Hope your week is going well. Todays tutor tip is about taking action. Unfortunately this stops many people from having a successful business. Many people for whatever reason believe that things need to be perfect before they try it.

This reminds me of a client we were working with. They had created a wonderful video tutorial about how to do fractions. The video was about 15 minutes or so long and we had worked with them for weeks until I felt it was ready to launch. We were going to use the video for a couple of different purposes. One of them main uses was to put it on you tube and direct folks to their online tutor business.

The video worked. It wasn’t perfect but it got the points across and taught the major concepts very well. They didn’t think it was perfect, so they tweaked and tuned and tweaked for weeks. Until they gave up. Very, very sad.

Things you’re doing don’t have to be perfect. Let’s say you’re building a website. After you launch it there will be plenty of time to tweak and tune things. The big thing is to take action and do it.

I encourage you today to pick something from your to do list you’ve been putting off and just do it. Tomorrow pick another item and do it. You’ll be surprised how these things pile up (in a good way).

Enjoy your Tuesday.

News –

Hope you are having a wonderful week. We tweaked the appearance of our newsletter and will be tweaking it over the holidays. Hopefully the one thing is we have content that you can use. Which reminds me if you have something you would like us to talk about, or want to know how to do something please let us know. You can leave us a comment on the blog, reply to this email or you can comment on facebook.

We will be taking some time off for Christmas (from the Newsletter and from posting on the Blog) – we’ll still be processing orders – providing support for our customers. The next issue of the newsletter will be on January 5th. This issue should give you plenty of stuff to do between now and then.

We also would like to take a moment to wish you and your family a wonderful holiday full of lots of fun stuff.

*** Our Gift to you ****

Normally with our tutor business program – we build you a website, facebook, Google plus and give you 3 months free hosting. We’ll give a year’s free hosting to the first 10 people that order before December 20th.

1. Go here – and place your order.
2. Email us after you order with the coupon FREE HOSTING and we’ll make sure to apply the hosting to your account.

If you already have a site – order the course – and we’ll give you a free Business review. We’ll take a look at your business and give you some tips to help you grow faster.

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Tutor Business Tips –

A few business tips for you to work on –

1. Now is a great time to make sure you have some local advertising in place. In many school districts report cards come out right before the Christmas break. If you haven’t done it yet you should find out when the schools you’re targeting give out report cards. You should then make sure on the calendar you advertise (especially) the week before and the week after report cards. During a couple of weeks leading up the report cards you’ll want to remind your current client’s to recommend you if they hear about anyone that needs help in the subject area you’re tutoring.

2. Do you have any goals? If you do we would love to hear them. With big goals I like to break them down into smaller parts. So let’s say for 2012 I want to sell 100 of our guides. That means I need to sell about 2 / week. So write down your big goal, break it down, and share it with someone. Someone that will hold you accountable and will ask you how you’re doing throughout the year.

3. It’s coming up on the end of the year. It’s time to think about the end of the year and taxes. I recommend you at least find out if you’re going to owe a bunch (or not). Here’s what I do. This isn’t tax advice, you should talk to your accountant.

a) Buy a tax program like Turbo tax or something similar. These were on sale quite a bit last week on Amazon. Don’t pay more than $100 but you’ll definitely want to have a business version.
b) Before the end of the year (I will do it on Dec 26th this year). Do your taxes within the program. You won’t know some of the numbers and for those estimate them. I won’t know exactly the income I will make but I can estimate it. Estimate your income a bit high, your expenses a bit low.
c) How did you do? If you made quite a bit more than expected you may want to purchase some things before the end of the year. You will of course want to purchase things you can deduct. One year I bought a new computer, last year I paid a few extra months of health insurance. If you’re going to owe quite a bit you’ll have some time to make sure you save up enough to pay it.

Continue – Building your Website / Web Presence.

There are many different ways you can build a web presence online. We’ve talked about several of them. Another easy way is to use Google Plus – which is super simple.

–> Make sure you have a Google Plus Account – https://plus.google.com
–> In the right column it says “Create a Google Plus Page” – click that and follow the instructions.

The only way to tie them all together [facebook, Google Plus, Google Places etc.] is to build a blog. Building a blog is awesome because you can create content there and then share it all over the web. So that one piece of content can be seen in numerous places and content is good. Since you’re building a business I would recommend you get a domain name and create a ‘real’ website. In future issues will talk about –

Creating a domain name for your site.
Setting up a hosting account.
Setting up your blog.
Adding things to your blog / making it SEO friendly.
The smart way to post content.

Hope you have a wonderful week.

 

Good Morning. Up early today. It actually feels almost like summer time outside. The wind is howling outside and we’re supposed to have some storms later today.

Last week Google Plus allowed businesses to create a page. We made a video on how to do it and it is really simple.

Hope you enjoy it and have a wonderful day!!

I was reading an older issue of Fortune magazine this week and they had a book excerpt from Jim Collins. He talked about managing through chaos. In the example he talked about two different expeditions to become the first to the South Pole. Two different leadership styles – one team made it, the other team didn’t.

What was the difference? Persistence. One team traveled some every day – no matter if there was a blizzard or the sun was shining brightly. On good weather days they didn’t overextend themselves and on bad weather days – they still traveled.

So what does traveling to the south pole have to do with your business. Decide you’re going to grow your business. A good goal if you’re starting out is to do one thing every day to promote your business. If you do one thing, by the end of the year you will have done over 300 things.

You need to do it if you have new tutor prospects running out of your ears… and you need to do it even if you haven’t gotten a lead in a month… just keep after it.

You can do it. Enjoy your weekend.

Here’s the article – http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2011/09/30/jim-collins-great-by-choice-exclusive-excerpt/

Make sure you’ve read this page / downloaded the spreadsheet –

Improve your tutor business – Your Business Pulse

You can save money on your health insurance.

 I love to save money, in fact I have a site I like to post tips on saving money frequently. You can check it out here –

 http://www.gasmileageguide.com/gas-savings-blog/

In figuring out the costs of doing business – like we’ve been working on this week – one of the biggest costs we have is for health insurance. I have insurance with a great company Blue Cross / Blue Shield. I need health insurance because my wife has asthma and I have a kid. If I were alone I wouldn’t even bother. We have had health insurance with this company for 8 or 9 years… when we quit our ‘normal’ job and started working only for ourself.

Over the past several years I’ve noticed that our premiums kept creeping up each year. $100 / month here – $50 there until this year they were going to be almost a grand a month. Since I always like to get the lowest price, the first thing I did was went to their website. Apparently my plan was an ‘old’ plan and they had some brand new plans. They have an online assessment tool on the site that will give you a reasonable quote. The quote said I would pay $575 / month. I called our insurance agent and asked him what it would take to check out these new policies. He explained that I would need to complete new forms and he would fax them to the company.

I mentioned that my wife has asthma, but she doesn’t take any meds. In fact when she goes to the doc, they give her a small shopping cart full of medicine, but for whatever reason they make her worse. So she takes a breathing treatment when she has a flare up – and controls it mostly by staying away from things that trigger it (mostly dust). The only prescription we had was for birth control.

 The result came back and our health insurance will now be $500 / month. I am really pleased. So if you pay for your own health insurance and have had it for awhile you may want to get a new quote. If you have a chronic illness or have recently spent a lot on health related bills I wouldn’t do it. But if you’re healthy then the only thing they can tell you is that it is more expensive or they won’t insure you. If you’re thinking about changing to a different company, the first thing I would do is check with your friends and family to make sure the policy pays well and you don’t have to go three states away to find a doctor that takes the insurance.

 Hope this tip helps save you some money and enjoy your weekend!!