I originally wrote this back in 2013, but it has become popular recently (late 2022).
Someone found the blog on the term “I just passed my ADI part 3 and don’t know what to do next”.
It’s also a common question on the forums, alongside “should I become an ADI? – which I explain in great detail here. The stock answer from the illuminati is that you shouldn’t do it, quickly followed by various diatribes about franchises, how you should strike out on your own and not pay any money to anyone else for either your training or your workload. But you don’t want to hear that, nor should you have to – you’ve passed your Part 3 and you want to know how to move forward.
Let’s get a few things straight. People have failed at this job since the dawn of time. That’s because if you can’t get the work (i.e. turnover) then you’ll simply go under. That was as true 20 or 30 years ago as it is now. The only thing that’s different is that it is perhaps a little harder to get the work these days – not only because there are more ADIs around (though this is less of a problem than the illuminati would have everyone think), but also because those that are already doing the job are offering silly prices, and also that many new learners tend to go for established, recommended, or easily found instructors or schools.
Running any business is very straightforward. All you need is a) products to sell, and b) customers who want to buy them. It’s no different running a driving school – by passing Part 3 you have your product, but the trick now is finding customers to sell it to.
The information you get from forums (superseded by social media nowadays) is highly misleading. That’s because few ADIs will ever be open and honest about how difficult it was to get started, or how difficult it is to remain in business. Most haven’t got a clue how well they are actually doing at it, even when they’re doing badly. Over the years I’ve watched many of them claim to be setting the world on fire, only to watch them go through not having enough work, having too little work, thinking of becoming bus drivers, and finally… becoming bus drivers! And yet those same people will still advise you to do what they did and start out completely independent, even though it clearly hasn’t worked for them.
They’ll claim to have gone independent from the moment they passed Part 3 (which in some cases is a plain lie), got a full diary within weeks (which is usually a massive exaggeration), and say they have a “waiting list” of several months (which is just nonsense, because if someone wants to start taking lessons they aren’t going to hang around until you become free). Even if there were ADIs who genuinely did do all that they claim in the timeframe they mention (and in the here and now – not 30 years ago), the simple truth is that for 99.9% of all other ADIs it was harder and took much longer.
A lot of people ask me for advice, and this is what I tell them.
Go for it!
You passed your Part 3 after spending all that money on training. Now go and make a success out of it – because it IS possible.
Know your financial targets
No rocket science here. Know how much you need to earn (as distinct from how much you’d like to earn), and work from there. Don’t plan on getting a full diary from Day One – you’ll only end up disappointed. Success is about making a living and not about working 60 hours a week. Of course, if you do get a full diary and end up working 60 hours a week, treat it as a huge bonus.
Check local AA lesson prices
Being a national school, the AA’s prices are a useful barometer. If the standard hourly rate for your area is £28 or more then you are likely to be able to get work. If the AA rate is less than that then you may have more difficulty finding work and will have to allow a little extra time for your plan to dominate the world.
Franchise or independent?
If you need to pay bills you would have to be insane to rule out joining a franchise – at least in the beginning. If you can generate all your own work, being independent is easily the cheapest option. However, all those failed and struggling ADIs out there thought that they could generate the work, too. It isn’t that easy.
How do I advertise myself?
One way or another it will cost you. It’ll cost you time, and it will cost you money. Unless you have plenty of both to spare, a franchisor will be able to spend the money more effectively and will likely be able to obtain a better return on the investment than you could achieve on your own. You can use your time on a franchise to improve your reputation and brand image, and then cut the apron strings when you think you’re ready. That might take anything up to several years – but at least you’ll be growing your business.
So I can do that myself, right?
In theory, yes you can. But as I have already pointed out, the job market is full of failed ADIs who were absolutely convinced that they – for the first time in recorded history – would do something no other ADI has ever managed (though many have attempted), and corner the entire market whilst simultaneously sending all franchises to hell. Honestly, just about every new ADI thinks in terms of hanging on to all that lovely money from their pupils. That’s why you’re asking this question in the first place, because a little voice inside your head is advising you to pocket every penny without any consideration for how you will actually get those pennies. You can spend hundreds – even thousands – of pounds on advertising and get absolutely no work out of it as a result. If you can afford to gamble with failure like that, by all means go ahead – but you have been warned.
Big franchise or little franchise?
Ultimately, getting work all comes down to advertising. Even the smallest of local franchises will probably be able to advertise more effectively than a solo ADI could. As the size of the school increases, the amount they spend also increases – but so does the return on that spend. The large national and semi-national schools can produce hard-hitting campaigns which attract a lot of interest.
Are there any guarantees?
Absolutely not. A franchisor cannot guarantee work anymore than a solo ADI can guarantee it. However, it is fair to say that if a large franchisor is having difficulties, anyone trying to operate independently in the same area will likely be having it worse. So conversely, in a more realistic climate where there is work to be had, the franchisor will probably have more success getting it than the average solo instructor.
Undercutting gets me more work, right?
In theory, yes. In practice, no – and it also reduces your profits. You see, it’s all very well knocking a few pennies off the lesson rate and playing the supermarket game of labelling things at £29.95 instead of £30, but what happens when everyone is doing it and you have to drop down to maybe £23.95 in order to distinguish your product? Because then you’ll be earning up to £7 less for each lesson, and since you’ll have done it in the first place because you’re not getting enough hours in, you’ll have cut your turnover by around 25%. And I can assure you that any work you do attract will not offset that lost income. At best, you’ll simply end up doing more work for less money. Go down this path and you’re well on the road to ruin.
But don’t pupils want cheap lessons?
Oh yes. People would like cheap everything – until they actually get it, and then they realise that below a certain threshold you get exactly what you pay for. You see, the going rate for lessons which provide value for money for all those concerned IS around £30 per hour. At that price, the instructor can deliver a good lesson. As soon as you start chipping away at that the first thing to suffer is the instructor’s income. In order to rectify that – and in the face of probably still not getting enough new work to counteract the reduced prices – the instructor has to reduce his business overheads, and the largest overhead (apart from the car) is undoubtedly fuel costs.
What’s in a name?
Cutting fuel costs means doing less driving, and that means slower learning. And since pupils aren’t stupid, many will twig early on that they’re being held back – perhaps not deliberately, but still held back – and start looking for another instructor. This time around they’ll think twice about going for a cheap one and opt for a larger local or national school. And many first-time learners think like that right from the start and choose a big name – often on the strength of mum or dad’s advice. So there is quite a lot in a name.
Is it worth it?
If you put the hours in and can afford to be patient, yes. Definitely. But you aren’t going to get very far if this is going to be your main source of income and you are planning to do every school run for your own kids, or not work evenings or weekends, and so on. Even when you’re busy, maybe doing 30-40 hours a week, work can drop to below 20-25 hours the next week just like that due to test passes or cancellations. It can then take anything from days to months to creep back up again – it depends on all sorts of factors that are totally beyond your control. It’s the price you pay for being self-employed.
But how much can I earn?
The sums are quite simple, and depend on how many hours of lessons you can deliver. Let’s assume that it will cost you £100 a week just to keep a car on your driveway (and it WILL cost about that for a half decent car, no matter what the illuminati try and tell you).
If you do a fixed 20 hours of lessons at £30 an hour you will turn over £600, less the cost of the car and about £130 for fuel. That will earn you about £18,000 a year before tax.
You can pro rata that calculation for any number of worked hours as long as you increase the fuel allowance accordingly.
However, there is no way you can just dial up your working hours – you might get 40 one week, then 20 for the next couple of months. and dial up a salary like that. As I have already said, you could have 40 hours one week (I’ve had over 50 hours a few times), and then see it fall to less than 25 hours for reasons totally out of your control the next. Once you’re established, you will probably average about 30 hours per week in a typical year.
Franchise costs vary. In some cases, you provide your own car and then pay the franchisor to have their livery and advertising work done for you. In others, you pay a franchisor to supply a car and everything else apart from the fuel. If you took out a franchise with a big school like the AA, you’d be paying up to £200 a week for the car, so that annual before-tax wage for 20 hours would be about £14,000.
Don’t look down your nose at franchises! I’ve tried to make it clear that the theoretical £19,000 for 20 hours depends on everything working perfectly. The chances are you wouldn’t get anywhere near as many hours by yourself when you first qualify are remote, so £14,000 is not to be sniffed at.
The bottom line
Consider starting out on a franchise until you learn the ropes. Don’t dismiss the option outright, otherwise you may not be in the game in a year’s time (just like the people who are advising you to go solo now). Once you can let go, do it. But only go independent when you’re certain you can stand on your own feet. Do it too soon and you’ll likely end up throwing all the hard work involved in getting your badge down the drain.
Well done Peter, who passed first time on Tuesday with just 2 driver faults. He recently became a father, so now he can drive his son around without relying on his wife.
Well done Paula, who passed on Monday first time, with just 4 driver faults. Her dad had phoned me the night before because he’d taken her out and she’d had a stinker of a lesson with him (stalling and not looking). Yet she’d been perfectly OK with me the same afternoon, and none of the things he mentioned had happened when she’d been out with me on any lesson, let alone the last one before her test.
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She’s the one who could break into tears over the smallest mistake or comment. The last three lessons before the test were no exception, either. I also discovered that with the tears comes argumentativeness! I shall remember the conversation about priorities at junctions – after we’d been doing them successfully for months – for a long time. It was like we’d never been in a car before, and I can’t remember the last time I had to terminate a Q&A session with something as autocratic as “Look! I challenge you to find me a junction which is laid out like that in the first place without there being traffic lights to control traffic flow across it”.
that: she was speeding. Breaking the Law by driving too fast.