As employment prospects look bleak for many in the country people turn more and more to business as a way out. So naturally, a good position to be in is that of providing skills training to those in or contemplating business. This is quite an open field as there are many different skills that are required in businesses. You may train general skills such as bookkeeping or technical skills such as detergent manufacturing. Regardless of your area of expertise, the concept is to make money of teaching others the skills you have garnered through experience.

Business is a complicated endeavour and there are bound to be many areas in which people require skills training. Some key areas are sales, administration, bookkeeping and business communication. On the technology front, you can look at ideas such as digital marketing, social media management, blogging for business, graphic design, web design and many other areas. As long as you can distil the knowledge you possess in an area into a training course you are capable of training people in it.

Market

Your market is as wide as it is deep. What’s important is your approach to training and packaging it in a way people understand. Positioning yourself as someone who is filling a skills gap based on their extensive experience is important. By the way, it’s not limited to the experience you have in business. Some skills and expertise may be gained in the course of employment. Your ability to teach it effectively is what matters most. Bearing in mind the general economy and the position of those who will use your business, price very carefully. You are likely to be dealing with people who are just starting or contemplating businesses.

With technical skills, it’s a bit different. You are essentially giving the goose that lays the golden eggs and as such they must be prepared to pay well. Training of this type can go beyond just theory and can go into a complete mentorship package. So you can help people create complete businesses in the area from scratch.

Investment

Education and training businesses tend to have low investment requirements. The product is information and only need to be captured well once in order to be easily duplicated or repeated. You can use hired premises to teach groups or have individual visits. Some skills need to be trained on site in order to transfer the ideas fully.

Accreditation

It depends largely on what you are teaching whether or not accreditation will be important. Some areas are well established and you may need to have some sort of accreditation to attract customers. In other cases what you know is what matters most and that practical knowledge is all you need.

The business idea is not quite conventional but it is certainly something you can become very successful doing. You can create further income streams by selling additional material and guides. For example, if your skill were making beauty soap you could create ongoing income by selling recipes and designs to the people you teach. There’s a wide opportunity depending on your industry and expertise. You can also break up what you teach into beginner, intermediate and advanced courses.