Episode Transcription

26: How to start a tutoring business in 2024

 Hello, lovely lady. Welcome to Classroom to Business, the podcast designed specifically for teachers working to become successful business women and creating financial freedom and lifestyle flexibility. I'm Kirsty Gibbs, business coach and mentor for educators and teachers just like you who are ready to step away from the classroom and create something more.

The Classroom to Business podcast is committed to helping you grow your business, break down those barriers to success and replace your teaching salary without having to work more hours. It's time for you to find freedom and start being your own boss so you can once again enjoy what you do and wake up each morning loving life.

Let's get into it.

Okay, today's episode is going to be quite a strategic one because I want to really answer some of the questions, I guess, in how do I actually start a tutoring business? If you want to go into this deeper, I do have my online course, Tutor Bootcamp. I will put the links in the show notes because I'm going to skim the surface today.

I am going to give you enough to take away and get started. But if you want to go deeper and, you know, get quicker results and more effective results, then definitely head over and check out tutor bootcamp because. Without holding your hand, I kind of walk you through the process and you will learn from my mistakes and all of the things that I've learned over the 11, 12 plus years in the industry.

So let's start today, however, with the beginning of a business. So this is where we're really nothing out. What your business is. So if you're close to pen and paper, grab pen and paper, start writing this down. If you're driving or listening to this on the run, then maybe come back, listen to it now, but come back again, because this will be super helpful for you if you're looking to start a tutoring business.

So firstly, you need to think about what are you offering? Now I talk about this all of the time, what's your superpower? What are you passionate about? You know, when we're in the classroom, we're teaching so many different things and we've often had experience in teaching lots of different year levels as well.

But what do you love? What do you really enjoy doing? What do you want to do more of? That is your superpower and that's your niche. Now it's important to niche down. In business, but especially in our tutoring businesses, because you want to be the specialist in your area. If I'm a parent and my child has got some struggles with reading, I am going to look for a tutor who specializes in reading.

Not just a general tutor. So by you having a specialized area or a niche, you are promoting that and standing out in an industry that I'm not going to say it's saturated, but there are a lot of people out there doing what you're doing, so you need to stand out. Now. Your niche or your superpower doesn't have to be the subject area you're teaching.

It might be the age of students you're teaching. It might be the approach that you take. It might even be the way that you have your space set up. Maybe it's the type of services that you provide, but have a think about what makes you unique, and we call these USP, unique selling points, what's going to make you stand out to the tutor down the road.

The next thing we need to think about is who are you going to work with? We dive into this a lot more in Tutor Bootcamp because understanding this is key to having effective marketing. But for today's episode, I want you to brainstorm who it is that you're working with, think about the student, but also think about the parent.

Then we're moving on to where are you going to be running your sessions? So are you going to be working from your home? Are you going to be working in the students homes? Where is it that you will run your sessions? Maybe it's online. Maybe you're going to rent a space. Maybe you're going to get a full blown lease and create a big premises and go all in, which is what I did, but it's not what you have to do.

You can very, very successfully start small. And I've got a lot of ladies who have started in their own homes. Some have kept it in their own homes and I've grown it there. Others have grown it in their homes and then moved it out into a secondary. Premises so you get to decide this. Okay. This is one of the best benefits of having a tutoring business is that you choose the answers to all of these questions.

It's a pick your path book, but a business. And also, are you going to just run them locally? Or are you going to potentially bring stuff into, you know, work for you in other areas? Now, yes, that might not be something that you want to do right now, but this is a great opportunity to sit down and brainstorm what you want it to look like initially.

And maybe eventually the next thing that I want you to think about is how will you run your sessions? Now, I touched on this before. You might want to do them online. You might be doing them face to face. But also the services that you're providing, are you going to be running as groups? Are you going to be running one on one sessions?

How will your sessions look and what sort of services will you provide? I talk about this a lot with my ladies all of the time. We come in, so many of us come into tutoring businesses and we just go straight to. One on one tutoring, that's all I'm offering because we think that that's the only option.

And we think that that's all that parents want. I'm going to go off on a tangent here and say that one, actually two of my clients just in this past month have transferred all of their one on one students. I think both of them had two exceptions so that I think they had probably about 30 ish kids each transferred all of them in their own businesses.

Group sessions. So not only has that freed up time to bring in more students or spend time with their family, whatever they're after, but it's also increased their hourly rate. So instead of working for, you know, 90 or 110 for a one hour, one on one session, they've now got four 60. Working for 240 now. So, have a think about that.

Don't just go in with a really narrow view of what you think this needs to look like. Do some research. Listen to my podcasts. You know, join the Tutoring Growth Membership. Jump into Tutor Bootcamp. Chat with me. Figure out if that's the best option for you. Business wise as well, because you want to be making a profit out of this.

And if you're only doing one on ones and you've only got 15 hours a week, that's it, that's all you can make. And the next thing that you need to think about is when, when will you run these sessions? Now, again, a benefit of having a tutoring business is you get to decide. Setting boundaries is part of the tutor success framework that I've created and.

Within that is your timetable. If you don't want to work on weekends, do not let families book in for weekends. Okay? Put that boundary in place, because let me tell you, there will be plenty of other families out there who are happy to do your before school, after school sessions. And if you're wanting to do sessions during school, then that's an option as well.

It might be a little bit more challenging and you have to go about things in a different way, but you can do your sessions during school as well. So have a think about. When you're going to be working, what do you want your timetable to look like? The next stage of starting your tutoring business so that it's ready to go in 2024 is setting goals.

I know that sometimes goal setting can be airy fairy. I was definitely a believer of this. I was not a goal setting type person myself. However, since having a business, That has got a lot of moving parts, setting goals. It isn't necessarily for me about striving for something. It's about giving me focus because from those goals, I can then break them down into actionable steps.

And this is exactly what I work with my ladies on, especially my private coaching clients is if this is your goal, what does that look like for us over three months? What action steps need to be taken. Let's work backwards and deconstruct that. So, you know exactly what you're focusing on this month, this week, even today.

So I would recommend sitting down and saying, what are my goals for the next three months? So I'm recording this, you know, we're coming into the beginning of the last quarter. So for this last quarter of the year, what are my goals? So if you're just starting this behind the scenes set up of your business, it might be to set things up so that I can.

You know, open my doors in January 21st or whatever date you've decided. If you've already just started your business, it might be to get five more new students, whatever. Okay. There's no rules around this, but I want you to think about your goal for the next three months, your goal for the next 12 months and your goals for the next three years.

Then, like I said, take those goals, especially those three month goals and break them down into monthly and at least weekly tasks, the action steps that you're going to take and then put them into your schedule, into your calendar. This is so important because in business. There are so many things going on that it can be extremely overwhelming and you don't know where to focus.

And if you're like me, you'll get a lot of new, other exciting ideas come along, and they kind of pull you away from what you're supposed to be doing. So if you've got that goal and you've got those action steps, you know exactly what to work on and what to focus on, and you're less likely to get distracted, more likely to hit your targets the next stage.

Is your business admin. This is often what people think about. So I do have a checklist for this. I will put the link in the show notes, but it's things like thinking about your insurance, registering your business name, getting an ABN, organizing your logo, your branding, maybe your website, those things that usually only sort of have to be sorted out once, but you have to do them.

Before you can start making money. Now you don't have to have a logo and a website and branding done before you make money. But I encourage you to be looking at those things in this stage as well, because those things are very crucial part of building a successful business and brand that people can recognize.

Because our next and final stage that I'm going to talk about today. Is awareness. So now that you know exactly what you're doing, who you're working with, what services you're providing, you know, where you are going in your business, you know, what you're working towards, you've got all of the business admin sorted.

You've got your logo and your branding. Now you've got to get out there. You need to get out there and be promoting your business as much as possible. And that doesn't just mean. Posting on your own Facebook page. That is the most common thing that people do. And I can tell you right now that it is not enough.

You need to be talking to people in real life. You need to be establishing business collaborations and relationships with other local businesses in your area. You need to be in other people's Facebook groups. You need to potentially, not need to, but potentially you might be doing some paid advertising.

Don't just rely on your own. Personal or your own business, Facebook or Instagram page to grow your business, because especially in the beginning, this is not enough. Okay. I cannot stress that enough. All right. So to recap, the first stage is really. Digging deep on your business idea and who you are and what you're doing, who you're working with.

The next stage is setting your goals so that you've got clear path of action steps to follow. The next step is getting your business admin sorted. The final step is building awareness so that when you open the doors. To your tutoring center or business or at home or online, whatever you've decided, you've got people there who know that this is happening and who are keen and ready and excited to sign up and join their kids into the services that you're offering.

Like I said, this is a really quick snapshot of the things that you need to do to start a tutoring business. Tutor bootcamp goes into all of these and more on a much deeper level so that you've coming out the other end with an established set up business. However, I wanted to give you some insight because I know that there are some of you out there who are looking to start your tutoring businesses in 2024.

So use this time now between now and the end of the year to be. Working on these things and getting them set up so that when you are ready to take on your students in January or February, whenever you've decided you're ready to hit the ground running, you've got all of these things sorted, you're not spending time trying to figure out which insurance do I need and how am I actually going to take payments and all of those sorts of things that we have to know and figure out in our businesses, it's all sorted.

So you can just focus on growing your business and providing amazing services to your families. All right. So if you want more information about tutor bootcamp, head to the link in my bio, check it out, send me a DM. If you've got any questions, I would love to chat. And hopefully this has given you a little bit more of an idea about what you need to do to start your own tutoring business in 2024.

If you enjoyed this episode today, I would absolutely love for you to leave a review. It only takes a minute. And if you haven't yet subscribed, make sure you do to ensure that you never miss an episode. Finally, if you want to know more about what we do, head over to the website, kirstygibbs. com or check out the link in the show notes below.

Thanks for listening. It's so great to have you here.