Mentor appears to be going broke

I received an unusual email this last week about a competitor that is under administration and for sale. The receivers wanted to know if we were interested in buying the business but we’d have to pay $5,000 (refundable) to take a look at the state of their accounts and financial affairs. The strange thing is that they emailed our entire support team to share the news!!!

Mentor Education partnered with The Career Academy a couple years ago and then started advertising very heavily along with a couple other “partners” of this company. I’m not sure if these partners are aware that Daniel Hunt and The Career Academy were convicted by the New Zealand equivalent of ASQA for misleading advertising regarding accredited training…

Advertising but not taking enrolments?

When writing about Okke and Cashflow Manager I mentioned some of the things that companies do with their marketing to attract new customers. Lots of companies do it and most of the time the customers don’t understand what is happening. As long as it’s “above board” smart marketing makes for healthy competition and keeps other businesses on their toes. We’ve had to adapt many times over the last 25 years to many changes in training as well as the industry we’re in: Bookkeeping and Office Administration.

It only when some companies s-t-r-e-t-c-h the truth a little too far that is can become harder to compete.

I did a search to see if Mentor Education’s website appeared and it did. Despite the fact that they are under administration they are still spending money on advertising. I followed one of their ads and it took me to this landing page for the Certificate in Xero (yes they are a direct competitor).

What I found most interesting is that they don’t write their own training materials. They appear to licence them from a company that was convicted for misleading students by the New Zealand Government authority that manages the Accredited Training Courses over there.

When I visited their website I noticed that they didn’t appear to be taking enrolments for the Certificate in Xero, Certificate in Xero Payroll, Certificate in MYOB and Advanced Certificate in MYOB & Xero.

What happens to students if no one wants Mentor Education and they go broke?

There are a couple important questions this brings up and the most critical is whether students will be able to continue in their qualifications if no one expresses and interest in buying Mentor Education?

This issue has occurred several times in the past where an RTO has gone bankrupt and students end up paying all their course fees but not being able to complete their course, nor get their qualification.

The Administrators have made it restrictive for most buyers by making them pay a $5,000 deposit. Tesla only charge $250 deposit and you know exactly what you’re getting.

The other question is how much is a company worth if it earns revenue of $5M per year but can’t afford to pay it’s bills?

MYOB & Xero Courses that are better and cheaper

I’ve been watching the amount of money that Mentor Education and some similar companies are spending on Google Ads and I find it astounding that they can spend that kind of money.

We spent a good amount of money on advertising 2 years ago to see if it made any difference. What we found was we could spend that money

• giving more to our existing students,
• creating more training course case studies and examples and
• finding out what extra training our students want and need.

I love the Tesla model because they are incredibly successful, sell direct and don’t spend any money on advertising. They focus on building a fantastic product and continuously improve it!

If you’re looking for a Xero or MYOB course you can choose from specific skills in our Bookkeeping Short Courses, Learning as much as you can about a specific software program in our Complete courses or learn a combination of different bookkeeping software programs.