Don't Quit Your Day Job ... Yet!
You are probably familiar with the phrase "Don't Quit Your Day Job!"
Usually people say this when they want to tell you that you aren't very good at something or that they don't think you will succeed at something new.
But I believe in this phrase for a completely different reason.
In fact, I would add the word "yet" to the end of this phrase.
DON'T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB ... YET!
You see, I quit my day job and started my own teaching business back in 2011.
But it didn't happen all at once. First, I started my business. Then, I quit my day job.
I had been working at a language school for about a year and half (teaching English) and I realized that there was no room for growth in the position I held there and that there were no other positions available to me. The most senior teacher had been working there teaching English for about five years and I knew that I definitely didn't want to do the same thing for the next five years of my life.
That's when I decided to take a risk and to go out on my own. I planned how I was going to start my education business and I searched the Internet for information. I knew that there was a ton of information out there and that I just had to find the right websites and sources. Still, it took me a long time.
When I went to register my business, rent office space, buy supplies and furniture, and really get things moving forward, I had a general idea of what I was doing, but, looking back, I see how many mistakes I made and what I could have done differently.
First of all, I had only planned for the month-to-month operations of my business and I had really only pictured myself working as an individual teacher (teaching English as the second language) in my business. I mean, I had imagined that I would hire other teachers too, but I planned on managing them myself. I tried to cut corners to save every penny I could and it ended up costing me more time and money in the long run.
The truth is that using free online resources and saving every penny possible ended up costing me more than if I had just invested in tools and strategies that had already been proven to work. I remember someone had told me about marketing tactics and business strategies before I started, but I just ignored them and thought that I knew better - even though I had absolutely no experience in business.
Fast forward to now - I own multiple businesses in the education field, online and offline, and make thousands of dollars in passive income each month.
How was I able to make that change?
But there are really two main points that I can see, looking back, that allowed me to become successful in my education business. I made a lot of mistakes, but there are two things that I did right.
1. I didn't quit my day job immediately. I worked two jobs - theirs and mine.
2. I didn't give up. It was long. It was painful. I made mistakes. But I stuck it out.
The reason I decided to set up the free training program for teachers is to help them with the second point here and to make their journey shorter and less painful.
I tried to do everything free and tried to use online resources that weren't proven to work. That caused me more problems than I can count.
Some people say, "You have to use KPIs to measure your employees' work performance." Others say, "KPIs don't work anymore." I just said, "What the hell are KPIs?" because I had no business experience and no background in business at all! Well, if you're reading this and you don't know what KPIs are, I'll tell you: KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator. To an extent, every business uses them.
But was that important for me to know, in order for me to make money teaching?
Absolutely not.
There were really just a few simple steps that I needed to take that would make me and my teaching business more successful than any of my competitors in the local market and even more successful than most online competitors.
But I didn't know that.
I didn't know that because I was focused on what everyone else was telling me and what everyone else was writing online. I read business articles and I listened to business radio stations and I thought I was a businessman. The thing I didn't realize was that the businessmen in those articles and on those radio shows were running multi-million-dollar businesses, while I had only invested $2,000 to rent office space and buy a few chairs.
There was a big difference between their businesses and mine.
So, while I was running around trying to learn about big business and calling myself a businessman, I was wasting precious time that I could have been utilizing to grow what I already had, which was the skills and competency to teach and to run a education business. I wasted years and a lot of money focusing on the wrong things.
For a teaching business to succeed it doesn't need the same infrastructure or investment as an oil company or a bank. Anyone can start a teaching business and start making thousands of dollars per month within just a few weeks if they know the formula for success and follow a few easy steps.
When I learned that, my whole life changed.
When I started my second teaching business, then my third, and then my fourth, I used this winning formula and was able to generate thousands of dollars within a few weeks of starting. After testing my formula over and over again, perfecting it and molding it into a well-oiled machine, I created The Teaching Business Catalyst training program to help other teachers take the same simple steps and avoid the painful process of moving in the wrong direction and focusing on the wrong things.
Now you can learn from my mistakes, so you don't have to make them!
But there was one thing that I did right from the beginning. I didn't quit my day job immediately. I worked two jobs and I stuck it out, even though it was tough.
I remember working from 8AM to 4PM in my teaching job and then working 4PM to 10PM in my teaching business. I would run back and forth between the two offices four or five times every day. Luckily, I was able to rent office space that was only a 20-minute walk from my job.
I ended up working between 60 and 80 hours per week for about half a year and I don't recommend that to anybody. It's not a healthy way to live.
I did it that way because I didn't have a plan. I didn't understand how I was going to make the transition from working for somebody else to working for myself and I didn't know exactly where my free time, work time, family time, and living time was in my calendar.
That's why one of the first things we do in our training program is help you create a plan for your life, so you can balance working for someone else and starting your own business with spending time with your family and friends and doing the things you love.
Having a healthy balance is so important and it will actually help you think and feel better as you start and grow your teaching business.
So here are a few words of advice to anyone who wants to teach ESL online independently or who wants to become an independent online TEFL teacher or who wants to start their teaching business online or offline.
Planning is of the utmost importance and I cannot stress that enough.
Follow the steps we lay out in the process we give you and you will avoid years and hundreds of thousands of dollars of pain and agony. I've been through that stuff and you can learn from my mistakes, instead of going through it yourself.
I've been able to set up multiple teaching businesses using the system, method, and strategies that we give you in our free training program for teachers and you can set up your business in the exact same way and start making money within weeks.
Only when your teaching business is generating more money than what you are making in your current job should you consider quitting. Remember that one week of income is not necessarily a signal to quit your job immediately. You need repeatable income. That's what we show you how to develop and we give you everything you need to teach ESL online or to be an independent TEFL teacher or to teach any language anywhere to anyone. That's how powerful this training is.
We've tested this program with native and non-native teachers and it doesn't matter where you're from. In fact, if you teach any subject, you can set up your own successful, profitable teaching business online or anywhere with this easy-to-follow system.