Paul_Polejowski
New Contributor
Hi everyone!
It's my first post here, so I'll start with a bit of a background story.
In 2017, I graduated from the uni (I'm from Poland, by the way) – I studied English Philology, and straight out of uni, I started working as a freelance English teacher (I had both my own students and cooperated with language schools on B2B contracts).
Soon I realized that building a personal brand may be a good choice. I decided to specialize and target myself in a niche of teaching adult learners online. I also decided "to cover more of the market" by getting into a franchise of a big language school specialized in teaching English to kids.
Cutting to the chase – the personal brand was a good choice. My calendar was fully booked with new customers about three weeks after starting my first Facebook Ads campaign. The money was decent, but being a newly married young man, I quickly had enough of working mostly early in the morning and late at night (as those are the times when most adults have time to upskill themselves, before and after regular working hours), while my wife was sitting at the kitchen table watching YouTube videos.
When it comes to teaching adults, I got burned out (yeah, I know, I should "man up"
) after some time, and the franchise idea was a complete disaster.
As the personal brand was doing great, I soon realized that something branded as myself doesn't scale up well. I decided to create a brand of my own online language school for adults – but since that moment, everything went south. Basically, year after year, it's getting worse – there are no new students, old students are resigning, etc. I took the strategy of working "on" my company, not "in" my company, so I hired freelancers to help me with customers and marketing, but basically, things that used to work won't work now. It's getting harder and harder to get both new customers (as people are returning to offices after the pandemic's over, and there's a problem with high inflation, so people basically have less and less money to spend on self-development. It is understandable, as it is at the top of the pyramid of needs, so it's the first thing that people try to save on) and to find good teachers.
After those last 6 years, I'm sick and tired of this business, I don't feel it anymore as I used to. I invested a lot of money and time in marketing, the website, etc., so I don't want to just flush it all down the toilet. I've got some ideas, and I'm curious about what someone else with an outside perspective and more business experience would do in my shoes:
It's my first post here, so I'll start with a bit of a background story.
In 2017, I graduated from the uni (I'm from Poland, by the way) – I studied English Philology, and straight out of uni, I started working as a freelance English teacher (I had both my own students and cooperated with language schools on B2B contracts).
Soon I realized that building a personal brand may be a good choice. I decided to specialize and target myself in a niche of teaching adult learners online. I also decided "to cover more of the market" by getting into a franchise of a big language school specialized in teaching English to kids.
Cutting to the chase – the personal brand was a good choice. My calendar was fully booked with new customers about three weeks after starting my first Facebook Ads campaign. The money was decent, but being a newly married young man, I quickly had enough of working mostly early in the morning and late at night (as those are the times when most adults have time to upskill themselves, before and after regular working hours), while my wife was sitting at the kitchen table watching YouTube videos.
When it comes to teaching adults, I got burned out (yeah, I know, I should "man up"
) after some time, and the franchise idea was a complete disaster.As the personal brand was doing great, I soon realized that something branded as myself doesn't scale up well. I decided to create a brand of my own online language school for adults – but since that moment, everything went south. Basically, year after year, it's getting worse – there are no new students, old students are resigning, etc. I took the strategy of working "on" my company, not "in" my company, so I hired freelancers to help me with customers and marketing, but basically, things that used to work won't work now. It's getting harder and harder to get both new customers (as people are returning to offices after the pandemic's over, and there's a problem with high inflation, so people basically have less and less money to spend on self-development. It is understandable, as it is at the top of the pyramid of needs, so it's the first thing that people try to save on) and to find good teachers.
After those last 6 years, I'm sick and tired of this business, I don't feel it anymore as I used to. I invested a lot of money and time in marketing, the website, etc., so I don't want to just flush it all down the toilet. I've got some ideas, and I'm curious about what someone else with an outside perspective and more business experience would do in my shoes:
- Sell the brand – I've got a complete branding package, domain, website (which also allows creating VOD courses), social media accounts, etc. I'd probably get at least around $4,500-$5,000 for the complete package. Definitely not enough to lead a comfortable life until my last days, but enough to start a new business/side hustle – my idea is a marketing agency for small local businesses (hairdressers, barbers, beauty salons, etc.).
- Utilize what I built in terms of my social media reach, website traffic, newsletter, etc., and my marketing skills, and start an affiliate marketing program recommending English language courses delivered by the British Council and language learning apps such as Babbel. Also, let in Google Ads on my page and try to earn from the traffic.
- Switch the business model from delivering live language classes to providing VOD language courses. There are some companies on the market that do that, and based on the opinions and recommendations, there are people willing to pay for such products if they are priced right.
- Combine options 2 and 3 together, so utilize the traffic and my assets to recommend outside services that are linked to the profile of the business (learning apps, live classes provided by different school etc.) and at the same time also promote my product (VOD language courses).
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