I built a business.
Then I sold it.
Now I teach it.
One-to-one Business tuition for GCSE and A Level. Eleven years in the classroom, five years tutoring privately, and a company of my own before that. Real examples, exam-board precision, and revision that actually happens between lessons.
11 years
teaching Business in UK schools
5+ years
tutoring privately alongside the classroom
54% A/A*
in the themes I delivered — cohort of 31, summer 2026
1 company
founded, grown and sold, supplying the high street
Experience
Taught by someone who has actually done it
Most Business teaching is second-hand. Mine is not.
In 2000 I founded Diva Cosmetics, creating and supplying bespoke colour cosmetics, skincare and gift sets for high-street retailers — Claire’s Accessories, New Look, Mothercare, Accessorize, River Island and George at Asda. Own-label ranges, retail buyers, seasonal deadlines, and margins argued over a penny at a time. I sold the company in 2003.
Since then I have mentored hundreds of business owners, written BOOM!, a book on how small businesses grow, and appeared on the BBC’s Beat the Boss. For the last five years I have tutored privately alongside teaching.
So when we reach cash flow forecasting, break-even, supply chains or the power a buyer holds over a supplier, I am not reading it off a textbook slide. I made those decisions with my own money at risk, and I got some of them wrong. That is the bit students remember — and it is the bit that turns a flat twelve-mark answer into an evaluative one.
Results
Results that stand up
In summer 2026, 54% of the 31 A Level students I taught achieved a grade A or A* in the themes I delivered.
Grades are not the whole point of an education, but they are the point of an exam. My job in our hour together is to work out precisely where the marks are being lost — knowledge, application, analysis or evaluation — and to fix that specific thing, rather than re-teaching a topic your child already knows.
Where marks go missing
- Answering the question they revised for, not the one that was asked.
- Application that names the case-study firm without ever using it.
- Analysis that stops one link too early.
- Evaluation with no judgement in it.
Method
The work between lessons is where grades are made
Here is the uncomfortable truth about tutoring. One hour a week is roughly 0.6% of your child’s week. Whatever we do in that hour, most of the forgetting happens in the six days afterwards.
Hermann Ebbinghaus mapped this in the 1880s and nobody has managed to disprove him since: without deliberate retrieval, most of what we learn is gone within a week. The fix is not more hours. It is smaller amounts of recall, spaced out, with the difficult material coming back more often than the easy material.
That principle sits underneath everything I set. Short retrieval, spaced deliberately, always written or spoken from memory rather than read.
Parents
Parents are part of this, not spectators
You can reach me whenever you need to. Ask how it is going and I will tell you honestly — what has improved, what is still shaky, and what I have asked your child to work on before the next lesson. No jargon, and no scores you need a glossary to read.
“Emma’s positive and insightful attitude towards Business is a testament to her vast knowledge and experience in the industry. The results she renders in her students are top quality. Would highly recommend to anyone seeking success in A level Business.”
Alex · A Level Business
Let’s find out where the marks are going.
Book a free 20-minute call. No charge, no obligation and no sales pitch. I will ask your child which parts of the specification they feel least secure in, look at their most recent exam answers if they have them, and tell you honestly what I think is holding the grade back.