Episode Transcription

20: When Your Kindness Gets in the Way of Your Profits
 

 Welcome to another episode of Classroom to Business. Today I am talking to you about when our kindness gets in the way of our profits. All too often, we let our hearts and emotions take over. Now, I do think as teachers and educators, we just naturally have these big, kind, caring hearts. We want to help everyone.

We wanna make sure everybody gets results, everybody gets acce access to, um, you know, quality education. And that's not a bad thing, okay? It's not a bad thing that we care about what we do, and we care about the people that we work with and that we are kind. But when it comes at the cost of your business, And your profits, then it's not such a great thing.

And I find this happening all too often in, um, the businesses of the ladies that I work with inside of my tutoring, growth membership. But I also experienced it a lot myself when I had my own tutoring businesses because we want to help. Okay. And the problem is, is that we make all of these assumptions and we form our own opinions, which is actually really dangerous.

And then we take action trying to help that family, and it actually hinders our own business and our own business' performance and profits. So first thing I wanted to share just a few examples of when this has happened to myself in my own business. So I don't know if any of you have ever worked with families with twins, but this is a big one when parents enroll one child for tutoring or school readiness or holiday programs or anything, but they have a twin.

What do we do? Like this poor parent has got to pay double whammy for everything, right? They've gotta pay double school fees, double uniforms, double amount of food, double amounts of tutoring, double amounts of sport, everything. So automatically we think we have to give 'em a discount. We, we have to do something because she, this, this mom has got two kids.

That's not fair. Okay. That's just one example. Another example is where I was working with a family, and this actually happens quite a lot, whose child was seen an OT and a speechie and was coming to me, and so straight away I think, well, hang on a minute. This parent's already paying for a lot of things, so I should probably give them a discount to help them out a bit.

Yeah, how many of you have been in that situation? And then another one is when I've got families who are going away for the holidays or you know, it's the end of the school term and they're at a private school and the school's finished and so they don't wanna come anymore. And I felt that whether it's because they've gone on holidays or they're not coming to me, be because school is finished, that I shouldn't get them to pay me while they're not actually coming to my services.

All right? There are so many other examples, but they're just some, and I'm hoping that by sharing those. They're sparking that. Oh yeah, I know when I've done that in my own business in yourselves. Because what I wanna talk about now is what we actually do in these situations. So the first thing that we do is, you know, we, we feel these big emotions, right?

And like I said, that's, that's great. It is good that we care. It is good that we are kind. But what we do next is we start to make assumptions. We assume that people can't afford us. Take the family with twins, for example. I made an assumption straight away that there's no way this parent could afford or would want to pay for double whammy.

However. However, that parent contacted me and asked me about my services or maybe. Let's look at the family whose child was seen. Ot, an ot, and a speechie, and I made the assumption straight away that, oh, there's a lot of things going on for that child. I should probably offer a discount. Again, I'm making an assumption.

This parent has contacted me because this parent values education or has been referred on and they value the difference that I can make in their child's lives. Now I myself have got two girls. And they do all sorts of activities. And if I was actually to sit down and look at my finances, they cost us a lot of money, right?

And I think this is pretty normal for most families. But if I was to, you know, rock up to horse riding one day, just because my child also does surfing and piano and music and all these other things, That doesn't mean that I would be expecting my horse riding instructor to give us a discount. You are no different in your tutoring business.

Just because you know that this parent or this child is getting support from somewhere else, that doesn't mean it's your job to provide the discount. Okay? When we give discounts, we are actually making it unfair to others. We are giving them prices that we haven't given to other families and students.

We're putting our clients before our own families. Now, this is a really big one because we we're doing is we're saying, okay, well this family needs help, so I'm gonna give them a discount. What you are then saying is, I'm taking homeless money, which means then. I'm able to contribute less to my family and the needs of my family.

So in summary, you are putting all of these other families before your own. Again, it is really great to think about other people before ourselves. Okay? You know, we get taught these things all of the time, but if you are not putting your family first, then who is? Because I can guarantee you that the family you're trying to give a discount to, they're putting their family before yours.

That's what we're supposed to do. Okay. The other thing that we unintentionally do is basically put ourselves last. So let's look at the example of where a child is seeing a speechy and an OT. They're paying the full price for the speechy. They're paying the full price for the OT. Why would they not pay the full price for us?

Why are we putting ourselves last? Why are we devaluing what we are doing? If they're paying full price for an ot, why can't they pay full price for us? Why doesn't the OT offer a discount, or the speechy offer a discount because they're coming to tutoring? Can you see what I'm saying here? We also by providing varying, varying prices to try and help people.

We are impacting the, the flow and the ease of the actual systems inside our business. If you have got different people paying different prices and on different discounts, you've started at different times. Then that is a lot to manage, and I'm not gonna lie, that is going to be a mess and a massive headache.

You want all of your families to be paying the same amount of money. You want them to all be paying you the same amount for your services. Now I'm going to talk about things that you can do if you really need to help a family in a minute, but. One more thing is, at the end of the day, if you are going to say to a family, look, I'm gonna take $5 off for you.

Okay, $5 off a week for you, that that's my discount. So instead of paying 95, they're paying 90 because you want to help and you've seen that they're going to speechy and an ot, or you've seen that the family have twins. So you wanna do your thing and be a good person and take $5 off. How, how much do you think that actually is going to impact that family?

$5 a week? What, what do you really think is going to change for them? But what it's done for you is set a standard or an expectation within yourself that you charge different prices for different people depending on their situations. But again, how is that fair to all of your families? What's the criteria?

For whether somebody gets a discount or not. And then how much discount do you give? Do you always give the same amount of discount? Do you give the same discount to a family who has twins to the family who is seeing multiple allied health professionals? Or is it a different discount? I think. That the $5 that you are trying to take off, I'm just using $5 as an example, actually impacts you way more because that's $5 for one family.

But if you start discounting, you'll be discounting more than one family and that becomes a lot more than $5 a week for you that you are losing. I know families who have both parents working who are earning really good money. But maybe they've got a massive mortgage, which means that they're struggling to pay for things like tutoring.

Well, other families who, um, might only have one parent working, but maybe they value education really highly, and even though they also have a mortgage, but they only have one parent working, maybe it's their priority to put that money aside each week. But we don't know that. And it's not our business to make assumptions and get into people's lives and finances and what's going on.

It's our business to get to know the students that we're working with and provide amazing services and get great results. Yeah, so some things that we can do instead of making assumptions and devaluing ourselves and giving discounts. Firstly, we can value what we do and the impact that we can make. All right?

We know we are making a difference just like a speechy, just like an ot. If you bring me one of your children, I will make an impact. If you bring me both of your children, I will make an impact in both of their lives. Just because you've brought me two doesn't make mean I'm making any less of an impact in one of their lives, right?

We need to put our families first and know that that is okay. Like I said before, if you are not putting your own family first, then who is? Because all of the families that you work with are putting their families first, and that's okay. That's what we're supposed to be doing. You can still love on your students and provide amazing services.

You can still continue to support them. But we focus on the changes and the impact that we make, rather than making assumptions and thinking about how much money that family has and what we should charge accordingly. Other things that you can do if you have families or you, you want to provide something for families that you know no possible way could afford you, is potentially you could offer a scholarship.

So this is something that we've done before and some of the ladies that I work with before, whether you, um, have a criteria that they meet. So, you know, there's an application process that they go through. Um, but that is a way that you could potentially work with a family that might otherwise not be able to access your services because of the prices.

Now you can see there, that's a big difference. A scholarship might be, you know, it could be a full scholarship, it could be 50% off, but that's a big difference to just $5 a week, which is like just a token gesture or token effort. The other thing is that you can add value to your families in other ways.

So if you know you are working with families who might be struggling in other ways, maybe it's financially, maybe it's just because that child's got a lot going on, then there could be other ways that you could help them without giving them a discount. So maybe it is providing some extra homework. Maybe it is steering them in the direction of some websites or apps that they could use at home.

Maybe it is recording your sessions so that the parents can repeat them at home free of charge. There are other ways that you can provide value and support those families. Use your Ben Kind heart without taking or offering discounts and you know, Putting the other families before your own. Um, the other thing that I highly recommend doing and everybody should be doing this, is having more than one service available and having something that is at a more affordable price.

So if you offer groups, for example, homework, clubs, holiday craft, and cooking sessions, you know, whatever you want to do, these could be at a more affordable price so these families can access them. And I can almost guarantee that you will find the families that you thought were struggling still want to pay top dollar for your one-on-one.

That will still happen, which just goes to prove the, we should not make assumptions about other people's finances or lives. Yeah. The other thing that we want to be doing instead is valuing our time. And valuing the students on our wait list. If we, so if I go back and I use one of those examples, if we, um, have families who are booked in for the term and they go away on holidays or, you know, maybe they go to a private school so their school finishes early and we don't want to charge them because they're not there, we're not valuing our time.

We're also not valuing the students who are on the wait list because we've got students on that wait list. Who would love to be turning up every single week no matter what. So we need to make, we make sure we're doing that and make sure we have a cancellation policy in place to help us in force whatever boundaries and rules I guess, that we put in place.

So, You might have a big kind heart and you might want to help as many children as you can, and trust me, I get that. I totally get that. But you need to be making sure that you are also having a big, kind, caring heart about your own family, and that comes back to your business and your business's profits.

If you start discounting your services for other people all the time, you are putting them before yourself.