A reader has asked how I get any leisure time when my diary is open between 8am and 10pm 7 days a week. Perhaps this explanation will also help others who are wondering about becoming ADIs.
It hinges on the fact that work is never guaranteed or 100% reliable – and this is especially true when you first start.
When I qualified some years ago it was my intention to cast my net as widely as possible to get as much work as possible as quickly as possible. So for the first year I was covering almost all of Nottinghamshire and the south-east side of Derbyshire (including Derby itself). It worked, but I dropped Derbyshire and some of the north Nottinghamshire postcodes because it was getting increasingly difficult to get from one pupil to the next, especially when they were at opposite ends of my geographical range. But this is a partial digression.
The fact is that you can have 50 hours or more in your diary one week (and it does happen) and only about 20 hours the next. It’s just the way it is. The full weeks are just those where everyone wants a lesson at the same time and no one cancels, the quieter ones are where people just don’t book or you get cancellations (colds and flu, exams, holidays, Christmas, and so on). It averages out somewhere in between.
So, looking at the situation on the one hand, you have a wide open diary and people can book anywhere between 8am and 10pm Monday to Friday. More often than not (and with judicious diary management), you can get them to book 10-12 in the morning, 2-4pm, and 6-8pm or times thereabouts. Seven days of 6 hours gives you a 42 hour week, but you are more likely to get a few empty slots and so you’ll end up doing between 30-40 hours. This is on average, mind you. On a good (depending on how you look at it) week, you’ll get people wanting lessons who have to fit in around whoever is already booked, so you might get some early lesson in and book the others at 11-1. Or someone might have booked 7-9pm, which then frees up another 2 hour slot in the afternoon which then gets snapped up. It’s those kinds of weeks which give you the 50+.
On the other hand, though, the weeks where people cancel or just don’t book for some reason give you free time which is paid for by the other weeks.
I also blank out whole days when I feel like it (and before they are booked) and pupils have no trouble shifting around those. For example, I have a day off next week because I just felt like one. And I had one last week, and the week before. It’s just not a problem.
Although my diary is open 8am until 10pm, I have worked as late as 11pm and midnight before (so I could do a Pass Plus session in the dark around midsummer). I also sometimes start as early as 6.30am if a pupil has an early test booked and lives a little way out (done several of those during the winter). I also have a current pupil who originally preferred 7.30am lessons before college, but now does 9am instead.
Now, I am not a morning person – but I will do this simply because if I say ‘no’ then I might lose the work. To be honest, nowadays I could afford to say ‘no’, but the effect on my reputation might be a longer-lasting problem (good or bad), so I just do it. I enjoy it, anyway.
This job is not a 9-5 Monday to Friday affair. If you become an ADI and do it like that then you can expect to earn a little pocket money at best, but not a living – I think this is one reason why so many instructors are suffering. They just don’t give the customers what they want, so the customer finds someone who does.
So that’s basically it. Once you are established you can nudge pupils to fit in around your own availability – but you will always have to be flexible because sometimes they can’t be. If you stick rigidly to set hours you will always end up losing some work that you’d otherwise get (two of mine have recently said “my last instructor couldn’t do weekends” – so he (x2) lost them, and I got them!) I also see instructors boasting about how they tell the pupils when they can have lessons and have fixed slots in their diaries – all well and good until a pupil comes to you who finishes work at 3.45pm and so doesn’t fit into your 2-4 or 3-5 slot; but like I say, I get plenty like that. Some weeks you’ll be snowed under, others you’ll have free time.
The free time isn’t regular or predictable – not in large chunks, anyway – but it is there. You can book weeks off for annual holidays if you plan lessons and tests well ahead, but you must never let a pupil down (and you must realise you get no income at all for those weeks)
The big question is whether you want a job like this. And only you can decide if you do!