Opening an English school in taiwan

Business Money
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Hi, I was invited by a moderator (almas john) to repost something i wrote in Daves Cafe last year. So here goes:

I’ve been in taiwan for about ten years now. Met and married my wife here. I worked the bushiban scene for a while, Hess and such, then did the adult programs, Global Village, TLI, finally got serious and used my MA in TESOL and got into the college and university scene. And even wrote and published some books for Caves Books. It’s been an interesting decade.

The money has always been good and sometimes great…can’t beat private one on one for 1000NT/hr.

BUT, IMHO the systems that are set up already are either non existant, restrictive or mind numbingly dull. So, my wife and I opened a school in Taichung with Taiwanese partners, created the curriculum and it was a disaster. Partners thought only of money and nothing about the system for teaching and getting results…so that didn’t last long. Tried again setting up a system in a local cram school. System great, partnership real bad. Out. Then we set up a home school in our house and had 50 kids a week, earning an income of 80K NT. We moved up to Taipei after the birth of our son and went back at it. Started a home school and when we had just 20 kids, rented a 4 story house in Taipei county, Ying Ge, the pottery place for all you who know it (for 12k/month if you believe that!). The system was good. We were good at it and 20 kids became 100 in about 1.5 years.

So, now, the next step. 100 kids maxed us out teaching wise, and maxed out the classroom space. So, we dipped heavily into our savings and went big time. Huge space in Ying Ge next to the train station. 200 ping, in a great location and we designed the layout and we have a good local reputation, and system that is flexible enough to actually get quick results and still have fun (teachers and kids). And it’s a whole new series of challenges, finding teachers, being legal, paying taxes, getting ARCs. Not a day goes by when we dont think “What have we done?” lol ((note: this isn’t so true now…the shock has worn off a bit.))

It’s been worth it. We’re in our thirties and this is the time to take a chance. Yeeha!

And last but not least, Hess just opened a kindergarten within sight! lol Although that could be a blessing in desguise IMO…

We’ll see…

anyway, anyone else take this course? open your own place? love to hear your tales. :slight_smile:

jdsmith

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Welcome aboard JD,
There are quite a few people here who have schools. Durin’s Bane runs a very successful school down in Kaohsiung, Bassman is manager (part owner?) of one in Ta-jia (Taichung), MJB has a school in Yangmei, and the head honcho Maoman recently started a school up here in Taipei.

There are some good existing threads. For example, the “Buxiban owners’ pet peeves about foreign teachers” thread in the Teaching English Forum.

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[quote=“almas john”]Welcome aboard JD,
There are quite a few people here who have schools. Durin’s Bane runs a very successful school down in Kaohsiung (Gaoxiong), Bassman is manager (part owner?) of one in Ta-jia (Taichung (Taizhong)), MJB has a school in Yangmei, and the head honcho Maoman recently started a school up here in Taipei.

There are some good existing threads. For example, the “Buxiban owners’ pet peeves about foreign teachers” thread in the Teaching English Forum.[/quote]

Oh grief, the whole partnership scene, WELCOME TO MY NIGHTMARE now! :help: On your own, good on you. I’ve been thinking about it, but in a town like Da Jia, well, I am a little scared. Sure, I already built a reasonable school already, but most of the students came in from 2 large kindergartens (owned by the :smiling_imp: ). I know that I would be able to do it, but doing it all legally might be a different story, that takes cash, and lots of it. :frowning:

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I have a local partner and it has worked out very well. She is pretty much a silent partner…I hardly ever see her.

If I could do it all over again, I would start out small and stay small.

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thanks for the welcome.

well, as I said, we started out quite small and quite off the record. I think the husband /wife team can make out profitably enough. We certainly did. But the question was always, can we get bigger and keep the quality high? So far so good.

As for the partnership thing, I wouldn’t do it again. Glad I did because we learned not to do it before it really meant something.

Staying small is ok too, but for us, we prefer trying to make the school self sustaining so that one day we won’t have to come to work everyday. :slight_smile: It would be nice if this place, and the branches that will develop would take us reliably into a Winnebago type retirement.

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[quote=“jdsmith”]

Staying small is ok too, but for us, we prefer trying to make the school self sustaining so that one day we won’t have to come to work everyday. :slight_smile:[/quote]

Chances are that you would only end up spending all your time on forumosa :s

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lol, i hear ya.

I was a slave to daves ESL chat for two years. :slight_smile:)

Much too busy for that now and have many ropes to teach the son on my off hours when we have time.

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I run my school on a very low key level and develop other businesses that I can conduct abroad. I don’t see any point in over commiting to Taiwan. Quite frankly, it is to vulnerable.

I think there is a formula for making the maximum amount of money out of a school and it doesn’t involve expansion unless you can really implement a crash hot management system that allows you to open many schools and you to make a percentage off of all of them. That just seems to go against the KISS tenet though. Keep It Simple Stupid.

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well, that is the general idea.

which leads me to another question: have any of you opened your own school, not a branch of Hess or Joy etc., and then opened branches?

And if so, whatkind of deal did you work out with the new managment, or did you run the branches yourself, from afar?

thanks

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Mmm, we started small about four years, though our growth hasn’t been as rapid as some others experienced. We have managed to build up a school and a reputation in the area we’re in.

However, we’re pondering how big we can grow…

I think we could hit about 200 students locally (no anchin ban classes though, just pure English).

But I’m vexed by the possibility of handling branches and especially finding reliable staff. In past businesses, I worked in, students quit every time there was teacher turnover… So I’m very reluctant to follow the HESS model or even the Joy School model, where T. turnover is/can be Extraordinarly HIGH.

… How have you managed this issue?

Kenneth

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That is the million dollar question. Getting started is easy enough. You, personally, work hard, be friendly, and demand excellence from yourself and build your local reputation. As for us, we did not one advertisement for two years and went from 12 kids to 100. Simply put, we worked our asses off, had good ideas, used good books and wrote the books we wanted but couldn’t find.

The next step, as we’re about double that size now, is to train a bunch of CHINESE teachers to unerstand the ins and outs of the system, why it works and such. Foreign teachers come and go and one married one, myself or you for example, can not possibly teach each and every kid that comes into the school. Ween the new parents off the “Teacher John” gossip: my wife only says “foreign teacher” when she talks to the new parents, never MY name. Anyway, the Chinese staff is what will get you prepared for a branching out. And if you can find a good long term foreign teacher, pay them a buttload to take it over, but put a big portion of that buttload in profit-sharing, not upfront salary. My monthly pay now at our big school is much lower than when we had just 80 kids, but end of the year is here, and it’s profit sharing time. That makes me smile.

In any event, the program can’t be too quirky or eccentric, too “mine”, if you expect other branches to follow it correctly. Hess and Joy have one thing going for them, a McProgram that is easy to follow.

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When you say profit share, are you talking aobut opening the books for teachers to see or based on the number of students or a bonus based on student retention/hours worked? I am curious about this because I am in the process of trying to keep top talent but don’t want to give the farm in the form of a high monthly salary.

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Opening the books for the teachers? Why not? It’s not as though they can’t figure out how much money is being made anyway. Our secretary’s boyfriend once calculated how much money he thought we were taking in! lol He was pretty close too.

It really depends on your situation. If you are in one school and it is your school then no, I don’t think you need to be so inclusive. But, if you’re talking about having a pair of teachers take over and run a branch then, by all means, let them see all the bills first, then all the special discounts, then the tutition. It’s a reality check.

Still, you can’t be zipping around in a Lexus SUV while your teachers are 100cc scooting the night away. Be fair. Open the purse strings, renegotiate their contract for a percentage of the net, payable every six months or so. I doubt they’ll work less because of it.

Read the book NUTS, about the owner of Southwest Airlines: a great, fair boss. It is inspiring to know that one can still be “in charge” and be fair and kind, in short, human to one’s employees.

Our school has a family business air about it, and we like that. Who’s in charge? Everyone, because everyone cares.

I can’t say “Give your teachers whatever they want. Make them stay. Do whatever it takes!” because even if you do that, animosity may develop between you and them,: “Why are you chatting and drinking coffee? You should be preparing your lesson!” And that would, in a word, suck.

Good luck.

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I don’t deny that it doesn’t take a brainiac to calculate what is being brought in, it is what is being sent out that is overly under calculated. Do you only profit share with your branches?

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well, as it stands now, we have only one very big school that needs to be filled up. So no branches. The idea is to use this school as the home base, train the staff here and then, hopefully next year, start shipping them out to branches.

The question I think is: am i willing to profit share with teachers? Sure, but not with just any, and not with all. Maybe when we truly are bigger we can do something like that, offer profit shairing for all, but now it’s not feasible. I would consider it to reward a great teacher who was willing to stay for a long period of time. Good teachers, albeit necessary and valued, and their salary should reflect that, can be replaced.

I however don’t think it would be wise to initially offer a teacher profit sharing, unless that teacher was well known in the community, from another school, and had a sterling reputation, and was planning on staying for a few years minimum…

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In small towns it’s not that easy, especially when everyone wants to open a buxiban. At the moment we are maxed out with local teachers, it’s kind of funny, we have extra foreign staff and the foreign teachers need more local staff so we can open more classes. We are a small town, but the sizes of the two major schools in competition with us are 1000 student and about 800 students. So, you can guess where the local teachers run to first, can’t say I blame them really.

I think, if you are big enough, profit sharing would work well, but, if there is a time when you don’t make much… I think many would say goodbye.

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Very good point. How did you get extra foreign staff way out where you are? Commuters? Wish we had that problem! lol

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When we first started we had a 20 foreign teacher limit. When the CLA took over we went down to 3. Now, with some adjustments to paperwork, we can have 9. Currently, we have 4 in town, including myself. Not one is a commuter. One will be leaving soon and won’t be replaced for 5 months or so because I want to teach more, I am getting bored. Plus, if I teach a little more then I can earn a little more.

I don’t get paid for all my teaching hours though, I put in a certain amount that I do “free”, that is included in the basic salary. Anything else I teach, well, that’s extra, but I don’t pay myself as much for those classes as what the foreign staff would get.

I’ll be on the lookout for a new head local teacher at the end of the year too. The head teacher is getting married and moving to Taipei. Actually, if anyone needs an awesome local teacher in Taipei after September, she’d be great. Her ability to do what we know is right and make the parents happy is second to none. Really sad to see her go.

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I sure wish I could find a suitable person to take over my responsibilities. I’d give him/her a salary and 10% of the take. Then I could sit at home with my thumb up my arse instead of sitting at a school with a thumb up my arse.

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What exactly are your responsibilities? Perhaps you could put out an ad and interview candidates for a management position. If you can’t find a suitable candidate, all you’ve lost is just a little of your time.