When I think about Tilly’s Tutoring being two and a half years old, my first reaction is probably the same one I have about most things in the business: I immediately think about what I haven’t achieved yet.
I think about the numbers I want to hit, the groups that aren’t full enough, the cash flow that needs improving, the systems that still need finishing, the tutors I need to recruit, the marketing I should be doing, the LMS that needs rolling out and the long list of ideas sitting in my head.
I don’t naturally stop and think:
Look what I actually built.
And perhaps that is exactly why I need to write this.
Two and a half years ago, Tilly’s Tutoring wasn’t the business it is today. There wasn’t a team of tutors. There weren’t home education groups, GCSE groups, systems, pipelines, dashboards, an LMS, multiple brands or plans for scalable learning.
There was mainly me.
A teacher with more than 20 years of experience who knew she could help children differently.
I knew education. I knew children. I knew what it felt like to work in schools, to carry the pressure, the workload and the responsibility. I also knew that some children simply weren’t thriving in the system they were in.
What I didn’t know was how to run a business.
So I learned.
And I learned in probably the most Becky way possible — by jumping in, figuring things out, changing things, creating things, occasionally creating far too many things, getting overwhelmed, reorganising everything and then carrying on.
It started with teaching. It became something much bigger.
At its heart, Tilly’s has always been about the student sitting in front of us.
Not a spreadsheet.
Not a target.
Not a GCSE grade.
A child.
Some of the young people who have come through Tilly’s have simply needed additional academic support.
Others have arrived having lost confidence completely.
Some have ADHD, autism, dyslexia or other additional needs. Some have struggled with school attendance. Some are home educated. Some have experienced EBSA. Some need reassurance before they need teaching.
There have been students who will talk endlessly and others who barely speak at first.
Students who need stretching and students for whom writing one analytical paragraph feels enormous.
That has shaped what Tilly’s has become.
I never wanted to create a tutoring factory.
I wanted children to be known.
And as the business has grown, protecting that has become incredibly important to me.
The subjects have expanded. The age ranges have expanded. We now support students from primary through GCSE and beyond, online and face-to-face. We have worked with families locally, nationally and internationally.
But the principle hasn’t really changed.
Meet the child where they are and work from there.
Then came the team
One of the biggest changes has been accepting that Tilly’s cannot just be me.
That sounds obvious now.
It wasn’t obvious to me at the beginning.
When your name, reputation and livelihood are attached to something, handing responsibility to other people is difficult. Teaching was the thing I knew I could do well, so my natural instinct was to keep doing more of it myself.
But slowly, Tilly’s became a team.
Different tutors brought different subjects, personalities, experiences and strengths. That meant we could help children I couldn’t personally teach and offer subjects that were completely outside my own specialism.
It also meant my role had to change.
I wasn’t simply a tutor anymore.
I became the person matching families with tutors, supporting staff, answering enquiries, managing finances, thinking about marketing, solving problems, planning capacity, developing services and trying to work out where the business was going next.
And that transition has probably been one of the hardest parts of the last two and a half years.
Because being a good teacher and being a good business owner are not the same job.
I’ve had to learn the second one while still doing the first.
There have been some brilliant moments
There are things that I genuinely need to allow myself to be proud of.
We’ve built established home education provision.
We’ve developed GCSE support and group tuition.
We’ve supported children who haven’t fitted neatly into mainstream education.
We’ve built relationships with families who trust us with something incredibly important — their children’s education.
We’ve created lessons, resources, programmes and systems.
I’ve watched tutors become part of what Tilly’s represents rather than simply people delivering hours for the business.
I’ve run masterclasses where hundreds of people registered.
I’ve developed Tilly’s Mindset Maths and started thinking beyond one-to-one tuition towards scalable learning.
Against the Grain Education has grown from the same belief that education sometimes needs to work differently.
I’ve even started developing Teachers to Tutors, taking what I’ve learned from leaving education and building this business and thinking about how it could help other teachers do the same.
That is a long way from simply deciding to tutor.
But it hasn’t been plain sailing
I don’t want to write one of those business reflections where everything difficult is conveniently turned into an inspirational lesson.
Some of it has just been hard.
There have been months where cash flow has frightened me.
There have been cancellations.
Students have left.
Tutors have left.
Plans haven’t worked.
Marketing hasn’t always produced what I expected.
I’ve spent money on things that haven’t delivered quickly enough.
I’ve had weeks where enquiries have come in but students have left at almost the same rate, meaning I’ve worked incredibly hard and still felt like the business was standing still.
There have been times when I’ve looked at what I’ve created and genuinely wondered whether I’m actually any good at running it.
And September 2026 has probably forced me to confront that more than almost any other point.
For the first time, I’m properly measuring things.
Sales.
Profit.
Retention.
Enquiries.
Conversion.
Attendance.
Tutor utilisation.
Group occupancy.
Outstanding payments.
Cash.
When you’re running on instinct, you can tell yourself that you’re busy and therefore things must be moving forward.
Numbers don’t let you do that.
That’s uncomfortable.
But it’s necessary.
The operating system I’ve now created for Tilly’s actually says that a dashboard without decisions is only a list of numbers.
I think that sentence represents quite a big change in me.
I’m starting to move from simply running Tilly’s to actually leading Tilly’s.
ADHD has been both a superpower and an absolute pain in the arse
I can’t reflect on the last two and a half years without acknowledging how my brain works.
I have ideas.
Lots of ideas.
I can see opportunities incredibly quickly.
I can become completely absorbed in something, build an entire concept, create the systems around it and move it forward at ridiculous speed.
That has absolutely helped build this business.
It has also nearly buried me at times.
Because once I’ve thought of something, my brain tends to behave as though it needs doing immediately.
So Tilly’s Tutoring becomes groups.
Groups become recorded lessons.
Recorded lessons become an LMS.
Maths becomes Mindset Maths.
Mindset Maths becomes Mindset Learning.
My experience building Tilly’s becomes Teachers to Tutors.
My education experience becomes Against the Grain Education.
Meanwhile I’m still teaching, answering questions, managing tutors, thinking about students, looking at finances and trying to remember the 47 things I thought of while driving somewhere.
The irony is that I have now built an entire external executive-function system to manage the business I created because of the way my brain works.
The Tilly’s HQ manual literally describes its purpose as reducing how much I have to mentally hold at once and turning information into decisions and actions.
If that isn’t personal growth, I’m not sure what is.
I’ve had to accept that the answer isn’t trying harder to remember everything.
It’s building a business where I don’t have to.
Life didn’t stop because I started a business
This is probably the part that’s easiest to leave out of a business reflection.
The last two and a half years haven’t happened in a vacuum.
I’ve been building Tilly’s while also being Becky.
A mum.
A partner.
A widow.
Someone with a family and responsibilities and emotions and health and appointments and children whose lives continue regardless of whether the business has hit its monthly target.
I’ve had proud mum moments.
I’ve watched Ethan get his A-level results and secure his university place.
I’ve spent countless hours around horses and showjumping because Ruby’s ambitions matter too.
I’ve got back on a horse myself and cantered again after around three years away.
I’m planning a future and a vow renewal with Gary while still carrying a past that will always be part of who I am.
And there have been periods where physically and mentally I’ve simply not had the capacity I wanted to have.
That’s something I’m only now learning to factor into business planning properly.
For years I have planned for the version of Becky who has endless energy.
She doesn’t exist.
The systems I’m creating now explicitly say that a plan has to work when energy and concentration are lower, not just on a perfect day. BECKY_HQ_Operating_Manual
That sounds like a business principle.
For me, it’s actually quite personal.
I also don’t have to do everything anymore
This might be one of the most important developments of all.
Becka taking greater responsibility for finance, bookkeeping, invoicing, reporting and marketing coordination is significant.
Millie joining as an apprentice and eventually taking responsibility for administration, LMS support, resources and routine systems is significant.
The tutors taking ownership of teaching, feedback and resources is significant.
Because the next stage of Tilly’s cannot depend on how many things I personally manage to complete in a week.
In fact, the operating structure we’ve now created specifically says my role should increasingly be the things that genuinely require me: owner decisions, leadership, relationships and my expertise. BECKY_HQ_Operating_Manual
That is going to take some getting used to.
I’m very good at being needed.
I’m learning to become good at building something that doesn’t need me for everything.
The business is not where I want it to be yet
And I think it’s important to say that.
Two and a half years in, cash flow still needs stabilising.
We need stronger recurring revenue.
We need to fill existing tutor capacity.
We need better retention.
We need to convert more enquiries.
The home education groups have more capacity.
The GCSE groups need building.
We need to recruit carefully where genuine subject demand exists.
The LMS needs rolling out properly.
The recorded content needs completing.
There are bills to catch up with and decisions about spending that need to be made carefully.
Those aren’t failures.
They’re the current business problems.
And problems need actions rather than panic.
That’s probably another thing I’ve learned.
What I would tell the Becky who started Tilly’s
I think I’d tell her that this is going to become much bigger than she thinks.
But I’d also warn her that bigger isn’t automatically better.
I’d tell her:
Don’t measure your worth by how busy you are.
You don’t need to personally teach every child.
You don’t need to say yes to every opportunity.
You don’t need to launch every idea the minute you have it.
Cash in the bank matters more than impressive turnover on paper.
A student staying is just as valuable as finding another one.
The boring systems will eventually give you more freedom than the exciting ideas.
Delegating something doesn’t mean you couldn’t do it yourself.
And sometimes the best business decision will be not yet.
I’d also tell her that there are going to be days when she is absolutely convinced she is failing.
Don’t make permanent decisions on those days.
Look at the evidence.
Because the evidence tells a different story
Two and a half years ago, I had an idea and my teaching experience.
Today there is Tilly’s Tutoring.
There is a team.
There are students.
There are families who have trusted us.
There are established home education groups.
There are GCSE programmes.
There are systems for enquiries, tuition, attendance and invoicing.
There is a developing LMS.
There are plans for recorded learning.
There is Against the Grain Education.
There is Mindset Learning.
There is Teachers to Tutors.
There is Becka.
There is Millie joining.
There is a tutor team.
There is a business infrastructure that didn’t exist before I created it.
There is even a 20-page operating manual because apparently I have reached the stage of my life where my ADHD requires its own management department.
And there is me.
Still here.
Still teaching.
Still thinking.
Still changing things.
Still occasionally trying to start six projects on a Tuesday.
But much more aware of what I’m building.
So, have I made it?
No.
And I don’t think I want to pretend that I have.
There is still financial pressure.
There are still things that need fixing.
There are still targets I haven’t reached.
There are still moments when I compare where I am with where I thought I would be and feel disappointed.
But perhaps the biggest lesson of the last two and a half years is that growth doesn’t always look like growth while you’re inside it.
Sometimes it looks like another spreadsheet.
Sometimes it looks like admitting something isn’t working.
Sometimes it looks like handing a responsibility to someone else.
Sometimes it looks like losing a student and resisting the urge to catastrophise.
Sometimes it looks like saying no to another idea.
Sometimes it looks like finally understanding your numbers.
And sometimes growth is simply realising:
I am no longer trying to prove that I can do everything myself.
I’m trying to build something sustainable.
Something that gives brilliant teachers another way to work.
Something that gives children another way to learn.
Something that gives families another option when the conventional route isn’t working.
And, hopefully, something that eventually gives me the freedom that I originally started looking for too.
Two and a half years later…
I’m proud of Tilly’s.
I’m proud of the children we’ve helped.
I’m proud of the team that is forming around it.
I’m proud that some of the most difficult experiences in my own life haven’t stopped me building something with a future.
But I’m also learning that being proud of what I’ve built doesn’t mean pretending everything is perfect.
It means being able to look at the problems without allowing them to erase the progress.
There is still a lot to do.
But for once, instead of immediately racing towards the next target, I want to acknowledge this one:
I started something.
I kept going when it was difficult.
I turned myself from a teacher who tutored into the owner of an education business.
I created jobs.
I created opportunities for teachers.
I created another option for families.
And I created a place where children who sometimes feel as though they don’t fit can be understood, supported and taught as individuals.
That matters.
So perhaps the next two and a half years aren’t about proving that Tilly’s can work.
I’ve already done that.
They’re about learning how to make it work without it consuming me.
To make it financially stronger.
To make the team stronger.
To fill what we’ve already built before constantly building something new.
To turn the systems into freedom.
To let other people take ownership.
To concentrate my time on the things that only I can do.
And maybe, occasionally, to stop long enough to recognise how far I’ve already come.
Tilly’s Tutoring: 2½ years down.
Not perfect.
Not finished.
Definitely not straightforward.
But built from scratch, still standing, still growing — and very, very different from where it started.
