A big welcome to our new subscribers, it you ever have any questions or comments please don’t hesitate to send us a note (you can just reply to this email if you wish).  More crazy weather here, sixty degrees one day and 20 the next, I think I’m ready for spring. Today we talk about how to not fail at your business and we give you some tips on juggling. Remember if you would like for us to speak about a specific topic, we would love to hear from you. Also don’t forget, every Friday we give you a promotion tip on our blog.
Keys to Business Failure –
We’re continuing our series on preventing business failure. The best way to prevent failure is to think about things that cause it.
3. Don’t have enough revenue per client / customer.
When you begin your business you should think about some goals you want to make. How much would it take to make your business “worth whileâ€. When I started my business I stumbled into it. I created a website just for fun, got some traffic to it, then people started asking me to help them get traffic and it grew from there.
Let’s say you’re working on paying off your bills. You figure that if you make $5,000.00 that will make a dent and would be worth it.  You do your research and figure that the going tutor rate is $25 / session. You figure on average you’ll tutor folks twice a week and tutor about 35 weeks during the year. So each new student would bring you $25 x 2 x 35 = $1750.00.
Think for a moment about the expenses for the student. This is an important thing not to forget. Let’s say the expenses per session is $7.50 then you would be making $17.50 or $1225 / year.
If you got 5 students you would reach your goal (very doable).
Repeat / New business – repeat customers are the bedrock of your business. This would be the tutor clients you have that you bill each month. These should cover your business expenses.
Tutor businesses are unique in that it is built around repeat business. I’ll use an example to illustrate this. Let’s say you have a business selling t-shirts. You sell them for $25 and make $15 / shirt. You would need to sell 334 shirts to make 5k.
4. Insufficient resources.
Another reason for failure is not enough resources. This can be a real problem as your business grows. Not enough people to do the work. Or not enough money. The wrong team members. Maybe you’ve outgrown them. Maybe your team is too small.
As your business grows and you expand, you don’t want to stay in the weeds of your business.
We’ve talked about hiring people before. http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/hiring-employees-for-your-small-business-tutor-business/
Juggling –
Juggling your business and family can be hard. Here are some tips for you, they’ve helped us and hopefully they will help you as well.
1.     When you start your business, make sure you talk with your family and definitely remember to include your children. Let them know why you’re doing it, and what you’ll be doing differently.
2.     Let your family help you with your business. This could be as simple as helping you answer the phone, to allowing them to tutor for you in a subject they’re good at.
3.     Keep your family routines as much as possible. If you always take a vacation to the beach every summer, take a vacation.
Here are some more tips –
http://womeninbusiness.about.com/u/ua/balancingworkandlife/worklifebalance.htm
We would love to hear from you if you have a tip.
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Links you can use –
WizIQ a tool we like to use for online tutoring is having a conference this weekend (online). It’s free and they have 34 different sessions. No matter what you teach / tutor I’m sure you will find some content you can use. The conference lasts from Feb. 1st (tomorrow) thru the 3rd. Details and the list of classes can be found here.
You can find all of our past articles here –
http://www.cleverapple.com/blog/
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Hope you have a wonderful day.