Episode Transcription

21: Pivoting to Groups in Your Tutoring Business

 Welcome to another episode of Classroom to Business. Today I am talking about a very hot topic, something that I get asked about all the time, pivoting to groups in your tutoring business. So today I'm going to go through why people often want to avoid it. The benefits of running groups in your business, what groups could actually look like in your business, how you can transition and introduce them, and the pricing considerations that you need to think of before you actually put it out there.

So to start off with why people don't want to do groups. So these are, you know, the reservations or hesitations that people have when I talk to them about offering or potentially offering group services in their tutoring businesses. So the first thing is that a lot of the ladies I talk to say my parents only want one-on-one.

So, Now, if you listened to my previous episode, you would know that making assumptions is one of the worst things that you can do in this kind of situation. So at the moment, your parents probably really want one-on-one because that's what you are offering. Also, it's probably what they think is the best for their child.

However, I. You are the educator. You are the expert in your, you know, area, your, your industry. And so you are the one who can actually talk to your parents about the benefits of small groups and then come up with a service that meets their needs. So, Often we sort of look at it and we say, well, parents don't want that.

We make the assumption. But the other thing that we do, and this is really, really, really sad, I guess, but also a little frustrating, is that we don't back ourselves. We say, oh, I, I can't work with a small group. The, the best way to work with a child is one-on-one. Most of you have come from the classroom in one form or another.

So most of you have worked with 20 plus children at a time, and then most of you have worked in small groups as well. So why is it then that we as tutoring business owners, think we can only do one on one? Now I do think that this comes back to, you know, there is a, a stereotypical view of tutoring and it is one-on-one.

And that view or that opinion is that to get the best out of a tutoring service, it has to be one-on-one. Now, if you have listened to my episode with Clever Cookie Academy, you'll know that you can deliver extremely high quality, amazing. Group services and still get fantastic results and still have happy students and happy parents.

So right now, if you are taking the approach of one-on-one is best, one-on-one is the only way, and that's all that I can do or that's all that parents want, I'm going to challenge you and give you some tough love right now and say that's not a growth mindset. Now you might decide, look Kirsty, I don't want to do groups.

That's okay. That's a different story. But if you are saying to me, I. Oh, parents don't want groups or you know, groups just aren't gonna work with my kids because I've got a lot of kids who've got learning difficulties, or I've got this or I've got that. Then I'm going to pull you up on that and say, I think that they're just excuses.

And so what you need to do is take some time to, to think, why are you creating these excuses around something that could potentially actually enable you to make more of an impact and more revenue? So that's why people don't do it is because, like I said, we make assumptions about parents and then we think that we can't do it ourselves, which I'm gonna call bs.

I think you can. The next thing that I wanted to talk about were the benefits of having groups. Now, this kind of goes alongside what I just spoke about is that there is this. I don't know. It's like unspoken rule that one-on-one tutoring is best. Now I can guarantee that there will be situations that you have been in before where you've worked with a child in a small group setting, or a couple of children or few children in a small group setting in a classroom, and you got results.

Have a think about the sorts of things you can do in a small group that you can't do in one-on-one. You can make those sessions real, like highly engaging. You can have more peer to peer interactions and teaching, you know, the whole think, pair, share all of the other things that are out there. You can have games, activities where your students are getting involved with each other, not just you.

All of this equates to creating an environment that's fun and you know, a situation where the students are often more engaged and enjoy their learning. And we know that when children are engaged and enjoy their learning, they get better results. Okay? So if you've got a piece of paper, brainstorm all of the good things or all of the benefits that you know of.

When you are working with students in groups, and I do have to say that there is a lot of research out there as well that talks about the effectiveness of working with small or of working with children or students in small groups. So take some time to do some research as well. If you're still unsure or if you need that reassurance for yourself.

There are also plenty of benefits for you and your business. So if we just think about, you know, working with our students one-on-one, say we're charging $80 an hour for a one-on-one session. Pretend you've only got, you know, five afternoons a week that you can work and you can fit in three students on those five afternoons.

So you are tutoring for 15 hours a week. You are working with 15 students. And you're charging $80 an hour. So basically it's going to be 15 times 80 is going to give you, you know, really quickly your weekly revenue. Now let's flip that around and say, okay, we're going around some groups and our groups we're going to charge, I'm just gonna use 50 because that's easy for me to do the maths very quickly.

So we've got. Three to four. So let's say four kids in a group paying $50 each. I'm now receiving $200 for that hour with four students in there. So I now have a choice. I can cut back some of my hours because I can make more on an hourly rate, or I can continue to work 15 hours a week, but reach more students and make more income.

Or you might do what a lot of ladies I work with do is that they actually go somewhere in between. So they cut back some of their hours, but because they're doing groups, it enables them to make more revenue. So they're actually making more for working less. I think if you were to sit down and talk to students who have worked in groups and one-on-one, you would probably find that most students preferred to work in small groups because they like to be with their peers, right?

They don't like to necessarily sit there by themself. With an adult, it can be quite daunting and overwhelming and full on. But if they've got their little friends or if they've made new friends alongside them, then it's a different opportunity for them. It's a different situation scenario where they're potentially feeling more relaxed and they don't feel so silly.

Thinking, seeing and knowing that there's other students who are like them, who maybe need a little bit of extra help with their maths or who need some extra support with their reading.

So overall there are benefits for you in your business. There are benefits for the students, and there are even benefits for the parents. If students enjoy coming, then it's so much easier for the parents to get them there every afternoon, right? The other thing is if your one-on-one prices are 80 or $85, And your small group sessions are $50.

Then those parents who maybe couldn't access your one-on-one prices can now afford to send their child to quality tutoring with, you know, a quality tutor or educator or teacher, whatever you like to call yourself because you've offered group services at a more affordable price for them. So there are so many benefits of running groups.

The other thing is a lot of ladies I speak to have got wait lists. So if you've got wait lists, there's, and, and you know, you're maxed out with the number of hours that you can possibly teach, how do you work with those students? You could employ another staff member to come on, and that is something that I help my ladies do if that's, if that's what they're interested in.

Or you can introduce groups. And start to create some groups where you merge some students together and bring in your new students to bulk up or, or build out those groups. Which kind of leads me into my next point that I would like to talk about, which is how do you introduce groups or transition to groups?

So if you have a tutoring business that actually doesn't offer groups at the moment, you might be freaking out. If you're anything, like a lot of the ladies that I've worked with, you probably are freaking out because you are still, you still have that mindset of, my parents only want one-on-ones. I just don't know, you know, if they're gonna want this.

So the first thing that you need to do is believe in it yourself. If you try and get on a conversation, on a phone call conversation with your parents, and you do not see the value in your groups, if you do not believe that your groups are actually going to make a difference, the parents will actually be able to see right through it, and they're not going to wanna opt in.

So first things first. Make sure you know the benefits of running groups. Make sure that the groups align with what you're teaching and the outcomes that you want. Like I said before, do a big brain dump of all of the benefits that you know of and do a little bit of research what's out there. What are the benefits that you maybe haven't thought of before or didn't even know existed?

Bring them all together. And then I actually like to test the way that I'm talking to my parents on somebody else. Usually it's my husband. And basically what I do is I do my research, get all of my ideas together. Then I come up with a bit of a blurb or a summary and you know, an idea of what I would say to my parents on these, in these conversations.

Then I. Practice it on my husband. So I would go and I would say to him, can you please pretend to be a mom that I'm going to talk to? And he's usually not paying any attention at all. And that's totally fine. It's just that I need to practice speaking about what it is that I'm trying to, you know, talk about.

And make sure it's clear and concise and that I'm positive about it and I've covered all of the topics that I want to include. So I would just go to my husband and say you know, pretend that he's a parent. Hi, such and such. I am giving you a call to let you know that we've actually got some new groups happening this coming term.

I'm super excited to invite Sally to actually join in the groups. I think she is ready for it. It would be a really fun environment for her. It would help to build her confidence, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm just gonna rattle off those things, okay? And it's, it might take me a couple of goes to practice this.

I might, you know, if you don't wanna do it to your partner, you might just say to yourself, but get comfortable and confident in this new service that you are offering and the way that you are going to speak about it. Because honestly, at the end of the day, That that conversation that you have with parents is going to be pivotal, going to be key in whether or not you can convince those parents that your group sessions are just as good as your one-on-ones.

And if you've, you know, heard me talk about this before, I do believe that groups are just as good as one-on-ones. And I use the analogy of going to a gym. So you might you know, go to a gym and have a personal trainer charge a hundred dollars an hour. Now at the end of that, you are going to be sore and sweaty, and you're going to have a hundred, a really good workout, right?

You might go to a gym class, which you've paid $55 for to access as many as you'd like during the week. So let's average it out. So maybe it's $25 for a gym class. I. At the end of that session? No, no. Within that session, there's the trainer, but there might be 10 to you, however many other people there are in that group, but at the end of that session, you are still gonna be sore and sweaty and smelly just like you were with the one-on-one trainer.

The difference is that in the one-on-one training you had all of the attention, but in the group training, I. It was more affordable and you still got your desired outcomes. Okay, so basically what I want you to think of is that your group sessions are not a second class, you know, service, a second rate service, sorry.

These are just an alternative way for you to deliver what you're doing. And you might even find that you love it that much and you're getting amazing results, that you completely transition and have all groups, which is actually what some places will do because they know that running one-on-one sessions solely one-on-one sessions will mean that you hit your income ceiling much sooner.

And mean that you can't work with as many students and that you can't impact and make that revenue that you are trying to get to. So when you're transitioning, make sure you're believing. In yourself and the services that you're providing. Practice it before you speak to parents. And then one of the ways that you can actually let parents know is send them out an email, let them know, Hey, I'm excited to let you know that.

As of next term, we're offering group sessions. If you would like to be involved, please get in touch and you know, you might have some more information about the, the differences and the benefits. Always talk about your benefits. I. Talk about your pricing differences and then if you know there are certain students that would work together, if you know that already, I would be contacting those parents and saying, Hey look, I think, you know, Sally and Donna would be really great together in a little group.

I'd like to start them off on a group on a Tuesday afternoon. For the beginning of next term, it means you'll be paying $50 instead of 85. They'll still have a, you know, personalized learning goals. But because we've got more students in there together, the lessons are actually more engaging. We've found 'em to be more effective.

The students enjoy them more, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, so you are just. Reiterating the benefits to them, which is obviously pricing and more engagement and for their child, but also the benefits for their student, which is they're still going to get the results. You know, at the end of the day, the parent wants to make sure they're still getting what they're paying for.

The final thing that you need to consider when you are introducing groups is your pricing. So basically there's no, you know, rule here about your pricing. There's no right or wrong pricing is you know, you get to decide this, right? But what I would say is that you want to make there in enough of the difference between your groups and your pricing, your, your one-on-one, sorry, that parents can look at it and if they're considering groups, It almost becomes a no-brainer because they're like, oh, I still get to work with Kirsty.

I, my child will still have amazing, you know individualized plan and they're going to enjoy it more. And it's $25, $35 cheaper. Yeah, definitely. Like, sign me up. But if your one-on-one pricing and your group. Pricing is too close together. And then a parent sort of thinks, oh, well for an extra $15, I could just have the tutor alter myself, or, you know, my child could have the tutor alter themselves.

We don't want that situation, so make sure you have enough of a gap. The other thing you wanna consider is to make sure that you don't put too much of a gap, that you need two students to have more than your one-on-one price. So for example, Say your one-on-one price is $80. You don't want your group price to be 40 because that means you need at least two students, and that still doesn't give you more than your one-on-one.

So you would want your group price at say, 50. So straightaway, two students is giving you more than one. One-on-one student. Okay. To finish off, I wanted to share just some examples of what groups could look like in your business. So there are loads, you know, there are endless possibilities of how you could run groups in your tutoring business business, but these are just some that I thought I would share with you.

So, You could have some sort of targeted teaching. So we have sort of, you know, three to four students per group and it, they are specific skills or areas or subjects that you are working on. You could have something like a homework club where it might be maybe, you know, junior primary or prep year two or something like that.

They bring in their homework and. Depending on how confident you feel, you could have more students in that group. But basically you are just facilitating them to finish their homework and help them with their homework. This has been really popular for us in the past because it helps parents, you know, it saves them time, it saves them the stress, the headache of sitting down with their kids trying to get through their homework, especially when they.

Hit, you know, year three or four and it's maths, homework. And the parents are like, Ooh, they did this differently when I was at school. So we can help you, we can take that ease, that burden off your hands. So. That's another example. Another one, our holiday programs. So during the holidays is a really, really great opportunity for you to try groups at.

If you haven't done groups before, obviously they might look a little bit different to what you are normally doing during the term. So if you're maybe normally tutoring during the term, then on the holidays it might be like a. A steam group, or it might be an art group or, you know, loads of different things.

And the final one is running semi-private. So I get this a lot. With ladies who are working with students who have got high needs or learning disabilities difficulties they don't want to do groups, but they know they need to do something more than just one-on-ones because they've hit that income ceiling.

So they might introduce something like semi-private. So say for example now often the ladies that I'm working with in this particular area are charging a bit more. So say they're charging $110 for their one-on-one, or a semi-private might be 80 or 85. And so that's two kids in there together. So again, you want to have the difference enough, but two students needs to be more than one, one-on-one student.

All right. Like I said before, you might say, no, I do not want to do groups. I am very happy doing my one-on-ones. I want this to be a unique selling point for me. And you know, I. I do hear a lot of people say that they want one-on-ones to be a unique selling point for them. However, when I talk to ladies who, who have pivoted over to groups, they haven't looked back.

So just keep an open mindset and if you are thinking that you want to pivot to groups, I'd love to know. I'd love to know how you get on. If you wanna stick with your one-on-ones. Then go for it. This is your business. You get to do what you want to do. But as long as you've had to think about why you are staying with one-on-ones, make sure it's not because you're assuming that parents aren't interested.

And also side note here, don't say My parents aren't interested because I've spoken to them. Okay, you might have spoken to two or three out of 10, but also you haven't spoken to potential parents who are out there who don't know that you offer groups, so just keep that in mind as well. All right? Don't forget, if you have enjoyed this episode, I would really, really, really love to hear from you.

So if you can leave me a review or send me a message. It means the world to me and it means that obviously I can continue to grow my podcast and continue to help other people like yourself.