Sick of grumbling back people’s orders at McDonald’s? If you’ve got your dreams set on a specific college, they’re always looking for people who take the initiative. Starting a teen business is a great way to do just that, as well as it makes money, and you can feel good at your job. In this article we’ll discuss all the components of starting a tutoring business as a teen including the initial preparation stage, getting clients, and making progress with your students.
Initial Preparation for Your Teen Business
Starting a tutoring business is not an easy ordeal. There are several key components to keep in mind. What is there to recommend you? Do you have enough money to get your teen business up and running? How are you going to spread the word?
First of all, it’s important to be a successful student yourself. Teen business requires you to be very responsible to get clientele. Think about it; if you were a parent, would you really want a failing student to be tutoring your kid? You really should be getting B’s before you can expect any good business tutoring. And even then, you can’t ask for more than a dollar above minimum wage. To get really lucrative business, you need to be recommendable by being a straight A student. It’s not quite as hard as it looks. As long as you’re responsible with your homework and schoolwork in general, organized, and you make sure that you really understand everything before you put it aside, you can easily get A’s, and your teen business will thrive. There are a lot of references on this topic.
Initially, you are going to need a month to get your teen business together. You’ll need one report card before you can really set up your tutoring business. That way, parents can have a recent reference of how you are doing in school. You’ll also need this time to get some money for your teen business. Really, when you start a business, you need to advertise it. Advertising your teen business in the classified can cost from $10 to $40. Check your newspapers rates, but make sure you do in the newspaper. This way you are getting local residents. So how do you get money? A summer job can provide you with some money, but I recommend that either you pull $100 in your savings (not college funds or anything important like that), ask for a loan from your parents, get a part time job, or do chores for your parents. Anyway, you’re going to need that $100 for supplies to support your teen business and that newspaper ad. We’ll talk about your rates, etc. in getting clients, but now we’re just viewing the classified ad as a cost.
Whatever’s left you’re going to need for supplies. You’ll find they’ll be an inseparable part of your teen business being successful.
Getting Clients for Your Teen Business
Tutoring is a profitable business, and some tutors have the nerve to charge up to $90 per hour. Regardless, they are not teens. As teens, you are expected to ask much less than a normal adult, even if you are more educationally qualified than they may be. Tops, you should really only ask $15, which is double minimum wage and dollar. Trust me, that’s over and above the average teen business. But going above that isn’t wise. Rate is very important in getting clients. If you go over that $15 as a rate for your teen business, you’re likely only to get a very slim pick of clients to choose from. They’re also going to expect a lot of you, as well as think that they can ask anything of your teen business that comes to their fancy regarding their child’s education. So don’t go over $15. You need to have options.
It’s also important to specify how much and when you are willing to work. If you just put “Tutor, $15 an hour” in the classifieds, you might loose a lot of clients because they’re expecting you to first, be an adult, and second, to be willing to work as much as they want. A teen business isn’t going to be open for clients as much as an adult-run business will be. If you say “teen willing to work for you up to an hour on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday” or whatever applies to you, you’ll be showing you are responsible and your clients will know what they are getting into. Also, be sure to specify the age group your teen business is willing to tutor. (Really, I recommend that you only work 2 hours a day at your teen business-you need the remaining hours for sleep, homework, and maintaining those good grades that initially got you the job.)
It’s also good for you to make a list of questions to ask your clients. Make them concise and informative questions because you don’t want to ask more than four questions because otherwise you will start feeling nosy, fishy, and overall uncomfortable. Also find a few alternative tutoring options in your community if you have to turn a client down from your teen business. Look up tutoring options for every age group that you would’ve been willing to tutor.
Make sure you meet the adults initially with a parent, just to be safe. Remember you are a teen running a teen business and teens are still under care. Even if you view yourself as old enough, unless you are over eighteen (and if you are, besides from nineteen-year-olds, you really can’t advertise as a teen business), you really need to meet them with a parent. Drive to their house to see how long it would take, where it is, and if it’s close enough to you.
When you first meet them you need to ask them about the child. Ask them about their grades, what they’re struggling in, and what progress they want to see in their child, and in what subjects. Ask them how they plan on paying you. These are all important questions for your teen business that you don’t want to miss. If there’s anything you’re not comfortable with, tell them that you will get back in contact soon. If you decide not to go with that specific client, tell them the other options. Don’t force yourself to do something you’re not comfortable with. You really shouldn’t have to sacrifice comfort-wise for your teen business.
Getting Prepared; Getting Your Teen Business Ready
When you have clients, make sure you know everything your teen business is expected to do. If the student needs help in math, make sure you know what parts of math they need help with. Get specific and make sure you don’t have questions. Questions regarding your teen business are for the face-to-face meeting with your client’s parents, not the over the phone initial contact. Once you’re confident that you know what your client needs, take that remaining $60, $70 or even $90 and spend on school supplies so your teen business is prepared. Get workbooks that you think are fun, will help them, are easy to use, and progressive and will reflect well on your teen business (as in they don’t focus on one concept for 30 pages). Buy a notebook for you to keep notes in. Buying the supplies will help you make your teen business look better in your client’s eyes. They want to be paying for your services, not your supplies.
I recommend, if your budget permits, that you buy two workbooks. One for homework that you will assign, the other for when you are personally tutoring him. To find what prizes your student might like, in that face-to-face meeting (that every teen business should have) you should ask the parents about cheap prizes that the student would appreciate. Even better, ask the kid his or herself. This central in motivating students to do their homework. Buy a few of these as a motivation to do homework.
Your Teen Business’s Focus: Teaching Your Students
There are a few things that you should know about teaching children especially concerning tutoring and teen business. This includes understand the importance of psychology, homework, tests, and learning types.
First of all, psychology. For a student to learn anything, they must feel good about it, and that it feels good for them, in the moment. This why I suggest prizes. Encouraging them and being positive in general is all very important to your teen business. Set goals for them. If they can score a 90% on the test for this week, they get that small prize. Include these long term rewards and short term rewards such a jelly bean for a good answer and a toy car for an A that week.
Homework is also important because this is the practice that ingrains the concept in their mind. This is why when choosing a homework workbook, it’s good to make sure it’s semi-repetitive so they get enough practice.
Also tests are very important. This checks their progress. If they aren’t making a lot of progress on their tests, that reflects badly on your teen business rather than on them. Ask yourself if it’s the way your teaching, not understanding psychology, or maybe an overlooked flaw in your teen business. If you feel that innately, you aren’t a good teacher, take a course online or at your community college about teaching children. It’s important that you are actually helping student rather than confusing them. A disorganized teen business is hardly a business at all.
Last, learning types is important. Understand your student’s learning types are imperative to your teen business’s success. To test learning types, take the first initial four days, focus on one learning type. The learning types include audio, visual, literary (which is a little different than visual) and tactile. Audio is listening. Do they learn well, when you simply just talk them through a problem, asking them questions and checking if they understand. As for visual, try out a whiteboard to explain things. Draw diagrams for them and pictures. Do they understand well this way? When I say” do they understand”, I mean are they grasping it quickly with these techniques? As for literacy, do they learn better when they read through something? For instance, is seeing how somebody solved an algebra problem, solved step by step, helping them understand? Lastly, they may be tactile. Find objects that help them learn something. For instance, two lollipops held rather than drawn and being able to move them around may be better for them as far as understand 2+2 than even if you keep the same idea and draw two lollipops to help them understand the concept of 2+2. Test out each way of learning and see which one they respond the best with. If they respond well with all or several of them, they may be able to grasp several techniques. If they’re not responding well to any of them, there may be a psychological problem where you should start taking classes to help you with your teaching skills so your teen business can flourish.
Keeping a Teen Business
There are some basic lessons to keeping a teen business. First of all, you need to saving some money that you get profit so it can go back into the business. This includes money for supplies, prizes, and whatever else may come up. Say you were making $135 a week. You should probably save $20 of that for supplies. That would be $80 each month for supplies, which, you’ll find is realistic for a teen business.
The other $100 you should split for spend and save. $50 dollars you should invest of that $135 to gain more money. This could be in stock-invest in things that you, personally, would buy-, a bank account, or a government trust fund. This money adds up so you keep getting more, and so it’s enough for something big. The other $85, spend to your will! What’s the fun of having money if you can’t spend it?
Also be organized. Keep track of everything you need to remember regarding your teen business. School, stuff to bring to tutoring tomorrow, your friends birthday. It’s easy to forget when you’re busy so it’s imperative to be organized.
In Review
Tutoring is fun, profitable, and a great introduction to real moneymaking in real life. Do it well and perhaps double your business, don’t put in effort, you may lose your clients. Teen business is a hard cup of tea, and takes maturity to keep up. But in the end it follows the same rules of life-be responsible, be honest, be passionate, and you will succeed.
