How I Ran My Training solutions company from Home

Today I will be sharing with you my journey as a training coordinator and how I ran a training solutions company from my home.

I earned an MBA from Lagos Business School and during the course of my MBA I discovered I had a good way to present information.

In my class then, we often worked in groups when given an assignment. I discovered that I was so good at presenting that my group always could count on me to present whatever assignments we had done even if it was not planned that I should present.

I wasn’t always like that, but I knew I could always present a good argument especially when we discussed case studies during our classwork, I also loved talking.

One day, we had a group presentation and other groups were presenting their bit.

As I was watching them, I kept replaying in my mind how I had prepared to present mine.  There were 6 groups in our class and mine was like way before the last.

When I got up to present my group’s idea of what should be the answer to the problem we were trying to solve.

I so did a good job that the whole class got up and gave me a standing ovation, we were a class of 69.

That was how I found out what I could do with my love for talking, making arguments and generating ideas.

Needless to say, we won that presentation and that alone set me on a part where I was able to present a project we worked on for PEACE initiative in Colombia, I was the Lead presenter at the United Nations in Manhattan New York City USA.

Fast forward 2011, I had finished my MBA and was trying to start off a career, it took me a while but I soon figured out that starting a training business will be the way to go. It took a miscarriage and a stillbirth though for me to make that decision.

6 things I Learned While Running My Training Solutions Company

1) Discover your Skill: What are you really good at, you have to know that one thing you can do and try to see how you can monetize it.

For example, my love for talking and presentation helped me discover how I could start a training business and use it to make a living.

I started Laplace Knowledge Academy with that single skill and used it to train over 500 professionals in the Telecoms industry.

2) Discover your target market: The Training industry is a huge market, according to The Training industry Report  in 2015, the US market spent about 70.6 billion Dollars on training alone.

This is to tell you of the huge market potential this presents to anyone who will want to dive into that market.

Understanding the market you want to go into and discovering what they need is the best way to marry your passion for training with a business model that works for you.

In my case, I discovered my target market as graduates who desired to start a career in the Telecoms industry.

Most of them were graduates of different disciplines but they had a desire to pursue a career in the Telecoms industry but lacked the needed skills to break into that industry.

The big industry players were not willing to train fresh graduates like that, they often hired people who already had the skills they needed.

If a fresh graduate needed to start up a career, he couldn’t be hired because he lacked the skills to get in.

In came my company a training solutions company that offered to train the individuals for a fee and then connect them with a company where they could intern until they perfected their skills.

The real issue here is understanding your target markets’ needs and providing a solution via training that solves their problems.

3) Design your business model: What is a business model? It’s simply how your business intends to make money.

This model tells you what your long term goal is and what you intend to do day to day in other to reach that goal.

Culling from an article I read about business models from TechCrunch here are 7 basic steps that you should include in your business model, I will also add an 8 step at the end.

Reaching your customers: In your training business, how do you intend to reach your customers, for my case, I advertised in places where I knew fresh graduates will be congregated in such as Job sites, Facebook and also pitched to schools to partner with them.

Differentiating your Products: How do you differentiate your product offering or training from what others were offering. I differentiated my training offering by offering to connect the trainees to companies where they could gain internship opportunities to perfect their skills.

Pricing: How do you price your products to ensure that your target customer can pay? I priced my training in different ways, I offered discounts to gain referrals and I also priced group bookings to encourage bulk enrollment.

I also made it easy for them to pay when they were ready to commit funds, here is a payment platform that makes it easy for you to receive payment from anywhere in the world, you can click here to register with them

Payoneer.

Payoneer is a payment platform that makes it easy for you to bill people anywhere in the world and also receive your payment from them.

You can be paid in most currencies and the fees they charge are not much. it’s also easy to access your funds.

Selling: I sold my ideas to young people who already had an interest in the telecoms industry.

I showed them how my training had helped others via past customer testimonies.

I also pitched my ideas to universities who were graduating students and showed them how my training will enable graduating students from their schools to do better in their chosen field thereby making their school a hot spot for recruitment by industry people.

Delivery and distribution: My training was mainly classroom taught classes, so I made sure that my customers knew where the training venue was beforehand to avoid missing classes due to inability to find the venue.

Supporting customers: I supported my customers by answering questions as to what they stood to gain from training.

I also ensured I kept in touch with them during the training times to assist with any concerns they may have.

Most of them were always concerned about getting the internship opportunities that would be available to them at the end of the training.

I made sure they understood the terms of the internship and helped encourage them to perform well in the training so as to be eligible to get it.

Achieving customer satisfaction: For some of my trainees I achieved customer satisfaction, they often gave me referrals.

Designing your income streams: Design your training business to have multiple income streams, as this will enable you to make more money.

For instance, if your training is based on teaching people how to cook Asian cuisine, Here are 4 possible income streams.

• Create a membership site where people pay monthly to learn new recipes.
• Author an eBook of your recipes
• Coaching: You can also have a paid coaching session for those who will like to do your kind of business in other to teach them.
• Brand ambassador: You can be a brand ambassador for a product you use.

Take a look at how I have been able to create multiple income streams from one simple business such as cooking Asian cuisine.

In building your business model, think of these income streams, and figure out how they will make you money.

To learn how to easily create courses that will attract clients and earn you money  Click here

4) Design your training Guide/ Manual / curriculum: For whatever kind of training you want to do, there has to be a training guide or manual. This will enable you to structure your course on how it will flow to avoid confusion and to enhance understanding by the trainees.

I did an instructional design course before I started my training so I could understand how to structure my course to enable my customers to get the best out of it. A good course structure makes for a good training experience.

5) Consult Your SME’s: SME’S are subject matter experts sometimes that could be you or someone you are using to deliver your training.

In my training, I was a subject matter expert for one aspect of the training which had to do with soft skills and career counseling.

But the real technical aspect of the telecoms training, I had to get subject matter experts to deliver the training.

These days you can get a lot of freelance experts via this platform:Fiverr

6) Get licensing: Not all kinds of training require licensing, but should your field require one, you have to get one before you can start your training company.

Channels of Course delivery: To deliver your course, you have to choose the channels of delivery of your course that appeals to your target market. There are two categories of channels

• Online Training: This includes the use of channels like YouTube, Webinars, email courses, WhatsApp group chats, Facebook videos, online videos, course creation platforms like Teachable etc.
• Offline: This includes, Classroom Taught class, Self-paced courses with physical course materials, Conferences, Seminars.

Whatever channels you choose, ensure it’s the one that suits your lifestyle as a mompreneur and be willing to adjust your business to suit that lifestyle.

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Disclosure: There may be affiliate links connected to this post which means I make a commission when you buy from them, this does not in any way add to the total cost of buying from the vendors.  The products I recommend on this page have been used  by me and I trust their services.