Grind your teeth and think about England

At midnight, when carriages turn into pumpkin, we continue the working day. For an hour and a half, we are talking with Petersburg Alexander Egrashin on how he lives and is undertaken. Alexander works so that you immediately begin to feel like a loafer: on the eve, he spent more than 16 hours on his feet - from 9 a.m. to 10 pm he taught students, then he allocated time to talk with me, and when we agree, he would sit down at night for the translation of the English text. Alexander’s incompatible with a normal life schedule is proud of: in conversations and correspondence, no, no, he will mention how he turned the next mountain, and repeats that he had no time to relax, but he will sink and rest someday later. He is 22 years old, he is a young businessman who, in September last year, opened a language school in the center of St. Petersburg with an exciting imagination with the name “The School of Effective English“ smart Cote ”(stress on the second syllable). The school provides customers with different services: group (including corporate) and individual classes for different levels of knowledge, transfers of texts, distance lessons on Skype, preparation for international exams, exam and interviews, etc. School promotion occurs through groups and advertising on social networks. Alexander fell ill in English in high school. The son of the military, he was born in Leningrad, and then lived in the city of peaceful for 17 years, which is not far from the Plesetsk cosmodrome. He studied at an art school, loved to draw portraits and was going to become a designer, and in his free time he taught poetry and participated in poetic reading contests - such a strange hobby. This oddity eventually played a key role in his fate. Once, Alexander learned a patriotic poem about the Great Patriotic War in English, and won a trip to England at the competition. London, teaching languages ​​at Cambridge and life in Kenterbury in a family of the British became for a boy from a peaceful one something like an immersion without an aqualanga in the Mariana Bombed and an exploding bomb. Alexander, who did not have good conversational practice, willy-nilly had to talk. In his skin, he felt how important knowledge of languages ​​is to communicate with people of other cultures and what prospects are opened before those who know these languages. Having returned, he began to learn English, familiar earlier at the level of ordinary school education , which was dustred in a year to knowledge, which was enough for the first three courses of the institute. He taught at night, on the weekend, with high temperature - according to Alexander, his fanatic craving for knowledge was cultivated by a teacher who worked with him. She taught the “rule of the winner”, which Alexander should: the main thing is to strive for the result, discarding everything that interferes with this result. After graduation, Alexander returned to St. Petersburg. He first studied at the “Humanitarian University of Trade Unions” on a linguist-translator, then transferred to the Polytechnician to the Faculty of Foreign Languages ​​(specialty “Teacher”). At the beginning of the fifth year, he changed the university, transferred to the Polar Academy to the specialty "English philology" - in order to study literature and at the same time write work in comparison of English and Russian prison slang. Our hero also changed his work repeatedly: from the first year he was engaged in tutoring, tried himself in journalism and technical support of the city -forming enterprise - the social network “In contact”. Alexander cherished the desire to open his own school for a long time, and the realization that it was time to act came, as an insight, in an instant, in August last year. He walked trite along the street and suddenly realized that it was time to start. Almost the next day, Alexander stood neither light nor dawn and went to the other end of the city to the tax, where he submitted documents for registering his own business as an individual entrepreneur. At the same time, he was preoccupied with the search for a roof over his head: he turned to the local fund of social support for entrepreneurship, who helped the young businessman find the room almost in the very center of St. Petersburg, on Rimsky-Korsakov Avenue. Alexander had an amount of 30,000 rubles: he paid 26,000 for rent, and decided to make repairs for the remaining 4,000 - since the room in which the school was supposed to open was nothing but the walls, roof, door and two videophons. I made repairs on my own: I painted the walls, repaired the wiring, lay linoleum. The inheritance from previous tenants went to holes in the walls - Alexander decided to seal with “cat paws” from the “Smootlay” adhesive paper for 80 rubles (“stencil, scissors - and everything is ready”). He cut them out too much and decided to use the blanks in order to show the students the way to school - from stopping to the entrance, where the school is located, customers come along the paws. I am interested in why he chose the name "smart Kote"? Alexander replies that he did not want to copy the experience of numerous predecessors who choose any English words as the name and write them for the sake of seriousness Latin. Since there was no money for advertising, and the only site for promotion was seen, it was necessary that the name itself became advertising. Therefore, the popular Internet meme “Kote” was chosen, which was called “smart” and immediately began to promoted with the help of pictures-modivators . On August 26, all official permits were received, and the school opened on September 1. In order to start, Alexander needed “fast money” - he went along a simple way to him, and offered the first customers large discounts: 250 rubles per hour, regardless of whether you study in a group or individually (subject to payment of the entire course at once). Since the school is moving only on the Internet, 70% of customers come from there, 30% - on the recommendation of those who have already studied. For six months, the school has accumulated a base of 40-50 regular customers. The costs of Alexander paid off almost immediately. The teaching income is enough to pay for rent, print advertising flyers and minimally advance on social networks. The plans to develop the Spanish direction (there are friends who are ready to help him in this), look for employees who could work with Alexander - expand, in short. But Alexander tells me about expansion plans without much enthusiasm and constantly tries to reduce the conversation to improve the quality of education. It is proudly shared: in mid-January, a woman came to him, such a serious business woman, which is fine but knowledge of English. And already in February she admitted that she tried to learn the language for several years in a row at different courses, and only Alexander managed to instill in her a sense of this language, his understanding. And everything would be fine, but the interest in teaching and passionate love for English, the desire to bear the light of Shakespeare's language to the masses is, alas, not about business. Obviously, Alexander is at the very beginning of the journey and, brewing in this boiler, should decide what to do next and how to develop, because with all his perseverance the rest of his life to work around the clock. I walked and thought: what would I do in the place of Alexander? What would change? And in the end, I decided to turn to experts - those who at one time built a business on teaching languages ​​and, possibly, came across the same difficulties as our hero. Alexander agreed to listen to the advice and argue with them. “If Alexander wants further growth of his business, he needs to change his role in the project,” said Ainur Abdulnasyrov, the creator of the “Club of Native speakers” and Lingaleo.ru . - You need to stop serving customers yourself and become an entrepreneur, organize other people. This is a rather painful process, taking into account what Alexander likes to teach - but you will have to learn not to do it. There is another option: to find a partner who will take on the whole business wrapper, but this is not very justified, since no one except Alexander himself knows better why customers come to him, what they need-and all this information will have to be transmitted to another person. ” Abdulnasyrov himself did not experience such torment. Studying in the GU-Wles helped: the project started not at the only desire to teach, but with a business model, a network of foreign executors and a clear positioning of himself in the case (Ainur did not teach partners, but acted only to the intermediary between teachers and students). True, at the very beginning, the model had to be changed: it was originally conceived that teachers would expel the percentage of the “club”, but it turned out that it was easier to take money from students and transfer fees to teachers themselves. A year after the launch of the Club, 50 native speakers worked in the project, and the turnover approached 1.5 million rubles a month. And then Ainur came out of the project at all, and now with the team of like-minded people is working on another brainchild-a web service for learning English Lingualeo.ru. However, the situation of Alexander Ainuru is familiar. According to him, it is difficult for teachers who begin their job with teaching on their own is difficult to “jump off” - some of his acquaintances could not. In addition, Alexander Egrashin should decide on the services that he provides. “Now he is engaged in almost everyone: group and individual courses, preparation for exams, distance learning, Skype lessons,” says Ainur. - It is good that the market is trying and feels, but for further development it is important to understand which services are most in demand and focus on them. Each of these areas is a serious business with high competition, and to play in this field, you can not scatter. ” Where to start? The director and co -owner of the English language school Windsor (founded in 2003) Julia Nikonova believes that it should begin with marketing analysis. “It is important to understand who is the target audience of the Alexander school, whether it is necessary to expand or reduce it (work in a narrow niche), what are its needs, what is the competitive advantages and disadvantages of the Alexander, where the language teaching market will develop,” she advises. - Then it is worth conveying the uniqueness of the school of Alexander to potential customers. The Internet now offers a lot of ways to work with the target audience,

. For business development, it is necessary to increase recognition. ” At the same time, Nikonova does not exclude the fact that having evaluated the market and his own capabilities, Alexander will decide to change the name of the school: “Smyster Kote” - a name that most likely works to attract a youth audience, but is the owner sure that he wants to work only with her? And so this name helps? Your confidence that the Internet meme is positively working for recognition on the Internet is worth checking with the study: interview customers and find out what percentage you drew attention to the name? How many people are generally able to remember him? " “The situation when a specialist opens his business and then breaks between the favorite business and the organization of business is quite common,” Nikonova notes. “It is better to command and be a strategist yourself, as this is the strongest motivation to achieve results.” And, most importantly, what all surveyed owners of language schools warn in chorus: the process of restructuring, changing the role in the project, will be long and, possibly, painful. But for development it is necessary. After hearing the advice of experts, Alexander admitted that he himself thought about less involvement in the pedagogical process several months ago. “I am a workaholic, I can work in an ultra -productive mode without reducing the efficiency,” he tells me by Skype. - But, but, but ... I understand that now you need to think, plan, structurally rebuild the method of separation of responsibility. Otherwise, this business will remain - a matter of one person. And this road, as you know, leads to a landfill. ” But with a change in his own role, Alexander still wants to leave himself a couple of students-so that, according to him, "do not bury the teacher in himself." But he does not plan to narrow the number of services with a decisive hand. According to him, the “invisible hand of the market” and the demand for certain services themselves will offend the services. “This is a natural evolutionary process in which I do not interfere, but only look closely at the results of the arrangement,” Alexander summarizes.