I spent Friday and Saturday last week walking the floor of the first ever New Zealand Franchise and Small Business Expo, in Auckland. Two days, stall after stall, and person after person, all quietly asking themselves the same question: which business is actually worth building?
I know that question well. I've been asking some version of it for twelve years, ever since I started Impact Tutoring as one tutor in Te Awamutu. I didn't set out to build a franchise. I set out to help kids stop feeling like fractions or NCEA maths were something that just happened to them. But somewhere in those twelve years, the growing part became one of the most exciting parts of the whole thing, and I want to tell you why, because I think it's the part people underrate most when they're choosing a business.
Growth is the real test of a good business
Anyone can sell you a business that works fine as it is, sitting still. What's harder to find is a business built to grow: one where getting bigger doesn't mean starting the hard parts all over again.
Three things decide whether a business can actually do that.
The first is your fixed costs. If a business needs a lease, a fit-out, and a room full of computers before your first paying customer even walks in, growth gets expensive fast. Every new step forward means another round of the same big spend. That's the trap I see a lot of tutoring and education franchises walk buyers into: a serious financial commitment before there's a single student to show for it. An Impact Tutoring Hub doesn't work that way. You can start in a hired hall, a church room, or a community centre, and move to leased premises later, once your student numbers actually justify it. Your money goes toward growing your Hub, not paying off a fit-out you took on before you needed it.
The second is whether growth depends on you personally, or on the model behind you. If every extra hour of income means another hour of you standing in front of a whiteboard, you haven't built a business you can grow. You've built yourself a very good job. Our Hubs are built to hold both: you tutoring in your own community, and as your Hub grows, a model, systems, and training solid enough to bring other tutors on under your name.
The third is whether there's actually room to grow into. This is where I get properly excited, because right now, there is. Anna's Far North Hub started in Kerikeri and has grown to reach Kaitaia too, with online tutoring on top of that reaching students anywhere in the country. And we're hearing directly from families and would-be franchisees in places like Tauranga, Marlborough, and New Plymouth asking when Impact is coming to them. Twelve years ago it was one tutor in Te Awamutu. Now it's three Hubs, Te Awamutu, the Far North, and Hawke's Bay (our first in the central North Island, which still feels like a genuine milestone every time I say it out loud), and there's real appetite for more.
What growing with us actually looks like
Here's the practical shape of it. Entry into an Impact Tutoring Hub is $29,000 plus GST, and that covers training, our systems, and our IP: the assessment tools, the teaching resources, the brand families already trust. There's a 5% royalty paid quarterly after that. We also offer flexible payment options if you need to hold your territory while you get ready, because I'd rather have the right person start a little later than lose them to a cash flow squeeze in month one.
Compare that to a franchise that expects a lease signed and a room fitted out before you've taught a single student, and you can see the difference in how the risk sits. With us, your investment grows in step with your Hub, not ahead of it. That's not a small detail. It's the whole reason a tutoring business is one of the few franchise categories where someone can genuinely start small and build something real, without betting the house first.
I call our franchise owners torchbearers, and I mean it. Narelle didn't head off to a new town to start hers. She took over Te Awamutu itself, buying the original Hub from me so I could step back from the day-to-day and move fully into the franchisor role. Anna and Jo picked up that same vision and carried it into their own communities, the Far North and Hawke's Bay, in their own way, at their own pace. Different paths, same belief. That's what growth actually looks like from where I sit: not a bigger version of the same thing, but the same "because you count" belief taking root in Te Awamutu, then reaching one more town, then another.
If any of this is sitting with you the way it sat with me twelve years ago, I'd love for you to look properly. Our franchise page walks through how the Hub model works, our information pack has the real detail on costs and territories, and the readiness quiz takes about two minutes if you just want a feel for whether this fits you.
I started this because I believed kids do better when someone genuinely believes they count. Twelve years on, watching that belief grow into Hubs I didn't build myself is still the best part of my week. I'd love to see where it grows next, and I'd love for that to be with you.