How Truependous Tutoring came to be!
From Teacher to Business-Owner
For my first ever blog post, I thought it would be apt to tell the story of how I started an online tutoring business from the table in my van, during lockdown number 1!
Read on to see how Truependous Tutoring came to be!
Living and working in Germany
To tell the full story, I will rewind several years to my time in Deutschland. I spent a magical 7 years living in this idyllic country at two incredible MoD schools. The first one even had a teepee and a forest school! I have soooo many fond memories from that wonderful place. The first that springs to mind is of a festival we held there for Year 5 and 6, where we tie dyed T-shirts and then sang songs in the teepee, jamming with ukuleles.
My second school was on an army base, and was a fabulous place to work. I remember during my last few months of working at that school (as we were all being made redundant) my headteacher had a meeting with each of us to talk about our future plans. I had so many! I remember him laughing as I discussed my ideas for either a cricket farm, funky funerals, a nursery, forest school or a holiday club. I knew I wanted my own business but i just wasn’t sure what.
Van life
In July 2019, my husband and I left Germany and our daughter was born in August. We had always planned to have a year off and travel in Bob our orange camper van. We set off for some mini adventures in September and then started the Epic Road Trip in January 2020.
Whilst travelling, we had the most blissful time. Life was incredibly simple and mainly revolved around travelling, eating and sleeping (even if it was very broken sleep with a baby). It gave us the opportunity to open our minds and I could feel my creativity levels rising with every new forest and meadow we camped in. When you’re in teaching, it’s hard to see outside of that because there is always so much to think about. Much as I loved having weeks of school holidays, I found that I didn’t get into the state of relaxation that we had found. We wrote a children’s book during several of the long drives! Watch this space as we have finally found the most incredible illustrator who is currently working on the pictures!
Business-Planning mode
Anyway, back to the story… we got into serious business-planning mode when we reached Garfe Park in Portugal – it was this beautiful meadow with the loveliest owners and we were the only people there. We spent four days thinking about different business plans and listing the pros and cons of each one. When in this idyllic campsite, we thought it would be really cool to actually have our own campsite so ended up putting an offer in for one that we found on Rightmove in Devon. However, when we looked more deeply into planning permission, you basically couldn’t do anything – you couldn’t even build an office or toilets. That plan reached a bit of a dead end so we looked into our other ideas.
We then found a property (that used to be a shop) that we thought would make a great nursery. My mum and sister went to view it and said it was great and had a lovely feel to it but needed a lot of work in the downstairs room. We contacted a financial adviser as we wanted to see if we could buy it but also keep our house. Unfortunately, the answer was a big no because the mortgage company wouldn’t lend us the money needed, as we had no income during that time. We were really disappointed about this but then this made us decide that our most attainable goal would be to start up as childminders as we could do this from our home.
Childminding course
We both completed the online childminding course whilst in the meadow. By this point in our journey, Covid was becoming a bit more of a concern but it was still at the point, especially in England, where people thought it was a big overreaction. We carried on our journey, kind of oblivious to it really, and made it further into Portugal. Then lockdowns started being announced in surrounding countries and we made the decision that we had better start making our way back to France to get a ferry. It was a 19 hour drive so we did 10 hours that night – it was incredibly surreal and quite overwhelming seeing how far we had to go on the Satnav.
Lockdowns
We stopped for a couple of days in France before getting the ferry back to Plymouth. Once we made it back, we stayed in Cornwall for a few days. I was completely and utterly devastated that our adventure, something we’d planned and dreamt of for years, was over. It was a bit of a grieving process! However, it was at this point that schools in the U.K. closed and I thought this would be a perfect way to channel my energy, instead of wallowing in disappointment. I decided to offer free tuition to support parents and their children during these challenging times. There was so much uncertainty and parents were panicking. I felt strongly that this was something I could help with, especially as I had no plans for the next two months as we were supposed to be travelling around Europe.
Online tutoring takes off!
Once we had completed two weeks of isolation in the van, we stayed with Ben’s parents in Southport for a few weeks. At this point, the tuition had started to take off and people were asking me if they could pay me to tutor their child on a weekly or twice-weekly basis. It was then I went self-employed. For the first month of free tuition, I taught all lessons at the van table. It was the cosiest work space.
Moving back to North Devon
When we moved back to Bideford I continued my tutoring, this time from the breakfast bar, and we went about setting up the childminding business. In August 2020, I decided to start some group lessons. I was really enjoying my 1:1s but missed the buzz of a classroom. I set up English and maths for LKS2 and UKS2 to start with.
I remember being so anxious that nobody would come! I had two people booked on to the first one, but I knew I wanted more than that so I contacted some friends with children and asked if they would join so that I could get more of a feel for it. Amazingly, two weeks later, the classes were booked up with 5-6 children and I didn’t have to ask friend’s children to fill in the gaps!
A couple of months later, I set up KS1 group lessons in English and maths, which I absolutely loved, and the KS1 lessons soon filled up too. Things continued in this way for a few months and I had lots of 1:1s as well as the groups. I even taught one boy, who lived in Florida, for two hours a day Monday-Friday.
Truependous Tots gains momentum
In October, we took on our very first tot for Truependous Tots and this grew slowly but steadily – a year and a half on we are completely fully booked with a waiting list. Funnily enough, when we walked past the premises we had previously wanted to buy (when staying in the meadow), we saw a change of planning permission sign outside, and someone else was turning it into a nursery! I couldn’t help but feel a bit put out. We agreed it probably wouldn’t have been the easiest thing ever going straight into a nursery though so perhaps things worked out for the best. It still bugs me though!
Moving into an office and creating a classroom
During this time, I moved from my breakfast bar office, to the front room, until we decided the attic would be a much quieter space and would also allow the Truependous Tots to have full use of both downstairs rooms. Also at this time we were doing lots of work on the house and garden – particularly the shed at the end of the garden. It was a stone structure clad with rotting wood (sounds delightful hey!), and the windows and doors were all rotted too. A friend said he would renovate it for us so we embarked on that next challenge. It wasn’t without its setbacks – once all the structural stuff had been done, we realised we had a leaking roof so all that then had to be replaced. This was ongoing in the background of everything else. (I’ll come back to that later in the story!)
Virtual playground
I can’t remember at what point this was, but I decided I wanted to have a virtual playground. I loved my group lessons so much, but wanted a space where we could have a general chit-chat and play games. I hosted two Zoom Christmas parties in my first year of tutoring and they were so much fun I thought I’d make it a weekly occurrence. The favourite games we play are Werewolf, Pictionary, Randomise, Frozen unicorns and loads of other random ones!
Local homeschool groups
I also decided I would love a local homeschool group so I put the feelers out and established one. Due to all the lockdown restrictions we started this all online. After several months of online lessons, restrictions eased and I could finally launch face to face lessons.
The classroom was completed by April 2021 and I had my first KS2 homeschool group in May. In September, I launched a KS1 homeschool group. Fast forward to February 2022 and I now have a third group!
In summer 2021, I took on a private group twice a week with six absolutely fabulous pupils living in Brunei – I absolutely love how this came about. A colleague I worked with in Germany about 7 years ago recommended me to friends she had in Brunei through the MoD connection. I’ve found the most incredible work from word of mouth from people that I knew from several years ago!
I am so delighted that I have been able to create a whole business by accident from the van table! It continues to expand, and it amazes me that I am able to teach people from all over the world: distance is no longer a barrier. I have students in Brunei, Saudi-Arabia, Hong Kong, Florida as well as the U.K. It was always my goal to have a positive impact on as many people as possible, and I feel that this is a perfect way to reach this goal.
So that turned into a bit of a mini life story! Ta-da! The birth of Truependous Tutoring and Truependous Tots!
