Ideas for new firm helping arriving English teachers?

HOLY CRAP! You mean she wants to do one-on-one, face-to-face? How many customers is she looking at? Where will they be located? She’s REALLY thinking of being available to jump on her scooter and zoom across town to help some schmuck by a pair of sneakers?
HOW much does she plan to charge for this? :laughing:

No offense towards you Mr.Toasty, but it seems you have had a remarkably smooth life here.
I could say that it is mostly due to your personality and how you adapt to things, maybe you had experience living in some other countries prior to coming to Taiwan. I have no idea. But in the last 3 years I have helped my school with the newbie teachers that we have hired and I can tell from both person and observation experience that not everyone has such a luxury to find a smooth start to life here. There is one newbie that came last year who we have to check on to make sure he isn’t dead yet. I don’t get it, but for some reason he only goes to work and goes home at night. The only other deviations that he makes are when he goes shopping for food and needs toiletries. It feels like he is completely homesick, but when he was given the chance to return to NY for a visit over the New Years vacation he said he would rather rot in his apt here than go back the US.

So everyone has their own different story here in Taiwan, some can’t take it and break down after a few months, and other make this glorious life here and love ever second of the adventure that they have. So even if this doesn’t appeal to some one like you doesn’t exactly mean that it won’t appeal to a new or perspective teacher/ foreigner. If you can provide a centralized source of decent, accurate up to date information that is available with guided help from friendly trust worthy locals and maybe even some other 外國人 then why not try.
Just because something is free doesn’t mean that is any better or more informative or available than something that you might have to pay for. :slight_smile:
Who knows maybe if 5 years she will have created something that works where others failed, and picks up where the free service leave off, and it will be one of those advertisement banners at the top and bottom of this site. :stuck_out_tongue:

Steady on chaps. Let’s not scare away one of the few female posters we have.

There are quite a few situations where it would be nice to have an assistant along to help out. A chap would sometimes rather pay for a service than keep bothering one’s friends, and co-workers.

And, let’s be honest. If we had had this service back in our day, half of us would still be single. :wink:
The hostility to this business idea comes from the realization (perhaps subconsciously) that:
“Damn! I didn’t need to get married. I could have just hired someone to help me.”

Oh, and you MIGHT just want to point out that there’s this website called Forumosa.com that provides answers to pretty much ANY question a newbie might want to ask.

And its free! :thumbsup:
I have no quibbles with the idea – its one that has been mined exhaustively on various websites over the years, after all, some a lot more successfully than others. In the case of Forumosa, it works quite well, has a good bit of advertising revenue to pay for it, etc.
But your friend just doesn’t seem to have ANY kind of business model whatsoever. She wants to SELL information that’s already widely available. HOW does she plan to compete with free information? I just don’t get it.

HOLY CRAP! You mean she wants to do one-on-one, face-to-face? How many customers is she looking at? Where will they be located? She’s REALLY thinking of being available to jump on her scooter and zoom across town to help some schmuck by a pair of sneakers?
HOW much does she plan to charge for this? :laughing:[/quote]

I am not saying she is going to go riding all over Taiwan like a mobile Triple A office or something to help some goof ball buy a pair of shoes. Her grandfather owns a little shop that has been empty for years, and she was planning to set up work there. :ponder: Actually maybe it would be like a AAA service, and I am sure she wont do this alone. Like every customer service business it would start small and grow larger. At some point she might even branch out into dealing with Taiwanese who need help finding an doing who knows what. There are all kinds of these specialized businesses all over the world. But for now it is just and idea that is taking form.

And there are several here too. Hundreds, in fact. Taiwanese and foreign. Send a PM to Tainan Cowboy, for example. I can put your friend in touch with several others, too. They’re all doing pretty well. Thing is, they tend to be specialists, with specialist knowledge, catering to people who have money. You friend doesn’t sound like she has any specialist knowledge, and she sounds like she wants to cater to people without money.
Where’s the angle? I just don’t see it.

I hope it works out for her. Here are some things I would recommend:

  1. She has to have great Chinese. I mean like fucking awesome Chinese. I deal with way too many people who can only describe and know things in their own small little world. Where if you don’t know the exact term, as they know it, they will not know what you are talking about.
  2. Be able to use a Taiwanese telephone book. They’re free and great for finding stuff after you find the 1 out of 5 that actualy does sell what they advertise in the telephone book.
  3. A sense of direction and a magical ability to use google maps and know exactly where things are, how to get there and how Taiwanese will layout streets.
  4. An upfront personality that lays out that she needs to get paid and this is not a free service. If they think their school is going to take care of them they need to think again. Make sure she knows how to explain that they might be using 好聽話 and what it means.

She could approach independent bushibans and possibly the big chain school head offices offering this service for their western teachers in return for a monthly retainer. The new teachers could either visit her office or contact her on skype if they needed help, and she would sort out their visa, health check, accommodation, cellphone etc when they first arrive. That might work if she sells herself well - reduce teacher turnover, no need to worry about teacher culture shock problems and communication problems with school management etc. I could see bushiban owners buying into that, particularly the smaller, Taiwanese managed independents.

[quote=“sandman”]Oh, and you MIGHT just want to point out that there’s this website called Forumosa.com that provides answers to pretty much ANY question a newbie might want to ask.

And its free! :thumbsup:
I have no quibbles with the idea – its one that has been mined exhaustively on various websites over the years, after all, some a lot more successfully than others. In the case of Forumosa, it works quite well, has a good bit of advertising revenue to pay for it, etc.
But your friend just doesn’t seem to have ANY kind of business model whatsoever. She wants to SELL information that’s already widely available. HOW does she plan to compete with free information? I just don’t get it.[/quote]

Not arguing with you that Formosa isn’t a great place, because it is and is very helpful and has a huge members list. But how many are active daily users, and how many are willing to give a weekend or miss a day of work to go to Keelung from Kaohsiung, or Taitung from Taoyuan, or even one of little mountain towns to help a lost n00bie find his way home?

There are people who I hang out with every weekend and do stuff with when free but I am not willing to go out and help them find their way home, or go with them to rent an apartment.

[quote=“sandman”]And there are several here too. Hundreds, in fact. Taiwanese and foreign. Send a PM to Tainan Cowboy, for example. I can put your friend in touch with several others, too. They’re all doing pretty well. Thing is, they tend to be specialists, with specialist knowledge, catering to people who have money. You friend doesn’t sound like she has any specialist knowledge, and she sounds like she wants to cater to people without money.
Where’s the angle? I just don’t see it.[/quote]

Again as I said before she is JUST NOW starting to think of this. It is RUFF idea that has not even gone past researching its potential.

Me. But the kind of person requiring that kind of help would most probably have NO way of actually paying me for it. Even if I was charging less than a 7-11 clerk.

[quote=“Okami”]I hope it works out for her. Here are some things I would recommend:

  1. She has to have great Chinese. I mean like fucking awesome Chinese. I deal with way too many people who can only describe and know things in their own small little world. Where if you don’t know the exact term, as they know it, they will not know what you are talking about. [/quote]

I would imagine that she has exceptionally fucking awesome Chinese, being that she has been speaking it for 28 years. LOL
She is the one Taiwanese friend that I am willing to bother as part of my daily routine if I need help. Too bad it took me 3 years to find her.

This is actually a decent idea, I didn’t think about this. There are a lot of smaller buxibans and what not that might not have the money and time to do these services, and even some of the large chains like HESS (although it is one of their selling points) that might be willing to refer this service to a third party so that they have one less responsibility to the teachers.

To start with she needs to approach some buxibans and pitch her idea to them. She can then get an idea of whether there is a demand for her services. If not, she’s lost nothing. However, I have a feeling that there would be a demand for what she has to offer. You just have to read some of the stories on this site from teachers whose buxiban owners didn’t even know how to process their ARCs to realise that there is a need. She’d have to be in contact with new teachers before they arrive in Taiwan, explaining what documentation they need to bring. It’s also pretty clear that the opinion of a lot of Taiwanese buxiban owners of western teachers is often pretty low, so they may be more than happy to have someone take the day-to-day person management off their hands.

She could pitch it as - ‘you just worry about running your business, I’ll deal with the whinging of those ungrateful little western bastards.’ Perhaps phrased a little more gently.

That could work. At least the Buxiban owners (might) have some money to pay for it. Would they WANT to is another matter entirely.

Sandman I am just curious how much do you think she will be charging that a normal person who doesn’t blow through their pay check on beer a buying the most expensive stuff for the apartment can’t afford to pay a small service fee?

I am really curious about this. What do you think would be a fair fee? Even though you 100% don’t believe that it can work. I just for shits-n-giggles, throw out your fair and responsible fee for helping a first timer go to the hospital, to help them get their visas in order, to registrar for various things, etc etc.

Dude, you’re the one who knows her, not me. I have no idea what she will be charging. Why not just ask her? I don’t “100%” believe it or disbelieve it. I’m still waiting to see a sales pitch – what she’s hoping to sell, to whom, how and how she plans to persuade people she has something they need to buy. I haven’t seen anything yet that I would consider saleable, really. I see a lot of “stuff” but the problem is, its already available – easily and for free – without having to rely on the opinion or expertise of just single individual who might or might not have the faintest idea what she’s talking about. Why would anyone be prepared to pay for that?
Its not a question of affording or not affording. Its a question of whether her service is seen as needed.
I mean, I’ve (and I sincerely hope your friend has too, if she’s at ALL serious about this) seen plenty of “where can I…” “how do I …” questions on this site. They’re generally answered many times by people who actually know what they’re taking about. Its free, and the askers seldom need to wait for more than a few minutes. What can your friend offer that’s better to, say, Joe Schmoe down there in Douliou?
What’s your friend’s area of expertise, exactly?

Ok Sandman, I can see that you can’t find the golden path for this idea and where it is leading. Granted that this is very broad idea that for most people they can’t find the need for it. In all honesty this idea seriously only came to her Monday because she was complaining that she is getting tired of her current job working as a mid-level manager in a company that does laser printing and etching for companies that want to put their logo on about anything down to a shirt button size, and up to a billboard. ( And by the by she makes close to NT100-120K a month so she isn’t thinking that us foreign teachers are making some huge amount of money, she actually thinks we are under paid)

Anyway back on topic, the idea for this company is basically some scratches on a napkin, a couple hours of searching Google, listening to me and a couple other teachers complaining about our early days, and my posting this here on Forumosa. Thats why at this point there is no business plan, no hook, no angle, no golden path. Right now all we have are a pile of ideas and a dream to follow.

The reason that I asked you what do you think is a fair price for this is because you keep saying no money no money no money. I just wanted to know (and here is the hypothetical part) IF you were new to Taiwan with the only Chinese that you know is Ni hao, Kungfu and Jackie Chan, you got suckered into a school that was less than the advertisement and far from what the recruiter said it would be, your coworkers helped you only when convenient for them, and the loa ban could care less as long as you showed up on time, taught the little cash cow kiddies, made them money. And you found this company and they offered full one on one assistance with all the things that you needed. Like getting your ARC squared away, getting you out of the hostel, getting you set up at a bank, all this good stuff. What do you think would be a fair price to compensate these people?

And I am asking this with a completely open mind and just wanting to hear your opinion.

I have seen the same thing proposed by many different people, it’s not viable, there’s no expense money in Taiwan, that’s the type of people who would pay for this. Most foreigners in Taiwan are tight as a duck’s ars%.

Many buxiban owners won’t even pay for teachers books and materials…they are the stingiest of all.

I guess she is bored and stressed and want’s a change, thats understandable. But it also stems from a crucial misunderstanding that they type of foreigners who come to Taiwan are independent travellers and more resourceful than even many Taiwanese.

I have no idea whatsoever. Like I said, why pay when you can get it just as easily for nothing? That’s all. If your friend thinks she can get cash for doing it, then good for her, and she should go for it. I don’t care either way, as it totally doesn’t affect me. I’m just, like you, tossing ideas around. No need to get antsy just because mine don’t jibe with yours.
You’ll find this almost impossible to believe, I know, but I HAVE been known to be wrong. Well, once.

[quote=“Chububobcat”]No offense towards you Mr.Toasty, but it seems you have had a remarkably smooth life here.
I could say that it is mostly due to your personality and how you adapt to things, maybe you had experience living in some other countries prior to coming to Taiwan. I have no idea. p[/quote]

Well, thanks for the compliment, Chubu. :slight_smile: However, I have to tell you things weren’t especially smooth for me from the get-go. I arrived here on a contract from an agent that turned out to be too good to be true. Airport pickup didn’t materialize, job was gone and we were on our own. More than our fair share of initial bumps in the road were experienced, but none of them would have been remedied with a pay service for info and advice, even it were available. It was just a matter of getting a job and we did so in short order.

If anything, I may be somewhat a-typical in terms of initial hiccups experienced, but I still niether required nor sought the type of service your friend wants to offer. The typical newcomer is even more unlikely IMO to pay for what really isn’t needed, especially since all aspects of the process have improved greatly since I arrived and, additionally, more info is available than ever before.

Again, please let your friend know these points, regardless of our difference in opinion. Your friend should know that the following has been suggested:

  1. The target market for this business-- not merely teachers, but newly arrived ones at that-- is extremely small (guaranteed to be smaller than your friend likely believes)

  2. The market is shrinking, not expanding

  3. There are already tons of free sources of help and advice already available-- employers, agents, friends, coworkers, websites, hotlines and publications. The overwhelming majority of new teachers have not tried to, do not now, nor likely ever will seek out fee-charging, third-party consultants for something as banal as teaching efl in Taiwan.

I’ll also reluctantly have to say nay, for the reasons given by others here. Even looking at the thread title I was already saying nay. And unlike Sandman, I have never been wrong.*

*At least since after the time on the school bus when I insisted to everyone that they were mistaken and that a “laxative” was actually something to help you go to sleep.