{"id":11240,"date":"2012-12-23T23:28:50","date_gmt":"2012-12-23T23:28:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=11240"},"modified":"2012-12-23T23:28:50","modified_gmt":"2012-12-23T23:28:50","slug":"going-it-alone-as-a-new-adi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=11240","title":{"rendered":"Going It Alone As A New ADI?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A newly-qualified ADI recently mentioned that they were looking to go independent straight away, having just passed their Part 3. Their reasoning behind this was that if they didn\u2019t have to pay a franchise, all the money they take from lessons would be theirs.<\/p>\n

This is one of the main reasons new ADIs go out of business so quickly. I\u2019ve covered this topic before, but it\u2019s worth running through it again.<\/p>\n

A Car<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first big mistake new ADIs make is to assume that you can somehow run a car for absolutely nothing! You can\u2019t. Consider this\u2026<\/p>\n

You are a normal member of the public who decides that they want a new car for the family, and you decide that you\u2019re going to pay \u00a310,000 for it. You drive it away from the \"Ashowroom and park it on your driveway. If you keep it for three years, it is costing you \u00a365 a week just to own it. At the end of three years its value will have approximately halved, and you use it as part-exchange on another new one costing \u00a310,000. The bottom line is that for the first three years the car is costing you \u00a365 a week, and after that the calculations get more complicated but the weekly cost gradually declines. If you always trade in after three years, and pay the same \u00a310,000 for a new model, the absolute minimum the car will end up costing you is \u00a335 a week (this is over-simplified, but you get the idea). And none of this includes insurance, which could easily be another \u00a320 per week! So you cannot<\/strong> keep a car for nothing.<\/p>\n

A driving instructor has a few more boxes to tick when choosing a car, so the cost per week is always going to be a bit higher in many respects. To quote Hitachi Capital, who lease cars to driving instructors:<\/p>\n

Purchasing an instructor vehicle outright might seem like an attractive option. However, when the real costs of running an instructor car are calculated, for many car leasing is a simpler, more cost effective route.<\/p>\n

A driving instructor vehicle can typically do 30,000 miles per year and will often suffer more wear and tear than the average car.<\/p>\n

Instructor vehicles tend to go through more tyres, clutches and brakes than normal – and many driving instructors underestimate the cost of repairs.<\/p>\n

Repairs can be costly, not only in terms of garage bills, but also in terms of vehicle downtime. A vehicle off the road means cancelled lessons – and no income.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A franchise<\/strong> deal including a car will cost something in the region of \u00a3150-\u00a3200 per week. It\u2019s basically a lease with extras, like advertising, diary management, all repairs, and pupil supply. It sounds like a hell of a lot of money, but all you<\/strong> have to then do is pay for fuel and give lessons.<\/p>\n

Leasing<\/strong> a basic car will cost you at least \u00a360 per week not including insurance, but a decent car is typically around \u00a380-\u00a3100. All repairs are included. It will be entirely your responsibility to find work once you have the car. Note that leasing a car is only slightly more costly than buying one outright (in spite of the idiotic comments many ADIs insist on making about anything that has even a whiff of lease of franchise associated with it).<\/p>\n

If you buy a car outright, wear-and-tear replacements are down to you, as is tax and insurance. And you won\u2019t have a replacement car ready if yours breaks down.<\/p>\n

Some Pupils<\/strong><\/p>\n

The next big mistake made by new ADIs (and some established ones) is to assume that \"Advertiseit is easy to get pupils. These instructors go through the qualifying exams assuming that once they have a green badge, learners will be queuing outside their door. The reality is a million miles away from that.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of driving instructors out there, and they\u2019re all looking for work – if not for today, definitely for tomorrow. So somehow, the new ADI needs to try and let people know he or she is there, too. And that means advertising. Fairly simple, right? Well, yes\u2026 and no.<\/p>\n

An example: the smallest advert in Yellow Pages (other than a single line entry) will (or used to) set you back about \u00a3600 for a year (that\u2019s another \u00a310 a week). However, all those other instructors out there are also advertising, so you end up being just a small voice amongst many – some of whom are paying for full-page ads. From personal experience, I can absolutely guarantee that \u00a3600-worth of Yellow Pages advertising can easily generate absolutely no work whatsoever<\/strong> (and that was when YP was a thick, A4-sized book, and not the A5-ish pamphlet it has become today). And another drawback to advertising in Yellow Pages is that you\u2019ll get dozens of calls from people trying to sell you phones, advertising, and all kinds of other crap – and it persists even years after you aren\u2019t in it anymore!<\/p>\n

What about those local free newsletters with “guaranteed circulation of 10,000\u201d? Again, I can state categorically that \u00a3300-\u00a3400-worth of advertising (up to \u00a37 a week) in one of those for three months may easily generate absolutely no work.<\/strong> It all adds up, so you may well end up spending \u00a320-\u00a330 a week on advertising for no return.<\/p>\n

The latest fad is for people who have only just realised that technology exists to glibly \"Ainform everyone that \u201ca website is essential\u201d. Well, it can certainly be useful, but when they say \u201cessential\u201d they mean for generating work – and in that sense they are wrong. Why? Well, just as Yellow Pages got flooded with driving instructors, so did the internet, and if you type \u201cdriving lessons\u201d into Google for your area, once you\u2019ve sifted through the big names – many of whom are abusing Google\u2019s terms by appearing more than once under dubious search terms – you\u2019ll realise that the likelihood of you appearing anywhere in the first 20 pages anytime soon is a bit of a long shot. Let\u2019s face facts, here. It is impossible for everyone<\/strong> to appear in the Number 1 position on Google, no matter what the guy from Y***** P**** (or the people who got your name from them) promises you (and every other instructor) when he cold calls you repeatedly.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m not saying that advertising, being in Yellow Pages, or having your own website doesn\u2019t work. It does – in time, sometimes, with a bit of luck, and if you do it properly. But it is not a tap you can turn on and off just like that, and it\u2019s expensive. And even if it gets you enough work for one moment in time, that work can easily dry up at any other moment.<\/p>\n

A Special Offer<\/strong><\/p>\n

For some reason, every ADI who passes Part 3 seems to be under the impression that they will corner the market by advertising. Believe me, you won\u2019t. And when reality dawns – \"Specialby which time you\u2019ll probably already be struggling to make ends meet – you\u2019re going to want to look for an angle that sets you apart from the crowd.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re not going to attract work by charging more<\/strong> than everyone else, so\u2026 hey, here\u2019s a great idea! Why not cut your lesson prices to snag customers? Instead of charging \u00a325 an hour, you can do \u00a323 instead. Oh, but wait, there are already loads of others doing that so let\u2019s try a bit lower – \u00a320, say. Even that might not be enough to stand out, and you could end up going as low as \u00a315 in an area others are still successfully charging \u00a325.<\/p>\n

Hold on, though. Here\u2019s another great idea. Free lessons. Give away the first lesson free. Damn, people are already doing that, so let\u2019s do a package and sell 10 lessons for something silly, like \u00a399 – or even as low as \u00a356.<\/p>\n

Can you see what I\u2019m getting at here? There are over 40,000 ADIs in the country, and the newly-qualified ADI is not<\/strong> special or unique. Far from it, in fact. A huge proportion of ADIs who got on the Register before you are already offering deals and trying to undercut each other. And is it working for them?<\/p>\n

The short answer is no, it isn\u2019t. There are instructors giving the job up all the time – not just new ones, but established ones who have been doing the job for years. It can be very area-specific, but even established instructors are finding it hard to get work – and more and more of them are joining franchises in order to survive even after many years of being independent.<\/p>\n

So the question you have to ask yourself is: can I<\/span><\/em> make it on my own when I\u2019m just starting out when so many others cannot?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Your Bank Account<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s imagine you\u2019ve gone with a franchise, that you\u2019re paying \u00a3200 a week for it, and that you\u2019re charging \u00a323 an hour for lessons. Now let\u2019s imagine that you\u2019ve been running for a \"Piggyfew months and have between 20 and 30 hours of work. Your total turnover will be up to \u00a3690, which leaves you with about \u00a3290 after your normal overheads. That works out to a wage of around \u00a315,000 a year.<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s assume you chose one of the other options where you\u2019re totally responsible for generating your own supply of pupils. You\u2019re struggling to get 20 hours of work, and you\u2019ve cut your price to \u00a320, with a special offer of \u201c10 or \u00a399\u201d. In a typical week at the moment, 5 of your 20 hours are therefore at the \u00a39.90 rate. Your turnover is around \u00a3350, which leaves you with about \u00a3150 after normal running costs. You will also have to factor in anything you have spent on advertising, which will also come out of that \u00a3150. This equates to an annual wage of considerably less than \u00a37,800, and you can knock off another \u00a350 for every \u00a31 per week you spend on advertising!.<\/p>\n

Even if your scheme manages to bump up your diary to 30 hours your total weekly wage will still be less than it would be if you were franchised – about \u00a3200-\u00a3250. So for all that work – and 30 hours of lessons isn\u2019t easy when you\u2019re starting out – you’ll still be on less than around \u00a312,000 a year.<\/p>\n

Summing Up<\/strong><\/p>\n

Obviously, it is necessary to make a lot of assumptions when explaining this. My<\/strong> assumptions are realistic and based on reality, whereas the newly-qualified ADI unrealistically assumes that they can get as much work as they need as soon as they start trading. Honestly, it doesn\u2019t work like that, and you need as much help as you can get for the first year at least – possibly for longer than that.<\/p>\n

Let me make it absolutely clear that IF<\/strong> you can generate enough work, being independent is the cheapest option by a long way. But if you desperately need to make the job pay then it is extremely risky to choose that option right from the start. You really must not rule out a franchise on the naive assumption that the money you save will be all profit, because you simply won\u2019t have the money to save in the first place!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A newly-qualified ADI recently mentioned that they were looking to go independent straight away, having just passed their Part 3. Their reasoning behind this was that if they didn\u2019t have to pay a franchise, all the money they take from lessons would be theirs. This is one of the main reasons new ADIs go out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adi-related","category-general-related"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}