News
It’s February, not much change in the weather here from January. Today we continue our Tutor 101 series.
Tutor Business 101 The Start
I hope you learned something from the tutor messages. Today I’m going to highlight some things, and give you a to do list of things you’ll want to make sure you are doing.
Part 1
http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/how-to-get-your-first-tutor-client-part-1/
The most important lesson of the entire series, if there is no market, then you either want to change who or what you’re tutoring.
From that page you’ll want to do the next link.
http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/is-there-a-market-for-tutoring-where-i-live/
If you’ll be tutoring school age children, I’ll make it easy for you. If you live within 25 or 30 miles of a school, then you have a market. If you want to tutor high school or college students then you may want to expand that out a bit. Remember though, especially if you’re planning on tutoring from your home, your students will have to drive to you. The less convenient it is for them to do so, the less likely you will be tutoring them. The same thing applies if you’re driving to tutor them. The longer you have to drive, the harder it will be for you (less students you’ll be able to take, more expensive it will be).
If you’re planning on using the internet to tutor, unless you want to teach something really obscure, you should be fine.
To Do List
- Create a list of possible schools you could get students from. If you’re not going to be tutoring students then you need to think a little outside of the box. An example let’s say I’m going to tutor guitar. Then I want to make sure there are at least a couple of places in the town I live in that sell guitars. You’ll want to create a list of stores.
- If you don’t find any possibilities in step 1, then you’ll want to refine whatever you were thinking about tutoring.
- Create a file, either on your computer or a hard copy (or both), this will be where you put all of your research so you’ll be able to find it easily later.
Part 2
http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/how-to-get-your-first-tutor-client-part-2/
Read the blog post make sure you check out all the additional links.
Now it’s time to do a couple of things. Part 2 is about finalizing what you’ll be tutoring and beginning to set some prices.
To Do List
- Discover your competition. This is one of the best ways to discover prices for your tutoring services. It is also important to frequently monitor your competition. Don’t worry about competition, it is actually a good thing. Read the article above about pricing. If you are going to be pricing your services higher than the other tutors in the area, it doesn’t matter, you’ll just want to make sure you can justify the extra cost. When starting out, I like to think of a base price, the lowest price I could possibly tutor someone. Remember this price, we’ll be using it later.
- Set up your business name. I’m not a lawyer, so this is just what I would do and not necessarily legal advice. You need to speak with someone that lives where you do. I normally don’t worry about things like a bank account or any added expense yet. As your business grows you can do this later. IMPORTANT: Remember you will need to track everything you earn (and spend) and you will want to pay taxes on the money. Again speak to an accountant.
We’ll continue next time. As always if you have any questions send us a note.
Business Notes
Keep up to date on schools you tutor in. As schools miss because of bad weather, they’ll be adjusting the school calendar and you’ll need to make adjustments too.
You should be working on your taxes. You should at least now have a good idea of you’re going to owe some money or if you get a refund. I always file early when I get a refund and on the date it’s due when I owe money.
Useful URLs
Almost every state has a website about starting a business. For example KY’s website is here http://onestop.ky.gov/start/Pages/default.aspx Just do a search for starting a business in ??
Quote
Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go; they merely determine where you start.
Nido Qubein