Is private tutoring a viable business in Australia?

Executive Summary & Verdict

Promising — 7/10. Start it. Setup costs are a rounding error, demand for HSC Chemistry help in that catchment is not in question, and your differentiator is the strongest kind: a credential the competition cannot buy.

The score is 7 rather than 9 because the arithmetic is bounded. Your window is 3.30pm to 7.30pm on four weekdays plus Saturday morning, which yields fifteen one-hour slots a week once you allow for getting home and fifteen minutes between students. At $110 an hour across 36 paid weeks a fully booked year is $59,400 — good money for a side business, and structurally incapable of replacing a teaching salary without changing the format.

One compliance item is genuinely non-negotiable. Private tutoring of under-18s is child-related work in NSW, tutors are listed explicitly [1], and engaging in child-related work without a clearance carries a maximum of 100 penalty units ($11,000) or two years' imprisonment, or both [2]. It is a $112 application with a four-week wait, and it must be done before the first lesson.

The other trap catches teachers who moonlight: money taken up front for a ten-lesson package creates a real obligation, and a parent is entitled to a refund for unconsumed lessons where the service fails [3]. Section 07 sets the sequence.

Idea Validation

The premise survives contact with reality. Parents in that part of Sydney already buy HSC tutoring, already pay by the hour and already compare providers. The question is not whether demand exists; it is whether you can be the one they pick.

Your differentiator is verifiable and scarce: "accredited teacher who marks the HSC" is a claim a parent can check and a university student cannot match. Note what it is not — a claim about outcomes. Implying a band result you cannot control is both a consumer-law problem and the fastest route to a parent wanting their money back in October.

The untested assumption is one nobody asks about: whether you can teach a full load and then tutor three more hours. That is a ten-hour day of direct student contact, four days a week, in term. Teachers who quit in week six almost never quit because demand was absent.

One check before you spend anything: read your employment terms. Most school contracts do not prohibit private tutoring, but some restrict outside work, and almost all prohibit tutoring students you currently teach. That conflict can end a teaching career — and your salary is the foundation this plan rests on.

Market & Target Customer

Your customer is the parent. That is not pedantry, it is the commercial model: the student experiences the service, the parent buys it, renews it and cancels it. So the parent needs evidence of progress they did not have to ask for. A three-line message after each session — what we covered, what she got wrong, what she is doing before next week — is the highest-return unpaid work here. Tutors who send it get renewals; tutors who do not get "we're going to take a break over the holidays."

What to measure before you commit the afternoons

• Where the Chemistry cohorts are. HSC Chemistry is a smaller cohort than Maths or English. How many students sit it at each of your five target schools is your market — not the suburb's population.
• The local rate, not the national one. Ring three tutors and two coaching colleges as a parent and ask their Year 12 Chemistry price.
• Term rhythm. Demand builds from late Term 1, spikes before trials and collapses the week after the HSC exam. Annual revenue is set by fillable weeks, not by rate.
• Drive time. If a family must cross a motorway at 4pm to reach you, you have already lost to a closer tutor.

Decide early between Year 11 and Year 12. Year 12 pays more and churns in November; Year 11 pays slightly less and, kept, becomes a Year 12 student who has already been coming a year. A book weighted to Year 11 is far more stable, and almost nobody plans it that way.

Competitive Landscape

You compete in three directions, and only one is other tutors. Franchise coaching colleges win on convenience and institutional reassurance and lose on ratio — most of what they sell is small-group instruction at close to your one-to-one price. Marketplace tutors win on price and lose on everything else; do not fight them at $50 an hour, because their existence anchors the bottom of the market and makes an accredited teacher a category rather than a markup. The free option is the competitor nobody lists: the school's lunchtime study group, the past papers, the YouTube channel. A parent not yet convinced tutoring is necessary is comparing you to zero.

Where the local competition is genuinely weak

• Nobody reports to the parent. A written note after every session is a differentiator that costs four minutes.
• Nobody holds the marking criteria. Students lose Chemistry marks on extended response structure and on not answering the verb in the question. That is exactly what HSC marking experience buys you.
• Nobody is good at the timetable. Coaching colleges run fixed blocks; a parent juggling sport and a sibling values a slot that suits them.
• Almost nobody advertises a clearance. Putting your Working with Children Check status in front of a parent before they ask is reassurance the competition rarely offers.

Business Model & Monetisation

This is a capacity business. Revenue is hours times rate, hours are fixed by the calendar, and so there are three levers: the rate, the fill rate, and the number of weeks you trade.

Work the slots out precisely, because it decides everything. School finishes around 3.30pm and you need twenty minutes to get home and set up, so the first session starts at 4.00pm. With 60-minute sessions and fifteen minutes between students to write the parent note and reset, you get 4.00pm, 5.15pm and 6.30pm — three slots per weekday afternoon, finishing at 7.30pm. Four afternoons is twelve; Saturday from 9.00am gives three more. Fifteen slots a week is the physical maximum, and it does not move however good your marketing gets.

Revenue lines, in the order they matter

• Weekly one-to-one, paid per session. The business. Highest rate, lowest admin, no liability hangover.
• Prepaid term blocks. A ten-lesson block smooths cash flow and locks the slot. It also creates a real obligation: the ACL entitles a consumer to a refund for unconsumed services where there has been a major failure [1]. Take blocks if you want, but keep that cash identifiable rather than spent, and never sell one longer than a term.
• School-holiday intensives. The one honest way around the after-school ceiling — holiday weeks are daytime weeks.
• Small groups, later and deliberately. Three students at $60 in one hour is $180 against your $110. The only lever that raises revenue per slot rather than adding slots — and it changes your room, your insurance and arguably your differentiator. Consider it once you are turning students away.

What to refuse: travelling to students' homes. A 25-minute drive each way turns a one-hour booking into a two-hour commitment and nearly halves your effective rate. If a family insists, price it as ninety minutes.

Finances & Budget

The good news first: this is one of the cheapest legitimate businesses in Australia to start, and your $3,500 covers it with room left over. The table is built from checked figures where one exists and marked as an allowance where it does not.

Now the revenue, which is where the verdict comes from. Fifteen slots is the cap. At $110 an hour — inside the $80–$180 band published for HSC-level tutoring [4] — and roughly 36 paid weeks once you strip out summer, most other holidays and the post-HSC collapse:

• Fully booked: 15 × $110 × 36 = $59,400 a year.
• Realistic steady state at 80% fill: 12 × $110 × 36 = $47,520.
• Year one, ramping from zero: about half that. Six to eight regular students by the end of Term 2 is a good first year.
• Direct costs: insurance, printing, software — call it $2,000 a year. There is almost no cost of goods, which is why this works.

One number to hold on to: at $110 an hour, each recurring weekly student is worth about $3,960 a year at 36 weeks. Two hours spent winning a student who stays eighteen months is the best-paid work in the whole business, which is why section 09 puts retention ahead of reach.

MVP & What to Build First

The verdict is positive, so this is sequencing rather than rescue. One item has a four-week lead time and everything else waits behind it.

Build first, in this order

• The Working with Children Check application, on day one. The police check behind it can take up to four weeks [1]. Start it before you choose a business name.
• One student, at your real price, for four weeks. The MVP is one paying family, because it tests the two things you are unsure about: whether a parent will pay $110, and whether you can teach after a full day.
• The parent note template. Three lines, same evening. Free, and your retention mechanism.
• Insurance before the first student sits down. Professional indemnity and public liability [2], plus the call to your home insurer [3].
• One page of website with your accreditation, rate, slots and a booking link. It exists so a parent given your name can check you are real.

Defer until you have eight regular students

• A company structure. Sole trader is right for now.
• Group classes. They change your room, insurance and pitch.
• Any software beyond bookkeeping and a calendar. Student portals solve a problem you do not have at six students.
• Branding. A logo has never sold a tutoring hour; the accreditation line does.
• Online tutoring as an acquisition channel. It removes the drive but puts you into a national market against every other accredited teacher, stripping out the local-and-known advantage the plan rests on. Use it to hold existing students through illness and holidays, not to win new ones.

The most useful thing in week one costs nothing: block the fifteen slots in your own calendar as if they were booked and live with it for a fortnight. If Wednesday at 6.30pm is impossible because of your own family, you have twelve slots and every number in section 06 moves by 20%.

Go-to-Market & Launch Plan

You need six to eight families, ever. That is small enough that broadcast marketing is the wrong tool and personal channels are the right one.

• Time the launch to the calendar, not your readiness. Parents buy Chemistry tutoring the week Term 1 reports land and after the Year 11 yearlies. Launching in Term 4, once Year 12 has finished, is launching into the deadest fortnight of the year.
• Go where parents are already asking. Local school and suburb groups are where "can anyone recommend a Chemistry tutor" gets posted. Answer as yourself, no pitch.
• Do not market through the school you teach at. It is a conflict, it will be noticed, and it risks the salary this plan depends on. Target the other four schools.
• Ask for the referral at the moment of visible progress — the session after a better mark comes back, not in December when the parent has mentally finished.
• Publish your clearance status and insurance in writing. Parents are handing you their child in your garage. Say the reassuring thing before they have to ask.
• Take a waiting list from the start. Fifteen slots fill and then you have nothing to sell; a named list turns a November cancellation into a February booking.
• Set the target as families, not revenue. "Four regular students by the end of Term 1" is checkable and tells you whether the price is right.

Marketing & Growth

In a business capped at fifteen slots, growth is not acquisition. Once you are full, marketing has nothing to sell. What matters is keeping the slots occupied at the highest defensible rate — a retention and pricing problem dressed up as a marketing one.

Retention is the growth strategy. A student who comes weekly from March to October is worth close to four thousand dollars. The levers are unglamorous: turn up on time, send the parent note, remember what she got wrong last week, never cancel late. Tutors lose families through drift and silence far more often than through bad teaching.

The referral loop is the only acquisition channel worth building. Parents of senior students trust each other more than any advertisement, and one satisfied family in a Year 11 cohort reliably produces two enquiries. Make it easy: say you have one slot left and ask whether they know anyone.

A Google Business Profile and one page is enough. Name the subject, level and suburb, keep the hours accurate, and do not build a content strategy — blog posts about study technique do not reach the parent asking another parent for a name.

The honest growth path, when you want more than $59,400, is section 05: holiday intensives, then small groups, then — much later — other tutors under your name.

Pricing Strategy

Published Australian rates run roughly $40–$70 an hour for primary, $50–$90 for Years 7–10 and $80–$180 for HSC-level tutoring [1]. You belong in the upper half of the HSC band. An accredited teacher with HSC marking experience priced at $75 is telling the parent the credential does not matter.

• Start at $110 and hold it. High enough to signal the credential, low enough that a parent comparing you to a coaching college's group price does not flinch. Confirm it against three local quotes first.
• One rate for Year 11 and Year 12. A Year 11 discount looks generous and costs you money on the student most likely to stay two years.
• Raise it once a year, in February, in writing, four weeks ahead. $5 a year is invisible; holding for four years and then asking 30% loses families.
• Price a cancellation policy rather than improvising one. 24 hours' notice or the session is payable — written, given to the parent before the first lesson, applied consistently. In a fixed-slot business a late cancellation is unrecoverable. Keep the terms plainly fair: one you could not justify to a reasonable parent is exactly what the unfair contract terms rules exist to strike out.
• Quote a single total: "$110 per session". Under the registration threshold you are not charging GST at all, and a parent should never have to add anything to a price.
• Discount slots, never the rate. A free half-hour exam review in the holidays beats $10 off every week for two years.

One decision has outsized effect and is usually made by accident: per session or per term up front. Per session is lower risk and lower admin; prepaid blocks buy commitment and cash at the price of a real refund obligation — see section 14.

Legal Setup & IP

Tutoring is a lightly regulated occupation in Australia with one enormous exception, and the exception is the most important part of this report.

The Working with Children Check is not optional

In NSW a Working with Children Check clearance is required for child-related work — work involving face-to-face contact with under-18s that is more than incidental — and the Office of the Children's Guardian lists tutors, instructors, music teachers and extracurricular coaches explicitly among the roles that need one [1]. The Check is issued by the Office of the Children's Guardian and applied for through Service NSW: $112 for a paid worker, free for volunteers, valid five years with continuous monitoring in between, and the national police check behind it can take up to four weeks [2].

Engaging in child-related work without a clearance is a criminal offence. The maximum penalty is 100 penalty units ($11,000) or imprisonment for two years, or both, and the same maximum applies to working while subject to an interim bar [3]. There is no small-business carve-out and no version of this where you teach first and sort the paperwork out later. The one piece of flexibility is that a person may begin child-related work once they have an application (APP) number, though many engagers require full clearance first [1] — and a careful parent will want the clearance, not the application.

As a sole trader working alone you need not register with the Office of the Children's Guardian as an employer. Instead you give each client your Check number, your surname and your date of birth so the parent can verify your status themselves, online or through the Service NSW app [4]. Put that on your website: free, reassuring, and the most effective trust signal available to a home-based tutor. Engage another tutor and you become an employer for these purposes, and must register, verify them and keep records [4].

This regime is different in every state and territory. NSW and Victoria have a Working with Children Check (Office of the Children's Guardian in NSW; the Department of Justice and Community Safety in Victoria), Queensland has the Blue Card, South Australia and Western Australia run their own checks through the SA Screening Unit and the Department of Communities, Tasmania has Registration to Work with Vulnerable People, the ACT has Working with Vulnerable People registration through Access Canberra, and the Northern Territory issues a Working with Children Clearance known as the Ochre Card [5]. Critically, these clearances are not transferable between jurisdictions [5] — Queensland states plainly that it does not recognise working with children checks issued by another state or territory [6]. If you tutor across a border, online or in person, check that jurisdiction's rules. Nothing here about NSW tells you anything reliable about anywhere else.

Mandatory reporting

Under section 27 of the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998, a mandatory reporter in NSW includes a person who, in the course of their professional work or other paid employment, delivers education (among other listed services) wholly or partly to children; where such a person has reasonable grounds to suspect a child is at risk of significant harm arising from their work, it is their duty to report it to the Secretary as soon as practicable [7]. A paid private tutor delivering education to children sits squarely inside that description on its plain words — and you almost certainly already hold the obligation through your day job.

Do not spend time arguing the boundary. The practical position is identical either way: if you suspect a child is at risk of significant harm, you report it. NSW publishes a Mandatory Reporter Guide for exactly this decision [8], and a report can be made whether or not you are mandated. Know the process before you need it.

Everything else

• Structure. Sole trader with an ABN. Revisit only if you engage other tutors.
• Insurance. Professional indemnity for the instruction, public liability for a person injured at your premises. Tutor cover is commonly quoted from $250,000 up for professional indemnity and $5 million up for public liability [9]; a tutor scheme offered through the Australian Tutors Association carries professional indemnity of $1 million with public and products liability options of $10 million or $20 million [10]. Choose limits with a broker, not from a web page.
• Planning approval for the room. See section 14 — in NSW a home business can be exempt development, subject to conditions in your local environmental plan [11].
• Terms of engagement, in writing. Rate, session length, cancellation notice, holidays, how prepaid lessons are treated, who is responsible for drop-off and collection. One page, given to the parent before the first lesson. Not lawyer work, and it prevents most disputes.
• Name and IP. Register the business name if you trade as anything other than your own name, check the trade mark register before paying for print, and remember that resources you write are your copyright while past papers and textbook extracts are not. Photocopying a commercial workbook for every student is an infringement, however normal it feels.

Tax, Invoicing & Admin

Get an ABN and operate as a sole trader. Tutoring income is business income, it goes in your individual return alongside your salary, and it is taxed at your marginal rate — which, on top of a full-time teaching salary, is the highest rate you pay. Budget for that from the first invoice rather than discovering it in October.

GST: the genuinely tricky bit, and it cuts the way you would not expect

Registration is compulsory once GST turnover reaches $75,000 — tested both on the current month plus the previous eleven and on the current month plus the next eleven — and you have 21 days to register after crossing it [1]. On this plan's ceiling you never get there, so you will not be registered and will not charge GST.

Many tutors assume that if they did cross the threshold, tutoring would be GST-free as an education course. Do not rely on that. The GST Act makes only defined categories of "education course" GST-free — pre-school, primary, secondary and tertiary courses among them — and each definition turns on who delivers the course, not on what is taught. In a published edited private ruling the ATO considered a tutoring provider and concluded its tutoring supplies were taxable, not GST-free, because the provider was not a recognised pre-school, primary or secondary course provider and so fell outside every relevant category [2]. An edited private ruling binds nobody but its applicant and turns on its own facts — but the reasoning is the reasoning, and the planning assumption should be that private one-to-one tutoring by an individual is a taxable supply. Confirm your own position with a registered tax agent, or by seeking your own private ruling, before you ever price on the assumption that GST does not apply.

That matters at exactly one moment: when you decide to grow past this plan. Group classes, intensives and a second tutor are how you cross $75,000 — and on the day you register, 10% of every fee comes either out of the parent's pocket as a price rise or out of your margin. Model it before you expand.

The rest of the admin

• PAYG instalments will start, and it will feel like a surprise. The ATO enters an individual into PAYG instalments where instalment income on the latest return is $4,000 or more, tax payable on the latest notice of assessment is $1,000 or more, and estimated (notional) tax is $500 or more [3]. This plan clears all three in its second year, and from then on you pay quarterly — fine if the money is set aside, painful if it is not.
• Set aside a fixed share of every payment on the day it lands. A separate savings account beats a good intention; the first year's bill arrives after the second year starts.
• Invoice or receipt every session, even cash, with your ABN on it.
• Separate bank account from the first dollar. Not required for a sole trader; it makes the return trivial instead of archaeological.
• Keep home-office and car records properly. A dedicated tutoring room and travel to students may be deductible, but only on contemporaneous records — and the rules for a room clients visit are not the rules for a laptop on the kitchen table. Ask a tax agent how to apportion before you claim.
• No employees, no payroll. Keep it that way as long as you can: engaging another tutor brings superannuation, insurance, Check verification and record-keeping all at once.

Tech, Hosting & Security

This business needs almost no technology and will be sold a great deal of it. The correct stack is a calendar, a bookkeeping app, a payment method and one page of website.

• Booking and reminders. A shared calendar with an automated reminder the day before eliminates most no-shows. That is the whole scheduling problem at fifteen slots.
• Payments. Bank transfer is free and fine. If you want cards, compare the full merchant fee — on a $110 session, 1.8% is $1.98, and across 400 sessions that is real money.
• One page of website. Subject, level, suburb, rate, slots, accreditation, Check verification details, contact form. Loads instantly on a phone. Nothing else.
• Online sessions. Whatever videoconferencing you already use, plus a cheap graphics tablet so you can write reaction mechanisms rather than describe them. Keep any consent to record explicit and in writing, and think hard before recording a minor at all.
• Collect as little as possible about the child. Name, school, year, a parent's contact, your lesson notes. No date of birth you do not need, no medical information, no photographs. Every extra field is risk with no upside.
• Back up the boring things — notes, resource bank, terms, insurance certificate, Check number and expiry — in two places, one not in your house. And do not run tutoring correspondence through your school email address.

Regional Compliance & Privacy

Four layers apply. Only one can stop you trading, but all four have caught home-based tutors out.

Child protection is the layer that matters. The Check and the mandatory reporting duty are covered in full in section 11. The point to carry here is that this regime is state-based and not portable: different names, different authorities, different rules, no mutual recognition [1][2]. A NSW clearance is a NSW clearance. If you move, or tutor a student sitting in another state, the requirement is whatever that jurisdiction says it is.

Planning: your garage is a home business. In NSW, home occupation, home business and home industry can be carried out as exempt development — without a development application — but subject to conditions including the maximum floor area set in clause 5.4 of the relevant local environmental plan, with restrictions for heritage items and certain sensitive land [3]. For one tutor and one student at a time in a converted garage study you are very likely within the exempt pathway. Do not assume it: the limits are set by your own council's LEP, so ring the council, describe exactly what you plan to do, and get the answer before you spend on the room. Check parking too — a car in your street every seventy-five minutes from 4pm is the most common trigger for a neighbour complaint, and a complaint is what turns a quiet arrangement into a council file.

Insurance: your home policy does not cover this. A standard home and contents policy gives only limited cover for business equipment — commonly capped, for example at $5,000 for computers and software — does not cover business money, and would not cover a client injured at your home [4]. A parent tripping on the garage step is a public liability claim, not a home insurance claim. Tell your home insurer in writing that you run a tutoring business from the property, and hold public liability and professional indemnity separately. Undisclosed business use is a classic reason a claim gets declined at the worst possible moment.

Consumer law: the prepaid package problem. Services supplied to a consumer carry guarantees under the Australian Consumer Law that cannot be contracted out of — they must be provided with due care and skill, be fit for any stated purpose, and be supplied within a reasonable time where none is agreed [5]. Where there is a major failure the consumer can cancel and get a refund for any unconsumed services, and a business must not accept payment for services it does not intend to supply or knows it cannot supply in a timely manner [6]. Read that against a ten-lesson package paid in February: if you stop tutoring in May, the undelivered lessons are the parent's money, not yours. Three rules follow — keep prepaid cash identifiable rather than spent, never sell a block longer than a term, and write your cancellation and refund terms plainly enough that a reasonable parent would call them fair. One-sided terms in a standard-form consumer contract are exactly what the unfair contract terms regime exists to strike out.

Privacy: probably outside the Act, and behave as if you are not. The Privacy Act generally does not cover a small business with an annual turnover of $3 million or less, with exceptions for health service providers, businesses trading in personal information, Commonwealth contractors and several other categories, plus voluntary opt-in [7]. A one-person tutoring practice is almost certainly outside it. That is a statement about legal exposure, not about what parents expect. You will hold notes about a named child's academic weaknesses and occasionally things you learn about their home life. Keep those notes minimal and locked, never discuss one family with another, and delete what you no longer need. In a suburb where all the parents know each other, the reputational cost of getting this wrong dwarfs the legal one.

Risks & Common Pitfalls

• Teaching before the clearance arrives. The one catastrophic risk, and the easiest to avoid: a criminal offence with a maximum of $11,000 or two years [1], and for an accredited teacher the professional consequences would outrun the fine.
• Burnout in weeks six to ten. Three one-to-one sessions after a full teaching day, four days a week, is the real constraint and it appears in no spreadsheet. Start with two afternoons and add the others after a full term.
• The ceiling mistaken for a ramp. Fifteen slots is the end of this format, not a stage towards something bigger.
• November. Year 12 finishes and a Year 12-weighted book empties overnight.
• Prepaid money spent. Term fees taken in February and spent in March become a refund obligation in May [2].
• Conflict with the day job. Tutoring a student you teach, or recruiting through your own school, risks the salary that makes this plan safe.
• An undisclosed home business. A declined public liability claim after a parent falls on your driveway, because the home policy never knew [3]. A phone call fixes it now; nothing fixes it afterwards.
• Implied outcome promises. "I'll get her to a Band 5" is a claim you cannot control and a guarantee you did not mean to give. Sell the process, never the mark.
• Single point of failure. Illness cancels every slot that week. Decide in advance — make-up, online, or refund — and put it in your terms.
• Crossing $75,000 by accident. Add groups and intensives without modelling GST and you take a 10% hit on price or margin with 21 days' notice [4].

Action Plan: 30 / 60 / 90 Days

Ninety days is enough to be trading with three or four regular students. The sequence is driven by the four-week wait on the Check, so compliance comes first and marketing second.

Days 1–30 — apply, then prepare

• Apply for the Working with Children Check on day one: online form, then a Service NSW centre with identity documents and the $112 fee [1]. Everything else waits behind this.
• Read your employment contract for any outside-work clause, and write down the rule that you will not tutor students from your own school.
• Apply for an ABN as a sole trader; open a separate bank account.
• Ring your council, describe one student at a time in a converted garage study, and confirm the home business exempt-development position and the floor area limit in your LEP [2].
• Ring your home insurer, disclose the business use, and get professional indemnity and public liability quotes [3][4].
• Ring three local tutors and two coaching colleges as a parent; write the prices down.
• Block the fifteen slots in your own calendar for two weeks. Cut the ones that do not survive your own family.
• Read the NSW Mandatory Reporter Guide [5].

Days 31–60 — set up properly, take the first student

• Clearance arrives. Publish your Check number, surname and date of birth details so parents can verify you themselves [6].
• Insurance bound; certificate saved somewhere you can find it.
• Write the one-page terms: rate, session length, 24-hour cancellation, holidays, how prepaid lessons are handled and refunded [7].
• Build the single page: subject, level, suburb, $110, slots, accreditation, verification details, contact form. Set the room up — desk, two chairs, whiteboard, good light, a clear path to the door.
• Answer two or three "can anyone recommend a Chemistry tutor" posts in local parent groups, as yourself.
• Take the first paying student at $110 — not a discount, not a favour. Send the parent note the same evening and keep the template.

Days 61–90 — fill two afternoons, then stop and look

• Target three to four regular weekly students across two afternoons. Resist the third and fourth afternoon this term.
• Ask each family once whether they know anyone else, at the session after a better mark comes back. Start the waiting list: names and preferred times, in writing.
• Reconcile weekly: sessions delivered, paid, cancelled, tax set aside.
• Price a three-day pre-trials holiday intensive and test it on current families — your only route past the after-school ceiling [8].
• At day 90, answer one question honestly: after a full teaching day, can you do this three times in an evening, four days a week, for a year? If not, the business is nine slots and about $35,000 a year rather than fifteen and $59,400 — still good, and worth planning on purpose rather than discovering in week twenty.