I Was Turning Away Clients: Why I Moved From 1:1 Tuition to Groups

When I first left the classroom, 1:1 tuition felt like the obvious next step. It was flexible, I was good at it, and families came to me quickly.

Then I got busy. Really busy. I was teaching all sorts of subjects, levels and ages, and every lesson needed its own plan.

A full diary, but the same problems

A full diary is a lovely problem to have, but it came with problems of its own:

• I’d swapped a long teaching week for a long tutoring week. By the time I’d planned every lesson and done the admin and marketing, my workload had barely changed.
• My income was less than my teaching salary, and it was unpredictable. It dropped whenever a student was ill or on holiday, or when I took a holiday myself.
• New enquiries kept arriving, and I had nowhere to put them. There’s only so much of one person to go round.
• I watched families I’d have loved to help go elsewhere, because I couldn’t fit them in.

That last one was the hardest. I was turning away exactly the clients I wanted to work with.

A different model

So I looked for a different way to work: teaching a group of similar students who all wanted the same outcome, without juggling dozens of different plans, subjects and levels.

The change was moving from 1:1 tuition to an online group programme that new students could join regularly, through a calm, simple enrolment rhythm. It kept my income steady, my client list growing and gave me far more time back. And whenever the right family needed help, I could say yes. No more “I’m fully booked” or “I can help you in three months”.

The three things that made it work

1. A programme structure that works for students joining at different times. Ours combines content, live support and community.
2. A simple marketing rhythm that brings the right families into your world every week.
3. A sales cycle that welcomes new students naturally every month, without pushing.

If you want to welcome new students every month, the answer is simpler than it sounds: build the programme that allows it, and the systems that feed it. That’s exactly what we build with tutors inside The 2 Hour Tutor Programme, and our step-by-step guide on moving from 1:1 tuition to group tuition is a good place to start.

Written byEllie BakerFounder, The Business of TutoringEllie is the founder of The Business of Tutoring. A former teacher and tutor, she has built two education businesses from scratch and authored The 2 Hour Tutor. Today she holds the vision for our school, shapes our programmes and coaches on our live calls. Meet the team

More from Ellie: I chose me · Why I left teaching · I found another way · Why I only work with teachers