Every tutor faces an income dip at some point. The question is whether it catches you off guard every time or whether you have a plan for it. This episode covers both. What to do if you are in one right now, and how to make sure it never blindsides you again.

In this episode, you will discover:

• Why the income dip feels more alarming than it usually is, and what that feeling is actually telling you

• Practical things you can do right now if you are already in a quieter period

• How to use a sales boost to create momentum even when the diary is thin

• Why planning your finances around the academic year is working against you, and what to do instead

• How your pricing might be part of the problem and how to start thinking about it differently

You might also find this useful:

• Episode 211: The Tutors Who Grow the Fastest Do This in Summer

• Episode 205: Avoiding Burnout As A Tutor Business Owner

• Episode 209: How to Set Your Tutoring Prices

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👋🏽 Hello! I'm Sumantha McMahon, and I've supported over 100 tutors and education business owners.

As a teacher 'dropout' turned professional tutor, combined with my 20+ years as a business owner, I'm in it with you! Yes, I'm qualified too :-)

My training leans on tried-and-tested methods that are completely tailored to our niche.

Work with me to breathe life into YOUR definition of success:

#1 Bespoke 1:1 Mentoring

High-touch 6-month programme for tutors who want to make their business more lucrative, in a sustainable way for the future, while protecting the impact they make.

#2 The Tutors' Mastermind

The leading membership for tutors that combines tailored training (live and recorded), a community of like-minded business owners and exclusive discounts.

This podcast is recorded using Riverside. Sign up for your account here (free plan available)

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© 2024 Sumantha McMahon

Sumantha (00:00)

Today I want to talk about something that every tutor, or at least almost every tutor, faces at some point, and that is the income dip, and more importantly, what you can actually do about it, whether you're in one right now or whether you want to make sure that you never feel blindsided by one again.

Welcome to the podcast. I'm Samantha McMahon, and I work with tutors and education business owners who want to build businesses that are more lucrative and sustainable without losing the impact they make on students. And this episode is a really practical follow-on from last week where we talked about what the fastest growing tutors do differently during quieter periods.

And when I say fastest growing, I mean in the sense that growth looks like something different for all of us, but it's about being intentional. So if you haven't heard that one or watched that one yet, you don't have to watch that in order to understand today, but the two go hand in hand. So do check it out or line it up to listen to next.

Here's something I want to say up front because I think it will resonate with a lot of you and because well, I've experienced it so many times myself. That income dip that we feel very anxious about is rarely as catastrophic as it feels in the moment or in the run-up to it.

Now, I'm not downplaying it, I'm not saying that it isn't catastrophic. For some people, it is a bit of a disaster. But a lot of the time I find with tutors that I speak to and also with myself, the anxiety of it happening is often greater than being in it.

So this doesn't make the feeling any less real, and I know that feeling really, really well. Not just from observing it with others, but because I lived it myself year after year in my early tutoring days. It's that creeping anxiety as the diary started to thin out, or knowing the date that I would have my last lesson with year 11 students.

It was the mental arithmetic constantly happening in the background, even when I was trying to just enjoy the quieter pace, when I knew I needed a break. And something that I touched on last week, which I think is worth picking up here, because it does actually connect so directly to what we're talking about, is that sense that the business is more fragile than it looks.

That the busy periods were masking something that without a full diary, the whole thing might unravel. If you heard last week's episode, you'll know what I mean. And if you didn't, then remember to check it out afterwards, because it gives you a lot of useful context for this conversation, but you can keep listening, you're not going to get lost because you didn't hear it.

So why does the dip tend to hit so hard even when you knew it was coming? One reason is that even when you can see it approaching, most tutors don't have a real plan for it. And when you don't have a plan for it, a predictable pattern actually feels like an emergency every single time.

Another thing is that tutoring income tends to feel quite personal. You know, it's not just money, it's a measure of how valued you feel, how in demand you are, how well the business is working. So when it dips, it can actually feel like more than a financial fluctuation. It can feel like a signal that something has gone wrong.

And I really want to gently push back on that because I think that framing keeps a lot of us tutors stuck. The income dip isn't a signal that something's wrong with your business. It's a pattern that just comes with the territory of working in education.

Majority of businesses have seasonal fluctuation. I'm sure that, you know, the retail industry experienced fluctuations around Christmas, let's say. And then in January, maybe it goes a little bit downhill. I don't know, I'm kind of guessing. And the great things about patterns is they can be predicted and they can be understood.

And that means they can be planned for. And that's what this episode is really about. Now, one more thing before we get into the practical side. What works for managing the income dip will look different for every tutor. Your circumstances, your income needs, your client base, your preferences, all of these things matter.

So rather than giving you a formula, I want to give you some principles and ideas that you can take and shape to just fit your own situation, because that's really the only way this kind of thing works. So for the tutor who is already in that income dip right now, and I know some of you will be, the last thing you need is someone telling you what you should have done six months ago.

So let's focus on what you could actually do right now. The first thing worth trying is just going back to the people who already know you, your existing clients, your past clients, families who have worked with you before. These are the people who already trust you and they already understand the value of what you do.

A well-timed, authentic message to a past client asking whether they would like to restart or whether they know anyone who might be interested or who might benefit from your support, you know, it can go a long way. It doesn't need to feel salesy, it just needs to feel like you, like how you might approach them if they were in front of you.

The second thing to consider is a sales boost. If you're in the tutor's mastermind, you'll be very familiar with that term because I have very specific training on creating sales boosts. In fact, if you're my one-to-one client, you have access to that as well. So check it out if that sparked something for you.

Now, I want to talk about this with you properly because I think it's one of the most underused tools in a tutor's toolkit. A sales boost is a proactive, time-limited moment where you create a reason for people to take action. It could be a very short promotion for existing clients who refer someone new, for instance.

It might be a well-timed message about spaces becoming available as September approaches. It might be something like a one-off masterclass, a paid masterclass. It might be a short course. It could be, okay, we're approaching August. Why don't I put something together for students who might be starting a new year group or a new school?

And this helps them start with confidence. It might be something as simple as just telling your clients and telling your audience that you've got some spaces and being really specific about who you work best with. You know, one of the simplest kinds of pieces of content that works really well is when people say, I am looking for, so I'm looking for 10 year nine students who want to start GCSEs with a bang, for example.

It's really simple, it's really direct, and you're getting the core message in from the beginning. The key thing is that what you're doing feels intentional rather than desperate. You're not scrambling, you're not begging people for work, you're just creating a moment of momentum that you can build on.

And even in the middle of a dip, that energy can make a really big difference, both to the actual results and how you feel about being in that income dip and how you feel about your business. So, just to remind you, if you're one of my clients, there is very specific training on different kinds of sales boosts and how to create them in a way so they sell, how to plan them, how to time them through the year, how to make them feel natural rather than pushy.

It's all in the tutor's mastermind. So if it's something you want to explore then and you don't know where the link is, drop me an email, I'll send you the link. So the third thing, and this one's less of a tactic and it's more of a mindset check. Is to resist the urge to take on anything and everything just to fill the gaps.

When the diary thins out, the temptation is to kind of lower your standards, drop your rates, or say yes to inquiries that don't really fit, or to suddenly broaden your messaging. Now, sometimes that feels necessary, but it's worth being really honest with yourself about whether you're making a considered decision or whether you're reacting from a place of anxiety.

Because the clients you take on in a panic are often the ones who can cause the most difficulty later because you haven't done the gatekeeping, you haven't spent time thinking about whether they're the kind of client you really want to work with in the long term. Now, for the tutor who is not in this dip right now, but you want to make sure that you're never caught off guard by one again, this part's for you.

Because that's where the payoff really happens. It means you don't have to be reactive. The most useful reframe I can offer here is around how you think about your working year financially. We very naturally structure our time around the academic calendar, things like term dates, half terms, exam seasons, and so on.

And it makes sense. It's the world that we're living in. And it's great for planning your diary and your workload. But our financial commitments don't follow the academic calendar. Bills arrive monthly, insurance might renew annually, some things are quarterly. Costs don't pause because it's half-term.

And so there's often a mismatch between the rhythm that we work to and the rhythm of our finances. And that's the part we need to pay some attention to. Something that really helped me was to start looking at my finances from a quarterly perspective. And I do this every quarter. I encourage all my clients to do it in the mastermind, my one-to-ones.

This quarterly review, this quarterly road mapping, look at your finances quarterly is really helpful because you're then looking in line with how your bills operate, but you can make the academic side fit in with that. So ask yourself: what does this quarter look like in terms of income and outgoings? So you're looking across three calendar months. And that's regardless of what's happening in schools.

So that lens makes the quieter periods easier to plan for. Because when I did this, I stopped measuring them against school term and started measuring them against a financial quarter. So that meant sometimes I would have two months that were really busy and then one month in that quarter that was really quiet.

I don't think if when I divided the year, I don't think I ever had three solid months that were really quiet. So, alongside that, from my experience, I actually plan my income expectations around 10 months in the year rather than 12. Some tutors will work closer to 12, some may work less, but starting from the assumption that there will be quieter periods built into the year.

And actually planning your pricing and your savings and your finances accordingly means that when those periods arrive, you've already accounted for them. So the quiet periods, when I started doing all of these things, they stopped feeling like something to panic about, because I treated them as part of the plan rather than a deviation from my ideal plan. I embraced the seasonality.

And the money that I set aside during the busy months meant that the dip didn't actually create a crisis. It was just part of the year that I had prepared for. And that brings me to pricing. If your rates only make sense when you're fully booked every week of the year, then there's a gap between what you're charging and what you actually need to earn across the whole year.

I did a whole episode on how to set your tutoring prices, so scroll back and find that one if it's one that you want to revisit. And before we close, the income dip is just one of those things that can feel really personal, even though it's almost entirely structural. It's not a reflection of how good you are — it's a pattern that just comes with the territory. Thank you for giving me your time, and you'll hear from me on Wednesday.