Do I Need To Be Talked Out Of This?

[dr_pretentious]

A friend has suggested that we might start a tutoring business together. She's got the math and science chops, and an almost-finished dissertation in an Ed.D. program, so we could be full-service shop. With the right office space in, say, Highland Park, I wouldn't have to drive all over the place to make house calls. Highland Park is full of grad students who are used be being paid starvation wages to tutor at the university, and the university budget cuts are leaving some of those folks with no way to pay the rent at all, so it would be easy to cherry pick experienced hourly employees at a significantly better wage than they're used to getting. Highland Park is also full of prosperous parents who are ambitious for their children, parents who are falling all over themselves trying to find a way to fill the gap between what the schools can do and what their kids need.

Could it possibly take more time to run a tutoring business in one spot than I'm currently spending driving from client household to client household? Am I delusional to think this could be a good plan?

Anyhow, S and I aren't going to do anything rash about this. She's waiting to find out if the university will reappoint her on a budget line with health insurance, which she should know around April, and I'm still neck-deep in the March Writer's Weekend event. Oh, and I expect to be significantly under the weather for at least another week. Meanwhile there are plenty of brass tacks questions to investigate. How much does a square foot of non-storefront office space a block off the main drag in Highland Park cost per month? What kind of insurance do you need for a business that involves having other people's minor children on premises without their parents? That kind of thing.

Comments

[harlequinaide.livejournal.com]

Thank you for laying out such a comprehensive breakdown of what it would take.

It's my pleasure; I'm enjoying thinking deeply about this. I think you'd be great at this, fwiw.

$120/hour seems excessive. It's interesting that the market bore it, but still... my college students aren't paying that much per course! (To be fair, they pay $60 and I make about that, but 1:1 is different.) It does sound like your boss was abusive, regardless of the pressure. My own boss was more like a mother: instead of yelling she would say, "I've very disappointed in you," and shake her head sadly.

For me, the cost/benefit was all about not driving all over creation. If rental spaces are cheap and you don't have too many employees, I think this could be fine. Hiring an acountant would help a lot (my boss has been burned, once by a former office manager and once by a former business partner whom she bought out, and doesn't trust other people to handle the money). Also, being my own boss was attractive, for a few minutes. I decided not to do it because I have no interest in running a business; it's teaching that I love.

The summers were awful. We did week long intensive camps, offerered "Buy 2 hours get 1 free" deals (the free one happened on Friday, because Friday was always dead, anyway) and ran chess clubs. One thing that I wanted to do but we never got off the ground was to run courses targeted at the reading lists of local high schools. A class of three football players who otherwise aren't going to read their summer reading would have been something of a cash cow, I think.

The value of staying in one place for five hours and having the students come to you can not be over-stated. If you're in this because you love tutoring (and not because you want to run a business), my advice is this:

1) Keep it small. Don't hire too many employees, or you'll end up spending all your time on them and none on teaching.

2) Establish relationships with local high schools. They can't recommend one tutoring place over another, but the guidance office can (and does) maintain a list of local facilities, and if parents ask they provide it. Also, one of our biggest programs was a yearly HSPT prep class at a local high school, geared towards people who wanted to get in there. It worked for them and built our customer base. Also, if you have a relationship with the school they will often give you the reading lists. This is a huge help in planning out curriculum.

3) Prepare to do test prep. About half our business was test prep, and that's only going to get bigger. People need it year round, and parents will tell their friends, so that even when one student is gone, her younger brother and best friend will sign up.

4) Any new business loses money for the first three years (according to what I've read), and they eat up pretty much all of the owners' time, especially in the beginning.

That's it. Like I said, I could see you being great at this, and I don't want to be all doom and gloom. If my boss didn't love it, she would have shut the place down years ago.