I’d be more interested if they did, or gave some facts. Or are you referring to people here or in the media?
I thought there was a high bar to entry because of safety and licensing regulations. I suppose your school is relatively small.
I’ll say that after running the school for 4 years I have $300,000ntd in the bank 
If you can find a closed school that already has the license you can start a school for almost nothing. The licensing and inspections can get expensive but starting most businesses require much more capital before they can start making money.
My wife’s friends have a small, husband and wife school. They make about 200K/mo net.
I think it would cost more than that to take over a school of more than two or three classrooms.
Maybe it’s not that hard. This guy keeps going against all logic, and apparently continues to.
Can you give us a boots on the ground idea about what is going on with enrollment in school programs right now? Can you tell us how you are doing classes and what feedback you are getting from the parents? Will you share with us how many students you’ve added or lost because of the covid 3rd level of alert? Thanks
We started the online class the week after schools were closed. Most of our students have transitioned to online class without much problem. 1/3 of our students don’t attend online classes for a variety of reasons.
Classes have gone from 2 or 3 hours a day to 1 and 1.5 hours. We haven’t reduced the price because it is more work to create online lessons. Most of the students have transitioned very well and our online classes are really excellent ways to learn English. Our parents have stood by us and no one has left the school because of the outbreak. We are keeping our head above water at the moment. I’m using the down time to pass out fliers around the neighborhood and creating online ads for facebook.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Can you tell us how many teachers you had before covid and how many you have now? How many hours teaching were there before covid? You’ve explained you are doing less than 2 hours now. Thank you so much for letting us know what is going on.
Our 2 part time teachers have stopped working since the schools closed. They don’t mind because they have kids in school that they need to watch anyway. I have 1 full time assistant that works from home and helps me prepare for the next semester. I was planning on highering another foreign teacher but that became impossible when they closed the borders.
Everyone has really come together. Our landlords have agreed to give us a break on rent and we have done everything we can to help our students. The parents have been really understanding and the kids have adjusted really well. It is almost a cultural phenomenon at this point. Everyone in the world has had to experience the pandemic of 2020.
If lockdown continues, locality is no longer a benefit, so do you think parents will stay with you or move on to more established online teaching companies?
Hooray for trying, most small businesses can’t or won’t. Have you just started that or is it ongoing, and how are your results?
Do you think you might have a future in expanding to hold online classes, group or tutoring, nationwide even after the lockdown?
How much were you and the wife taking out as a salary each month though?
If you were taking 200000 out a month and after a few years you had a business that had loyal customers then that is successful.
I don’t think our students will leave us for more established online teaching companies because my students know me and I know my students. Part of owning your own school is that you can watch your students grow from year to year and the parents know how important that is.
We aren’t just doing online ads and passing out fliers. We are doing everything we can to improve the school and attract more students. We have even added a few new students since the lockdown because we have increased our advertising. We are improving the school by investing in more teaching aids and buying more supplies. I even have time to create our fall lesson plans so that everything will be better than ever when the lockdown ends.
I can only pray that some local buxibans close so that I can get a big wave of new students. Sadly, I know and have worked with many of the other teachers that have their own buxibans.
So taking what you’ve learned from online teaching and continuing that as another potential revenue stream once restrictions are over isn’t of interest to you?
I forgot to mention that. There isn’t a huge incentive to keep the online classes going but it would help provide my teachers with more hours. The profit margin on a class with only 4 kids in it isn’t great and there is a possibility that the teacher could just take the students from our school. I think once the border opens up I can have my foreign teacher teach the online class during her quarentine period. That would be great for everybody.
I thought you said that all your students moved online and you haven’t reduced the price?
So why would there be 4 kids in the class?
I think the incentive is more money, though it would take some investment to do it properly. I don’t know why 4 kids is your limit. You’d have to think beyond your neighborhood. Teachers stealing students is always a concern, so you’d have to have a non-compete clause, as well as offer some value beyond putting a teacher in front of students. I once started working on building an online ESL program before I realized the amount of content I needed to produce wasn’t something I could do on my own and I didn’t have the business acumen to set it up, and don’t trust many people enough to go into business with them and I don’t have the money to hire people to take care of what I can’t. But for an established business, with the right curriculum planning, infrastructure, and marketing, they could make a go of it.
Having more than 6 kids in a class can be problematic, especially for newer students. The churn and turnover for an online class has to be high because the parents are looking for something that is quick and easy. Easy in, easy out too.
My classes had an average of 10 kids so it worked out well that there was a perfect amount for online classes.
I agree with your assessment. For a long time I thought that online tutoring wasn’t high quality but now I see that it has many benefits. I don’t limit myself to 4 students, I just make realistic projections. I can’t expect full classes every day.
I would love to pursue an online teaching model but, at this point, time is money. I would have to work so hard setting up the online class that my brick and morter school would suffer. I would need a whole cast of teachers and assistants to keep the school running and I have learned the hard way that finding good help is nigh impossible. It would be a massive undertaking. 
It takes a lot of effort to start a business online. I was never successful because I didn’t have the money to make a real start of it and I always tried to go it alone. I also started with greyhat (spam, etc.) marketing in the beginning because it was easy, and by the time I had learned proper marketing, my energy and patience was spent.
Lol hahaha