Launching An English Business Coaching Company — Catherine Aygen
Intro:
Catherine Aygen is a trainer and Neurolanguage® Coach, specializing in professional English and international communication. She is now based in Grasse, on the Côte d’Azur in France with her family, dog and chickens, after spending several years in Paris, Singapore and Japan. She loves languages and learning.
Tell us a bit about your backstory. How did you first get started teaching English in France?
I arrived in France after 7 years in Asia working for the British Council as a teacher and teacher trainer, so I was already in the industry.
I first landed a job working with executives in a French company and then also moved into teaching in some “grandes écoles”, which are the top universities in France.
I have a Masters in Linguistics and a diploma in TESOL, so that certainly helped in finding good (and well-paid) jobs.
After working in language schools in France, you decided to go work for yourself. How did you get your start?
To work for yourself, you have to be registered as a trainer and to do this you already have to have a contract! Luckily I managed to do this with a company I was working for in Paris so I was already set when I arrived in the South of France.
I worked briefly for a language school when I got to the Cote d’azur, but I was so disappointed by the whole experience: not just the bad pay, but the lack of professional development and the total lack of interest in the teachers.
I basically just decided to go for it and went to a couple of HR people I already knew in my town to ask if they would be interested in me doing the English training for their companies. Luckily they said yes!
I went to a couple of HR people I already knew in my town to ask if they would be interested in me doing the English training for their companies. Luckily they said yes!
Your business seems to have grown a lot since those early days. What does your business look like now?
I now have four ongoing corporate clients, who give me a lot of work and other one-off corporate clients. I’m also getting more and more enquiries from individuals, as everyone in France has a personal training budget from the government and my training programmes are eligible for this.
What have you found to be the most effective strategy for people knowing about your business and you growing your profits?
I now have four ongoing corporate clients, who give me a lot of work
I now have a couple of freelance teachers who do some work for me. I try to pay the top end of the market rate for this area, and I’d love to have a small team of teachers and do regular professional development sessions with them.
I’m very present on Linkedin, but so far I think it’s more of a way for people to see that I’m a professional who knows their stuff, rather than a place to directly get clients.
Can you talk to the topic of finding your niche in your business? Do you think it’s important to specialize in one type of product or service?
Most of my clients actually come through personal contact so networking is vital for me, even though going to networking events in French is nerve-wracking! It’s also important to have a professional-looking website if you want to be taken seriously.
Most of my clients actually come through personal contact so networking is vital for me.
My niche is professional English for French speakers. I then have quite a few different products within that scope: longer training courses and short workshops on different aspects of international business communication.
I definitely think you need a niche, even if it’s just deciding if you’re aimed at adults or children, if you are an exams specialist, if you work only with corporate clients. You need to be easily recommendable: I want people to immediately think of me when someone asks for English for their work.
You said that forming a business in France is quite complicated. It is in Italy too. Do you want to share what important lessons that you’ve learned along the way?
I definitely think you need a niche, even if it’s just deciding if you’re aimed at adults or children, if you are an exams specialist, if you work only with corporate clients.
It also makes things easier for you. I don’t want to deal with kids classes or individuals, so if someone asks me about English for their children (I get asked this a lot — there is a big market for this) I can say no without even thinking about it.
Be zen!
Bureaucracy exists and unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about it. Don’t fight it, just go with it.
Bureaucracy exists and unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about it.
Getting the right paperwork done to be a registered trainer is not easy in France, especially as the government keeps changing the requirements, but I knew I wanted to do it and so I did.
I think some people give up because it all seems too daunting, but if you keep a clear head and keep going, you’ll get the results you want.
That is all very good advice. I don’t personally know the bureaucracy in France. But I know what it’s like in Rome and in Palermo. I find that a sense of humor really helps. I try to see if from an omniscient observer. And sometimes snails-pace bureaucracy can be humorous. If you could go back in time, is there anything you would change about your English teaching career? Why?
Also don’t believe what one person in an administration office tells you — ask around. That one person is not always right!
I actually started a Facebook group for other trainers in France like me so we’d have somewhere to ask questions about this type of thing.
I’d have thought bigger sooner and I would have joined a business group sooner!
I would have joined a business group sooner!
It’s only in the last couple of years after joining a business mastermind group, that my business has really started expanding. Before I wasn’t thinking big enough and I didn’t really have a clear idea of where I wanted to go and how to get there.
That’s good advice that I thought I should follow for myself. But sometimes it’s hard to find the courage to think bigger.
Is there anything else that you’d like to share about yourself?
I’ve always wanted to be an entrepreneur, and this isn’t the first business I’ve had: in 2004, I persuaded my father to take his Christmas poultry business online, and I set up the website and did all the marketing. It became an extremely profitable part of the business.
When I lived in Singapore, I had a side hustle of a website selling Asian decor in the UK. Both of these were great learning experiences and I think to have your own English training business, you need to have this desire to be an entrepreneur, because it’s hard work!
Honestly, if I thought about my hourly rate, it’s probably lower than working for someone else, but I absolutely love running a business and I love knowing that my team and I are truly helping people to take away some of their stress around using English at work and to make their working lives easier.
Okay, so if others want to connect with you online, how can they do that?
Website: www.aygentraining.com
Email: info [ at ] aygentraining [ dot ] com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aygentraining
Originally published at https://makealeap.co/ on November 30, 2020.
