As we near the end of COMM101, and the date to the Group Business plan 2 presentation approaches, I couldn’t help but notice an article in the Vancouver Sun on a mother from Burnaby who had started her own tutoring company, Academic Advantage. My group’s business plan had also been a local tutoring service and this article sparked quite an interest with me.
Susan Cumberland of Academic Advantage
As I first read the article, I couldn’t help but asses her initial steps when launching her business. Her business operates without service contracts, meaning that the parents of her clients pay the teachers $50, and they later give her $10. This plan seem quite flawed to me initially, and I found it quite hard to believe that her current business has 500 teachers on its roster.
As I continued to read, I discovered that Cumberland had enrolled herself in a business program at Douglas College as well as hired many consultant and advisors to help her with starting business. This initiative that she took helped turn her dream of a tutoring service and turned it into a functional business. The current business plan I am evaluating, Stuart Tutoring, is quite similar to Cumberland original vision but lacks much of the financial projections and does not have a solid and defined marketing plan. After hiring a consultant, Cumberland was able to get back on track and catch up with her accounting, which my business plan company should have taken into account.