Featured The Rising (Part 29) - Unable to catch up

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Edvin

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Rising from the ashes...
Start: The Rising (Part 1) - Introduction
Previous: The Rising (Part 28) - I'm LIVE !!!
Current: The Rising (Part 29) - Unable to catch up
Next: The Rising (Part 30) - Shortsightedness

It is 2:30 am as I try to take a minute to post a quick update.

I'm busy playing catchup and have yet to take a breather.

I'm the new kid on the block without any storefront; so, I need a way of establishing my credibility. To facilitate this, I started a blog about my services so that the parents know more about the benefits of enrolling their children. I also started posting pictures & videos on facebook. I need to do some more FB page maintenance before I can link to it from my website.

Last week I had three paid students, which appeared to be very happy with the services.

This week I have six paid students; actually, I have seven students, but I gave one client a 50% discount when I learned that she was going to exclude her daughter from the coding camp due to financial difficulty.

I have not yet started my online ad campaign (adwords, facebook, radio, etc)...

Why? Well, it is not important!

No, I'm just kidding! The truth is that I haven't really had the time.

My students follow a self-paced curriculum; so, not much work needs to be done in that area. However, it is too much to ask children to engage in a study session continuously for 3 hours. Instead, I engage them with a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) challenge which has been well received and been a lot of fun.

However, I find myself taking a lot of time preparing for next day's activity session.

My wife reminded me that my prep-work was similar to the work that volunteers would do to help teachers in schools.

I have an internal struggle regarding my business model. To sustain a viable business, I need to increase my price schedule and decrease hours I spend in preparing these fun STEM activities (differentiators)! Keep in mind, that when I work I try to think how I can sustain my activity and leverage automation for my STEM kits (e.g. laser cutter or other such devices).

I can recycle some idea from week-to-week; but, I have at least one repeating student, which makes me want to forge new material.

Perhaps, the best course of action is to keep working with the camp and then increase my prices and change my service!!!

Well, my brain is not working, and it is shutting down ZZzzzz....
 
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djbaxter

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Edvin said:
I'm the new kid on the block without any storefront; so, I need a way of establishing my credibility. To facilitate this, I started a blog about my services so that the parents know more about the benefits of enrolling their children. I also started posting pictures & videos on facebook. I need to do some more FB page maintenance before I can link to it from my website.
Click to expand...
You're doing it right, Edvin. Any new business takes time to establish but you are off to an excellent start!

Edvin said:
My students follow a self-paced curriculum; so, not much work needs to be done in that area. However, it is too much to ask children to engage in a study session continuously for 3 hours. Instead, I engage them with a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) challenge which has been well received and been a lot of fun.

However, I find myself taking a lot of time preparing for next day's activity session.
Click to expand...
I taught part-time at one of the local universities here and found the same: for the first year or two, preparation time was almost overwhelming, especially since I had a full-time day job. But after the first run, your task is one of fine-tuning instead of building from the ground up. And after a while, once you have fine-tuned out what works well and what doesn't, preparation time drops off sharply. It helps to keep that in mind: It will get easier, or at least less time-consuming, the more times youi offer the course.

Edvin said:
I have an internal struggle regarding my business model. To sustain a viable business, I need to increase my price schedule and decrease hours I spend in preparing these fun STEM activities (differentiators)! Keep in mind, that when I work I try to think how I can sustain my activity and leverage automation for my STEM kits (e.g. laser cutter or other such devices).

I can recycle some idea from week-to-week; but, I have at least one repeating student, which makes me want to forge new material.

Perhaps, the best course of action is to keep working with the camp and then increase my prices and change my service!!!
Click to expand...
I think that's exactly the right approach, Edvin. Remember: the rule of thumb has always been that any new business venture will take 3 years to become profitable. Establish your business, establish your credibility, and establish your customer/client base. And at that point, you can look at gradually increasing your prices to make the business more profitable.

Added: I love your website, by the way. At some point - when you have some breathing room before 2.30 am! - you will want to add a GDPR-compatible privacy policy but you can wait for that. I can provide some samples if you're interested - and if you're using the WordPress platform for the site, some recommended plugins.
 
Edvin

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Tnx for all the info and encouragement; I really appreciate it.

DJ,
I am only targetting my local community and GDPR is not required in US.
Therefore, I'm not sure if its implementation makes sense.

Let me know if you have other thoughts on this.

Tnx,
Edvin
 
djbaxter

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Edvin said:
I am only targetting my local community and GDPR is not required in US. Therefore, I'm not sure if its implementation makes sense.
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My thoughts are these:

You're correct that GDPR is a European law that is not required in the US or Canada. However, it defines a reasonably well-organized structure for outlining to your customers and potential customers exactly what information you collect and how that information is protected, as well as the fact that your site uses cookies.

For that reason, I have adopted its basic principles on sites that I own or manage for other small businesses. I don't use the full implementation on sites that do business only in North America but I have adapted it in a way which I think accomplishes the spirit if not the letter of the GDPR.

The implementation I use is basically just a structured statement of the privacy policy and two WordPress plugins that provide (1) a notice of the use of cookies; and (2) a reminder of the privacy policy in places on the site that either use contact forms or create customer accounts or shopping carts.

The two WordPress plugins I use are:
  1. Cookie Notice for GDPR by dfactory
  2. WP GDPR Compliance by Van Ons
You can see the format used for the Privacy Policy page at the site in my signature: Privacy Policy. Feel free to copy that and just substitute your own information if you wish.
 
Edvin

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Very Interesting and thank you for sharing.
I'll take a look during my next hiring cycle.
 
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