Do this if you’re starting a teaching business in 2025

Apr 1

Written By Andrew Woodbury

Your 12-month roadmap

Read time: 6 minutes

Here’s our TTT for this week on how to grow your online teaching business.

What is TTT? A Tip, Takeaway, and Task. On Thursday.

Enjoy!

Tip: Don’t do everything

Are you starting your teaching business in 2025? Perhaps you've already delved into it - the year is already two months old, which is hard to believe.

Even if you've already started yours, we think these steps will serve you well to strive towards your goals this year.

Let's begin with what we don't recommend doing:

We see many teachers trying to do a bit of everything.

This doesn’t just mean concerning their niche. It also means how they deliver their product.

We constantly wonder if what makes us teachers great in the classroom is simultaneously what holds us back in business. That is, trying to help every student in every way that meets their needs. In the classroom, we do this.

But we shouldn’t in our business. Not because we can’t or shouldn’t, but for viability purposes.

McDonald’s doesn’t sell pizza, for example (even though they used to and definitely should go back to it, in our opinion). If you walk in there and order pizza, they don’t bend over backwards to go find you some.

They tell you to go somewhere else.

Telling potential customers to leave is difficult when you’re just starting out, but it’s essential you draw that line. Doing so allows you to focus on what really matters.

Takeaway: Why date a niche?

If you are serious about starting your teaching business in 2025, here are the steps you could follow:

Step 1. Choose the problem you solve

Remember, you’re not going to start a McDonald’s and serve pizza. You need to choose one specific problem that one group of people have, and solve it for them.

That’s it. Start here.

Step 2. Choose how you solve it

Decide how you want to work with students to solve that problem. This could be classes, 1:1, group, DM support, or even face to face. Just pick one and go.

Step 3. Run a pilot

Get 5 people and run a pilot program to validate steps 1 and 2. Don’t overthink it.

Do all of this within the next 60 days. Then you have validation. That leads you to the next step:

Step 4. Business model

Decide on your business model. That is, what in steps 1-3 are you keeping, changing, and deleting? You now have a product and fulfillment strategy, i.e. a business.

And at this point, you can think about what you want this business to be: a hobby, side hustle, or main hustle. Depending on your vision, you’ll make different decisions.

Step 5. Say “no”

Other people outside your niche will find you and ask you for support - say no.

You’ll get other ideas for other courses and niches - tell yourself no.

Not because they are bad ideas, but because they are distracting. By this point, you likely owe it to yourself to see your pilot idea through.

That is: is it simply a one-off idea or is it a real business?

It’s quite simple to create a new idea each month and get a few people to test it with you. It’s another entirely to get new people all the time to sign up for the same idea.

Stick with it.

Which leads us to…

Step 6. Do one thing for 12 months

Alex Hormozi says that most people fail in business because they cannot do the same thing each day again and again.

They get distracted by shiny objects or new trends.

We tend to agree with that.

So, step 6 is to embrace the “five ones” of starting a business:

1 problem you solve
1 offer
1 platform

1 conversion method

1 year

Do this for 12 months and you’ll have much bigger goals this time next year.

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Task: Go on a date

To get to step 2, 3 and beyond, we need to do Step 1 first. Thinking in steps is also quite a useful way to construct your solution - that is, how you solve your client's problem.

If you're starting your business now or moving away from general English and into a more defined, specialized area, the first step is to answer this question:

What problem do I solve for my (future) clients?

Tip: it's not linguistic.

If you get some clarity on that in the next 7 days, you can move on to Step 2 and then beyond, resulting in momentum.

We hope this helps.

If you want some guidance in this process, book a complimentary consultation with us.

We show you how to:

1. Identify the real problem you solve

2. Create a solution for that

3. Enroll 5+ clients in 30-45 days.

See you next week.