We were lucky to catch up with Mark Wilson recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Mark, thanks for joining us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.
Brains and Brawn started in 2018 as a tutoring company. It was fairly straightforward: we would help students prepare for the SAT or ACT and improve their scores to be competitive for their target college. At first, I was the only tutor. We slowly grew and hired other tutors. But nearly every day, parents would call to ask our advice about a multitude of other things: “Now that we have the SAT score, what else does it take to get into our dream college?” Our tutors were eating up a lot of time, and pretty soon, parents started offering to pay us to help with college applications, interviews, understanding financial aid, and more. We saw an opportunity: Our College Coaching service was born.
Trusting a business with the SAT or ACT score is easy enough to do. It didn’t take much time to land a new client. Our team would show our results, and in short order, we’d have a new client. Trusting a business, a complete stranger, to help determine where the next four years of life will be spent is a different situation though. Even though our results were phenomenal, no amount of paid advertising could convince a parent to trust us with their child’s future. So, we started working with current clients to grow. We would have a current or previous client host our team in their home. They would invite friends and family members who had children in high school. We didn’t market or sell to these people in attendance. Rather, we simply outlined what it takes to get into an elite college. The team and I would spend roughly an hour discussing what a kid in high school needs to do in order to be successful, and then we would hang around for a couple of hours for questions. We found that the only way to build trust was through meaningful discussions with parents. Listen to their concerns, provide realistic solutions, and then offer to help.
It worked. We grew from a small, Memphis-based company to a global service, with clients in every timezone in the lower 48 and multiple international clients. Continued growth is challenging, but leaning into our model of trust then partnership has proven to be reliable.
We were able to grow exponentially, without crowd funding, angel investors, or loans. We were able to grow simply by meeting people and giving advice without any exchange of legal contracts or invoices. Instilling trust that our ultimate goal was for our client’s to achieve theirs was the only path to success.
Mark, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I grew up in a very small town of about 1000 people in rural Appalachia, a town without internet access and no nearby cities. Neither parent attended college, but despite the odds, I was able to get accepted to Yale University where I studied Economics. I then followed a fairly traditional path: an internship turned into a job offer and I immediately realized that my path was centered on the financial success I would experience rather than the work I would be doing. Many of my college peers went down the same path. I saw this problem growing, and I started Brains and Brawn to help others avoid the same fate. I left the path of finance and pursued helping high school students find their meaning in high school to prevent them choosing a career path simply for the financial rewards.
Brains and Brawn centers on this issue: How do you find meaning through your career? Like others, we focus on gaining admission to elite institutions. However, we spend far more time learning about each student that we work with to ensure the college (and the major) they pursue will be the right fit for them. We’ve found that financial success comes from enjoying your work. Regardless of the industry, success is generally a result of passion.
Our clients have 500+% higher odds of being accepted to a top 50 university by working with us. But, more importantly, they enter a program that allows them to thrive. We spend years discussing different types of college experiences. We focus on college tours and understanding what learning environment each student needs to succeed.
To find the right college, students have to decide from more than 2,500 options in the US alone. It’s an impossible equation. Paralysis by analysis sets in. Discussions with students help our team narrow the list from 2500 to roughly 20-30 solid options for them to consider.
To truly get to know a student, you have to have discussions with them often. While other businesses limit the number of meetings to once or twice per semester, we have no limit on the number of meetings a student can have with their college coach. In fact, we require a minimum of one meeting per month. Most students prefer to meet more frequently, and the ability to meet and discuss every aspect of a student’s experience in high school provides our college coaches with crucial information, which we use to provide the student with meaningful college options.
We have several teams that focus on student success. Our writing team ensures every college application, internship application, and every email to sent to volunteering organizations is perfect. Our mock interview team ensures every student is prepared to nail their college admissions interview. Our scholarship team works tirelessly to help students and parents pay for college. We limit the number of clients each college coach works with to ensure we have time to truly get to know our students. These efforts have helped shape the future of every client we work with.
Any advice for managing a team?
Our business is 100% remote, and 100% service-based. It’s often tempting to want to undercut our contractors and employees since their work happens in the comfort of their home. Pay your team well; pay them more than they’re worth. Reward them with bonuses. Make it known up-front in the hiring process that they should approach you if they’re ever unhappy with their work or pay. Having a solid and experienced team, especially in a service-based industry, is the biggest key to success. I can’t participate in every meeting my team has with our clientele. I have to trust them. I also need them to trust me and ensuring they’re taken care of financially ensures that they’re committed to the success of the company rather than just their own paycheck.
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
Our business requires a lot of trust. For a parent, relying on a business to help their child get into a 4-year university is a big commitment. Not only is college incredibly expensive, it constitutes 4 years of their child’s life, and those are the first 4 years in which their child will live away from them. Caring about our clients and trusting them to tell their friends and family members about their positive experience has been our only path to growth. Sure, we’ve tried every form of advertising/marketing, but growth is slow and steady; and it’s centered on current clients having a great relationship and outcome.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Brainsandbrawnllc.com
- Instagram: Brainsandbrawnllc