March 30, 2008 – 12:47 am
What’s different about Smith’s School compared with the multitude of English conversation schools in Japan? Bottom to the top it’s totally different. It’s truly a breath of fresh air. No stale lesson plans, no stiff teachers looking truly uncomfortable in ties, just a down-to-earth well thought out curriculum which provides what Japanese [...]
As a person who’s made the decision to do just that, let me review your options from my point of view.
OK, I can work for a corporate school and earn 250,000 to 300,000 a month working about 40 hours a week. I would put on my necktie and go to work when I was scheduled [...]
February 24, 2008 – 11:46 pm
That’s an important question. Many people are so busy just going through their daily life that they never stop and think about this question and whether they are achieving something or not. Yesterday, I realized that I too am one such person. Given a chance to write down a goal for myself [...]
January 13, 2008 – 6:29 pm
My fellow franchisee, Adrian Shephard, has again written three excellent posts. I share his optimism about the future of the English Conversation industry and my school. I also share his optimism about belonging to a dynamic franchise like Smith’s. Belonging to something bigger with great web presence and kind and a courteous staff is essential. [...]
December 30, 2007 – 6:33 am
Why become a Teacher-Owner of your own English Conversation School in Japan at this moment? Because the largest corporate English conversation school in Japan, which had 60% of the market share went out of business three months ago after a 21-year build-up, and left hundreds of thousands of its students with little to show for [...]
December 22, 2007 – 11:32 pm
I really enjoyed reading this one written by Craig, the owner of the Ohtsu School. It expresses exactly what we must do to succeed. Become a part of the local merchant family and show the brand. Get to know the people doing business in the vicinity of your school and let them [...]
November 21, 2007 – 4:17 pm
With the recent failure of the largest corporate English school in Japan, I have come to wonder, shall I say “hope” that those 400,000+ students will take a hard look at how they were treated by this corporate school and decide to find a monthly tuition school like Smith’s so as not to be burned [...]
September 1, 2007 – 7:38 pm
Initial Investment Payback in less than 13 months!
So I have now had my Smith’s school for 14 months after purchasing it for 2.7 million Yen in 2006. After starting with only 15 students I now have 49 but 7 are Man-to-Man (Private) which is like having 56 students. The clear earnings [...]
This month started off a little slow. I only had one trial a few weeks ago but suddenly this week I got a new fax showing 6 trials this week. What a pleasant surprise! I was beginning to worry ….a little. But as has happened many times, there was nice surprise [...]
OK, so you are thinking about teaching English in Japan. It is a big business here due largely to the lack of emphasis on the development of conversational skills at the junior and senior high schools and the over-emphasis on grammar and translation.
Teach for a Big Corporate School:
There are a myriad of schools at [...]
Last night I got a very pleasant surprise. It was a fax from head-office informing me that one of my new students had just called the staff to request that her lesson be changed from Powerful to Man-to-Man from next month. “Powerful” refers to those students who, due to their job etc., [...]
January 21, 2007 – 10:53 pm
The Small Business Administration reports a first-year failure rate of over 30 percent for independently owned, non-franchised business. The flip side of that is the statement by the U.S. Department of Commerce that annually since 1971, less than 5 percent of franchise outlets have failed. Not to mention that nearly 50 percent of all retail sales in America come from franchising.