MANAGEMENT
MASTER PLAN
Setting New Goals for Your School
Setting New Goals for Your School
This is a great way to gain clarity about your school and where you are going.
Your Income vs. Expense Goals
When you reviewed your income vs. expense were you surprised or have you been right on target all along? What matters most is the amount of profit that your school is making.
If you gross 150,000 a year and have 150,000 in expenses, you may feel good that you were at least able to pay your bills and take a salary, but that doesn’t leave you much room for building a valuable, stable business or to give yourself a raise.
Set a goal to increase your profit the coming year by 10-20% (15,000-30,000 more in profit for the year) or about 1,250-2,500 more per month on average using our example.
To do this, you must either bring in more money, lower expenses or some of both.
Your Student Value
When you calculated your student value was it less than the monthly cost of tuition or was it at least 10% greater than that?
If your average monthly student value is less than the price of your monthly tuition then that usually means that either you have students that have paid in full for memberships or students that aren’t paying any tuition for others reasons.
You’d like it to be greater than the cost of your monthly tuition because it also includes retail sales and special event income in the figure.
Reviewing your annual student value will help you determine if you need to raise tuition, or develop stronger income-generating events and retail programs.
Your Student Retention
One of the biggest obstacles many schools face as they try to grow is student retention. It’s hard to imagine starting the year off with 100 students, enrolling 100, and being left with only 100 at the end of the year.
That’s doesn’t really happen right? Unfortunately in our industry, it’s not that uncommon. Only most owners don’t take action like you are to understand it and correct it before it’s too late.
Some school owners lose 5 students for every 5 students they enroll.
As you’re reviewing your student retention percentages look at what months you lose the most people and create a plan to combat it.
The Setting New Goals Action List
1. Set written goals in regards to your income and expense. How will you increase income, reduce expenses or both?
2. Set written goals surrounding your student value. How will you increase it? By raising tuition, doing a better job publicizing special events, promoting more retail during class?
3. Set written goals to improve your student retention. What will you do to help? Update curriculum? Conduct surveys? Make more attendance calls? Build an in-school community?