How To Become A Successful Edupreneur In Education (Ultimate Guide)

You may already teach classes online but perhaps you are beginning to develop a larger vision as an educator. Edupreneurship is about providing education to the masses, and the steps to get there can be summarized into these steps:

• Understand edupreneurship and you.
• Establishing your passion to teach.
• Developing a sound business model.

With the growing trend of online education (438% increase in past 5 years) and a clear shift to eLearning classrooms, it has brought on the rise of the edupreneur, a new type of entrepreneur with potential of earning 5-figures per month.

What Is An “Edupreneur”?

An edupreneur is someone who starting a business in the education sector. Edupreneur are educators who take up edupreneurship, setting up business models and systems that enables them to scale their education business and provide world-class education to the public worldwide. 

Edupreneur is an entrepreneur who push the boundaries of education and business. These educators take risks that most teachers are unable to engage in.

To be a successful edupreneur, you need to understand the following:

• Business of attracting learners to your online courses.
• Create courses that meet student’s learning goals and learning objectives.
• Use of technology to help offer online education and training for the public.

Today, you can choose to create and sell your online course with eLearning platforms like LearnWorlds, ThinkiFic and Podia or online learning marketplace like Teachng, Udemy, and Skillshare.

How Is Edupreneur Different From A Traditional Educator and Entrepreneur?

Edupreneurs start their business by taking their skill sets and advertise them to individual students as well as colleges, universities, primary schools and other such organizations. These business are education focus while aims to become profitable through different ways of monetization strategies.

Entrepreneur on the other hand are business focus, they are interested in financial aspect of the business regardless of which industry it falls into.

Traditional educators are expert in their field focusing solely in the aspect of education. They often conduct their courses or classes in physical classes, while edupreneurs today create and sell their courses mainly online.

Here is a quick comparison table comparing the difference between an edupreneur, entrepreneur and a traditional educator.

With the growth of online education, edupreneurship have become a very profitable business while helping to transform the education industry.

Who Are The Edupreneurs?

Edupreneurs are education entrepreneurs who build a business in the education industry. These people are the expert in the field who like to educate students by sharing their knowledge to a wide audience. The different types of edupreneurs includes people such as:

• Coaches and consultants (Life, business, health, strategic development, career, etc.)
• Online course creators and instructors
• Influencers such as YouTubers, bloggers, TikTokers etc.
• Social media content creators
• Podcasters
• Public speakers and strategists
• Authors and many others…

Edupreneur is like a combination of both Entrepreneur and Educator, taking the best of both worlds of entrepreneurship and education, an edupreneur is special.

As an edupreneur, you don’t only need to be interesting in providing quality education, but you’ll need to be equipped with a very different set of skills that allow you to build a business within the education sector.

The skills required for an edupreneur includes:

• Ability to design, develop and creating online courses.
• Ability to market and sell your online course.
• Ability to deliver online course and engage with your students.

In a nutshell, edupreneurs are educators who takes up entrepreneurship in the field of education.

They combined education and business, these people are the educators with an entrepreneurial mindset and in the business of selling skills and knowledge to students who want to learn.

How To Become An Edupreneur

Whatever your edupreneurial goals, you must understand this is not going to be a overnight venture. It’s going to take time, patience and a willingness to change. It means developing a keen sense of business acumen while staying focused with your goals.

The following is a loose outline of how to go about getting started as an edupreneur.

• You can change or adjust the steps as you need to accommodate your goals and vision.
• You can add in steps as you think it may help you reach your edupreneur goals.
• You may not remove steps as listed as these are the foundation on how you can become a successful edupreneur.

Having said that, to become a successful edupreneur, you’ll need time and patience.

Chances are, this isn’t going to be easy but if you’re up to the challenge, consider the following steps below.

1. Determine Your Niche And Your Passion

While you may already teach classes online, determining your niche and passion is particularly important. You must love what you do so much that there’s nothing left but to expand on it. So, you want to sit down and think of all your ideas.

• Determine who the target audience is going to be.
• Partner with other instructors you who teach related subjects you don’t.
• Think about age and gender demographics along with students’ location and their lifestyles.

Ask yourself questions like:

• Do you want to attract children, young mothers or retirees?
• Do you want to attract professionals or hobbyist?

Understand that you can’t be everything to everyone, stay focus on who your target audience are, and provide them with everything that they may find valuable.

2. Develop a Complete Business Plan

Once you have determined a niche based on your passion, you must create a solid business plan. But, you want this to be all-encompassing and overarching.

• Start by jotting down one or two sentences that sum up your purpose, passion and goals. It should be concise and simple to the point.
• Then, find competitors, related and unrelated to your industry.
• Research and analyst to see how successful they are and do a bit of background market research on them. Look at student reviews, instructor feedback, the platform(s) they use and etc.

The key to creating a good business plan is to get a solid grasp on what your competitors do, how they execute their business model and how you can go above and beyond.

Your business plan should include things like:

• Your goals for the next five or ten years.
• Your mission as an edupreneur.
• The kinds of students you hope to attract.
• The type of education you wish to offer
• The instructors you want to join your team.

Make this into a slideshow or other form of online presentation to attract these target people.

3. Sharpen Business Skills

As you begin implementing your eLearning strategies, begin sharpening your business skills. This means you could take an online class on business and go to the library.

Research and learn all you can about what it means to be a good businessperson in your specific line of work. This will include;

• Methods of marketing
• Knowing how to acquire funds
• Getting to network with others.

You also want to consider revenue generation, contract negotiations and other aspects of your edupreneurial business that require a refined sense of knowhow.

Finding a Mentor

You can also find someone you respect in your industry or another professional from a different field going on the track you wish you take.

See if these people will let you shadow them for a day or if they can offer you some sort of mentorship.

Other common ways to get a mentor is to simply study famous businesspeople and entrepreneurs, dead and alive.

• Look at their track records and what you can learn from them.
• Follow their history and challenges.
• Find out how they get started.

These stories aren’t just inspiring, they’re very informative and provide an education on what to or not to do.

4. Stay On Top of Technological Advancements

Since we live in an intense technological age, advancements are coming out all the time along with vast developments in the virtual experience. Therefore, staying on top of these consistent updates will keep your education goals on the edge of the latest fads and trends.

However, this also means understanding the implications and consequences of these advancements.

Compare the new technology to that of your initial edupreneurship goals.

Ask questions such as;

• Does this new technology support or go against your edupreneurial goals?
• What are the implications for the future of humanity and the planet?

Asking such questions will allow you to draw your focus even further while giving credence to your desired goals.

An Example

For instance, Artificial Intelligence, or AI, has wonderful potential to make our lives easier and more efficient with things like writing, calculations, website design and other such matters.

But, if AI can teach itself this knowledge, then it’s possible AI will make human writers, mathematicians and webmasters obsolete.

5. Partnerships And Team Building

A very important part of your edupreneurship will be building partnerships along with a team of instructors. There are many ways to get started including:

• Finding them online through social media outlets and the platform you use to teach others.
• Joining up with a educational institution, like a college or university.

Networking in this way will not only attract more students to your classes, but it will also create a viral buzz about the industry online and in real life.

This will draw more people to your project while creating a wider community of likeminded people.

6. Establish Solid Marketing Strategies

Marketing and advertising are going to be your greatest keys to success. This means using traditional and typical methods along with thinking outside the box.

• Promote your classes.
• Establish partnerships and joint ventures
• Create big-picture goals with email campaigns
• Get your course known through social media posts and public event calendars
• Create limited time discount offers.

You also want to attend real-life events, conventions, conferences, meet ups and seminars related to your field and the subject matter you teach.

If you want to amass many educational facilities and organizations, develop a media package that you snail mail to these institutions.

Sitting down and devising a strategy should go beyond what you listed in your business plan. Putting out free classes once a month or having no-obligation contests/competitions are some examples.

7. Create Content And eLearning Programs

Naturally, content and programs will be the pinnacle of your edupreneurial business. You may create eLearning programs for established universities or develop content as a joint venture with other instructors.

• Do some background research on your ideas, see what’s already out there and come up with a survey or social media post asking for people’s opinions. Classes and programs should engage and attract.
• Develop ideas for eLearning programs and survey your students desirability and educational organizations alike.
• Itemizing everything you have available through your teaching platform or instructor course profile and promote them to your audience.

8. Stay Open, Flexible And Focused

Like any entrepreneurial endeavor, eduprenurship have its own set of risk and climbing the ladder of edupreneurial success will not go viral overnight.

Sure, there’s a chance it could, but be real with yourself and know this is going to take at least a year, if not much longer, to see a return on your investment.

Therefore, you must remain positive while staying open, flexible and focused on your goal.

Change And Adjust Accordingly

Listen to both criticism and praise with equal treatment, adjusting your goals and purpose as the need arises.

Simply gauge reactions from other people and see what they have to say about them.

For instance, if many students from varying classes complain about your material delivery, then you should change the format. Likewise, if people love your goofy mnemonic devices, then don’t change a thing.

Staying Focused

No matter what happens, stay the course of your purpose and goals. This is why you need to keep your statement of purpose in a business plan simple.

Whenever you start feeling down or doubtful, repeat this statement to yourself.

If it doesn’t ring true, if you’re unable to achieve it per your initial vision, then it might be time to change.

But, don’t back down because people aren’t as attracted to it as you thought or there just isn’t enough buzz around it.

Simply reconfigure your marketing and business plan until you devise a formula that works.

Future Of Edupreneur

Traditionally, education are taught in classes at a school, university or other learning institution. But nowadays, education is transforming, and more people are learning new skills or taking up new courses online.

Since the SARS-COV-2 lockdowns, eLearning has become a huge industry. Many edupreneurs have taken steps to turn challenges into opportunities.

In 2021, online learning was worth $315 billion. By 2025, that’s expected to jump to as much as $325 billion with a huge leap to $465.47 billion by 2028.

Now is the best time to create a career path you want in the education sector, and utilizing the technology available such as all-in-one online course learning platforms is one of the best way to start.

Sell your expertise and using education as a means of entrepreneurship and getting onto the edupreneurship bandwagon now can help you create an online business that can have major implications for you and your future.