Episode Transcription

30: Your Tutoring Business is Like a Game

Hello, lovely lady. Welcome to Classroom to Business, the podcast designed specifically for teachers working to become successful businesswomen 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. This episode is for all of you ladies out there who are a little nervous about putting a cancellation policy in place. Maybe you've got one, but you don't enforce it. Maybe you've got no idea how to create one. I want to talk to you about that today. And I want to start off by saying. Your business is like a game and when you provide the rules to your game, then people know how to play that game.

So if you are sharing the terms and conditions around what's expected for your business in terms of what happens if you're late, what happens if you cancel, what happens if you don't show up, what happens if you're going away on holidays. They're all part of your terms and conditions, part of your cancellation policy.

If you want to include it all together and they're the rules for your business. So. If you think about, when you sit down to play a game, you don't know how to play it. What's your goal? Your goal is to win. Your goal is not to cheat, usually, unless you're playing a very heated Monopoly family game, and you just have to win.

But, your goal is generally to win following the rules. So, we learn the rules. And then we know how to play. And then we do our best to win the game. Your business is the same. So if you don't tell parents what the rules are in your game, then they are going to do what you see as cheating. To try and win.

Now, win is not a negative word right here. Win is making the most of the situation. Okay, and it's not taking advantage in a bad way. It's getting the result they want, which is bringing their child to tutoring, getting results and transformations for their child with their learning. And obviously paying you to do that.

That's the way that's what they're trying to get. But if you don't tell them how much they need to pay, when they need to pay, like I said before, all of those terms and conditions around, if they're late, if they cancel, if they don't show up, if they're gone holidays, if you don't tell them what is expected, they don't know.

And what then happens is you get taken. Advantage of, and it's not necessarily because you're dealing with nasty moms and dads or people who are trying to rip you off. It's because you haven't told them how to play the game. I want to use some of my own personal examples here and highlight situations where the rules haven't been explained to me.

And as a decent human being, I have inadvertently. Cheated. An example I use is my daughter's piano teacher. She's lovely, going really well at piano. The very first conversation we had, she said to me, you will be charged for canceled sessions. I said, okay, that's fair enough. And this was before I signed up.

And I said, the thing is next term we are away for two, maybe three weeks. I knew that that was coming. And so I wasn't sure whether I should sign up. Right then and there, or wait until we came back. And this lady said, no, no, no, that's fine. You've given me notice you're going away. I won't charge you.

Firstly, she set her rules, then I've seen the first change. Now this isn't like a conscious, I'm sitting there thinking, Oh my gosh, she's changed the rules. Now I can swindle her this way. Not at all. I respect her and the services that she provide, but she changed the rules. So I follow suit. What happened then, a couple of terms later, when we went away again, I just let her know a couple of weeks beforehand.

Oh, just to let you know we're away next week or whenever it is, so we won't be able to come to the sessions. Now, there's a part of me, probably because I've had tutor in businesses for so long, that expected her to say, Okay, no worries. And still charge me, but she didn't, she said, okay, no worries. And then the invoice had that session taken off.

Now I could sit there and say, Oh, she's such a lovely person. She didn't charge me for that. And I think that often as teachers and tutor and business owners, that's what we think. We think being a nice person, I'm not charging them, but I already thought she was a nice person. Whether she charged me or not, but again, what it did was it conditioned me to think.

Okay, it's that easy for me. If I've got to cancel and can't make a session, I can't come to a session. So again, she's shown me her rules are changing once more. The third thing that has happened is that it wasn't a planned holiday. It wasn't anything important. It was just a fact of we couldn't get there that particular afternoon, you know, happens and again, pretty late notice.

It might've been the morning or something like that. And I wasn't charged again. So you can see now, this is no disrespect to this person at all. And the reason that I'm using this example is because it is so common and it is a problem. I actually. We'll pay her the invoice because I am on the flip side seeing what's happening and I will pay her the full amount and We're doing extra sessions to make up and again her rules following her rules But nine times out of ten your parents aren't going to do that They're not going to just pay you because they think you should be paid That usually won't happen.

They will follow your rules, the rules that you set to your game and everybody's business is different. So everybody's games are different. Everybody's. Rules are different, but the key thing here is to establish your rules at the very beginning and stick to them. Now, on the other side of it, when I started my tutoring business and I had some things loosely written into my terms and conditions about What would happen if you missed a session and that you committed to the 10 weeks of the term, things like that.

However, I was new and I really wanted to make everybody happy. It's not the kid's fault that they're going away on holidays or the parent's fault that the schools have finished early. So I fell victim, I guess, and again, did it to myself because I started to let people walk over me and they did that because I changed my rules.

So they were trying to win the game. And again, when I say win the game, I don't mean it in a sort of nasty, mean way, they're just trying to get their result. Their end result is spend a minimal amount of money, they're not going to pay me if they don't have to, and get the services as promised. It probably was about two or three terms of dealing with Probably a couple of families in particular, and they were really, really lovely families not trying to rip me off, really supportive of my business, would tell other people about my business, all of these sorts of things.

But come week nine and 10 of every term, there were private school students and they would say, Oh, we finished school or, Oh, we're going on holidays. And so I was like, okay, no worries. And they'd already paid up front. I would credit them two sessions for the following term. The problem was that these particular examples that I'm talking about were part of a group.

So part of a school readiness group, and that meant that. I couldn't feel that. So I would have six kids in there in this particular class. All of a sudden I only had four paying students for that class, but I can't feel two spots for the last two weeks with no notice at the drop of a hat. It's very hard for me to do that.

So I was losing out because these families were finishing up early and I know that this is really common and I know that a lot of us do this in our businesses and I want to jump on today. and encourage you to set the rules for your game. Nobody can tell you what rules you need to set because it's your game.

But the sorts of things that I would encourage you to consider, obviously, how much you charge. And let me just put in a little side note here that if you've got a couple of different prices, maybe you've got people on discounts. Maybe you've got people from who were your beginning students that you've never increased their prices and now you've got this happening.

It's going to get messy and it's going to get really, really hard to get everybody onto the same page. So that now aligning all of your pricing so that with a goal, maybe in the next 12 months, everybody is. Paying the same amount that might be a podcast for another day, actually. But if you are setting the rules for your business, not only do you need to be thinking about pricing, but you need to think about what happens if families are late.

What happens if students go away on holidays? What happens if schools finish early? Now, this is my little take on this, but just because your school finishes. Early, that doesn't mean that the intervention and the work that I'm doing with your child has finished. That is a conversation that I definitely would be having with any families who are looking to finish up early because their school has finished.

That's great. School's finished, but there's still so much that I'm doing with them over these next couple of weeks. And it's actually going to hinder the progress that we've made so far, or they're not going to get that consistency or they're not going to get the results, whatever it is. So have a think about that.

Have a think about what happens if they just don't show up, what happens if they're late on payments, what happens if they fall sick that day. So there is a genuine issue or reason why they can't make it to their session. All of these things you need to think about and then create your terms and conditions, your cancellation policy around that, they are your rules.

And then, this is the really important part, you need to stick to your rules. Because if you don't stick to them, people will start doing what you see as cheating the system to try and get their outcome. Okay, and again, it's not because they are bad people. They're just being humans, just like you and I, we are trying to get the results that work best for us.

So if I don't have to pay for a session, I'm not going to pay for it. And if your parents don't have to pay for a session because you haven't followed up the cancellation fee, or the late payment fee, or whatever it is, that's not their fault. That's your fault. Some tough love today. If you don't have any idea how to create a cancellation policy, Get in touch because I do have a cancellation policy that you can grab plugging your own little.

Bits and bobs here and there, your own conditions, put your logo on it, put your branding on it. I also got terms and conditions, student enrollment, handouts, agreements, all of the things that you need to give to your parents at the very beginning of their time with you when they're enrolling so that you've got.

Everything signed and recorded and documented. And then also, and if you've heard me talk about this before, you'll know what I'm going to say is continue to remind them we're in week seven or eight, I think right now, the weeks are flying away. But this is the perfect time to email your families and say, Hey, such and such.

We're having a fantastic final term of the year. Just a reminder. We're in week seven of our 10 week term. That means we've got three weeks left. So you're telling parents right there. This is the expectation and you're reminding them that they are committed to these sessions and it's a really great segue, especially at this time of the term and this time of the year to put in those emails, the re enrollment information or the action that needs to be taken by them to secure their spot for the following term or the following year so that you are not spending all of your holidays Chasing families and trying to book them in.

If that's something that you would like some help with, please get in touch with me. I'll be more than happy to jump on and do a strategy session with you where we can create some template emails that you can send out. Every single term to help you get your students enrolled for the following term, ensure that they commit to the whole term, and then give you back that time and space during the holidays to actually just relax and not having to be chasing up finances, re enrollments and booking forms and all those sorts of things.

I'll pop a link in the show notes for that, if you're interested. And also, if you would like a cancellation policy, please. Get in touch. I'll put a link for that as well. And if you have a cancellation policy already in place, but maybe you've been a bit slack or laxy daisy with your rules and enforcing that cancellation policy or that terms and conditions, then this is your friendly reminder from someone who has learned the hard way.

And now who is literally seeing every second person going through the same thing. Start now, put your foot down, put your rules in place, stick to them and make next year the year that you don't have to be chasing up money. You don't have students just not turning up. You don't have classes or groups that were full that are now missing students because they've gone on holidays and there's no payment to cover that.

Start taking your business seriously. You can still be a nice person and have your rules in place and stay by them. 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, coastygibs. com or check out the link in the show notes below. Thanks for listening. It's so great to have you here.