They say teaching is a seasonal job — September always opens a season for new careers and businesses in education.
Many of us, teachers, think about starting a business several times within an academic year, when we work for others, when we have too many students to be on time to teach them, when we just want more. Although it often looks easier than it actually is, starting an online school can make your life exciting, full of adventures and new friends, so eventually it may be worth it. But may be not :-) business is always a risk, before investing your money, emotions and time, decide if it is really the time.
5 signs it’s time to start your own online school
You have too many students
People queue to have lessons with you, you still teach individual students, but mostly groups. You probably have a waiting list.
You are more excited than afraid
Feeling a bit scarred about starting new projects is okay unless the fear freezes you and prevents you from taking certain actions to give it a go.
You have at least one other teacher you trust enough to invite them in your team
First thing about forming a team is trust. Trust should be all around — experience, professionalism, human qualities et cetera. Treat teams like marriages and never do business with people you don’t trust. Important: you should first make a great team, only then you may make great friends, not vice a versa.
You can count
Seriously, no laughing. Learn how to do the math correctly. Example: never count how much a lesson in your online school would cost basing on how much you pay to teachers in your team only. Remember other expanses like Zoom subscription or hosting and other things.
You are ready to fail
It might seem that everything is under control and if it doesn’t work out you will just return to your private students and it’s going to be okay. It is not that simple. First of all in terms of financial side — if you invest money you can lose it and you should be fully aware of it. Do you invest your own savings or do you take a loan in a bank? Will you regret if you fail? Will you be able to return the money into your bank if you fail? Think about it before taking actions, you should be as safe as possible in both financial and phycological contexts. it is not easy to overcome a failure, so get a friend, a mom or a mentor ready to support you.
Important things you need for your educational project
If you are still reading this, you are probably ready to play business, let’s see what is “building my online school” starter kit is :-)
Students
If you follow this simple rule “find people, sell them your service”, you will definitely succeed! The question is where to find them? Who is your target audience? What service they need? The secret is people don’t always want what they want, so you will have to learn how to guess it. Of course, they certainly know that they want to learn English, the point is they don’t know which course to take, how to start and how learn a language fast — this is your stage to perform on! Make an offer, be nice, smile, get them!
Teachers
Find soulmates, people who share same values as you. If you focus on finding professionals with same spirit as yours who would be ready to build something great together, you will never be worried about things like “Oh my God, they are going to leave my school and take clients with them, they will leave nothing to me” — don’t think about it, think about how to form a great team.
Content
Choose interactive and beautiful content, efficient courses and lessons on popular and viral topics — people love talking about news, TV shows and about themselves. Some of the content you may find helpful:
1) Memories, Narrative Tenses — a lesson to revise narrative tenses and talk about memories, great to start the new academic year
2) All Conditionals — conditionals are challenging for students of all levels, this lesson will help you figure out the differences and practise the skill of building conditional sentences
3) CAE TEST — if you or your students prepare for this exam, this lesson will help you to train and practise
4) Appearance, Comparatives — train comparisons in the context of appearance and enjoy the engaging and beautiful exercises
5) Experience — the lesson is dedicated to life experience and will be super good to start a course with a new student or a group
6) Applying for a job overseas — this lesson is suitable for young specialists who aim to build career overseas, the exercises will help prepare for a dream job interview
Discover more on Amazy Community.
Would you like to start your online project? What prevents you from doing it? Why haven’t you started yet? Share your thoughts.
EXPERT OPINION
Hey everyone, my name is Ekaterina and I started my own language school back in 2010. I had no investors, no plan, nothing. Only my enthusiasm and passion about teaching. Today my school is a team (it’s more like a community) of 200 teachers, who teach around 1500 lessons a month, strong management department and a nice office with a modern coffee machine :-) I’m happy to share some thoughts about it!
Starting projects is always challenging, especially when it comes to changing your role from a teacher into an entrepreneur. First and most important thing you should realise you are not just a teacher anymore, which means you need to stop thinking as a teacher and you need to start thinking as a business owner. As simple as that, but it’s not as easy to accept as it may seem.
When you make decisions, think about your team, clients and the prospects your business will get because of it. How will it influence my business and what results will it bring in a year? Ask yourself such questions when planning and taking actions.
Secondly, be ready to wait until the seeds grow. Fast profit is mostly about scams, not real things. It’s okay if you don’t become self-sufficient in a year, two and even three.
Finally, love what you do. It is always very clear how sincere you are about your job. Your team sees it and your clients do. If you do not love teaching or managing business (including crisis management which is quite stressful) or making sales, then don’t go there.
Success won’t be easy and it won’t be fast, without love you won’t survive.
That’s all by now!
Stay Amazing <3
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