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00:00:04
today we are going to talk about some very interesting topic about teaching entrepreneurship and what it is and how to become um the owner of your own teaching business and that's a very important thing that we just talked about 5 seconds ago um in the breakroom is that you have to change your mindset to from just having you know oh I want some site students I want to get some earn some little cash we are going to talk about changing your mindset to become an enterpreneur and uh to treat what you do to teach treat cheating

00:00:37
teaching oh my God that's a mouthful to teach to cheat oh no to treat teaching as a business and how you're going to do that okay let me share my screen and we're going to take a look at my presentation right so here we are um so this is me Pina mlov you've seen some information about me um there earlier um I'm not going to talk much about me let's not waste time on that the first thing I want to know is where you are right now what stage you are on what kind of people we have here with us are

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you a new teacher maybe you have very little experience have you just started working for an online school or maybe just a school organization maybe you work with a platform do you already have some um personal individual students maybe you who have already started working independently or maybe some of us already have their own thriving teaching business let's see what kind of audience we have here and maybe this will give us an idea of what kind of things we should focus on more please scan the C code and go on a poll it will

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take you a few seconds while you are at it the uh QR code is there on the um left of the screen so it's still there let me break down what exactly I'm going to talk about I have have divided my talk into four parts so these are the four things we are going to focus on the first is understanding Independence what exactly it is what does it mean to go independent what does it mean to start your own teaching business and is it even for you because honestly maybe a bit controversially it's not for

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everyone so we will see if it's for you the next one are going to be first steps to Independence what are the very first things you need to do if you want to go independent and have your own teaching business then we're going to talk about some business foundations what things you need to consider when you are already independent what kind of things to focus on and these are things that a lot of people you know they don't know about or they forget to consider and they're very important and finally we're

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going to move on to competition and growth and this is something that will come a bit later uh you know in your career path and something that people who already have their teaching business will really enjoy listening to so let's take a look at some poll results and see what kind of people we have here with us just a [Music] second here we go yes okay so the majority work for a school or an online platform 50% exactly the half then we have a few people working for a school and having some personal students okay some teaching

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their students in dependently and some already have their thriving teaching business I do hope that today's talk um is going to be uh really interesting to everyone and even if you already have your own teaching business I'm going to give you some tips and some advice that you might not have considered and provide some answers to questions that you might have been buzzing in your head okay thank you um let's go back to the presentation okay here we are so to begin with understanding Independence what it

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is we are going to address fundamental question why even become an independent teacher and is it for you um it's not only about creating some you know extra income getting some cash you know it's about creating a sustainable business that aligns with your values with your experience with your live goals and this is something that um you need to consider uh if you already work for a school platform you probably know that there are certain advantages to doing that but there will be things that you

00:04:36
sacrifice when you work for a school or a platform or any organization so let's take a look at what they are the first benefit obviously is regular employment benefits so these are things like holiday pay Seck leave maternity leave if you're officially employed of course uh regular pay so you do not need to worry about that there is some Financial stability and security connected to it the next part is simplified student acquisition which means that the company the school organization they take over

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the pain of looking for new students for you and you don't have to Market yourself you don't have to look for you know where do I find the students they do that for you and one more thing is that schools organizations they give you an opportunity to teach groups or even get into corporate education which you know can be real hard sometimes to do on your own we will talk about how to do that later but this is something that for example less experienced teachers um will love because they can get this

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experience of working with groups or doing corporate education doing business English I don't know doing kind of um extracurricular things speaking clubs you know these are very important things to have experience with and finally professional community support this is invaluable especially for younger or sorry about the word less experienced l let's say teachers um this means that a good school a good or organization will often arrange certain training for you you will have regular teachers meetings

00:06:11
you will have support from your director of studies from your more experienced senior colleagues and um this helps you grow it really boosts your professional growth as a teacher and these things are really hard to find on your own sometimes so we will talk about how to uh leverage that later but this is something that is really valuable that you get now what do you sacrifice what are the drawbacks of working for a school if you do work for a school you will know the first one is usually lower wages with fixed rates and it's

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extremely hard to negotiate the raise some sometimes you will get you know the regular annual raise or you know something like that but once you are are working on that fixed trade it's virtually impossible to negotiate a raise I'm talking from personal experience of myself and my colleagues um another thing is limited control over work conditions uh the schools organizations will usually dictate when you work and who you work with and so you do not really have a say in that unfortunately um can you take a break

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can you I don't know go on holiday and when to do that those are things I'm talking about next is extra administrative work and especially if you work with children you will have to you know fill out some kind of um progress report cards uh you will have to communicate with parents not that you don't have to do that working independently but this is more standardized and you don't have a saying when this happens and how this happens so maybe you will have a teachers parents meeting or you will have to call

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them and talk about their child um filling in attendance sheets you know a lot of these things and um surprisingly these things are not inor ated in your pay usually these are extra things you do without compensation and they are just part of your work you are just paid for teaching you're not paid for this but you have to do this when you work for a school um and finally reduce flexibility in teaching methods um schools organizations they usually have to provide a standardized um quantifiable experience

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to the customers to their clients and when they Market themselves they usually advertise you know the courses specific course books specific results and so you will generally have to follow a curriculum that is set for you there will be a plan there will be you know set assessments and if your students work at a different pace um it will not benefit them because they have to you have to rush them to achieve those results and also working with chorus books that you don't like maybe they do not work for your particular students

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needs maybe you want to do creative work do your own exercises extra kind of practice I don't know fillers and those kind of activities they are usually discouraged you do not really have time for that and although on paper your company may say well we encourage teacher creativity and things like that in practice this is often not so and even frowned upon so those are the things it may look now judging by all this that there are more disadvantages than advantages and you might think why would anyone work for an organization

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school or a platform well the thing is that this is not just numbers every uh Point here has a certain value has a certain weight that is determined by you what is important to you and what things matter to you more than the others if you are as I've said many times before if you are a um a less experienced teacher just starting on your path these advantages will definitely outweigh all the disadvantages it gives you experience it gives you support growth it gives you students and you have security if you

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don't want you know the pain of having your own teaching business if you don't want to grow and you're fine with where you are that's valid because today's world values High Achievers and ambition but I don't think it's important it's not for everyone and you are valid where you are and if you enjoy just you know working for a school they have all their responsibility and you just come to teach and yes you do some extra things but that's fine for you that's all right

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that this is just not for you it's okay and you don't have to feel bad about not you know striving for you know some some unattainable goals or whatever but let's take a look at who is this for after all so why do you need to choose independent and these questions do you value personal freedom in teaching approach do you want to decide what you do in class what kind of materials you use who you students are then it's for you do you want to control over a student selection and work schedule do you want to know

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when you work do you want to choose when you go on a holiday when you have a break when you reschedule the lessons or when you can cancel them do you want to choose exact particular people and say no to the ones you don't like this is for you and finally if you really want to boost your income if you want Financial Independence if you want to increase your Revenue this is also for you so with that aside let's move on to the next part first steps to Independent okay so the first steps are the first four

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questions that you will need to ask yourself and mind you I'm going to talk about uh very practical things that you might need to consider that you can just sit down and write down and put it all on paper and take a look at what can happen you know what you're going to do so uh hopefully this will help so the first thing what aspects of teaching bring you the most satisfaction um so why is this important to ask yourself what kind of answers you can elicit from yourself uh first if you like creating materials for example if

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you love creating certain Co tailor made resources you can focus on developing these resources and courses and marketing them uh if you like grammar explanation standardized kind of tests and lessons why not work with exam preparation if you strive that if you're a very structured person that likes to plan things and deliver them if you you know thrive on speaking activities and having fun and talking a lot why not do speaking clubs and uh presentation training I don't know and working on

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those things so this will help you narrow sort of down what you are good at what you enjoy and when you enjoy what do this increases the value for everyone and it gives you job satisfaction and you know it makes lives happier for you and your students as well okay what kind of students do you connect with best um consider age groups uh do you like working with kids or maybe teens or maybe adults and I beg you do not mix very like different things you can't teach everything to everyone you have to

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focus on one thing and to not worry about you know not having the opportunity for more more clients the right clients will be there there are what 8 million people on this planet I don't know how many people live in your area but working online is a thing so you will get your students when you do not teach everything to everyone you do not stretch yourself too thin and you can focus on exact kind of target audience and deliver materials for them and then you know it saves time really okay so age groups what levels you find

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feel comfortable working with if you do not feel comfortable working with Advanced levels focus on beginners you can specifically Target beginner levels and say I am best at helping people achieve you know um great success on the lower levels I can teach you to speak and feel comfortable in everyday survival kind of situations when you travel within three months you know this is something that you can think of um uh what kind of professionals are they do you enjoy working with business people maybe creative people maybe you enjoy um

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I don't know teens you know as an age group so that's that's number two number three how much time can you dedicate to building your business and this is specifically ties in with question number four what's your minimum viable income so let's look at number four first and that will bring us to number three um you need to calculate how much money you need to earn every month uh sit down and think about your minimum monthly expenses so how much money you spend on on your rent on your groceries

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on food uh include emergency uh funds there so if you go if you're sick for example for a week um you know can you take a break if you want to go on holiday uh how much money do you need to put aside every month for that are you paying mortgage for example so these things should be calculated and then you will get a sum of how much money you need every month and then think of how many hours you can work every day we're just starting here we're not scaling or anything we're working on we're talking

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about one-on-one lessons so how many hours can you work in a day divide the sum by the hours you can work in a month and you will get your um your fee basically you will get your hourly fee so this is the easiest way to calculate how much money you need to earn this can be your target but you do not have to quit your job immediately and this is something important to understand you do not have to go to C turkey and just quit and I'm going independent now do it gradually do not force yourself into

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this you can get one student uh on a weekend then you know get two more and then gradually you will you know take less hours working few hours working for the school organizational platform and then gradually you can completely go independent take it slow uh know your target income goal how much money you need to earn to feel comfortable to feel secure and then gradually go there um okay so we are going to look now at um specific steps you can take that I took that I recommend others to take uh

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when you start um so you've decided to go independent you've calculated your hourly rates you've decided you know yes I'm going to do that I want to find my students so how do you find the students uh first tweak your offer you need to understand what exactly you're offering them so they know what to expect from you uh I said before choose the age the levels you feel comfortable with what aspects you are good at uh it can be exam preparation for teenss business English for professionals General

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English for adults you know it will be specific for you this is not a niche we're not talking about niching it or narrowing it too much down this is just specifying what exactly you do it's not too narrow don't worry then a thing that may you know may feel uncomfortable and that you know some people forget about it they don't know they can do this you can this is the thing that always brings students um and it has happened every time when I recommended this to uh new you know teacher prur tell everybody if

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people don't know that you a teacher and that you are open to new students how will you get them so make it uh public make it known to everyone you can make a post about it on social media if you have Instagram make a post about it make a story about it write it in your bio then ask your friends to repost it or to post it on their stor saying this is my friend she's a fantastic teacher or he's my uh colleague he's a fantastic teacher he has some uh time for new students now highly recommend uh these first Warm

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referrals that you get from the people this Word of Mouth it always works wonders and another thing is you can also ask your existing students to do that or your old students so people you worked with in the past and they're no longer your students but they feel gratitude towards you you can text them and say hey I'm looking for new students um I know I remember that we had great time together like we worked fantastically uh if you have any friends uh who are willing to study who are looking for a teacher uh could you

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recommend me or you can just say hey it just if it's comfortable for you no no pressure can you post about me on social media and saying yes this was my teacher uh I likeed studying with her recommend her to so you will get your first students this way immediately I promise you now the next thing is creating your basic online presence so people are you're referred to you they go on your social media what do they see how do they understand that they can trust you how do they choose you here so create

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your basic online presence by um publishing information about who you are choose one platform it's do not you know stretch yourself to thin hair as well uh if you're comfortable with Instagram uh keep it Instagram it can be Facebook it can be LinkedIn um usually I said LinkedIn is more for business professionals so if you're targeting uh kind of business English um we preparing for interviews presentations public speaking this kind of thing go on LinkedIn find your clients there uh if

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you you know want General English or younger audience for sure Instagram is your place and Facebook is also for General audiences but that depends on your country what platform is prevalent in your country what platform people use so that's thing and then post regularly about you like what you do how you teach what kind of expertise you have uh don't you don't have to be a blogger you don't have to make dancing videos or singing videos or funny videos like Tik toks or reals you don't really have to do that

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just talk about things that matter to you um for example if you're preparing for a lesson and you're creating an exercise talk about that oh I'm preparing for this student and I created this exercise for them and this is what it will help them so this will show that you care about your students that you tailor your lessons it will increase your value then maybe some funny moments from your lessons if your students said something funny or you know there was a miscommunication it it caused some loves

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these are great stories to share and people always love this looking at those things testimonials of course testimonials are a bit tricky because if you elicit testimonials from your students people always know that so if you publish some testimonials from your students people know that you asked them to do that and that kind of decreases their value so to increase the value back um ask for specific things what exactly your student liked about learning with you or share their whole story so this student started at this

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point and this is where where I brought them this is where we got at the end uh share their successes share specific tangible results you had with the students or ask them to give some tangible specific things not just oh this is a great teacher L working with her why exactly was this teacher great why were you great so this will increase the value of the testimonials all right moving on this is sort of an inspirational mind map road map for you this can be you you can be working at a language school you can be working at an

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organization imagine you're teaching business English you get one private student on the weekend on Saturdays for example who you teach they refer you to a few students you know you find students through referrals through your friends and suddenly you get five and those five bring more students and then you go independent within a year or sooner or slower go at your own pace do not push yourself but it's really possible and it's really easy to do well maybe not super easy for everyone but you can do

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it and I believe in you okay now moving on to business foundations these are the things that you will need to consider when you're finally an independent teacher and you have some some students already or you you know you want to treat it more professionally so these are the five aspects that we're going to look at initial contact with your clients how to do that the payment systems pricing rules and the legal side of things okay initial contacts so this is how you communicate with the students

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when just they just come to you uh as I mentioned earlier you need to have some kind of landing page or some kind of place where students can easily find information about you sorry okay so it can be as I said if it's Instagram clear everything super personal about yourself delete all the highlights about traveling to uh Istanbul or Malaysia uh or wherever you go just keep the most important highlights pricing how I work how to contact me or book a call I don't know rules of working with me so things like

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the testimonials so very easy things that you know very simple information bullet points and not overwhelming that people can see oh okay make a decision contact you let's go there has to be a clear way to contact you you have to write DM me or here's the link to kendly to book a discovery call with me um so that people can easily do that use calendly that's a fantastic tool for that you can set certain hours or times when you are available for a call people can go there they can schedule like a

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30-minute call with you this way and you will see a notification about it on your email and in your calendar um right uh so then should this be free um if it's just a conversation why not uh we've had a discussion about this in the morning session I think that no teaching time should be unpaid so if your introductory lesson or Discovery session involves you teaching then what I do is a 50% of price of my regular rate now payment um search the payments that are prevalent in your country in your region uh it can

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be PayPal it can be wise but do these come with regulations and fees so see what works for you if it's a direct bank transfer it can work as well uh depending on what are your students comfortable with and what you know will be the clearest way for them and of course document all the transactions for tax purposes tax purposes do not forget about that now pricing how do you price yourself we've already set what your target uh price should be what your Target hourly fee should be but also do

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a market research and see what kind of professionals individual Professionals in your uh sort of vicinity in your kind of country of your level charge f a fair Advantage um and what one thing you can do is a really great advice there yeah person I give it so it's great offer discounted packages um so this will make it easier for you to budget your monthly income and expenses uh if you get payment for every lesson do you do it before or after the lesson do you have to remind your students who forget to

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pay this is really a pain in the neck uh I highly advise you against that so the best thing to do is to motivate your students for buying uh packages of lessons uh it can be four eight 10 lessons let's say you charge $30 per hour uh you can offer a 10 lesson package for $270 uh with a 10% discount so it will give some savings to students and they will find it uh really nice and also you know how much money you have for the month you can budget it you can uh decide you know what you spend it

00:26:12
on oh sorry raise your prices regularly almost forgot this is something that came to me with years of experience and I wish I knew that straight away you have to raise your prices regularly do that annually think of it as uh birthday for your business um said it like the 1st of September my prices increase by 10% this will include um inflation and uh basically because you grow as a professional you invest in yourself um this helps you you know grow as well you warn your students about it straight away uh we will I will talk

00:26:50
about it a bit later you can incorporate it in the rules and the agreement you sign with the student and they know about it in advance and you warn them that this is going to happen a month or two in advance so like August or Jun July uh and just do that this is a right thing finally the rules um again um my problem used to be that I didn't have a set agreement with the students before we just started working I told them you know a few things that were important but they were never uh standardized or

00:27:20
formalized and I had my student who cancelled all the time like 10 minutes before the lesson and because we didn't have that agreement I felt a little bit um insecure about asking them to pay for the lesson I always say well yes okay all right let's cancel let's reschedule okay but that lost my time because I prepared for the lesson I didn't place any other lesson on that time and I really lost money on that and I wasted my time so now what I always have is a set agreement that I basically sign with

00:27:49
every student uh it doesn't have to have any legal value but it's something that you both agree upon uh so this should it should be like just a piece of paper that has the information the first of your teaching methodology what you deliver what you offer what exactly you're going to do to get together now consolation policy with specific terms when is it okay to cancel what are the penalties for canceling for me it is um a 24-hour uh cancellation policy which means that if my students cancel less

00:28:19
than that uh they have to pay the full price of the lesson um and there are certain e emergencies that I also write down that you know we can reschedule or we can cancel okay your R res scheduling policy is the next thing when can you cancel when can you reschedule do not exclude yourself from this um payment terms and pricing how can your students pay you what the all the prices are so it's all spelled out for them they don't have to look for this information anywhere they have this paper it's pinned to your chat

00:28:50
I don't know or it's you know where wherever you keep all the information and then lesson package conditions what are the packages and you know what conditions they are how uh you know can they uh cancel lessons you know if they buy a package or maybe they can cancel two times in a month you know what is the time period they have they buy a 10 lesson package do they have to study them all in one month or they can spread them by three months uh but if those three months pass and they don't use up

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this package does it uh you know disappeared like or do can they move it over so this also has to be clearly explained here now finally the legal side of the business um this is an important thing when you you know when you're just starting when you have one or two students maybe you can Overlook that but the sooner you look into this the sooner you know what you need to be ready for the better uh so of course different countries will have different regulations and I cannot tell you exactly what it is for you uh so uh you

00:29:55
need to see whether you need to register as a small business entity or you can register as a private independent professional like self-employed person do you have to be an entrepreneur so what is your legal State status that has to be how much tax do you have to pay uh what kinds of uh qualifications may you need to have if you're a teacher and this is a teaching business uh are there any Social Security or Healthcare requirements um and then one thing uh that is also some people don't know

00:30:28
about is that some governments will have uh um sort of systems in place installed to help professionals and you can pay a small sort of installment every month that will be a fund for your holiday pay for your seek leave that the government will pay you back with extra and so there are certain programs that help individual professionals independent professionals like that in many countries so it's worth Consulting maybe a local accountant or local business consultant uh about that that they can

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you know help you understand what kind of things uh you can use what kind of programs you can participate in that incentivizes you know smaller businesses and supports them now finally we have just a few minutes uh competition and growth um this will come in much later uh maybe not much later maybe you grow like a superstar and I hope you do uh but this is basically for teachers who already have uh their independent practice so what to do next um first of all how do you deal with competition how do you

00:31:32
stand out from the crowd of other teachers because the market is saturated um you have to step away from coursebooks I always say that uh this is not tailed enough a lot of students who come to me now and I see this huge difference between like what happened six years ago 10 years ago and what happens today is that years ago people just came you know I want to move from level to level and study for years with you and I still have those students with me they've been with me years they moved from beginner level to advanced level

00:32:00
and they still can't let go of me uh but I also have new students who come and they have a very specific pain that they want me to help them with uh is it preparing for a specific interview or do they want to enroll in a university do they want to you know deliver a presentation are they planning to go to um an expo uh Exposition and they want to you know they have a booth there is an agricultural thing I had a student like that and you prepare them for this specific thing you have help them you

00:32:29
devise a plan so personalized learning plans uh addressing specific student needs uh delivering creating tailored materials for your students uh and also you have to use modern platforms and goals people right now are completely spoiled by such platforms as dualingo you know where everything is clickable where everything can be moved it's easy to access you know they open the the app they can see all their progress there are platforms there are many places where you can do that if you just send them a PDF they

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will choose a person they will choose a teacher who makes it interactive who makes it easily accessible for them and uh interesting for them over you so this is how you stay competitive research what the market today is what you know what kind of platforms you can use and use them and then because there are subscriptions you will need to operate that in your monthly budgeting and your expenses and I probably have to finish very soon but give me a few more minutes uh ver most important thing to not

00:33:32
compare yourself to others in a way that uh oh this teacher is doing that and they're more successful than me or that teacher is doing that they're more successful than me or this school is doing that just do what corresponds with your values with your core principles what you feel good at and compare yourself with your yesterday self with yourself six months ago with yourself a year ago and see yourself in the future and go that way only compare yourself with with you and focus on your own

00:33:59
growth um okay I don't have time for that I will not build a community but okay one more thing targeting your clients um this is narrowing it down uh a bit more so this is about finding your ideal clients you need to think this about more about posting and marketing so think about what pain your student has what opportunities they're missing because they don't know the language or they have the language barrier or they haven't studied with you what a opportunities are they missing what have

00:34:30
they tried that didn't work and what would make them choose you over the others uh you need to adapt your offer to show this you know to show that you can solve this problem that you can make it work for them and that they can help them grab the opportunities that they're missing right now with this uh so instead of saying hey I teach business English you can say teach Tech professionals who want to work with International companies and prepare them for interviews or I help in ch ch managers conduct hiring interviews with

00:35:03
global teams uh things like that is what you know will help you stand out and Target particular clients and in your posts emails chats um write about those things create a light bulb moment for your stud for your clients that they oh this is exactly what I've been looking for they might not even know that but they saw your post go this is exactly what I wanted and they will email you or contact you okay um I think I have to finish now thank you very much