Workshop for Home Schooling Parents

[kablooey]

I would like feedback on a business idea:

A workshop for home schooling parents who want to improve the way they teach their children math.

I'm thinking it would be a 3-hr session in which parents would role play, play math games, discuss learning strategies, teaching strategies, and the relevant cognitive sciences.

What do you think?

(This post is the Cliff Notes version; details below.)

[kablooey]

I am a full-time math tutor. I have gone to great pains to develop teaching methods that align with cognitive science, the psychology of learning, evidence-based practices, etc.

The kids love it. I frequently get requests like "Can we play algebra today?". I have taken a formerly troubled 13-year-old from counting on his fingers to the Pythagorean Theorem in 9 months. I have converted many math haters into math lovers.

This is what I was born to do.

Now I'd like to scale up my work, help more people, and earn more money by holding a workshop that helps home schooling parents teach math more effectively to their children. Ideally, their children would be in high school, like most of my students.

Problem: I know nothing about running these workshops: Pricing, advertising, scheduling, preparation, locations, types of customers, etc. are all blanks for me.

So I figured the next step is to do some preliminary research. I posted on eLance to get help. That file contains the kind of stuff I want to know, but, basically, I want to find someone in that does this profitably already and is willing to share their secrets.

I want to find a business model to adopt.

Any thoughts?

What should my next action be?

[aelle]

I know nothing about homeschooling and am very glad my days of tutoring maths are behind me, but I know about business modelling and business development.

- Find out more about your target market (homeschooling parents who struggle teaching maths). How many of them are there? Where do they live? How much money do they make? Do they tend to be frugal D-I-Y types (unlikely to spend money on your products) or would they be open to shell out big bucks for their kids' education? I have this nagging doubt that home/unschooling parents who have money are probably highly educated and have no issue with high school math - but do your research and prove me wrong!

This should tell you if your venture is worth it in the first place. Can it make money.

- This core market: what would be the best way to serve them? Are they physically close enough to you to come to a in-person seminar - and do they have the time? Would they prefer a webinar? Written material that they can study anywhere? Note that the last 2 options are much more easily scalable than the first.

- What is your competition out there? Do they target the exact same demographics as you? What are their selling points? How do they price, how do they advertize? This is NOT so that you can copy them, but so that you understand them and see a niche that's unfulfilled. How can you differentiate yourself from them? Who are they not serving?

Think narrow first (seminars for teaching parents hoz to teach maths to their kids) and then wider and wider (public schools, charter schools, private schools are your competition too).


- Who are the most important stakeholders in this business?
a. Who are the influencers of your core market? Homeschooling web forums, gurus, paper publications? You need to be in their good graces and ideally they would endorse you.
b. Who is likely to give your trouble? Are education products legislated in any way? Have they ever caused public outrage in your core market, or could they? Who caused this trouble, and how can you make sure they won't sink your business?

If you can research and answer all these questions, or at least draw an educated guess, and design your business in consequence, you will be in a better position than most business creators. Your big enemy is thinking "yeah but MY dream company is like so and so..." Starting a profitable business is not about fulfilling your dream - not primarily. It's about fulfilling a need in the market.

[Doku]

You might also want to look into a video course. I am a homeschooler, and the problem that we would have with something like this is: what do we do with the kids? Things like this, my wife and I both would like to go to. We also need cliffs notes to refer back to over time. As a video course, we could refer back to it whenever.

The issue there is that you might end up with piracy being a problem.

[SnerpGoodWord]

I don't know too much about the subject, but I do know that there are homeschooling associations/clubs in most major areas. They might serve you well in terms of both market research and promotion. They might also help you find your competition (if it exists) which could be good for investigating pricing, methods of content delivery etc.

[kablooey]

Originally Posted by Doku

You might also want to look into a video course. I am a homeschooler, and the problem that we would have with something like this is: what do we do with the kids? Things like this, my wife and I both would like to go to. We also need cliffs notes to refer back to over time. As a video course, we could refer back to it whenever.

The issue there is that you might end up with piracy being a problem.

I've thought about doing a video/web-based course, but that is pretty tough for the kinds of things I want to do. For example, there will be an algebra activity with plastic manipulatives that parents will be using. I need each parent to have a set of them, and I need to see, in minute detail, how they use them.

Instead of a video, I think I'd just include an activity book in which parents fill the left-side of the page and then the right-side of the page is something they can do with their kids the day they go home. Hopefully that kind of repetition/implementation will reduce the need for later referencing.

I haven't figured out what to do with the kids during the workshop, btw!

[kablooey]

Originally Posted by SnerpGoodWord

I don't know too much about the subject, but I do know that there are homeschooling associations/clubs in most major areas. They might serve you well in terms of both market research and promotion. They might also help you find your competition (if it exists) which could be good for investigating pricing, methods of content delivery etc.

Yes, I'll be asking whoever takes my eLance job to find out about those.