jared's blog

Over the coming weeks, I will be addressing various aspects of information management as they relate to the supplemental education business. We will look at how companies have struggled with these issues and the solutions they have arrived at to overcome these problems. We will examine a few case studies and see how efficient management of information has provided a key to growth and financial success.

OHIO (Only Handle It Once)

Reprinted with permission from Crossroads of Learning Journal © 2008. All rights reserved.

Over the past twenty years there has been a tremendous amount of growth in the supplemental education business including tutoring, test preparation, and other educational services. With the exception of large education chains such as Sylvan, Huntington, and Princeton Review, supplemental education companies have been primarily owned and operated by educators, usually ex-classroom teachers. These companies have been operated from an educators perspective, which often times has translated to large amounts of time dedicated to program development and delivering quality educational services.

Most of us do some kind of written marketing / advertising. There is something simple that can be added or “tweaked” in every marketing piece that can get us a greater response and, in turn, more students.
There is one simple thing that almost any one of us can do to get our written communication read. Often, the reason letters, notes, flyers, and advertising aren’t read is because we have failed to spend a couple of minutes adding the key ingredient.

Reprinted with permission from Crossroads of Learning Journal © 2008. All rights reserved. The use of tutoring as a method of helping someone to learn has been around for a very long time. In fact, it is probably one of the oldest teaching methods. If you think about things you have learned about the life and times of Plato and Socrates in ancient Greece, you will probably recall reading that the children of the wealthy were educated individually or in small groups by masters or tutors.

Many education center owners have learned the hard way that large marketing and advertising campaigns can have very limited results. For example, our company once spent $16,000 on radio ads over a three month period. We received a total of 17 calls as a direct result of this campaign; almost $1,000 per lead. That's not quite a formula for profitability, nor the results we were looking for. And this was not the only advertising campaign that failed to produce results.

Under law, what is the key difference between a contractor and employee? The primary factor in determining the relationship lies in the right of the company to direct and control the manner and means in which the instructor carries out the job, regardless of whether this right is exercised or not. While there are a number of factors that states use to determine the classification of the relationship between center and instructor, here are some simple questions to ask:

• Do you require your instructors to offer services only to your company?
• Do you dictate how the instructors work with the student?
• Do you choose the materials the instructor uses?
• Do you determine the location of the work/sessions?
• Do you train your supervisors?
• Do you supervise your instructors and provide direction?

Welcome to the CenterTrac blog.

I've been running several supplemental education centers for a number of years. You can learn more about that here. The CenterTrac blog is going to try and provide useful tips and articles from myself and others on running centers like mine.

We hope that you get something useful out of the posts that follow and please feel free to contact me at jared@centertrac.com if you want to contribute.

Good luck and good business.