I work full time as an executive assistant and I have my boss’s blessing to pursue a side business of training new executive assistants in our industry. I created a 12 week course which is a combination of every other week group training and every other week one-on-one coaching. I charge $1,500 per student and I’ve been limiting each course to 5 students because of the time commitment of the one-on-one sessions which take place during my workday for my full time job.
1st course had 4 students.
2nd course had 2 students.
3rd course had 5 students, and I refunded the 5th student her money because after coaching with her I convinced her she shouldn’t be working as an executive assistant; she was better suited for sales, and I happily refunded her money as that was my choice. So this session had 4 paying students.
I feel like I could easily turn this whole thing into a membership platform. I can record the training I was doing live, and instead do weekly study-hall-like group sessions. I can easily do an assets section of the membership where the students can download worksheets, checklists, etc specific to our industry (real estate).
I currently have a blog which I post 1-2 times a week (started it May 2015), and I have a podcast which I’ve let die because I was interviewing executive assistants and I didn’t realize the effort required to pull that off and my interviewing skills need work. (Clearly doing more interviews would make me a better interviewer! – duh) There are 1,200 people on my email list. I’m also very involved in several Facebook groups specifically for real estate executive assistants and I was made an administrator of one particular group (4,500 members) by that group’s owner so I can solicit business there.
HERE IS MY QUESTION: Is it too soon to think about implementing a membership platform when I’ve only had this side business for year now?
I have no intention of quitting my full time job. I love it! I wanted to do the side business to provide extra income since there’s a ceiling to my income in the full time job. Plus, I’ve been a real estate executive assistant for 12 years and have a lot of knowledge I want to share and profit from. I’ve made $15,000 gross in the last 12 months, and I’ve invested $8,200. I’m thinking that if I create this member platform and charge maybe $89 a month, I believe I could get to 100 members within 3 months.
What is your advice please? (And I promise not to be an ask-hole by getting your advice and then ignoring it!)
TL:DR I’ve been an entrepreneur for 1 year now and instead of breaking even, I have made a profit. Is it wise to change from running a 12 week course to running a membership platform with only a year of owning my own business under my belt?
