The best way to build a healthy Popless tutoring income stream is to cultivate a roster of students who return regularly for ongoing lessons. Having regular students is ideal for everyone involved. It's not only the best thing you can do for your business, it's also the best thing for students who want to improve. Regular feedback from a tutor is a scientifically-proven strategy for improving students' skill level.

Converting one-off students into regular customers may not be something that comes naturally to everyone, so we spoke to some of our top tutors and asked them what practices help them to retain students. Here's what they told us:

Work on your mindset

It is helpful to keep ongoing sessions in mind during all your interactions with your current and prospective students. Think of each lesson as a link in an ongoing chain, rather than as a one-and-done. Remember, all of your one-off students have the potential to become regular customers if you're focused and proactive in encouraging them to schedule their next lesson.

Offer study plans

Build study plans, which incorporate a group of lessons structured to follow a specific learning arc, and encourage your students to sign up for them. Following a structured course timeline with specific objectives for each step is an effective teaching tool, and establishes a schedule of ongoing lessons that will get your students in the habit of returning on a regular basis. Optimally, you should offer a variety of plans geared toward varying skill levels and budgets, and present them in a way that clearly outlines their advantages.

Plant the seed

One thing you can do before you even have your first lesson with a new student is to contact them and ask them whether they want to set up a weekly time slot. Tell them that most students opt for ongoing lessons, with weekly tutoring being a popular option. No matter what answer they give you, asking this question will plant the seed in their mind that long-term ongoing lessons are an option.

Get to know your students

Focusing on your relationship with your students is essential for a number of reasons. From a business standpoint, students who feel that their tutor cares about them and understands their needs and learning style are more likely to return for ongoing lessons. From a learning standpoint, students who feel comfortable with their tutors are generally more receptive to feedback and more likely to retain what they learn. And students who learn more are more likely to return.

Of course, there will always be students who don't want to waste any time on social pleasantries, so it is important to discover what works best for each student. But even just getting a feel for your student's personality will require you to do a bit of relationship-building at the start. Some specific tips we received from our tutors were:

• Talk to your students about their lives and remember what they tell you. Even recalling minor details, such as a pet's name, can help ensure your students feel heard and valued.

• Consider adding your students as friends/following them on the social media sites you have in common. Students have reported that one small gesture being really meaningful to them, even if you never interact on those sites.

• If you need to reschedule, do so early and give your student a reasonable explanation. Being shuffled around without explanation - or worse, being ghosted - can be devastating for the student/tutor relationship.

• Make it a goal to touch base with your students once a week, either via a scheduled lesson or just by messaging them through chat. If they're not showing up on your dashboard, then checking in with them will give you an opening to bring up the subject of having another session together.

Be positive with your feedback

As you're interacting with your student, either through tutoring or a group class, be positive. This doesn't mean being artificially nice or fawning over a student's progress, good or bad. It means pointing out good decisions, when they happen, and taking a constructive approach to remedying bad ones. Challenge yourself to find a positive framing for addressing students' mistakes. For example:

• Help them to figure out why they're making that decision, and why a different one is preferable.

• Ask them what other options they considered. Perhaps they were closer to making the right choice than they realize.

• Acknowledge that it's a common mistake (if it is), and explain why.

• Look for a way the decision they made this time is an improvement over past choices, even if it's still not optimal.

Using a building/reinforcing approach with students will strengthen your relationships with them, help them to improve, and keep them feeling encouraged about their learning progress. All three of those factors will motivate them to return for ongoing lessons. And with some students, the student/tutor relationship is the absolute top priority. Even if they learn a lot from you, if they come away from the experience feeling like you were overly critical or harsh, they will seek out a new tutor. Or they'll quit entirely.

Remember, although tutoring may be the way you make your living, for your students it will likely be a something they’re doing to develop themselves. If they don't feel good about it, there's very little motivation to stick with it.

Set goals for next time

As you conclude your tutoring session, bring up your goals for your next lesson. You can use the goals they listed for the current lesson on their booking request as a starting point, or you can formulate the goals based on how the lesson went. By talking about what you want to do next time, you are indirectly encouraging them to schedule a follow-up without having to straight-up ask them to do so.

If they agree that those would be good things to focus on for the next lesson, then you can remind them that you're generally quite busy, so it's best to just get the time scheduled while you're both still available.

Ideally, this means they will complete the booking process before your current lesson ends.

Assign Homework

By the same token, you should be assigning tasks for students to complete after your lesson ends. Such tasks make it possible for students to engage in deliberate practice, the most reliable way to improve their performance. As a tutor you need to guide them through an extended process of iterative improvement, which requires that they have lessons with you regularly. Assigning tasks for your students to focus on between lessons will encourage them to book a follow-up so that you can evaluate how their practice went and give them new assignments for the following week.

Offer Discounts

Popless gives you the ability to offer discounts to students in multiple ways. These discounts help encourage students to commit to taking regular lessons with you from the start.

1. You can generate coupon codes that will grant users discounts, either in percentages or flat dollar amounts, that they can use when booking. To set those up, click coupons in the left navigation.

2. You can offer discounts to students who buy lessons in bulk when you create meeting packages. Add and edit your meeting packages by clicking Services and choosing Add meeting package.

Follow up and follow through

It is generally a good idea to keep track of your students. If you find that a few weeks have passed without hearing from a student, reach out and see whether they're ready for another lesson. You can use your chat history to keep track of how recently you've been in touch with your students, and to refresh your memory on their goals and concerns. Ask them things like:

• How are you doing on [a specific goal you worked on together]?

• How'd you do on your homework?

• Have you come across any challenges while appling what we went through last lesson?

• Are there any specific areas where you feel like you need more support?

• Were you able to complete [problem you worked on] by yourself?

Be specific, and help them to remember why they booked with you in the first place. Even just a friendly greeting will help build your tutor/student relationship and serve as a reminder that you're there to help them reach their goals.

Don't neglect your own growth

Our tutors have told us that being a high-profile, excellent tutor will naturally attract students. Not only do players want to learn from the best, they want to know they’re getting the best learning experience. Beyond that, continuing to develop your experience and grow as a professional makes you a great role model for making an ongoing commitment to improve. So as you interact with students and potential students - whether it's through lessons, group classes, or social media - mention the goals you're currently focusing on for yourself.

It'll inspire others to set some goals of their own that you can help them achieve.

And, of course, never underestimate the value of being a great tutor.

The bottom line

It's tempting to rest on your laurels and let your reputation do all the work toward building your Popless account - and to a certain extent, that might work. But remember, working with a committed core group of returning students is ultimately much easier than tutoring a rotating roster of new faces. And all it takes is a subtle mindset shift and a few small tweaks to your tutoring process to make that happen.