Case Study
Empowering Independent Garage Owners Through Scalable, Cohort-Based Online Learning
Client: The Garage Inspector
Introduction
Andy Savva, having spent years buying, growing and exiting award-winning autorepair businesses, has an extraordinary wealth of experience that could be helping struggling garage owners secure their long-term futures.
We worked with ‘The Garage Inspector’ to scale and monetise his expertise through a suite of group-based online courses, all powered by a custom-built learning platform.
The Challenge
Many independent garage owners in the UK are excellent at repairing vehicles, but struggle to run consistently profitable businesses. Worse still, there is little support or guidance available on non-technical challenges for this critical sector.
Andy Savva was already sharing his insights and experiences through his popular in-person courses across the UK and Ireland. However his impact was capped by the limited number and geographical spread of the workshops he could facilitate.
Our task was to design a series of online learning products that would give busy garage owners the skills to build better businesses immediately.
“I’ve made it my mission to help as many independent garage owners and their teams as possible benefit from the lessons I’ve learned over the years. But there’s only so many I can help in person.
I’d thought about online learning before, but I had no idea what was involved or how to get started. I just wanted a way to reach garage folk wherever they are, spend less time on the road, and build something that would really help them run better garage businesses.”
The Process
Having had no experience at delivering his training courses online or virtually, Andy came to us with a completely blank canvas to help us bring his vision to life.
Through our Clarity workshop and subsequent research through his popular community group, we identified a robust plan to scale his expertise.
His blueprint for online learning outlined the proposed format of his online courses, the technology requirements, a scalable phased plan to grow into this new venture and a go-to market strategy that would ensure strong initial demand for his offering.
The Product
We teased out several key principles that needed to underpin the new offering.
It was important that the courses captured Andy’s extensive insights, they gave garage business owners the opportunity to connect and share experiences, they were built around a balance of structure and flexibility to study, and also provided support beyond the core training.
Given this, we designed a cohort-based format that combined live video workshops, on-demand self-study content and a rich bank of interactive resources.
We also integrated community aspects, so participants could reflect on their own situations, share these with their peers and build long-lasting connections to support their progress once they go back to their businesses.
The Platform
After an in-depth analysis of the target audience, we developed a bespoke and mobile-ready learning platform to host Andy’s new cohort-based courses.
With WordPress as the base, we added learning management (LearnDash), community (BuddyBoss), ecommerce (WooCommerce), events management (Events Calendar) and CRM (GroundHogg) capabilities to provide powerful features for both course participants, external partners and administrators.
The Rollout
Following a hugely successful pilot, Andy rapidly expanded his offering to two additional cohort-based courses covering additional topics vital to the success of an independent garage.
His first year saw the Garage Inspector deliver more than a dozen courses and support more than 100 business owners. Throughout this period we supported Andy on the administrative aspects and helping him deliver a high-impact course experience.
With new partnership relationships onboard, Andy’s online offering has become a central part of his offering with further expansion into new cohort-based courses and bitesize on-demand short courses soon to come on-stream.
As a result, Andy is now helping more garage owners, spending less time on the road, growing his income streams and living life increasingly on his terms.
“Candle Digital really understood what I was trying to do from day one. They didn’t just build something and leave me to it – they’ve been close partners the whole way, helping me shape and develop things as we’ve gone along.
The feedback from my clients has been fantastic. I’ve been able to help more people than I ever could have face-to-face, grow my business revenue, and spend more time doing the work I love.”
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