No matter if it's how a first class will go or how successful your ELT business will be, all English teachers face concerns and even fears in their career. The enourmous satisfaction of the progress of our students is sometimes marred by fears and concerns but as it turns out, these are shared by far more teachers than we can think at first. In Oxinity we've asked our teachrs and identified with their help the most recurrent ones and we offer a feasible solution that will bring peace of mind to both new and experienced teachers.
ELT Business Related Concerns
Will I be successful in my business and how long does it take to build a solid structure?
Any ELT business and career will not be successful unless we work on the core essence of it: the approach that we take to teaching and creating a highly professional teaching persona.
The approach to teaching is almost always neglected by teachers or reduced to clichés. "I am a TEFL qualified native experienced English teacher". Although this is a good starting point, it is far from shedding light on the benefits you are bringing to students and what differs you from the competition. A good teacher endorsed by arfificial intelligence that enhances learning is an argument that very few educational institutions in the world currently have.
To build a solid structure is a matter of having the right tools and planning regular actions that lead to sustainable growth.
My strength is in teaching. How do I get the students if I’m not good at sales?
You are not a salesperson and we know it. Your strengths are in the classroom and it's in your classes where you are making new clients, even if you don't realise it. If you teach to the level of excellence, if you are able to explain to your students the structure of your class and how it speeds their learning process, you are planting the seeds of a fruitful long term growth in students. Word of mouth is going to do the rest.
We know that 80% of your future students will come from the classes that you currently have. Be well prepared for them and work on your professional profile.
Students need arguments to pass to other students, so provide them with as many great content about you as possible. In Oxinity we take all this content and distribute it to your target students. That way every teacher here finds their fit in terms of clients and students.
I don’t want to be a salesperson. What if I don’t get any students?
Any teacher with some experience will tell you how often they are approached by friends of current students who recommended you to them. The question is not whether you'll get students -of course you will- but whether you'll be able to provide a good service for them and whether you'll cope with the work load it entails.
For that purpose you need a partner. Someone who would take away the administrative burden and would ensure that you have the best possible resources for the classroom. Again, we do that along with each one of our teachers.
What if I don't grow as expected?
The expected growth is reaching 20 new students in 6-7 months. This is a realistic and sustainable growth. Translated to a monthly basis, that means recruiting 2-3 students a month, which is perfectly achievable with a good action plan, consisting of good online presence and creating and sharing valuable content.
But what is valuable content? In simple words, this is content that responds to your students' requests. You have to pay attention to what your students wonder about in class and provide it to them in or after class. And if you manage to put this content in your students' pockets through WhatsApp or email, you are securing yourself continuous referral of students.
If you have a good profile, if you've created attractive content for your students and if you've managed to reach them through the channel they use, your growth will come as a consequence of consistent strategic online and offline presence.
Quite the opposite: what do I do if I have too many students and I can’t handle them all?
Although it may seems that this is far from you at this stage, you can face the consequences of fast growth sooner than expected. What then? What if you have to cope with more students and run out schedules, out of time to take care of them all, out of resources for each of their needs and progress track?
In Oxinity what a single teacher cannot cope with in terms of teaching hours is an opportunity for another teacher to get started in this business. We act as a bank of hours and for us it is very easy to find another good match for the students you can't teach. You keep the ownership of your students and you can always recuperate them, but another teacher teaches them and we all provide a great service with a great system.
What do I do in case I have dropouts?
Don't wait until you actually have dropouts to provide a solution for that. We all have dropouts and we usually know how much time is the expected training period of a student. We refer to it as a churn rate. We've achieved that our churn rate is very low, which is due to the great system that empowers us all, but still learners have also the need to stop their classes at some point. Having a bank of hours is going to rescue you from getting despaired because of a dropout. If you work on your continuous sustainable growth, you'll have support resources to get new students on board.
You have a great partner in Oxinity
And as all good partnerships, we empower each other, together we are stronger and more resourceful. Becoming an Oxinity member is all about benefits. Come join us and discover the reach of our project.