{"id":7722,"date":"2012-01-06T17:02:32","date_gmt":"2012-01-06T17:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=7722"},"modified":"2012-01-06T17:02:32","modified_gmt":"2012-01-06T17:02:32","slug":"new-adi-stampede-imminent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=7722","title":{"rendered":"New ADI Stampede Imminent?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Elephant,<\/a>I\u2019ve mentioned a few times recently that I am expecting a rush of people trying to become ADIs this year. The recession is showing no signs of letting up, and many people are losing their jobs as their employers go to the wall. For many, self-employment is the only chance they have of working. I\u2019m already seeing a few signs of increased interest in the job.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve also said that \u2013 in my opinion \u2013 people becoming instructors doesn\u2019t significantly affect the amount of work available. I mean, it\u2019s obvious that at some<\/strong> point there could be too many instructors, but I don\u2019t think we\u2019ve ever hit that point (except possibly in a few depressed areas of the country).<\/p>\n

So why are so many existing ADIs suffering or even giving up the job? In my opinion, it\u2019s down to a complex mixture of poor marketing, bad advice, and greed.<\/p>\n

I saw a magnetic sign on the side of a Hackney Cab today. It was advertising a local driving school \u2013 probably a one-man band, like most of us are \u2013 and it said:<\/p>\n

\n

5 lessons for \u00a350<\/font><\/p>\n

Lessons \u00a316 an hour<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ve seen the school car a few times and thought nothing of it. It\u2019s not a banger or anything, and looks like it\u2019s leased or owned. And I saw another ad in a takeaway a couple of days ago that said:<\/p>\n

\n

4 lessons \u00a340.01<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Yes, it did have the 0.01! I didn\u2019t see what the normal hourly rate was, but you can be reasonably sure it wasn\u2019t more than \u00a320.<\/p>\n

When someone becomes an ADI they have a choice of joining a franchise or going solo. Those who are genuinely not clear about which path to take are often given very bad advice by established ADIs who have issues with franchises. Many of these will have started out on a franchise of some sort, but once they were established they went solo. However, for some inexplicable reason, they try to persuade new ADIs to go solo right at the start!<\/p>\n

Other newly-qualified instructors are just greedy, and reason that if they are doing 40 hours of lessons a week then paying a franchiser a fee of between \u00a3100-\u00a3200 is money they could have in their pockets. The difficult part, though, is getting those 40 hours. As a new ADI, it\u2019s like taking up football for the first time and then expecting to get picked for England against Holland next month. It doesn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

This is where the bad marketing kicks in. In order to try and get the 40 hours they have to advertise, and since they\u2019re not the only ones in the market for pupils, they need a hook. The hook is lower prices. But then, the problem is simply that even if they could get anywhere near 40 hours, every \u00a31 they knock off their lesson rates is another 2 hours of lessons they need to do just to remain where they are. The fact that they don\u2019t<\/strong> get 40 hours \u2013 many are lucky to be doing half that, and yet their original business plan demanded that they get around 40 hours at a full hourly rate \u2013 just compounds the issue.<\/p>\n

Now, I charge \u00a323 an hour for learner lessons, and I calculate that my pre-tax profit from that must work out to somewhere between \u00a312-\u00a315 an hour (very<\/strong> approximately). Someone charging \u00a316 an hour, with similar overheads, would be making between \u00a35-\u00a38 an hour pre-tax, which would fall still further when the \u201c5 for \u00a350\u201d lessons are factored in. Then there\u2019s the advertising outlay (Lord knows how much it costs to have an advert stuck on a taxi), and the likelihood that it will be ineffective.<\/p>\n

Slapping an A5 flyer in the local Chinese or Indian takeaway doesn\u2019t fill diaries. Nor does sticking the equivalent on the side of a taxi. Neither can keep<\/strong> diaries full. At best, it gets a couple of pupils. Usually, it gets none.<\/p>\n

Of course, I appreciate that in some areas the going lesson rate is low, but around here there\u2019s no such issue, and someone advertising \u00a316 lessons is only doing it to try and get work. In fact, he will have to be doing 30% more lessons than me just to make the same profit \u2013 and yet he\u2019s doing this because he\u2019s probably working 50% less<\/strong> hours and desperately needs to fix it! The same undercutting is happening on a pro rata<\/em> basis everywhere. \u00a37 an hour is a hell of a price to pay to \u2013 at best \u2013 tread water.<\/p>\n

Finally, those lower profits enhance the need to cut costs, which will inevitably affect the lesson quality (less driving to save fuel expenditure). This, in turn, affects reputation, and that<\/strong> prevents referrals and can easily lead to loss of pupils, who know when they\u2019re being taken for a ride.<\/p>\n

This is where I think the problem lies. How long can newcomers survive with rising costs in this recession, when they\u2019re on their own without a pupil base, and are charging \u00a37 less than the going rate? Yet still<\/strong> you hear advice about going it alone!<\/p>\n

Speaking personally, I\u2019ve got a good pupil base and good referrals \u2013 and it took time to build that up. I\u2019ve been doing a minimum of about 25-30 hours (except in the snow last year) and a maximum of 50 hours (once) throughout 2011. My average seems to be between 33-37 hours, and 2012 looks set to continue the same way.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, those charging silly prices couldn\u2019t run a viable business even if they had the same level of work as me! The costs involved in running a driving school ensure that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve mentioned a few times recently that I am expecting a rush of people trying to become ADIs this year. The recession is showing no signs of letting up, and many people are losing their jobs as their employers go to the wall. For many, self-employment is the only chance they have of working. I\u2019m […]<\/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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7722","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\/7722","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=7722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}