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- Jan 7, 2014
There hasn't been an active thread on entrepreneurship in years so I decided why not start one up. Feel free to share any idea's , business plans, articles ,video's, website's ,etc that you think would be useful to fellow entrepreneurs. I would love for this to be a place for entrepreneurs to collaborate and everyone to grow their business. When posting always try to add value , lets try to refrain from simply "That won't work" or " Ha, thats already being done" without facts and references to support what you are saying. I'm a sophomore in college and I'll start this thread off with a little intro of what my business is.
I own a computer programming lessons company located in the East Coast( as much as I'll reveal as far as location don't need more competition popping up in my area). I started when I turned 18 right after high school so this is my 2nd year owning .The first thing I did what decide what it was going to offer ,was it going to be language , grade school , high school, college tutoring, etc. I eventually decided on high school programming traditional subjects were WAY to saturated for my liking. My biggest thing when starting this business was I wanted something that has low startup costs and allowed me to have free time to do with I want. I've since accomplished both. A big thing wrong with most tutor businesses I seen was that they were unorganized and non proffesional , so the first thing I did was make a website and logo . Through networking I was able to find 4 college students who I would pay on commission . Next step was to get polo shirts made complete with logo , this goes along with being professional , I can't tell you how many parents have told stories of tutors showing up late with piercings,red bulls , and hollister shirts. For marketing my plan was to adults instead of high school kids , what most people were telling me to do, simply because like piano lessons this is the type of service I don't think a 9th or 10th grader will willingly seek out you have to explain the benefits of knowing how to code to an adult and wanting the best for their kid they will see the value and work with us. The biggest drivers of growth came from targeted fb ads , paying to place huge flyer at groups and meetups of moms , and referral programs (If wan't specifics leave a comment) . Now with employee's , uniform , website, marketing I needed to get locations set in place. I didn't want to be one of those tutors that is all over the place , sometimes here sometimes there , so I worked out deals with 4 locations where I payed them a percentage of hourly fee's I charge . The reason I did this rather then pay to rent is I started this with less then 300$ in the bank. Now last thing I needed was a way to collect money. I decided it would be best if they had the option to order from the website so i installed a cart that accepts all major cc's and paypal also while being able to accept cash or checks in person. I bought a software to manage employee's and clients. And in the past 3 months have hired a manager to handle basically all day to day operations. We've since explanded from 4 employees to 17 , and also instead of just offering one on one lessons locally we've released video lessons and 2 E-books. Expanding to virtual products has been by far the best thing we could have done. So far this month exactly 73% of our revenue has come from the 2 books. I don't want to say exact revenue #'s but I will say it's high 5 figures monthly and I plan on reaching atleast 6 figures a month in 2015! A small computer lessons business started at 18 has paid for college and allowed me 100% fully support myself and help out family and friends I couldn't ask for anything else.
Please share any stories , advice , or really anything helpful and of value.
I own a computer programming lessons company located in the East Coast( as much as I'll reveal as far as location don't need more competition popping up in my area). I started when I turned 18 right after high school so this is my 2nd year owning .The first thing I did what decide what it was going to offer ,was it going to be language , grade school , high school, college tutoring, etc. I eventually decided on high school programming traditional subjects were WAY to saturated for my liking. My biggest thing when starting this business was I wanted something that has low startup costs and allowed me to have free time to do with I want. I've since accomplished both. A big thing wrong with most tutor businesses I seen was that they were unorganized and non proffesional , so the first thing I did was make a website and logo . Through networking I was able to find 4 college students who I would pay on commission . Next step was to get polo shirts made complete with logo , this goes along with being professional , I can't tell you how many parents have told stories of tutors showing up late with piercings,red bulls , and hollister shirts. For marketing my plan was to adults instead of high school kids , what most people were telling me to do, simply because like piano lessons this is the type of service I don't think a 9th or 10th grader will willingly seek out you have to explain the benefits of knowing how to code to an adult and wanting the best for their kid they will see the value and work with us. The biggest drivers of growth came from targeted fb ads , paying to place huge flyer at groups and meetups of moms , and referral programs (If wan't specifics leave a comment) . Now with employee's , uniform , website, marketing I needed to get locations set in place. I didn't want to be one of those tutors that is all over the place , sometimes here sometimes there , so I worked out deals with 4 locations where I payed them a percentage of hourly fee's I charge . The reason I did this rather then pay to rent is I started this with less then 300$ in the bank. Now last thing I needed was a way to collect money. I decided it would be best if they had the option to order from the website so i installed a cart that accepts all major cc's and paypal also while being able to accept cash or checks in person. I bought a software to manage employee's and clients. And in the past 3 months have hired a manager to handle basically all day to day operations. We've since explanded from 4 employees to 17 , and also instead of just offering one on one lessons locally we've released video lessons and 2 E-books. Expanding to virtual products has been by far the best thing we could have done. So far this month exactly 73% of our revenue has come from the 2 books. I don't want to say exact revenue #'s but I will say it's high 5 figures monthly and I plan on reaching atleast 6 figures a month in 2015! A small computer lessons business started at 18 has paid for college and allowed me 100% fully support myself and help out family and friends I couldn't ask for anything else.
Please share any stories , advice , or really anything helpful and of value.
