Starting a training company - where do I start?

[JoyDivision]

I currently run an IT support company, which is going ok (done it for 6 years) but not enough to live on long term.

I am starting a basic adult teaching course in the new year as I do a lot of training unofficialy in my current business.

Long term I was thinking of setting up a small learn direct type centre but how does it work? How do you get referrals from the job centre, do you compete on price?

And how does payment work etc?

Some information of where I can start in terms of research would be helpful, I couldn't find much on Google.

 

[incensed]

Let's get you thinking by asking you some questions that you need to answer to start ANY business-

• What's the target audience? who are they? How Many?
• How do plan to reach them to tell them about your service?
• What's you revenue model going to be?
• Have you thought about operations- how you will deiver and what you gonna need in terms of costs and people?

BTW what kind of adult training classes are these, if you don;t mind?

Hersh

 

[simonr]

Would your training classes be in the IT area? If so, one option would be to present your current clients with discounts on your training courses and so on - at the very least you've got a database to start marketing with!

Do you *really* want to go head-to-head with LearnDirect, given that they were set up with Government money?

 

[Apprentice Guru]

You could start by contacting Learn Direct to see if they have funding for the courses you're looking to run as alot of the LD work is contracted out to local suppliers.

Another area to look at would be IT apprenticeships which are funded by the Skills Funding Agency. To deliver these you'd need your A1 assessor award and someone else in the business would need the V1 Verifier award (or vice versa).

 

[projectfriday]

Another idea would be to deliver private IT training, whether on a 1-to-1 basis or group basis for companies, offering a discount of a minimum booking of 4 or 5 employees (or whichever number you prefer). There's a lot of websites which list such training centres, so you could get listed on there. You could offer on-site training or full/half day workshops at your location. You could offer specialised courses or general IT training. Look into how you can deliver certified courses such as MCSE, also look into offering other IT training such as Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce, etc.