We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful India Gandy. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with India below.
India, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?
The list of topics was all great, however this particular question stood out most to me simply because the journey through entrepreneurship is like a roller coaster and you will face some challenges that you didn’t see coming, but we have to keep going until we get there. We all have goals that we want to achieve and when the hard days come you will question yourself, your business, your life, but keep going until you get there. In my opinion I am much happier as a business owner and the only thing I wonder is why more people don’t own and operate their own businesses? Trust me I absolutely loved teaching Early HeadStart, but I have no regrets about walking away from teaching to establish my own Childcare. Since my last interview 2 years ago, I’ve been fortunate enough to establish two more businesses. I literally see life through a different pair of lenses, and now that I am aware of my passion of pursuing business and growing businesses, I step into new areas of my life from a business mindset. I will end with this it takes confidence to walk into a room, a situation, a circumstance and look for the problem so you can be the solution and for me that is what has caused me to be successful, I don’t allow a problem to stay a problem, I step back and figure out how to solve the issue.
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?
In 2019 I walked away from my teaching career in Early HeadStart, at that point I had been teaching for 7 years. I knew I wanted more, and I also could see that it was becoming harder and harder for me to keep up with a school model that I personally felt needed some adjustments. I’m not going to tell people reading this it was easy, because the pressure literally had me halfway out the door, but the pressure of knowing it was my time to fly didn’t make the transition smooth by any means. Fast forward to the present Promise Academy (my Childcare) just celebrated its 4th anniversary!!! We have been completely blessed and favored to be amongst childcares who stayed open and operating during COVID and the Pandemic. Moving through that phase alone was so challenging because nobody seen it coming, yet we all had to deal with it. After things slowly got back to normal, I had the pleasure of getting married in 2022. From this marriage my husband and I started brainstorming on our next business venture and we have now established a logistics trucking company (SON Transporting). Operating Interstate moving loads state to state with the goal of being contracted with Amazon as our end of year goal. I have had to go from being the teacher when it comes to the childcare field to becoming the student in the field of logistics. Over the last 3 years I have really ramped up my networking environments and started offering consulting services (The Gandy Group) to up and coming entrepreneurs. This has been such a joy and I’m so thankful to be able to help people who have made the choice to work for themselves. I am able to take the stress and worry away from people who have a huge “what if” hanging over their heads. What if it doesn’t work? What if it fails? What if I dent make as much money? These are all questions I’ve asked myself, but I didn’t give up and because of that I started to see the rewards of my sacrifices.
Any advice for managing a team?
As a business we normally take the steps in establishing rules and guidelines. However, I take it one step further and have a list of nonnegotiable. Those are the things we will do and will never come off of the table. It’s important to have standards and morals even in business. Our team has a very clear understanding that rules are subject to change based on policy updates, restrictions, and guidelines being updated. The nonnegotiable’s on the table will never change, we respect everyone walking through our doors no matter what. We help people and we go the extra mile no matter what. We do this for customers, families and within our four walls. If we display honor and respect to strangers, we most definitely offer it our coworkers.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Relationships!!!!!! People can separate the real from the fake. People know when you are offering them genuine customer service or just putting on a show. When you establish meaningful real relationships, you find yourself not working as hard. Why, because the relationships being established are creating your reputation. I have serval people call me that literally got my information from someone other than myself. It brings tears to my eyes when families call and say I have been highly recommended by an individual or company that I’ve collaborated with, and they felt the genuine love from me.
Image Credits
Staff and families – Promise Acadmy Learning Center Staff – Gandy Group and SON Transporting