It’s a great time to be an education entrepreneur! Parents are eager for access to diverse education options. They continue to explore alternatives to district schools, including homeschooling, microschooling, virtual schools, learning pods, low-cost private schools, and charter schools.
The widening gap between what parents want for their children’s education and what mass schooling currently offers creates greater opportunities for today’s education entrepreneurs.
Some of their advice is contradictory, such as when one founder says to jump in and get started while another one says to take it slow and steady, but all of it can be helpful on your journey to creating a new education option for families this year!
“I would say that having a community of entrepreneurs is essential. I didn’t really have that and I’ve been trying to create it. I have a small Facebook group of women who are running similar programs and we support each other just in terms of daily questions. I think that would have really helped me starting out and would have given me a little bit of a clearer path in terms of what needs to be done and what might be occupying most of my time.”
“Start with the real problem that you care about, that parents and kids and educators need solved, and then see how you can solve it. Seek out those complaints, those pain points, those problems that you hear from friends and relatives and neighbors, and then go and build those solutions.”
“It’s always good to start around a personal pain point you have, but you can also just have a really cool idea of something you think people would love. And I would just say, try it out as quickly as you can. Don’t sit for a year planning how the school is going to go and rent expensive space and launch. Really get what you’re offering into people’s hands as quickly as you can.”
“I think it’s like any sort of entrepreneurial project: You just have to get it started and it’s going to be rough. The first go at it is not going to be perfect. Do you care about children? Do you care about families? Then start, keep going, little by little.”
“One of the things that was hard for us I think when starting was asserting good boundaries for ourselves, because this job will burn you out really quickly. There’s a lot of needs and—you saw the pace of our day—it doesn’t stop. You get here and usually still have cold coffee on the desk at the end of the day and it’s just very, very, very, very busy. So running a microschool, whether it has five kids in it or 35, is going to be like that and I think understanding that commitment from the beginning is important.”
“Plan, take your time, don’t feel rushed. Yes, there is a surge of microschools, but the most important thing is to research and get all of your ducks in a row, figure out who you want to serve. What’s going to be your niche? What is going to attract parents to you? And as you’re looking and building different components of your school, don’t forget to remain true to who you are and know what your mission is and stay focused and create programs that really align to who you want to serve and what you want to see.
“Don’t be distracted because a lot of times folks can listen to our dreams and they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I don’t think you could.’ Don’t listen to that. Don’t allow others’ fears to impose upon what you believe and what you want to do. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Reach out to other existing microschools. Take your time. Don’t rush.”
“Do it! I feel like I see too many people in planning mode for too long. And the real learning starts when you’re living it, when you’ve got kids in there with you and you’re figuring this out together. So I would say take that leap. The world needs you. The kids in your community need you. Please start your program. Start your microschool. This work is so rewarding.”
“Write down your goals, break it down step by step, and then step out and do it. It’s not easy, but it is very doable. And most things that are worthwhile are not easy, so I just think go for it—open it in your home if you can’t find a place.”
“My advice would be what I'd say to any entrepreneur: just start. Many want to spend a year or two or three designing, developing, and then launching. I really see the value in launching with some kind of minimum viable product and then adapt, and iterate, and pivot from there instead of trying to think that you can build a perfect education company in the closet and then launch two years later. Just get out in the market, try to do something.
“I tell students that I work with the first dollar is the hardest. So go get that first dollar instead of waiting to build it so you think it’s perfect. Go get a dollar first and then adapt and iterate from there. And then I'd also say get to your 10th failure fast. That’s a principle I was taught early on.
“My Tech High is definitely not my first company. I’m grateful that it’s successful, but I had at least 10, maybe 20, failed pursuits that really taught me things that I needed to know before My Tech High could succeed. So if you haven’t had your 10 failures, keep pushing to get your 10th failure and then the next one might just succeed.”
“So I think the first thing is to know why you want to do it. What are you most passionate about? If you’re chasing after what you’re most passionate about and what’s true to your heart, it’s going to do well regardless. And then just take baby steps. I think it was great that we started with just six students and now we have almost 250 students, which is crazy! So take those baby steps and when you get overwhelmed, have those people that you can go to and say, ‘Hey, am I doing this right?’”
“Be aware as early on as you can of the challenges and the things that you need to know from a legal point of view. We had, quite early on, conversations with our planners, for example, regarding zoning, so we didn’t waste a huge amount of time going down rabbit holes, looking for different premises and expecting to be able to have a facility in a domestic dwelling or different places like that.
“Just be really consistent and take it really seriously. We met every week, we approached it like a very serious business and we ran it as a business, taking minutes, recording our accounts very clearly, all of those things from the get-go.”
“I would say connect. Find people who are already doing it to connect with because we are more than happy to share our experience and what’s been good and what’s been bad and how to help navigate those things.”
“Realize that you can start over. It broke my heart when the learning community that we had ended up needing to no longer be. But I got to start over. And I got to start over with so much more wisdom, so much more information, so much more support. The amount of money that we’ve raised equals the amount of money that was initially donated to fund the old learning community. So that’s been really huge.”
