We will start with being a sole independent driving school/instructor. You grow your business by increasing the amount of earnings you can make. The most obvious thing would be to increase the number of hours you work, but this in most cases will tire you out and this would lead to a lowering of your standards of teaching.

Learning people to drive is a demanding task if done well. If you plan to do 12 hours of lessons per day, expect the last lesson not to be as good as the first lesson and your health and well being will suffer. I know this because I have done it, so I know how it feels!

Ok, how do we earn more money? Simple charge more for lessons! Well, it’s not as easy as that. So, we need to put more thought into that. To charge more you need to be worth it. The first thing to do is to be the best instructor you can be.

This means investing in quality and relevant continuous professional development (CPD). Pick courses or documents that you feel that will benefit you the most. Record all your CPD via a reflective log or an action plan. That way you can see how the development training has benefited you. Even better reflect after a number of months, as improvement has to be continuous.

If you work for yourself you can also be selective who you take on as a pupil or not. What I mean by that is that you want to meet your pupil’s expectations. It’s a principle called win/win or no deal. If a pupil inquires about lessons with you and they want to be safe and agree to take the correct number of lessons and will only attempt a practical driving test when you are happy to take them then it’s win/win (you both win).

However, if your pupil enquiry is for a test in a week’s time and only wants a 1-hour lesson and the use of your car, you can’t meet their expectations of passing regardless of how deluded they are in thinking they are going to pass! This is a no deal.

The better you are, the more recommendations you will get. If you can’t fit people into your diary, then charge more. At the moment you could say there is plenty of work out there at the moment, as I don’t have to improve because the work will always be there. But remember, if you are in demand and offer a quality product then you can charge more, and I don’t think the demand for lessons will always be as high as it is now.

Other ways of charging more per lesson is by offering more. This can be done by offering free access to a theory app, offering access to specialist websites like confident drivers who offer additional help to anxious drivers or offer downloadable lesson pre-reads or recap. Also use specialist apps that record lesson progress and reflective logs, etc. Or offer video reflections on a driving lesson, whilst parked and engine off of course.

Also, get a Facebook page, website and business cards as well. The more people know you and what you do the more inquiries you will get.
You could even think of training driving instructors, talk to Lynne about that.

Ok, the next way of growing your driving school would be recruiting more driving instructors. By far the most important principle is taking on the right person in the first place. Taking somebody on that you can trust to deliver quality lessons and offer integrity in all their business dealing is essential.

They represent you and your driving school. It might be tempting to take on anybody who is willing to pay for training and offer them loads of work, but are they delivering quality lessons, that’s going to build a positive reputation?

Also, you would need to offer them a fair and transparent franchise agreement that equally benefits you and the franchisee. Give them a reason why they should stop with you.

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