My friend works as a tutor. She seems to have an uncanny ability to detect a student’s deficiencies and fix their problems.
She has been taking clients, and now has a completely full schedule.
In order to scale up her income, I suggested that she operate an agency:
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Take the overflow students she’s turning away now
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Hire tutors
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Advertise for more students
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Have an initial consultation with the student
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Tutor the student, or have one of the tutors she retains work with them.
It looks like she’s in the process of taking my advice.
I would love to hear any comments the SDMB community has on my idea.
Dumb?
Smart?
Tips?
Thanks in advance.
first, is she losing any time on transportation? Because if the answer is yes, she should implement one of several possible methods of avoiding that. If she can add the most value by sitting in front of her student, that’s what she is supposed to be doing.
second, she does not need to delegate work to the tutor entirely after first consultation. She can actually have them tutor in the same office and periodically check up on the progress, for quality assurance and to give instructions to the tutor. A so-so employee with an expert as manager is always a lot better than a so-so employee alone, although not as good as the expert working alone.
And then there are more elaborate potential schemes involving technology which I will not go into now because she is not likely to be able to implement that. Miniature businesses are not supposed to be doing groundbreaking research, they are supposed to be applying research of others to actually make money.
The transportation costs seem to be about 5 miles each way, with about a 12 minute drive to each 2-hour appointment. Total 10 miles and 24 minutes.
I like the idea of an office. Cash is tight, so that would probably have to wait, but I like it.
I’m bumping this for the weekday crowd. My only bump, I promise.
Instead of starting an agency, couldn’t she just raise her rates? And only take new students who will pay her new price. (Or raise her advertised price, and cut people a deal as she feels like it) Hiring other tutors will mean a lot of time spent on paperwork/email type stuff, that isn’t going to be billable to the client and takes hours away from the time she can spend tutoring.
Also I would think that tutoring is the type of work where some clients really want a specific tutor. If she’s done well then I assume she’s getting calls from people who want her. If she sends work out, then her past success is not necessarily going to replicate itself, it’s not her own work and it’s not the same clients (ie, people who already know they want her, personally). Also, once a tutor becomes popular and gets a referral base, what is to keep them from going off on their own?
So I guess I think it’s easier said then done. But disclaimer, I’ve never actually run my own business so take this for what it’s worth.
The goal here is to exceed the profit that is possible through the efforts of a single tutor.
I have my own business, unconnected to hers, but I sell product, not service. My experience is of limited value in her field.
I tutored computer science classes for awhile right after finishing college. I stopped after discovering some of the homework was getting passed around to other students and getting turned in. One idiot simply changed the name on the work and turned it in. The teacher noticed immediately.
I always struggled with the amount of help I gave. Tutoring programming, I often had to help the student get started. Point out how to write the code to achieve what the teacher wanted. But, make sure the student did their own work. That’s not easy when the student is struggling. Looking back, I should have kept more objective distance.
I quit tutoring after hearing that the work was being shared. Their teacher was very angry and was blaming me. Lesson learned, I knew it was time to stop tutoring.
Thanks. I’ll pass that last anecdote along.