I am considering opening up my own business/conversational english language school (or something more specialized). Anyone here able to elaborate on the challenges of it? What about starting an online esl business?
Online would be hard to build up, especially with the flood of COVID pop-ups. I run my own space, and have received a number of solicitations to connect my school to them, and they are just wannabe Amazon’s and Ubers: you do the work you regularly do, but get paid less and they take a cut.
One of the advantages of an independent operation is it’s more personal, and word of mouth can build you up. Unless you have radiant charisma or have created a teaching system that makes online teaching better, face-to-face is where it’s at.
Right now is a great time to build something up because people are wanting to do things as the vaccination rate goes up. As well, a smaller place doesn’t have the traffic of a national eikaiwa and can be much much safer.
Starting one depends on how good of a teacher you are, how good you are at business, how much you are willing to gamble on yourself, and other factors. I wrote a post about how I started my place about three years ago, if you want to see my specifics. I quit my day job in February 2020, and have way more students now than I did when I quit. The pandemic sucks, but work and income hasn’t been one of my stresses
Online would be very difficult because very few Japanese people have computers. Most people in Japan use smartphones to access the internet. The schools found this to be a big issue at the beginning of the pandemic when they closed public schools. Only about 20% of the kids had access to a PC.
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Your other challenge will be getting clients. Japanese people don’t trust foreigners when it comes to customer service. Finding sales staff that are affordable and trustworthy is very difficult. Most small eikaiwa fail because the customer service isn’t good enough to get or keep customers. Eikaiwa is a customer service indstury, the customers care more about being kept happy than learning.
Honestly, if you could program your own app, that would benefit you so much since you wouldn’t have to rely on a third party like zoom or Skype. But then you’d need the infrastructure and tech support for the app.
Your best bet would be to open up your school, build up your clientele, then off online as a option for parents and customers who would prefer to study at home. Honestly if I had the rapport, I’d totally do online lessons over in person as long as the quality was there since I wouldn’t have to travel I could just jump on my pc
> Anyone here able to elaborate on the challenges of it? What about starting an online esl business?
I haven’t owned one but I’ve managed/built-up a single-teacher eikaiwa (Japanese-owned with limited supervision), have friends in the business (successfully) and did most of the research…etc before deciding not to setup an eikaiwa.
Thoughts (ignoring visas and the like)… – I wouldn’t personally go online as it’s over-crowded and a bit of a price war with the online market. – You’ll need to invest some money in it and know your local area. For example I had 3 million yen ready to spend and my ex-wife lived in the town we were considering (~200,000 residents and no eikaiwa other than a Peppy with ~100 students). Also it was a smallish town, so rent was cheap (without lesson prices and student numbers necessarily being lower than that of a big city). I think it was useful to have saved the money and identified a market. You can’t just setup in a random place and expect people to come. – Can you teach? My ex-wife was a qualified primary school and English teacher. I was a qualified (Australian) teacher with a master or TESOL and another teaching masters degree. Not saying you need the same quals (I know people who run eikaiwas with creative arts degrees and stuff who do a great job because they’re experienced). But like, you wanna know what you’re doing before you start your own business. – **Have you taught in Japan? One thing I learned is that when setting up a school, 20 students could mean you’re teaching people aged 2 to adult at random hours. To get started you’ve gotta setup ‘placeholder’ classes then fill them out, so you end up setting up enough classes for 150 students (and doing a similar amount of work) early on, while scraping the barrel to make ends meet because there’s only 15 students.** – I’d talk to a lawyer and an account to get all your contracts and payment systems setup. Compliance stuff too. Many don’t (which is on them) but I would wanna make sure everything’s compliant. You’ll probably wanna setup insurance too. – Do some basic sums (write ’em down and decide whether it’s worthwhile). For example what are your outgoings? How much do you need to make for it to be worth your while (e.g. what would you earn in your current profession or as an ALT? can this be an upgrade?) **IMO lastly and most importantly you wanna calculate how many students you’d need to reach this number. Now, how much work do you reckon it will be to find those students (say 80 students), retain them, prep materials for them, do events/reports (outside ordinary hours), respond to their questions/complaints and do all your admin? (Who’s gonna do the admin BTW? Have you got perfect Japanese?)**
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Examples… IMO it can work and all the successful schools I’ve seen are successful because a lot of thought and love has gone into them. Also, they’ve done their market research properly. These include… – A weird English lady who’s been in Japan for 40+ years, speaks fluent Japanese (Japanese husband) and has setup a picturesque English country house as her school. She gives me the creepies for some reason but is VERY popular and does things like trips to England every year and stuff with the kids/parents. She’s 100% devoted to that place and must put in a LOT of effort to make it what it is. – A cool Canadian dude (creative arts degree) has setup an urban ‘cave’ above a friend’s bar (it was an unused storage room). He’s also setup other schools in other friends’ ‘unused storage rooms’ (all with different vibes). He’s very creative and purely does ‘conversation’. I mean, he’ll have nights where 40 people come to talk to him and a few friends in the ‘urban cave’ environment, with music/instruments/beers…etc. Again… he speaks fluent Japanese, is VERY well connected in the area and has a Japanese wife. He’s also been there for like 25 years now (wow time goes by!) – A dude who’s a chef (fluent Japanese, Japanese wife, wife’s hometown…etc) runs an izakaya where he also does English lessons (one of the traditional booths [the one for large groups] with forest/mountain views [lovely room] has a dual purpose). I think he makes enough $$$ from the izakaya but gets so many people asking him to teach English that he’d be stupid not to take their money.
The only common things I notice here are… – Fluent Japanese & a Japanese spouse – They know the area and are well connected so can leverage this to get clients & a good deal on rent…etc – All of them are experienced eikaiwa teachers and/or ALTs who know the ropes in regards to what Japanese clients expect
Under normal circumstances starting a school/teaching privately can be tough: you need a combination of teaching/business/marketing and customer service in Japanese skills.
Under Covid it’s even tougher. Budgets are tight, people are reluctant to go out, no one is rushing out to try to get more exposure for themselves or their kids right now.
Just FYI there are SO MANY English schools, both locally and online. At this point it is a buyer’s market for the Japanese and a price war among the teachers.
The first question you need to ask yourself is, do you want to teach on your own? Or do you want to have a business that employs other people? In other words do you want to be a teacher or a business owner?
The former is much easier, but you will never be able to spend a month relaxing on the beach while still making money. The latter is much more work, but has a greater potential payoff.
The answer to that question should dictate everything else that you do. i.e Are you selling yourself and your fun personality? Or are you selling a systemized experience in which the teacher is just one of the inputs?
Your pricing, marketing, skills needed, etc… should all depend on how you answer that question.
I have had a reasonable amount of success in the eikaiwa business myself.
Unless you have a good plan to focus on a specific niche market I’d forget about teaching online. There is too much competition from places that have lower cost of living than here in Japan. It is possible to make a Japanese based online teaching business work but you have a major advantage being on the ground here compared to being at a disadvantage when online.
Some of this has already been said by other posters but my take on it is,
Do you have experience working in the eikaiwa industry? Before I bought my first school I worked for two years in other people’s schools. Some friends of mine in other industries thought I was crazy when they heard how much I was making but it was part of my long term plan and the experience was valuable.
Can you speak Japanese? If not do you have a business partner who can? If you can’t speak Japanese at least well enough to somewhat read documents or have a plan to employ Japanese speaking staff from the start up phase you are going to have a hard time. There are still options, working out a franchise arrangement maybe worth thinking about. The larger company may be able to provide a website and Japanese staff in return for a portion of the school’s profits. It isn’t ideal but can cover for a lack of Japanese ability.
Do you have enough start up capital? You need to be able to cover your personal expenses and the school’s expenses until it starts making money. It’s possible a new school could be in an area where the market needs are not being met and will be immediately successful but in most cases it will take time to gather students. It is best to plan to operate at a loss for at least a year while starting up. On the bright side students tend to stay for a while for once the school get a decent amount of students it will probably be a stable source of income.
As an alternative to having money to invest you could also start very small and teach private students in your living room then open a school with some money coming in.
If you have those three things (experience, Japanese ability and money or at least a solid plan for a shoestring budget) you have the right idea to be thinking about getting into the eikaiwa business. It has a fairly low floor as far as initial investment goes and a high ceiling in terms of potential profits. Eikaiwa is either the most popular after school activity for elementary aged school children or the second most popular after swimming lessons in Japan and there is plenty of room to open a small school that does a better job then the large chains.
8 comments
Online would be hard to build up, especially with the flood of COVID pop-ups. I run my own space, and have received a number of solicitations to connect my school to them, and they are just wannabe Amazon’s and Ubers: you do the work you regularly do, but get paid less and they take a cut.
One of the advantages of an independent operation is it’s more personal, and word of mouth can build you up. Unless you have radiant charisma or have created a teaching system that makes online teaching better, face-to-face is where it’s at.
Right now is a great time to build something up because people are wanting to do things as the vaccination rate goes up. As well, a smaller place doesn’t have the traffic of a national eikaiwa and can be much much safer.
Starting one depends on how good of a teacher you are, how good you are at business, how much you are willing to gamble on yourself, and other factors. I wrote a post about how I started my place about three years ago, if you want to see my specifics. I quit my day job in February 2020, and have way more students now than I did when I quit. The pandemic sucks, but work and income hasn’t been one of my stresses
Online would be very difficult because very few Japanese people have computers. Most people in Japan use smartphones to access the internet. The schools found this to be a big issue at the beginning of the pandemic when they closed public schools. Only about 20% of the kids had access to a PC.
​
Your other challenge will be getting clients. Japanese people don’t trust foreigners when it comes to customer service. Finding sales staff that are affordable and trustworthy is very difficult. Most small eikaiwa fail because the customer service isn’t good enough to get or keep customers. Eikaiwa is a customer service indstury, the customers care more about being kept happy than learning.
Honestly, if you could program your own app, that would benefit you so much since you wouldn’t have to rely on a third party like zoom or Skype. But then you’d need the infrastructure and tech support for the app.
Your best bet would be to open up your school, build up your clientele, then off online as a option for parents and customers who would prefer to study at home. Honestly if I had the rapport, I’d totally do online lessons over in person as long as the quality was there since I wouldn’t have to travel I could just jump on my pc
> Anyone here able to elaborate on the challenges of it? What about starting an online esl business?
I haven’t owned one but I’ve managed/built-up a single-teacher eikaiwa (Japanese-owned with limited supervision), have friends in the business (successfully) and did most of the research…etc before deciding not to setup an eikaiwa.
Thoughts (ignoring visas and the like)…
– I wouldn’t personally go online as it’s over-crowded and a bit of a price war with the online market.
– You’ll need to invest some money in it and know your local area. For example I had 3 million yen ready to spend and my ex-wife lived in the town we were considering (~200,000 residents and no eikaiwa other than a Peppy with ~100 students). Also it was a smallish town, so rent was cheap (without lesson prices and student numbers necessarily being lower than that of a big city). I think it was useful to have saved the money and identified a market. You can’t just setup in a random place and expect people to come.
– Can you teach? My ex-wife was a qualified primary school and English teacher. I was a qualified (Australian) teacher with a master or TESOL and another teaching masters degree. Not saying you need the same quals (I know people who run eikaiwas with creative arts degrees and stuff who do a great job because they’re experienced). But like, you wanna know what you’re doing before you start your own business.
– **Have you taught in Japan? One thing I learned is that when setting up a school, 20 students could mean you’re teaching people aged 2 to adult at random hours. To get started you’ve gotta setup ‘placeholder’ classes then fill them out, so you end up setting up enough classes for 150 students (and doing a similar amount of work) early on, while scraping the barrel to make ends meet because there’s only 15 students.**
– I’d talk to a lawyer and an account to get all your contracts and payment systems setup. Compliance stuff too. Many don’t (which is on them) but I would wanna make sure everything’s compliant. You’ll probably wanna setup insurance too.
– Do some basic sums (write ’em down and decide whether it’s worthwhile). For example what are your outgoings? How much do you need to make for it to be worth your while (e.g. what would you earn in your current profession or as an ALT? can this be an upgrade?) **IMO lastly and most importantly you wanna calculate how many students you’d need to reach this number. Now, how much work do you reckon it will be to find those students (say 80 students), retain them, prep materials for them, do events/reports (outside ordinary hours), respond to their questions/complaints and do all your admin? (Who’s gonna do the admin BTW? Have you got perfect Japanese?)**
—
Examples…
IMO it can work and all the successful schools I’ve seen are successful because a lot of thought and love has gone into them. Also, they’ve done their market research properly. These include…
– A weird English lady who’s been in Japan for 40+ years, speaks fluent Japanese (Japanese husband) and has setup a picturesque English country house as her school. She gives me the creepies for some reason but is VERY popular and does things like trips to England every year and stuff with the kids/parents. She’s 100% devoted to that place and must put in a LOT of effort to make it what it is.
– A cool Canadian dude (creative arts degree) has setup an urban ‘cave’ above a friend’s bar (it was an unused storage room). He’s also setup other schools in other friends’ ‘unused storage rooms’ (all with different vibes). He’s very creative and purely does ‘conversation’. I mean, he’ll have nights where 40 people come to talk to him and a few friends in the ‘urban cave’ environment, with music/instruments/beers…etc. Again… he speaks fluent Japanese, is VERY well connected in the area and has a Japanese wife. He’s also been there for like 25 years now (wow time goes by!)
– A dude who’s a chef (fluent Japanese, Japanese wife, wife’s hometown…etc) runs an izakaya where he also does English lessons (one of the traditional booths [the one for large groups] with forest/mountain views [lovely room] has a dual purpose). I think he makes enough $$$ from the izakaya but gets so many people asking him to teach English that he’d be stupid not to take their money.
The only common things I notice here are…
– Fluent Japanese & a Japanese spouse
– They know the area and are well connected so can leverage this to get clients & a good deal on rent…etc
– All of them are experienced eikaiwa teachers and/or ALTs who know the ropes in regards to what Japanese clients expect
Under normal circumstances starting a school/teaching privately can be tough: you need a combination of teaching/business/marketing and customer service in Japanese skills.
Under Covid it’s even tougher. Budgets are tight, people are reluctant to go out, no one is rushing out to try to get more exposure for themselves or their kids right now.
Just FYI there are SO MANY English schools, both locally and online. At this point it is a buyer’s market for the Japanese and a price war among the teachers.
The first question you need to ask yourself is, do you want to teach on your own? Or do you want to have a business that employs other people? In other words do you want to be a teacher or a business owner?
The former is much easier, but you will never be able to spend a month relaxing on the beach while still making money. The latter is much more work, but has a greater potential payoff.
The answer to that question should dictate everything else that you do. i.e Are you selling yourself and your fun personality? Or are you selling a systemized experience in which the teacher is just one of the inputs?
Your pricing, marketing, skills needed, etc… should all depend on how you answer that question.
I have had a reasonable amount of success in the eikaiwa business myself.
Unless you have a good plan to focus on a specific niche market I’d forget about teaching online. There is too much competition from places that have lower cost of living than here in Japan. It is possible to make a Japanese based online teaching business work but you have a major advantage being on the ground here compared to being at a disadvantage when online.
Some of this has already been said by other posters but my take on it is,
Do you have experience working in the eikaiwa industry? Before I bought my first school I worked for two years in other people’s schools. Some friends of mine in other industries thought I was crazy when they heard how much I was making but it was part of my long term plan and the experience was valuable.
Can you speak Japanese? If not do you have a business partner who can? If you can’t speak Japanese at least well enough to somewhat read documents or have a plan to employ Japanese speaking staff from the start up phase you are going to have a hard time. There are still options, working out a franchise arrangement maybe worth thinking about. The larger company may be able to provide a website and Japanese staff in return for a portion of the school’s profits. It isn’t ideal but can cover for a lack of Japanese ability.
Do you have enough start up capital? You need to be able to cover your personal expenses and the school’s expenses until it starts making money. It’s possible a new school could be in an area where the market needs are not being met and will be immediately successful but in most cases it will take time to gather students. It is best to plan to operate at a loss for at least a year while starting up. On the bright side students tend to stay for a while for once the school get a decent amount of students it will probably be a stable source of income.
As an alternative to having money to invest you could also start very small and teach private students in your living room then open a school with some money coming in.
If you have those three things (experience, Japanese ability and money or at least a solid plan for a shoestring budget) you have the right idea to be thinking about getting into the eikaiwa business. It has a fairly low floor as far as initial investment goes and a high ceiling in terms of potential profits. Eikaiwa is either the most popular after school activity for elementary aged school children or the second most popular after swimming lessons in Japan and there is plenty of room to open a small school that does a better job then the large chains.
Good luck!