Creating your Dream Tutoring Business
Updated: Jun 24
It was so good to talk to Melitta Campbell about starting your dream tutoring business on her podcast The Driven Female Entrepreneur. You can listen to the episode here.
I talked a bit about my tutoring failure.
I got so much wrong when I started tutoring. Even as a specialist dyslexia tutor charging much more per hour than general tutoring, I couldn’t make it work.
preparation took too long
travelling took too long
the admin and communication took too long
It just wasn’t a viable tutoring business model. So I stopped tutoring.
But I knew how valuable my tutoring work was. I got some amazing outcomes for my students.
I felt I deserved more for my hard work. And I felt students deserved expert help.
I got started again and realized the value of group tutoring in diversifying my offer.
That initial failure was my challenge to create a model that supports tutors to support students - sustainably.
Pricing and packaging your tutoring offer three ways is just one of the trainings inside the membership so tutors can charge a fair price that keeps them in business - and in the business of helping as many students as possible.
That means it’s still possible to tutor 1:1 if that's what you like, and what works, especially for tutoring your higher needs students.
But 1:1 tutoring doesn’t have to be your only model.
You need to know how many 1:1s you can afford to take on - because that’s typically your lowest earner as a tutor - before you start referring.
Our signature Tutor Like a pro! Membership for phonics teachers and early literacy educators also came out of a kind of publishing failure - that wasn’t really our fault.
Teachers were loving the resources - check out @jigsawphonics on Instagram to see them in action - until a whole host of phonics schemes got validated - and teachers were telling us that as much as they preferred Jigsaw Phonics, they had to use a different programme.
We even have teachers in the membership who used Jigsaw Phonics resources at school.
But these resources became the basis of the 90 ready-to-tutor lessons that tutors love, because they can tutor consistently with zero prep to get their students the results they deserve. And children love the hook of the Jigsaw Phonics characters that make learning meningful and fun for them.
That’s probably enough failure - tutoring and otherwise for one day. But I’m really interested to know:
What would your dream tutoring business look like?
Drop your comments below, email me at sandra@jigsawphonicstutoring.com and let me know!