Tutors deserve a proper business education
Ellie opened the door. Our team walks alongside you. The structure holds you while you build.
The Business of Tutoring is a family-run business school for experienced tutors and teachers. We help you move from 1:1 lessons to a group programme that’s well designed, confidently priced and built around your life.
Ellie, Mel, Terry and Kelly
The business side nobody taught us
Most of us came to tutoring from the classroom. We knew how to teach, and teach well.
Nobody showed us how to price, how to market, or how to build something that lasts. That’s the gap we fill. Not with hype or quick wins, but with clarity, structure and a team beside you while you build.
How it started
When I founded The Business of Tutoring, I kept coming back to one question: how do we give tutors the business education they never got, without the hustle or the hype?
I built my first tuition business in 2009. I’d been a teacher for almost ten years and had no sales or marketing experience at all. Honestly, the thought of selling made me feel a bit sick.
I carried a lot of conditioning from teaching: the sense that whatever I did was never quite enough. So I assumed every family wanted cheap, pay-as-you-go lessons. I charged £30 an hour, said yes to everyone and cleaned my hallway before every session because students came to my house. A coach told me to undercut the competition and stack up as many clients as I could. I hated it, but I thought he must know better than me.
The pivot
In 2012 my first baby arrived. Sitting in baby swimming, yoga and music classes, an idea started to form: why wasn’t anyone teaching languages to babies? People thought I was mad. I did it anyway, and that first class grew into BilinguaSing, a multi-award-winning music and language brand. Mel and I have built it into a network of 24 franchisees across the UK, and we still run it today.
When the pandemic moved everything online, I saw that tutors had a real opportunity to build something different. They just needed the business knowledge, and the right mindset, to make it work. That’s when The 2 Hour Tutor Programme was born.
The breakthrough
When I first opened the programme, the places filled within two weeks, before I’d even finished building it. A teacher friend said something that changed how I saw everything:
“Ellie, you’re selling every day, you just don’t realise it. Every email, every post. You’re not pushing. You’re connecting.”
She was right. Empathy, connection and being a specialist rather than a generalist had been working all along. No hype, no pressure.
What started as my programme has grown into a school, delivered by a team of specialists. That’s what we’ve built, and our team delivers it alongside me every day.
Ellie Baker, Founder
What started as one programme has grown into a school, with a whole team beside you.
The 2 Hour Tutor Programme is our CPD-accredited flagship, alongside a set of smaller tools and audits for every stage.
CPD-accredited programmeWe’re not here to talk anyone out of teaching
We work with tutors and teachers who already believe group tuition can work, and who are ready to build it properly.
Tutors are professionals
You’re developing the next generation, and your expertise deserves to be priced properly.
Programmes give you leverage
A programme with a start, middle and end serves students better than open-ended hourly sessions, and gives you your diary back.
Specialists outperform generalists
When you’re known for one thing, your marketing gets easier, your pricing gets stronger and the right families find you.
Empathy beats hustle
You don’t need to shout louder or undercut anyone. You need clarity about who you help and how, and the confidence to say it.
Mindset is foundational
It’s a muscle: it dips, and it strengthens with practice. That’s why it sits at the heart of everything we teach.
Quiet progress counts
Not all progress is loud. Confidence, clarity and self-trust often move before the numbers do. The intangible creates the tangible.
What we help you build:
- A programme for one kind of student and one kind of problem
- A clear start, middle and end, not open-ended hourly sessions
- Pricing for transformation, not time
- Marketing with clarity, so the right people find you
- A business that supports your life, not the other way around
What it isn’t:
It isn’t about working only two hours a week.
It’s about working with intention.We hold the space. You do the building.
There’s a simple loop we come back to again and again.
Clarity
Gets you out of the fog. Our calls mix strategy with reflection: pricing one week, reviewing the quarter like a business owner the next.
Decision
Gets you out of limbo. What are you proud of, where have you made quiet progress, and what will you start, stop and continue?
Action
Gets you into momentum, at a pace that fits your life. Work-life integration, not balance: some seasons you’ll do more, some less.
Real life happens alongside all of this. Children get poorly, seasons shift, and some months you’ll do more than others. That’s allowed. Do what works for you, and we’ll meet you where you are.
A family business built on trust
Different voices, different strengths, one aligned approach, so you’re never relying on one person.
Ellie Baker
FounderI started all this: first as a teacher, then as a tutor, then as a business owner working it out the hard way. I’ve built two education businesses from scratch and made plenty of mistakes along the way. I’ve learned that the answers usually aren’t outside you. They’re already there; you just need help seeing them.
I hold the vision for the school, shape our programmes and coach on our live calls. I believe in calm growth, ethical marketing and building something you’re genuinely proud of. I also wrote the book on it: The 2 Hour Tutor, available on Amazon. I’m a mum of three, a certified holistic coach, a yoga lover and a bit addicted to personal development.
Mel Thomas
Marketing CoachI’m Ellie’s sister, and I’ve been by her side since we co-founded BilinguaSing in 2013. Together we’ve built it into a 24-strong franchise network, which we still run today. Before that I taught secondary Geography for 12 years, as head of department and in pastoral roles.
My real strength is helping tutors move from “this makes sense” to “I’m actually doing it”: marketing, social media and sales conversations, translated into practical next steps. I review every Business Breakthrough Audit and host our free workshops.
One thing I always say: you’re a helper, not a seller. People need to know you, like you and trust you first. If you book a conversation about our programmes, I’m usually the person you’ll speak to.
Terry Hill
Success Mindset CoachI’m Ellie and Mel’s dad: a former teacher turned business psychologist, NLP-qualified, and the author of The Inspiration Code. I’ve spent decades in mindset coaching and personality profiling.
Most tutors don’t need more strategies. They need clarity about how they react under pressure, why they default to certain habits, and how to lead themselves as their business grows. On The 2 Hour Tutor Programme, you’ll start with a FACE personality profile session with me, because a business only grows as far as the person running it.
Kelly
Client Success Manager & Tech SupportKelly looks after the tech behind The Business of Tutoring and our clients’ businesses. Landing pages, email systems, lead magnets, getting a course into an app: if it’s technical, Kelly can walk you through it or take it off your hands, so you can spend your energy on your students and your programme.
Proud partners of The Tutors’ Association
We’re a partner of The Tutors’ Association, the UK’s professional body for tutoring. It sets standards for the profession, runs accredited CPD and brings tutors and tuition businesses together.
Members of The 2 Hour Tutor Programme on Silver or Gold get six months of Tutors’ Association membership at half price, so you build your business with a recognised professional community behind you.
Small groups, backed by research
The Education Endowment Foundation’s research finds that small group tuition adds an average of four months’ extra progress over a year. It also finds that impact drops noticeably once groups grow beyond six or seven.
That’s why we help tutors design groups of six or fewer: small enough for every student to be seen and heard, and large enough for real discussion.
From tutors we’ve worked with
What [The 2 Hour Tutor] gave me was clarity, not just on what to create, but why and how.
It’s not like those other courses where they kind of just tell you what to do and leave you alone. It’s a fully supportive system.
What I wanted was a clear path from somebody I trusted.
Now I teach 10 hours a week from home. I take my children to school, I pick them up from school. My life looks very different now.
If this resonates
We’re not for everyone, and that’s okay. But if you’re quietly thinking “something needs to shift”, you don’t need a massive plan today. You just need your next right step.