Career Tips: Self-Employed vs Franchised

When your driving instructor examinations are drawing to an end, you start really thinking of how you are going to benefit from your new career. Indeed, every trainee must decide between two options – taking out a franchise from a reputable driving school or going independent. This decision is crucial so you don’t have to be hasty. driving lessons gold coast training blog launches a series of posts dedicated to providing trainees with some insights into ways they can build their career on.

So you want to go independent…

Self-employment is more of a vocation than a way of making a living. Getting an independent operation up and running isn’t easy. So we tried to make a summary of what it would take to start up a driving instructor business on your own.

Think Backward

90% of start-ups in driving lessons gold coast business fail within their debut year of operation. The same is true with start-ups in any industry. If you still reading this post you may wish to know why.

Major reason behind failing is not knowing what you want out of your business or how you are going to get what you want. Wait a minute! You know exactly what you want, isn’t it? You want to teach people how to drive and get paid right? So you find a car, place an ad or put up a website and wait for learners blowing up your phone. But nobody calls. Or people call but never call back. Or you car’s broke down. Or you have a pupil to teach but haven’t worked out a proper lesson plan yet. Problems keep piling up until you are left confused and frustrated. Finally, you fail.

Before you even start doing anything towards building your own business you have to learn to think backward. It means you should start with your desired goal. It’s not teaching how to drive. It’s what you want to get out of it. How much can you earn in the current climate? How much can you earn in your area? How many pupils you need to achieve you financial goal? These are questions you need to answer, to name a few.

Research

One of the key things about setting you a desired goal is aligning it with reality. Start with a simple market analysis to find opportunities you could seize. First of all, you need to look at driving lessons gold coast industry as a whole.

It is very important to do a special research for your business area. You need to analyze your competitors. How many are they? What are they charging? How are they offering their services? Who are their clients? Digital Data Direct launched a valuable solution for driving instructors called Local Instructor Insights. The solution can provide you with detailed information about driving instructor business in your area.

Estimates

Based on what you’ve gleaned from your research you can reasonably set your fees and strike your selling points. You can first take an average area fee and deduct all your business expenses from it to know what your profit would be. Your expenses as a driving instructor include fuel, monthly car maintenance and repair, insurance, taxes and marketing. Final pricing will depend on how you much you can reasonable charge in your situation.

Marketing

After estimating your costs and fees you know exactly what value you are offering and at what charge. Marketing is how you telling people about it. Most common ways are placing an ad in local newspapers, business directories and launching a website. Most of your audience will be young people. So it would be smart to serve up something entertaining.

Managing day-to-day operations

Even before you start working with your first customers you need to have clear work schemes in place. How are you going to handle business phone calls? How are going to manage your schedule? What are your lesson plans? How is your accounting and financial reporting arranged? These are questions you need to answer in advance.


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