Top 5 Lessons From Love Tutoring Festival 3 | June 2022

We know not everyone could attend the festival, so we’ve rounded up some highlights for you to get inspired by and learn more about. 

What we loved most about this festival was the diversity of the sessions - from discussing tutoring for SEND children to learning how to expand your tutoring business into the US, this Love Tutoring Festival had something for everyone. 

• Tutoring is teaching the whole child, not just the subject. 

In Monday’s session on tutoring children with Special Education Needs and Disabilities (SEND) we heard from a range of tutors who specialize in teaching those with SEND. 

In this session, one of the top discussion points was how people sometimes overlook the importance of building a strong relationship with students - this is paramount to successful tutoring. 

But how do you do this in a virtual setting? 

Our favourite takeaway was the idea of implementing a ‘talking time’ at the beginning of a session. Here the student can chat about anything they like to get them comfortable talking to the teacher, sharing their interests, and getting used to the virtual classroom setting without having to dive straight into class. 

Once comfortable with each other, the teacher can then introduce the learning points and begin the academic part of the session. 

• Selling to customers is providing a valuable service they need - not just benefitting your business.

If you are a tutor or teacher with their own business or who advertises their own services, it can often feel like a daunting prospect to sell to customers. 

In Tuesday’s session on converting leads into sales, company owner of Green Tutors, Georgina Green, provided a great talk on the practice of converting leads to sales.

We loved her tips on ensuring that you show genuine interest in leads and their company, rather than leading with a sales pitch at the first interaction. 

Georgina’s talk inspired participants to consider how their business or services can best serve customers' needs and prompted us all to think about how we can add value to our networks in order to convert more successful sales from our leads. 

• Being Familiar With A Topic Is Not The Same As Retaining Learning.

On Wednesday we had a great keynote session delivered by a maths teacher, website creator and podcast host Craig Barton. This session provided some excellent tutoring revelations for on-the-ground teaching, and we had to share one of our favorites! 

Firstly, Craig showed us 6 google logos of various colour variations and asked us to pick the correct image. Only one person in the whole session could pick the correct google logo, despite the fact that all of us use google regularly. This illustrated the important point that being familiar with something is not the same as knowing or having learned something. 

Teachers were encouraged to ensure students are equipped with strategies and retrieval techniques to ensure they properly learn content - as many of us may think we know something simply because it’s familiar to us. 

• Essential Information For Selling Your Tutoring Business In The USA

Do you know the key requirements for selling your tutoring business to US schools? 

One of our Thursday sessions provided participants with essential info for taking their tutoring business to the US market. It turns out that there are strict evaluation and award criteria for prospective US tutors. 

Before you go ahead and begin prospecting to US clients, you will need to fill out a ‘request for proposal’ for student tutoring service, and this will need to cover business and insurance requirements. 

To boost your chances of success, ensure you have prepared directly relevant experience, an evidence-based approach, strong references, and a clear plan to scale your quality services. 

Selling your tutoring business in the USA may not be the easiest market to break into, but our experts assured us it sure is worth it once you’ve gone through the initial process!

• What Is Ethical Franchising?

One of the key topics was "ethical franchising". The 3 key ingredients of ethical franchising are: transparency, honesty and a two-way commitment.

This two-way commitment was also one of the top tips these experts had for choosing a franchisor. You really want to look for a close alignment with people (more so than profits or products) as a franchise agreement often lasts 5 or more years. 

The other important tips were to understand what the franchisor is looking for. “Teachability” was the number one attribute that Sean looks for when assessing potential franchisees. It’s the one attribute held by the most successful franchisees Sean has been able to work with.

The final takeaway is to do your due diligence. Just like a marriage you should not skip the “dating phase” and really get to know, not just the charismatic CEO & salespeople, but the operations people (just like Sarah) who can “tell you how it really is”. If you’re not getting the information and access to people you need to make an informed decision, it’s not a good sign.

We hope you found this helpful and if you'd like to take your online tutoring business to the next level, and haven't yet tried out the LearnCube Virtual Classroom or all-in-one solution for tutoring companies, you should create a free-trial account here.

😊 Happy Tutoring! 😊