November 2009 – Business Plus Baby

November 30, 2009April 17, 2015

Become a tutor: Business ideas for mums

(Updated March 2015)

Tell me more…

If you enjoy working with children, why not become a tutor? You could tutor them outside school hours in subjects such as maths and English. You can either work for an agency, find your own clients or both. You can work in your own home or in your clients’ homes, although it’s usually more cost effective to work from your own home as it saves travelling time and expense. You can work with individuals or small groups, primary school children or secondary.

What are the benefits?

You can choose how many hours you work
You can work weekends and evenings
It’s very satisfying work if you enjoy teaching but find the thought of being a classroom teacher too bureacratic or stressful!

Things to consider…

Make sure you really enjoy working with children!

Teaching methods will almost certainly have changed since you were at school. Unless you’ve been a teacher very recently, you’ll need to learn how your subject is taught in schools now if you’re going to avoid confusing your clients.

Although there’s no legal requirement, parents will usually want you to be DBS (previously CRB) checked. You can’t apply for a DBS check as an individual or self employed person, so you’ll need to get this through an organisation. You could do this by signing up with a tutoring agency, although they may make you pay for this. Or you could do some voluntary work, such as running an after-school club at a local school. This would also give you useful experience and may help you make some contacts. (Applies to UK only)

You may find it easier to tutor children who attend the same school because you’ll have only one syllabus to work with.

Allow at least half an hour preparation for each hour of tutoring.

If you’re signing up with a tutoring agency, look for one that advertises regularly in the area where you want to work.

You can advertise in your local newspaper, by putting up a card in local shop windows, on free websites such as gumtree.com. You can also send your details to local schools – if parents ask for teachers for extra tuition, they may pass on your details. Once you get started, you should be able to get work by word-of-mouth referrals, so make sure you have some business cards printed that clients can hand out to friends.

Be clear about your expectations when you sign up a new client – how much notice do you need for cancellation? What happens if the child doesn’t do their homework? What materials do you provide? What happens if you or the child are late for a session?

You don’t necessarily need a teaching qualification, although this is a big advantage. The need for a teaching qualification will often depend on supply and demand in your area. E.g. if there aren’t enough qualified maths teachers to go around then you will be able to find work without a teaching qualification

There isn’t a steady stream of work throughout the year – work increases on the run up to exams and decreases over the summer holidays.

Recommended resource:

If you want to get to grips with the business side of being a tutor, including pricing, I recommend this course:

How to start a highly profitable tutoring business by Vicky Olubi

Not convinced that tuition is for you? Take a look at other business ideas for mums.

(contains an affiliate link)

November 24, 2009November 28, 2009

The best advice I have ever been given

This post is inspired by Josie’s Writing Workshop over at her Sleep Is For The Weak blog.

The best piece of advice I have ever been given came to me in the middle of Wales in 1993. By a guy whose name I can’t even remember.

I was coming to the end of my university course and it hadn’t been the fabulous experience I’d expected. Brought up in the 80s on a diet of Johnny Ball and Tomorrows World (when it was good) I was fascinated by how things worked, so I’d chosen to do a physics degree. But the reality was very different – apart from one afternoon a week in the lab, the rest of the course was just maths, really hard maths. Half way through the course my confidence was at a low and I dropped out. I was talked back by a tutor and ended up taking physics with a medical physics option, which was an improvement because it was using science to make ill people better. All that maths had a practical use at last.

By 1993 I was coming to the end of my course and, even though life was better with medical physics, I wasn’t going to get the grades I needed to actually be a medical physicist. The recession was just about at its worst so there were next-to-no jobs out there. At that time I felt I’d have been better off if I’d left school at 18 and got a job – at least I’d have some useful skills.

We went on a residential course somewhere in mid-Wales a few months before we took our final exams. The physics department had invited an ex-student back to give us a presentation on life beyond the University of Wales. He’d got a physics degree, but like me he hadn’t been the natural born scientist he’d hoped to be. He’d done some more studying and become a Master of Wine. Despite doing something completely different from his degree, he said that his physics had come in useful. Especially when he had to learn about the technicalities of producing wine.

“Nothing is ever wasted”, he said.

Just four words, but it gave me hope that the tough previous three years hadn’t been for nothing. Those words have come back to me whenever I’ve come to a crossroads and wondered if the path I’ve taken to get there was a waste of time and effort.

Like the time I realised, even thought I’d spent a year getting qualified as a teacher, I didn’t actually like being a teacher. A couple of years later I got a job training teachers in IT, using what I knew in a way I didn’t expect. And it led me into a whole new career in training.

Then there was the day I realised I couldn’t go back to my full-time training job when my maternity leave ended. Was that the end of my career? I kicked myself for not seeing it coming and making better plans. But over the next few months I realised that six years as a freelance trainer was actually pretty good preparation for life as a self-employed mum.

As the man said, nothing is ever wasted.

So if you happen to know Master of Wine who is in his early forties and has a BSc in Physics with Astrophysics from the University of Wales, please let me know. I’d like to say thank you.

November 23, 2009August 12, 2010

Business Ideas For Mums – Running a Community Magazine

Tell me more…

You can start a business that produces a magazine for your town or local area. You would earn money by selling advertising space in the magazine.

You can either buy a franchise or start your own magazine from scratch
Your magazine could be aimed at anyone in the local area or could be for a specific group of people like parents or business people.

What are the benefits?

You can choose your working hours to fit around your family.
The satisfaction of producing your own magazine
The potential to earn a decent income from a part-time business, although it will probably take several years of hard work to get there.

Things to consider…

You will probably have a heavy workload on the run up to the publication deadline. How will this fit with your family commitments? Can someone else handle the childcare if you need them to?

Chances are you’ll have to chase some advertisers for payment. You’ll need to be persistent and not afraid of phoning people and asking for the money you are owed. It may take a while to get payment, so you’ll need to make sure you can survive if several advertisers don’t pay up for a few months.

If you’re not going down the franchise route and are just starting your own magazine, advertisers may be reluctant to part with their money as you won’t have a track record. Before you approach advertisers, think about how can you convince them that their advert will reach their potential customers.

If you’re considering buying a franchise…

Don’t take the franchiser’s word for it in terms of how many hours you need to work each month. Talk to someone who is already running a community magazine.

As with all franchises, be clear about exactly what you’re getting for your money and weigh up if this is good value. Talk to people who have already bought the franchise and learn from their experience. Write a business plan and make sure you can make a profit – don’t take the franchiser’s word for it, do your own homework.

Franchisers will often give you exclusive rights to an area, but this doesn’t stop someone starting a rival magazine from another franchise or an independent magazine. Check out your competition, there may already be several magazines in your area.

Further information

Some franchises that you can buy are Raring2Go, Community Times, Family Grapevine.

Ouse Valley Living is my local independent (i.e. not a franchise) community magazine – check out their website for inspiration.

How about running a website instead? If your community is made up of people with a shared interest that is spread across the country or the world, you could create an online magazine. See Business Ideas For Mums – Running an Information Website.

Not convinced that running a community magazine is for you? Take a look at other business ideas for mums.

November 19, 2009June 4, 2010

Can you really make money from an internet business?

If you've looked into starting your own internet business you'll have seen websites claiming you can make "$$$" by doing very little work. There's a lot of hype out there and it's bound to make you feel cynical if you read enough. I'm certainly not making $$$ from this website (yet!), but I believe that internet businesses aren't that much different from any other business. You'll need a product or service that customers are prepared to pay for, a marketing strategy to tell people about it, some cash to invest to get you going, consistent planning and hard work. This week I've found a couple of thought-provoking posts if you're interested in running an internet business, but have doubts that it can really earn you money. First up is 5 big internet business lies from hiremyparents.com and it's well worth a look. If you're feeling that it's impossible to get your information website noticed in the ocean of information out there, check out Diana Schiedman's Stand Up 8 Times blog post: The Internet and Online Marketing: Musings.

November 17, 2009November 16, 2009

One Day…

This post was prompted by the Writing Workshop on the Sleep Is For The Weak blog.

One day parents will really be able to balance working with spending time with their children.

One day there will be a part time job for anyone who wants one. Jobs which make full use of mums’ (lets face it it’s usually the mum) skills, expertise and training. Jobs with an equal status to full time jobs and that pay the same rate per hour.

One day schools will teach kids how to be their own bosses so they will know there is more to working life than the employment career ladder. Lets give kids more flexible work options and prove that running your own business isn’t just for hard boiled macho blokes in suits.

One day companies will make full use of not-so-new-anymore technologies so that more of use can work remotely. Then we’ll be able to work more flexibly and our work will have less impact on the environment (less travel, less fuel).

One day childcare won’t be so outrageously expensive that a parent with two or more pre-schoolers can’t afford to work.

One day the media will stop flogging the tired ‘old working mum vs stay at home mum’ debate. It isn’t a straightforward choice between one and the other, many of us juggle both options and we change the way we work (or don’t work) as our children get older. We don’t sit around arguing about which is best – we just get on with what works for our family. And we support each other in our choices.

One day women will refuse to compromise either their career or their family time and will start their own businesses so they can do both. Hang on, that’s already happening!

Do you have any more? Post me a comment…