41. Career progression for the self-employed English teacher in Japan

AI-generated transcript:

I wanted to talk about something that maybe is an obstacle for people who want to become self -employed or are thinking about becoming self -employed and think, I don't want to.

And that is the idea of a career progression, that if you're self -employed, you don't really have a career.

And this is true, but the whole subject kind of bores me because I'm going to talk about it.

But, you know, for much of my younger years, perhaps I was more, not obsessed, but I was more conscious of career progression.

And I really thought it was very important.

You have to get to the next rung in the ladder so that you can afford to live and do all the things that you think are very important.

Yeah, I get that.

So the idea of jacking it all in and becoming self -employed can be very daunting.

I think I've mentioned that before.

But, OK, so career progression.

What would be a typical career progression for a self -employed English teacher?

Well, I assume that you may be, I mean, what I did, I'll say what I did, but, you know, it doesn't make it right.

It's just that's my experience.

I started teaching at Berlitz Language Schools for two years, a year and a half in my 20s.

That was my first year.

That was my really my only paid employment in teaching that I ever had.

But it was enough to give me a sense that I would be OK at it, that I quite like talking to people and quite like listening to them.

And also, I didn't like the bureaucracy of a business or working for other people.

I never worked in schools at that time.

But anyway, so I had that.

So where do you go from there?

That was my little bit of experience.

I would imagine that you have a little experience.

Well, you know, if you want to do your own thing, the next thing is to do your own thing.

And presumably before you have your own place to teach from, you could teach from coffee shops or you could get an ALT position working for schools.

That might be how you start off.

A little kid going by on a scooter.

That might be how you start off.

And all of these are good.

And it's good to get your face in front of students.

And to get some experience of dealing with people and teaching English.

Right.

But after that, you know, you get stuck with low salaries.

And as you get older, frankly, as you get through your 20s, you might meet somebody special.

And, you know, you want to settle down.

And you realize that you...

Well, back when I was working, it was 250 ,000 yen a month.

I think I got it up to about 330 ,000 yen a month.

And this was, what, 25, 30 years ago.

And I think the wages are actually a bit lower even now.

I've seen from NOVA it's like around 200 ,000 yen per month.

Plus place to live.

Perhaps you know better than I.

Anyway, so you've got to get out of that.

So what can you do?

Well, the next career progression would be to build up your own private students from people that you meet.

Or you could advertise.

Or I'm thinking word of mouth, you might get a handful.

Great.

Go from there.

So then you have a full -time job or maybe part -time job and you supplement it with your own students.

That's good.

And then where do you go from there?

Well, hopefully you can build up more and more.

You get more and more students.

You get better at teaching.

Maybe create your own materials.

Maybe you're not publishing yet.

Publishing your own books, but you could.

But creating your own stuff.

Getting a good feel for it.

And building up a reputation.

Now you might, then you might consider teaching from your home.

If you have a spare room, you can do that.

That's a good thing.

Lack of planning regulations in Japan.

There's a good side to that.

And that is that you can just open a business wherever you are.

And people are quite forgiving of having home businesses.

Just get a nice sign board, put it out front.

And away you go.

If you have a place that you can teach from.

And, you know, a six -month.

Mat room or even a 4 .5 tatami mat room would be enough.

I would do that.

These days, I guess you could do online.

When I was starting out, that wasn't an option.

But again, you still need a space and a quiet space to do that from.

So that could be from home.

You could teach from here.

I'm sitting on a bench in a lake.

Next to a lake.

I wouldn't recommend things that are weather dependent.

So other things you could do.

You could teach from a you could rent a place at a local library or civic hall.

They are a bit fussy about about people renting out to make money from it.

So it can be a bit awkward.

And also they have weird sort of like a lottery system.

You can't just have a regular spot every week.

Little kids come back on their scooter.

She's pretty good.

So, you know, I wouldn't advise that.

But at some point you have enough students that it was worth maybe renting a place.

And that's when you get really serious.

You may think, oh, I can't afford the rent.

But, you know, if you work out, work it out in terms of how many students do you have and how many how many students do you need to cover your rent?

Let's say your rent is, for argument's sake, 80 ,000 yen for a little tiny place a month.

And you charge 8 ,000 yen.

Per student from monthly monthly lessons.

Well, even you can do the math.

That's 10 students.

So so that means that if you have 10 students, you know, that's that's what you need to cover the rent.

Obviously, you need more than that for food and everything.

But, you know, so if you were earning, you know, you just do the math.

If you if you need to earn, you need to clear 250 ,000 yen a month.

OK, add 80 ,000 for the rent.

Well, that's 330 ,000.

So you need to be enough students to cover 330 ,000 yen.

You can work that out.

Divide that by eight.

Eight thousand.

Whatever that is.

That's five.

Around five.

Four.

Four.

Four of you need 40 or 50 students.

50 to be comfortable to start your rental place.

Well, that's, you know, that's your career progression or 50 students.

That's, you know, you're not going to be rich doing that, but you're going to make as much money as you ever did.

And that's going to be a very important part of your life.

You're going to get an entry level job.

Double the number of students get to 100.

Right.

So once you get to about 100 students and you've got a regular business, you know,

you're making reasonable money.

You're making, you know, you may be clearing 400, 500 ,000 yen a month.

Yeah.

OK.

You know, it's not an enormous amount of money, but but from there, you could then

consider hiring somebody.

That would be the next career progression.

Thanks for being with me

SPEAKER 1

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SPEAKER 1

That brings me to the real story.

SPEAKER 1

All of a sudden the water taps were shut.

I decide myfeelin the agency all turned up.

amount and still make money because you just do that same factor okay well if i'm spending two

thousand yen for a student and for a teacher how many students do i need to have to make it worth

my while and how many anyway so you grow like that so you could that's the next career progression

uh if you wanted to go in that route you could completely replace yourself

and um you know then you become a teacher of the teachers or you become a

um the head teacher or the manager or director or whatever you want to call it

and and just teach your favorite students and offload everything else and just

be cover for other people eventually you could replace that role so in fact you could become

by the time you retire um you could be uh you know just an advisory role you could run a website

telling other people how to do their business

um

i haven't

gone that far um i'm still young no i just i don't know i've got an allergy against being a

manager but you're quite good at managing myself and i'm quite good at managing a classroom

uh i don't know i just don't fancy it but anyway that's me that's one possibility you could

uh and then then the next thing is you become a chain i'm not really interested in doing that

myself but you could you could replicate everything that you've done

making your textbooks and just hiring everybody to start over um and then you've got two places

then three then four and five whatever so going from a from a position where oh there's no career

there's no career project uh ladder actually it's better than that career ladder it's a

it's a way of life with really really big upside that you know potentially you could be quite rich

if that's the direction you want to go but you can shape your life how you want to do you can give

yourself more time or if you really enjoy teaching if you're one of those crazy people

you can do a lot of the teaching but as you get older you might want to step back from the

running around with little kids or or perhaps you don't like business english

hand that over to somebody else um

so you know that that's you you are in control of your of your destiny of your career

and that's the best thing so so although it appears that you have no career trajectory

actually um it is what you make of it to a large extent okay that's me i've gone past 10 minutes

amazingly um have a good one i'm gonna finish my

uh american coffee which this telephone is resting against and i can finish my uh

bike ride okay have a good one have a nice weekend yay there's the sun i got here on time this time

okay see you have a nice weekend