I have been a private French tutor for 15 years, and I have run Anais and Co for the past seven.
In that time, we have helped thousands of people learn French. We have seen remarkable progress—and we have seen people lose momentum, despite starting with the best intentions.
Today, we have made a significant change: we are stopping the sale of individual blocks of French lessons.
Instead, we will offer annual programmes with one or two private lessons each week.
It may make our business harder to grow. Time will tell. But it reflects something we have known for a long time: meaningful progress in a language comes from consistency, over time.
Results come from showing up
After 15 years of teaching, one pattern is impossible to miss.
The clients who make real, lasting progress are the ones who take lessons every week and stay with the process for months or years.
Whether they have one lesson a week or two, the principle is the same: regular practice compounds. A little progress one week becomes confidence a few months later, and eventually fluency begins to feel possible.
Many clients have always understood this naturally. They would buy a block of lessons, complete it, buy another, and continue. Some have stayed with us for years.
Others need the structure of a clear commitment around them.
That is why we are moving to annual programmes. If consistency is what produces results, the way we offer our lessons should reflect that reality.
The problem with selling 12 hours
Over the past decade, Anais and Co has grown into a more established school. People come to us because they are looking for something serious: a structured curriculum, experienced tutors, continuity, and a method built over many years.
They also come to us after trying the easier options.
An app. YouTube videos. A “miracle” method. A cheap trial lesson. There is no shortage of promises that learning a language can be quick, effortless and inexpensive.
Of course, these options can be useful. But learning a language is not instant. If it were, everyone would be bilingual.
When someone becomes genuinely motivated to learn French, they often start looking for a more substantial solution. They find our books, our tutors, our reviews and our approach.
Then, until now, they would open our brochure and see packages of 12, 24 or 48 hours.
That created an uncomfortable contradiction.
A person could reasonably assume: “If they sell 12 hours, perhaps 12 hours is enough to achieve something meaningful.”
But 12 weekly lessons represent less than three months. You can make progress in that time—certainly—but it is not enough to become comfortable speaking French.
Around 90% of our clients understood this. They completed one block and continued with another. But for the remaining 10%, a smaller package could create the impression that it was a complete solution.
We have always said that there are no shortcuts. Selling French in neat blocks of hours increasingly felt at odds with that belief.
So we decided to stop.
A more honest model
Our new programmes are deliberately simple:
- One or two private lessons each week
- A full year of structured learning
- The time, continuity and accountability needed to make real progress
This is not about making a bigger commitment for its own sake. It is about aligning expectations with what language learning actually requires.
Professional tutors, training, consistency across a team, a structured curriculum and continuity all come at a cost. Our prices and policies have always reflected that.
But the most important cost is time.
There is no clever way around it. French becomes familiar through repeated contact, regular practice, mistakes, corrections and the gradual accumulation of understanding.
The commercial reality
There is another reason for this decision, and it is worth being honest about it.
When I started teaching, finding clients was relatively simple. You could place an advert online, pay a small fee to appear near the top, and people looking for a tutor could find you.
That world has changed.
Large tutoring platforms now spend enormous amounts acquiring clients. They bring together thousands of tutors, make booking immediate, handle payments and take a commission from every lesson. Venture capital has intensified that race for growth.
As a result, the cost of finding a new client has risen dramatically. What might once have cost £50–£100 can now cost five or six times more.
We could react by chasing volume: lower our prices, relax our standards, make everything easier to buy and focus on bringing in as many people as possible.
But that would compromise the things that make Anais and Co valuable: structure, continuity, professionalism and results.
So we are choosing the opposite direction.
Rather than selling more isolated hours to more people, we want to work with people ready to make the commitment that gives them the best chance of succeeding.
No shortcuts
Will this make it harder for someone to become a client? Probably.
Will it work commercially? I do not know yet.
Asking for a year-long commitment in a market full of £20 trial lessons may seem like a risk. Perhaps it is.
But after 15 years of teaching French, I know this with certainty:
The people who get results are the people who keep showing up.
Our new model is built around that.
