We were lucky to catch up with Jacqueline Ammerman recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jacqueline thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

One of the most important risks I have taken in my life was moving to Texas from Chile with my family. In 2018, my husband and I decided to make a life changing move. We felt moving to the United States was necessary if our children were to become bilingual, which we felt was very important for them since I am a native Spanish speaker and my husband is a native English speaker. We were leaving the comfortable beach life in Chile to move to Texas. At the time we had a thriving language academy in Chile and were willing to take the risk to continue with it remotely and to start another English academy in the United States.
Before we arrived, we thought that my husband would be able to teach English since there are so many Hispanics in Texas. The going was slow. After about a year, we were becoming desperate because the income we were generating in Chile with the English classes was not enough to sustain us in Texas and my husband’s English students in Texas were few.
This is when I decided to study the Montessori Teaching Methodology. I decided to study this methodology because it coincides with my Fashion Design degree.
My husband and I then decided to switch gears here and I would offer to teach Spanish classes. Fortunately, it has been very successful. I now have over 50 students who are learning Spanish with me. I have also started teaching Fashion Design, which is my other passion. But most importantly, my children are now fluent in both Spanish and English which is why we took the risk in the first place.

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?

By teaching Spanish, I help solve numerous problems. The first problem I help solve and the one I am most proud of is to improve the understanding of the Latin culture. By knowing Spanish, people are able empathize with a completely different culture. If one is not able to speak the language of another culture and people it is very difficult to understand the problems and many challenges that others may face on a daily basis. The more obvious problem I help solve is the many opportunities that available to people that speak both Spanish and English. English is the most spoken language in the world and Spanish is the fourth most spoken. Between both of them, these two languages are officially spoken in 88 countries. With the knowledge of both Spanish and English, the opportunities available are numerous.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

I met my husband and cofounder in a small town in Chile called Pichilemu. I was visiting with my family and staying at our beach house. My husband was in town because he is a surfer and Pichilemu is known for it’s world class waves. I had no idea at the time, that I would two years later marry him and continue to still be married after almost 23 years. Back then my husband was making Hawaiian themed clothing in Chile. After a while, I started doing the designs for his clothing line and our business expanded to Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay and Peru. In a couple of years, inflation in South America became rampant and along with cheap imports from China the number of clients dwindled and we decided to start a new business venture in language instruction.
We formalized this business in Chile and have now have students in Chile, the United States, and Canada. We offer in person classes and our online classes are also live with either myself, my husband, or one of our native speakers.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I built my social media presence on Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube by updating new information on a daily basis and showing more of the product which is the advancement of our students. I also post relevant testimonies of our clients. My advice to someone starting out is to focalize your posts according to your goals. For example, if you are looking to sell a product, know your market and clients and direct your posts to attract those future clients. I am always looking to include new hashtags to attract more people to follow my posts.     

Contact Info:

• Website: www.languageschoolboerne.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ammerman.language.academy/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmmermanLanguageTravel/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCW_9It1VibRqp8oVawnTTqw