We were lucky to catch up with Anna April Whiting recently and have shared our conversation below.

Anna April , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

In 2022, I was thinking about going back to teaching as I had been a teacher in the past. The only thing that kept me from it, is that I didn’t want to return to a public school system. In my previous experience working in public school, I ended up with very serious professional burnout, with spats of anxiety and massive amounts of stress. It made me feel broken inside. Think about going back to that same environment was something I didn’t want to face again. So, instead of going back to public school, I decided I would try to become a private teacher. I wasn’t sure whether it would be possible for me to develop my own brand in Utah, but I decided to try anyway.

From the beginning, I wanted to teach Russian. It is my native language, and I love having the opportunity to teach it to others. But because I didn’t know how to reach the market and faced some pretty serious challenges in the beginning, I also decided to get a professional certification for teaching English as a second language (TESOL). Getting that certification, I was able to communicate with more people about their interest in language, and was able to better communicate with the market and found my niche group of clients interested in Russian.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

When I was in High School, I started to think about my career a bit more seriously. In my time there, I found that I really enjoyed spending time with younger children and helping them learn. I was thinking that maybe I could use that enjoyment to become a child psychologist or maybe even a youth art teacher. In the end, I found that the best fit for me was to study elementary education. I went to college and completed my degree in 3 years, and fairly soon after starting my search, I was offered a job at a local school. Fast forward a few years, and I wanted to create my own business in the private sector, offering 1-on-1 lessons for Russian as first or second language, and English as a second language. I travel to people’s homes, get to know them and their children, and create customized lessons to fit their needs. These lessons can include reusable visual aids, custom homework assignments, and weekly check-ins with the parents to make sure we are on the same page as far as their child’s success is concerned.

I am very proud to say that in 2025 we’ll be celebrating 3 years of success in Utah. Having started from nothing, and having grown to where it is now, I feel like it really is something to be proud of. And I’m looking forward to continuing that growth and meeting the needs of more people moving forward.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Building an audience on social media has a lot to do with consistency. I created a page on Instagram and Facebook, and I also have a google business listing. I post every week and highlight some of the activities used in my lessons during the week. It’s not really anything extraordinary, it’s quite simple. I show people how things actually look, as if they were to sit in on my lessons, and demonstrate how I interact with and communicate with kids. Being authentic in your presentation is a really big deal in the current social media climate. So, if there were 2 things I would like people to take away, it is that you need to be consistent, and you need to be authentic.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Honestly, the best source of new clients for me is through social media and self-marketing. Whether someone happens to stumble upon one of my posts and becomes interested, or they are looking specifically for the service I provide, they tend to find me pretty organically. There have been times when I have paid for promotions of my pages, but it was simply promoting the same posts that I have always made. So, it was never a specifically designed advertisement. The other thing that seems to happen quite often (especially in the space of foreign languages), is that clients tend to aggregate into their own little social groups who speak the same language. So one client might know another parent who is looking to also help their kids learn Russian, or somebody knows an immigrant that needs help learning English, and they get referred to me.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/whitingprivateschool/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/536443111238228/
• Other: https://maps.app.goo.gl/BnjzEY1cRiJA9VV6A

Image Credits

Photo by Anastasia Zyomina