George owns a content management website development company. Their capacity to attract and maintain programmers with sufficient experience in their content management software is simultaneously the optimizing and limiting factor for their growth. So, he is seriously considering opening a training program to build their pipeline of qualified programmers. An attorney quickly told George to start a second business.

The attorney is correct. A training company or school is a very different business from a website development company. This is especially relevant because George wants to open the school on another continent. But I was struck by the casual matter-of-fact tone of the attorney’s advice.

Yes, George can work with the attorney to file official papers to open a school. But before that makes any sense, George will need to have someone in place with experience opening and running a professional school. What credentials will instructors need to have?  How will recruitment and selection of instructors be handled? Who are the prospective students, and how will they be reached?  What would the curriculum be? How will competence be measured, a passing grade be earned, or certification achieved? What competition exists? What tuition is normal? What drop out and no show rates are common? What prevents graduates from deciding not to come to work for George’s company after they have been trained? What percentage of an instructor’s time can realistically be in the classroom? What will the hard costs be for facilities, work stations, telephones, utilities, etc?  How much gross profit and net profit should George expect from the school? Will the key person be a partner and eligible for profit sharing? How long would it take for the school to produce capable employees to achieve ROI on the venture?

His core business is growing. Recruitment is just not going fast enough. Search firms have produced disappointing results. George is VERY busy handling proposals and making sure that major clients are happy. Realistically, he won’t have time to oversee the launch of a second business right now.

It’s funny.  When we suggested that the content management website development company could establish its own recruitment department, George dismissed the idea because he thought that having a recruitment department would be too expensive and distracting.

Aldonna R. Ambler, CMC, CSP has earned the right to be called THE GROWTH STRATEGIST™. She has won over 2 dozen national and statewide “entrepreneur of the year” awards for the resilient growth of her international businesses across 4 recessions.  Her midsized BtoB service, technology, and distribution clients get on…and then stay on…the published lists of the fastest growing privately held companies. All of her own service businesses (strategic planning, executive advisory, growth financing, talk show, speaking, search) help privately held midsized companies achieve accelerated growth with sustained profitability™.  Ambler is in her 7^th year hosting a weekly peer-to-peer-to-peer on line talk show at www.Business.VoiceAmerica com and www.growthstrategistshow.com that features interviews with CEOs/Presidents of midsized companies (typically between $20 and 200 Mil/yr) sharing success tips about the growth strategy-of-the-week. Family owned businesses are being emphasized in 2011. Ambler is in the process of launching her 8^th enterprise. She can be reached toll free at 1-888-Aldonna or at Aldonna@AMBLER.com.