Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Freya Fitzpatrick. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Freya thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the toughest things about entrepreneurship is that there is almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?

I think of myself as an accidental entrepreneur. At heart and by education, I am a teacher. For a variety of reasons I went from teaching public school to private school to homeschool co-ops. The demand for my classes at co-ops exceeded the hours available at the co-ops and parents asked me to teach additional classes at my home.

Thus, I ended up stumbling into running my own business. I had no business training. I had never participated in administration in any place I taught before, so I had no practical experience. I was just making it up on the fly … with a lot of coaching and insight from my husband who works in business. There was a steep learning curve with plenty of hurdles popping up. I’ll talk about only 2 of them, though, because from talking to other entrepreneurs, these are not uncommon issues. My problem was that, because I stumbled into running a business, I was rather blindsided by these issues.

First problem: Getting paid! It might seem obvious that people ought to pay for what they receive, but I immediately encountered a myriad excuses for why people needed me to wait to get paid. I felt gobsmacked! I felt betrayed, devalued, insulted, angry, disappointed. And I worked hard to put those feelings aside because what I truly care about is my relationship with students and helping them learn and grow. If I bring to the classroom negative feelings about the finances associated with a given student, that gets in the way of the mission I care passionately about.

Solution: It took a few years of trial and error, but I came up with a solution that now works almost flawlessly. I require up-front, non-refundable payment in full for each semester. This is due 6 weeks before a semester begins. This gives me time to follow up with tardy payments. If an account is not paid in full when the semester begins, the student cannot attend classes. Now each semester, I start the teaching part of my edupreneurial venture with financial issues resolved. I take off the business hat and wholeheartedly put on the teacher hat.

Second problem: Growing too big. In addition to not intending to be my own business, it never entered my mind, once I began teaching my own classes, to have other teachers teaching with me. I was just doing my own thing. However, at the end of the second year of my Learning for Life venture, a teacher contacted me to say my reputation was growing and she’d love to be a part of what I was doing. I definitely did NOT want to be hiring people and getting involved in payroll, so I started researching other organizational ideas, and came up with the concept of running a hybrid school with a “shopping mall” type organization. I rented the space and then individual teachers could sublease a room within the space to teach whatever we agreed they would teach. Just as shoppers pay each vendor in a mall for what they buy, so parents would pay each teacher for the classes they enrolled their kids in. I drew up a contract that specified details of the relationship between the other teachers and me. This ran wonderfully smoothly for about 3 years. I added 2 teachers for year 1 of this model, then next year added 3 more, then next year 2 more. That’s when the model started to break down. We were no longer a homogenous group of teachers with similar views of education, children and families. In year 4 of this model, we reached a crisis point with 2 teachers actively pushing agendas that conflicted with the original mission of Learning for Life. Parents were upset. People were “taking sides.” It was awful.

Solution: Fortunately, COVID struck and shut everything down. That gave me time to reassess. I realized that the seemingly wonderfully explosive growth we’d had for 7 years put Learning for Life at a size that was bigger than I wanted to learn to manage. I had been so excited by the growth, by the buzz about my hybrid school, that I assumed “grow, grow, grow” was the ultimate measure of success. The 3 month shut down gave me time to really step back and evaluate not only how to solve the problem, but to think about what my original mission was. What I learned is that size is not the only legitimate measure of success. For some business, size may be awesome. For me, the quality of the learning and growth experience for students is what matters most and it is totally OK to say, “Nope. I want this to stay small.”

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?

I got into education because I love children; I love to teach; I love to do what I can to help kids not just learn but believe in themselves and grow. I assumed I would always teach in public or private schools, and to start with I did both in the USA and in Sweden. Then we had our own kids whom we expected to put into public school, but reports from neighbors about severe physical bullying at that school including down to Kindergarten level made us decide that this was definitely not an option. With one kid still at home, one one income we couldn’t afford private school for the oldest, so we reluctantly concluded we’d homeschool the oldest until both kids were school age. Then I would get a position in a private school, and the kids would attend where I taught.

This all seemed like a great plan. Then we got to know the homeschool community. We loved seeing how kids of all ages and abilities learned and played alongside each other without segregation by age or ability. Individual families were tight-knit and loving. Children were respectful of others of all ages. They were intellectually curious and unafraid. So, we ended up homeschooling.

Homeschooling was a movement that was gaining steam at that point and families were pooling resources to offer group co-op classes. Although in the earliest days of the homeschool movement, most parents homeschooled for religious reasons, the range of reasons that people homeschool grew with every passing year. Over time, many people with neurodiverse children began to homeschool so their kids could learn without labels, without rigid IEPs (individual education program) that required constant advocacy to enforce. Academically and athletically gifted students started to fill the homeschool ranks because they could customize their schedules and explore outside-the-box resources to excel in their areas of strength. Also, over the past two decades the idea of co-ops gave rise to hybrid schools, a concept now recognized in many states within the USA. All this set the stage for my accidental edupreneurship.

When I launched Learning for Life, I had 4 main goals/principles:
1. Parents are the ultimate experts in regard to their children. My job is to work hand-in-hand with parents to help their kids succeed.
2. Academic excellence – I whole heartedly believe in every child. Every child who is willing to put in effort can access advanced ideas and content with enough support and accommodation.
3. Accommodation of neurodiversity – There isn’t only 1 way to read or to write or to learn. Instead of an IEP for each child, every subject and every assignment contains numerous options for how to take in the information and for what type of output the student must make in response. This allows parents (those ultimate experts) to make accommodations as needed on any given day. There is no rigid IEP that has to be followed until the next scheduled evaluation time. Parents know what their kids need. I give them the tools and flexibility to individualize and adapt when and how the student needs.
4. Respect – I work to ensure that Learning for Life is a community of people, from a wide range of worldviews and religions, all committed to learning to treat each other with respect.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

At first I assumed that advertising was what I needed to do. I launched a website. I ran Facebook ads. I got a Twitter account. I paid for booths at education fairs.

I am certain that all of this helped build brand recognition which is, of course, crucial for a business. And, I continue to keep all of these strategies active.

However, the #1 driver of growth has been word of mouth. Almost all new clients volunteer that they have signed up for classes because a friend said, “You HAVE to take classes at Learning for Life,” or “My kid finally started to LOVE going to classes when we switched to Learning for Life.” etc.

So, my #1 strategy is concentrate on doing what I do. The results speak for themselves.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

The short story is that I didn’t raise capital. And, wow! Am I ever glad I took this approach.

I am financially very cautious, so the idea of committing funding up front to something that involves risk is not something I was willing to do. I had already seen 2 other hybrid school start-ups fail within 3 years of launching due to initial over-investment. In each case, the edupreneurs had rented and/or built out a beautiful space that was perfect for teaching. They hired teachers. They bought furniture and equipment. They had advertising costs, insurance costs, payroll costs, equipment costs, and rent. And sadly, after 3 years, in each case, they still could not generate the revenue to meet these expenses, and each had to fold.

I decided that I would start small in my basement. I asked parents if any of them had folding tables or chairs to lend. I scoured thrift shops. I put up a single piece of $12 white panel board rather than an official $100 whiteboard. And, when we outgrew the basement, I made the rounds to community centers and churches and, with a very low budget in mind (a cost that I already knew I could meet even without any additional growth), I kept asking for space until I found the place that was willing to rent to us.

And so, with an initial investment of under $300, I increased my outlay based only on what existing business could support. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. And here I am, 12 years later, still financially on solid ground.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thehomeschoolconso.wixsite.com/website
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheHomeschoolConsortium
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/freyafitzpatrick
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheHomeschoolC

Image Credits
(Freya Fitzpatrick)