Lots of hits for Driving Instructor Earnings

I'm still getting lots of hits from the search engines for Driving Instructor Earnings, so I thought I'd offer you guys some links:

1. Driving Instructor Earnings Calculator - though not entirely accurate, this is worth a look. If you think things through carefully you can actually get a reasonable impression of how hard you'll have to work. Bear in mind that for every 1 hour lesson you give, you'll need to work for around 1.5 hours, for every 2 hour lesson - 2.5 hours. Don't forget to look at the "after tax" bit!
   
2. Becoming a Driving Instructor - The Truth Behind the TV Ads - A great article about whether it's worth becoming a driving instructor or not.
3. So you want to be a driving instructor? - A real article by a real instructor. No, he's not a happy bunny.
4. Instructor Training Colleges and Empty Promises - The infamous "Money for Cold Hope" article from the respected industry representatives - the Driving Instructors Association.
5. Driving Instructor Pay - How much you could earn - the optimistic but realistic version.
6. Driving Standards Agency Forum Thread - boy was this guy not happy when he posted.
7. Driving Instructor Jobs - Advice from Career Scotland, with the very interesting fact that only 4% of ADIs have flexible hours. ("Work the hours to suit you" indeed. Please add "r customers" to that statement.)
8. Money Saving Expert - An interesting thread from a non-ADI forum. Friends, relatives and Instructors tell their side of things.
9. Becoming an ADI - the 2pass view, written by an ADI.
10. Real driving lesson prices - what we see every day, just for when you are working out how much you'll earn based on £20/hour.

After reading those you should get a realistic idea of what you can expect. Good luck.

Enough Work for Driving Instructors?

I really don't know if there's enough work for all of us ADIs at the moment. The fact is - no-one else does either!

Oh the joy of it!

There are lots of posts on the forums at the moment:
http://www.drivertrainingtoday.co.uk/forum/index.php/topic,32850.0.html
http://www.adiforum.co.uk/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1217356506
http://www.adiforum.co.uk/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1216972910

...and we can never get any agreement.

The fact is, if you expect to just be a driving instructor in this business, you're gonna come a cropper.

Being a franchisee is the nearest to having a job that you can get, but it's the kind of job where your boss can send you home with no pay whenever he likes! Have a look at the last link to see what happens when an instructor trusts to BSM or AA to find them work - it simply doesn't happen unless you do it yourself!

Going independent is not easy, but the fact is that you will be in control of your career. You will live or die (metaphorically I hope) by your business skills.

You will need to:

• Advertise effectively (websites usually work the best, shelling out £500 to Yell is possibly the worst)
• Answer the calls that come from the adverts effectively (you can't do this if you're out on a lesson, but a good answerphone message can help to get leads)
• Convert enquiries into sales (if you're not a natural sales person, employ someone who is, or find out how to do it without feeling like a nasty slimy creep)
• Ensure your customers are so impressed with you that they tell their friends (reminding them to sometimes helps, or offering incentives for them to can help!)

Once you've done all of these if you can't make it then you need to get out.

There are enough customers for all the ADIs and PDIs out there - unfortunately 95% of instructors are fighting for 35% of the customers.

Think about how you find people.

Find cheap ways to get noticed.

Make sure your service is second to none.

Complaints about the Instructor Colleges

This is a bit of an odd one - I tend to keep an eye on which searches lead people to me and in recent weeks this one has started turning up higher and higher.

It leads initially to a post about how to complain about a driving instructor (geared towards learners), so I thought I'd better address the issue itself.

As I've mentioned before on several occasions, I'm not a keen fan of The Instructor College - the one who are affiliated with Red Driving School and who insist on telling everyone out there that our job is really easy and that we're raking it in.

I get annoyed with them, because they mean that everyone feels that they can ask for a discount (one reason I don't do learners any more) and everyone else wants to become an instructor because they've been told that there's a "shortage" of instructors (ask any instructor if there's a shortage!!!!).

However, just to re-iterate previous posts again - there is nothing wrong with the way that they work - they're a company.

The claims they advertise are substantiated and I can happily tell you that yes - it is possible to earn £30k a year as a driving instructor.

I'll also tell anyone who wants to listen that if you shelled out to the instructor college without doing the research with regards to what you are going to get - then you're a fool! And in the modern market economy we all know that the fool and his money are easily parted.

A couple of pointers - ask how much training you will get - and get it in writing.

Ask what ratio this training will be - 2 trainees to 1 trainer? 1:1? Or will half of it be classroom training at 20:1?

Then ask yourself how many hours training you are getting?

50 hours at 2:1 = 25 hours.

14 hours at 20:1 = 1.5 hours.

So you are getting 26.5 hours for your £3k+?!!!!!

This means that you may find yourself paying over £100/hour for your training.

Hell........
...................even I don't charge that much!!!!!!!!

Red Driving Instructor Training TV adverts

Yep - they're back!!!

The Instructor College always used to be linked to Red Driving School, and were the only people advertising on TV, so I'm gonna make a big assumption (possibly a mistake - correct me if I'm wrong guys) and suggest that it's the same company, just a different name on the adverts.

Well the search engine queries have all started up again:

• How much does a driving instructor earn
• Driving instructor training prices

and one of the more worrying ones:

• learner instructor £30k tv ads

(lets face it, if you can't search for something with a little more finesse than that, you may not be able to communicate well enough under pressure to be a competent driving instructor.)

So, we come back to the same old questions of whether there are too many ADIs out there, and whether you can earn £30k as a driving instructor.

In response to the "too many ADIs" statement that always gets bandied around - well there's no shortage, but like anything else - if you're good enough you'll get work.

In response to the next question, I'm actually gonna change my answer:

No, you can't earn £30k as a driving instructor while working a normal week.

If all you want to do is instruct people how to drive - you probably won't be able to consistently clear £30k after expenses and before tax. However easy the salesperson with a few figures on a whiteboard or in a glossy brochure suggests it may be - the reality is that there are very very few driving instructors who earn this much. Those who do certainly don't conform to a 9 to 5 work pattern.

However - if you're prepared to be a business person, a coach, a trainer and use your skills and imagination - you can earn this and more.

Consider fleet training - you should earn around £120 a day before tax even when working for someone else. That's a 9-5 job (ish) which earns around £600/week if you can get the work. There's your £30k straight up.

Consider getting your own business training - fleet, or specialist. Now you can charge £300+ per day, but you've got bigger overheads, but if you're really good you could be working 4 days a week, and if you have a free receptionist (partner or suchlike) you could bring in £1200 a week.

Suddenly you're earning £60k a year.

And finally, consider ADI training You can charge £4000 for a course that has overheads of around £400, and takes around 80 hours to deliver - often at a ratio of 2 trainees to 1 trainer. This means that in 2 weeks you should effectively turn around 2 trainees, at a gross profit of £3600 each.

Suddenly you're earning enough to start advertising on TV!!!! (after doing the math, and having 4 weeks off a year, you should be getting around £140,000!)

The training colleges would have a problem with my math here, in the same way that I would have a problem with theirs!

Just a word of advice to all thinking of training - do the research on the forums and at the websites mentioned in the sidebar to the right.

Don't hand over any cash until you know what you want and are certain you are going to get it.

Driving instructor training shouldn't need to cost the earth, and having a successful career shouldn't mean penury for ever, but it's not as easy as it seems in the adverts. The exams take hard work and dedication, and even when (if? the overall pass rate for completing all 3 ADI exams is around 7%) you pass, you may find that what you think is a job at the end of a course is only a franchise, and no guarantee of earnings.

http://www.adiforum.co.uk/

http://www.drivertrainingtoday.co.uk/

Driving Instructor Earnings - AGAIN!!!!

Yep, this is a never ending one - it's so much fun when you throw the subject into a thread on a forum and watch the two sides jump at each other!

Simple fact is - yep, you can earn a lot in this business!

No, it aint an easy ride!

As is always the case, there will always be those who cry that they've not made their On Target Earnings in their first year, those who cry that they're never going to make the promised £30k (or £40 if you take note of some company's promises!), and never make the effort to get there. There will always be those who don't rightly care - they never expected to make £30k anyway and just wanted to tick over thank you very much.

And then there will be those who do, have, or will make the cash. Easily in some cases. These are the guys who treat it like a business. If you opened a shop you wouldn't expect to make money without advertising, making the place look nice, offering stuff that other shops didn't, and generally being better than those around you.

So why should being a driving instructor mean that you can just "do the job" and expect the cash to rush in. It won't. It will go to the guy down the road who works harder, works smarter and has a better website!

Have fun everyone!

I think the bubble is about to burst.

I'm not normally one to be pessimistic (yeah right!), but I reckon that there is a tipping point coming in regards to our business.

The saturation of ADI's/PDI's is continuing, as is the constant advertising for new people to join the industry.

Every ADI who is getting frustrated with learners is thinking of becoming a trainer (if you let learners frustrate you - you'll never survive PDIs!), all looking to encourage more punters to join the business.

And what many people may not have recognised is that with the new 1 year learning rules coming in, many learners will be priced out of the market completely.

Very few learners can afford to insure a car privately, and very few parents want to supervise, so the majority of the heralded 100 logged hours driving will be with driving instructors. Simple maths will tell you that this will mean spending around £2000 before test fees, if not more.

At the moment, many of our customers start to learn with no understanding of how much it will cost, just thinking that £20 a week is ok, and well,...me da sez it'll only tek a coupla month. By the time they pass, they've spent nearly £800 without realising it. When they are told they MUST learn for a year and MUST take 100 hours, then even the least mathematically minded will understand that it'll be £40 a week until this time next year!

That may just make the difference. It's a lot of money to many people. We may find ourselves losing customers to public transport, and once people get past 20 without driving they tend to stay non-drivers unless their situation changes.

Will there be enough work?

There will certainly be enough driving instructors!

How are you going to get through it?

Too much work - do I franchise it out?

Yep, it's true.

I've turned down 6 learners in the last fortnight.

I've dissuaded 3 people from taking intensive courses.

I've given a lot of information to a potential driving instructor in the hope that he will do a lot of research. Then I gave him my competitor's number!

And I still haven't got enough time to think...

And no. I'm not earning the fabled £30k a year - some of us simply can't do that many hours - we go slightly mad, or feel terrible that we're not offering value for money.

It does raise the question though - should I start a franchise? Should I charge someone £100 or more a week just for doing the same stuff I do for myself? Should I just find an ADI who wants to pay me an intro fee for customers? Should I take on a PDI and train them up "in my own image"?

Or should I just stick to being the one man band, be glad that I can pick and choose my own customers (not take all the dross that phone up with the same stupid questions), and just keep raising my prices until it settles down?

I'm voting for the easy life guys, sorry. I promise I'll pass on the work if you're good. If you're not, you just won't get a mention.

Oh, and if you want driving lessons - don't ask the price as your first question - there's more important things when choosing a driving instructor. If you ask the price you'll immediately get the brush off from me, because I reckon you've probably done very little research (prices are published on my website) and from experience you'll mess me about, won't listen to my advice, and you'll cancel on me when I really don't need the trouble.

I'll stick with the people I like the sound of.

(PS: Apologies for guys out there who're struggling - I guess I'm lucky - give it time and either you'll be busy too, or I'll be hoping you refer someone my way!)

Complaints about driving instructor training colleges

(Since posting this - we've had a lot of traffic for people looking to complain about their driving instructor - if you want to do this it's easy - just contact the driving school they work for, or failing that - the Driving Standards Agency (DSA) http://www.dsa.org.uk/ in the meantime, back to the thread in hand.......)

Yep - it's that time of the month again when all the people who didn't do the research, didn't engage their brains, didn't look beyond the glossy TV ads start complaining again!

Sorry guys - you deserve everything you get!

It takes about 2 minutes searching on the internet to find the forums and some serious independent advice. It takes even less to remember that you don't get owt for nowt.

I really am sick and tired of people saying that these colleges should not be allowed to advertise their £30k a year claims - the fact is YOU CAN EARN £30K/YEAR AS A DRIVING INSTRUCTOR.

The thing is - you can earn £30k/year as a toilet cleaner. You can earn £30k/year as a street scene operative (bin person!). You can earn £30k/year as a nocternal ambient replenishment operative (night shift shelf stacker). It's just that in all of these circumstances you know that you are going to have to work your way up, and put the hours in.

Driving Instruction is no different - get used to it.

Sorry guys - not in the mood for whingeing this week.

What should the average price of driving lessons be?

Well after another of my straw polls (quick search of the internet, and the forums), I reckon the cheapest you can get a driving lesson for is about £15 an hour. There's a couple of discounts involved in that price, but it's still too low.

And the most expensive? Outside London - £25/hour seems to be the highest I've found that isn't actually specialist training.

Something I've asked about before is why this is so low? We pay more for our kids to learn the guitar - and how high are the overheads on that?

So what has happened? Well the problem has always been that people can teach their own kids to drive - so why should they pay anyone else to? I can't play the guitar, so I can't teach my kids, but I can drive - and how hard can it be?

Well the problem with that logic is that playing the guitar badly can't kill your kids! (It might make you want to kill yourself, but that's another issue)

So what can we do to get the price back in line with reality, well, we could encourage the government to restrict personal freedom even more and insist that everyone goes takes professional lessons with an ADI (not keen personally). We could encourage some of the examiners who want to insist on tests being taken in dual control cars (but people can hire them for about £10 an hour).

Or we could make people aware of what it is we do, and we could encourage the DSA to grade instructors more transparently. We could work to make people understand exactly what they are paying for, and we could encourage people recognise the advantages of choosing an instructor who has experience, qualifications and skills relevant to what they want to learn.

A couple of relevant qualifications might be useful - maybe the DIA could run them as CPD courses, with easily recognisable certification:

Certified Confidence Builder - trained in specific techniques to help nervous learners
Certified Mature Driver Trainer - trained in specific techniques to help mature learners
Certified Aspergers/Dispraxic Trainer etc - trained in techniques specific to certain disabilities which should be no barrier to learning to drive.
Certified Language Trainer - able to train those whose first language is not English eg: Punjabi, Polish or even British Sign Language.

I'm sure some of you will be able to think up your own.

Wouldn't that be better than simply putting Dip DI (great course, but what exactly does it mean to the customers guys?) after your name.

How long does it take to earn £30k as a Driving Instructor?

Just a quick on here - if you're one of those who does actually want to earn the £30k I've done a quick straw poll.

Only 10% of driving instructors will ever reach that magical figure.

Bearing in mind that more than 60% of driving instructors are working 6 or 7 day weeks - it's going to be a long hard slog to get there - but it is possible!

Of the instructors I have spoken to - they reached the £30k figure after serious work for about 5 years.

In their first year 80% of them made a loss from driving instruction - once training fees had been figured in.

In their second year, they felt that they probably worked 60+ hours a week for less than the minimum wage.

In their third year the average seems to have been around £12k for a lot of work. These instructors all continued taking further qualifications. None of them sat back with their green badge.

In their fourth year they earnt over £20k, and worked hard on reducing their costs and increasing their business skills.

In the fifth year they hit the £30k. They reckon they worked about 65 hours/week including travelling between training sessions. An hourly wage of around £8.87.

Only one of them relies purely on training learners.

Just thought you might like to know.

How much does a driving instructor earn

Another one without a simple answer, but I'll try.

Anywhere from £0 (or even a loss after training, car, franchise and other costs), to £30k and beyond.

£0 or a loss - work for a bad franchise who charge you a fortune then don't give you any customers. Work for yourself, but have no business sense, and a bit of bad luck (5 lessons for a fiver brigade opening up next door).

£30k - work like a sod for about 3 years. Train constantly to gain new qualifications. Have good business sense - or learn it. Work smart, keep customers, get a good reputation, but never slack on getting the word out.

Beyond? Start your own school, move up through the career ladder to ADI training and beyond. The owner of a 10 car school who trains all his ADIs should be able to earn around £1500 a week.

Tempted?

(for more info on this huge subject click on "driving instructor earnings" below.)

The Instructor College Con?

This keeps coming back!!!

Are their adverts intentionally misleading? Possibly.
Are their adverts lies? No.
Is it possible to earn £30k as soon as you qualify? No, but they don't say you can.
Is it possible to earn £30k as a driving instructor? Yes.
Is it possible to earn £30k and work flexibly? Yes, as long as the flexibility you're thinking about is yours towards your customers, not the other way around.


Do The Instructor College TV ads give the wrong impression to people? Yes.

On the forums there are hundreds of accounts of people who feel that they have been misled by these adverts and promises. However, there are other driving instructor training courses who do similar things. Guaranteed placements or franchises sound like guaranteed 'Jobs', but they aren't. There are other careers entirely which seem to offer huge rewards - take sales - we've all seen the adverts that specify 'On Target Earnings of.....', and we take those with a large dose of salt. Why are people so taken in by these adverts tho?

Possibly because it all seems so plausible. People look at how much driving instructors charge (£22/hour say), and then simply multiply that by 40 hours. Unfortunately this simplistic view of things can easily over-ride the reality.

So should we be taken in? No. Should we sue them? No. Are they doing something underhand and sneaky? Possibly. Should we have sympathy for people who are taken in? Probably. Should everything we see and hear on TV adverts be taken as gospel truth? Only if you are really stupid. Sorry guys.

Do the research. Go to the Driving Instructor Forums. Read as much as you can about REAL driving instructor stories. Don't hand over a penny until you know what you are getting. And try to pay as you go. That way you can walk away.

Not enough work for Driving Instructors

Yep, some of you guessed it - I've got too much time on my hands.

I could blame all the trainees coming in from the pink factories like TIC, on a promise of £30k a year and a fully maintained car.

I could blame all the parents, for trying to skimp on good training for little Alfie, who are trying to teach him themselves.

I could blame the DSA, for making me take time from my amazingly effective marketting campaign to do the HPT.

I could blame everyone but myself. But I won't.

There is work out there. There are people who need my services, all I've got to do is get off my (overly large) behind and find them, entice them in with my skills and qualifications, promise them independence and a highly paid job once they pass. But I don't want to. I'm tired and I need a break, so I'm having one!

If you want an opinion (why are you here if you don't?) then yes, there are too many instructors for the available learners. But learners aren't the only people who need training. There's other instructors, there's fleet drivers, there's banned drivers, there's drivers who want to avoid getting points after being caught speeding. There's new drivers who need pass plus for insurance, or confidence and help with new areas or motorways. There's young drivers who need to know how not to kill themselves on country roads. There's police drivers, army drivers, ambulance and fire service drivers.

Look at the roads - who do you think needs driver training!!!!

So, to the whingers - I say get off your (probably also overly large) a$$e$ and start tapping into these markets. Don't sit there complaining about bad driving - do something about it. That's your chosen job.

So you wanna be a driving instructor?

£30K?
A new car?
Work around your commitments?
Sounds tempting don't it?
Do you know how much work it takes to get £30k a year?
Well let's do a little basic math.
Average lesson: 1hour.
Average time taken out of your day to give that 1hour lesson: 1.5 hours.
Average cash recieved for that 1.5 hours: £18 (after discounts - this is a realistic average)
Average cost to give that 1.5 hour lesson:
Advertising - £1.50 (at least)
Car - £3 (based on £90/week and 30 hours of teaching)
Petrol/Diesel - £2 (at least)
Miscellanaeous - 50p (believe me, it's cheaper sitting in front of the shiny adverts
than it is doing the job)
Average income (before tax) for that 1.5 hour lesson - £11
Average hourly rate (before tax) - £7.33
Weekly income after expenses (before tax) - £330
Average yearly income (4 weeks off, and 5 days sick/car nackered/snowed in etc) - £15,510
Cost per year of continued professional development - £350 (at least)
Cost per year of accountancy - £250
Cost per year of membership of professional bodies - £100
Cost per year of repairs to car not covered by lease/guarantees - £100
Average income after extra costs - £15,060
Amount of time spent building your business without any recompense - ?!?!? (10 hours/week?)
Average hours needing to be booked per week to achieve 30 hours after cancellations - 35
Average number of road rage incidents from other motorists per day - 2 (at least)
Cost of qualifying - £3000
Time taken to build up the business to a point where you actually have a full diary and start to turn a profit - 1 year (how much would you have earnt in that time?)

Do you still wanna be an instructor?