Human Resource System - help

[carlamo]

Hi all,

My wife (a PE teacher) and I (software engineer) have over the past year started a business teaching children to code in our local area. We started as per Unscripted says, and simply threw up a landing page, posted to some facebook groups and took deposits for bookings from parents to secure their child's place. We then knew the market wanted this service and so proceeded to invest in the business. We started with 1 class, but have since grown to 3 classes each with 12 children and now we have a 20+ waiting list. Currently we net around $1200 a month on this venture, while still doing other work.

We are now looking to expand and I am in the process of systemising the business as much as possible (invoicing, class registers, onboarding, social media etc). We are obviously aware that a major drawback of the business is it's link to our time and so the only way to expand the physical aspect of the business is to employ staff.

We have a 17 year old helper who we pay currently, but we need to hire someone to now lead a new class as we want to explore the viability of disconnecting the time aspect and using someone else's time to deliver the class. After this, and the systemising, we are then looking to expand into other areas (other side of the city and then other cities completely).

Another aspect of the business I am exploring (but I believe is pretty much saturated by now), is the online aspect. Online coding classes are a dime a dozen, don't deliver on their promise to children and I believe this is why our club has been so successful so far. I am however exploring the prospect and selling our lesson plans online to both parents and teachers (maybe a netflix model or pay per lesson plan), but this is still an unproven route.

I would appreciate advice any of you could give me, including any personal experience of doing something similar.
Also what are people's opinions on this?

Much appreciate any help you can give.

Carl

 

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[carlamo]

After a bit more thought on this, I am going to try things out and see what works. We have already interviewed someone and I instantly got more of a feel for what we are after.

I have so much work to do on this, to try and scale via magnitude.

 

[Sebzmaniac]

Hi all,

My wife (a PE teacher) and I (software engineer) have over the past year started a business teaching children to code in our local area. We started as per Unscripted says, and simply threw up a landing page, posted to some facebook groups and took deposits for bookings from parents to secure their child's place. We then knew the market wanted this service and so proceeded to invest in the business. We started with 1 class, but have since grown to 3 classes each with 12 children and now we have a 20+ waiting list. Currently we net around $1200 a month on this venture, while still doing other work.

We are now looking to expand and I am in the process of systemising the business as much as possible (invoicing, class registers, onboarding, social media etc). We are obviously aware that a major drawback of the business is it's link to our time and so the only way to expand the physical aspect of the business is to employ staff.

We have a 17 year old helper who we pay currently, but we need to hire someone to now lead a new class as we want to explore the viability of disconnecting the time aspect and using someone else's time to deliver the class. After this, and the systemising, we are then looking to expand into other areas (other side of the city and then other cities completely).

Another aspect of the business I am exploring (but I believe is pretty much saturated by now), is the online aspect. Online coding classes are a dime a dozen, don't deliver on their promise to children and I believe this is why our club has been so successful so far. I am however exploring the prospect and selling our lesson plans online to both parents and teachers (maybe a netflix model or pay per lesson plan), but this is still an unproven route.

I would appreciate advice any of you could give me, including any personal experience of doing something similar.
Also what are people's opinions on this?

Much appreciate any help you can give.

Carl

Nice

 

[carlamo]

Another update on this. We have opened two more locations and have some contracted staff delivering these classes along with student helpers. We are hitting a limit with our time at the moment managing all the emails, chasing payments and doing our day jobs still. We tried automating a lot of the parent communications, however we found that numbers started dropping off as the parents seem to want the personal touch.

Our next steps are to digitise our class registers, payment and student concept cards so that we can free up some time, allowing us to expand further. So far we have around two years worth of coding lessons and lots of various topics for ages 6 to 12.

My wife and I are determined to get to a point were we can leave our day jobs and pursue this to the full, however whats held us back so far is around £30k of 5 year loans we took on as part of a house extension, so we are paying the price now for the luxury. I don't regret doing it as our house has a low mortgage principal still, but the pain is real and has held us back from expanding quicker.

We are looking forward to the day when we both work full time on this and can go nationwide or even global with this as we have a USP with others don't seem to have or can easily replicate. The main issue with this business is scale, however I do believe if we systemise the creation and running of new locations, it will be huge. All we want to do is break free from the slave grind and have the autonomy to do what we wish with our children. Not going to lie, I think this is the hardest i've ever worked.

 

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[Jobless]

No real advice, but I encourage you to fight on. Seems like a service in demand. Good point on the 'personal touch'. Chasing payments suck, it's not where you want to be spending your time.