We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Melissa Leonard. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Melissa below.
Hi Melissa, thanks for joining us today. 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.
I started ML Tutoring during the COVID-19 pandemic after seeing and hearing about far too many students and parents struggling with virtual schooling. I wanted to facilitate a positive learning environment that is supportive, engaging, and unique to each student’s needs, an environment where students can thrive and build confidence in their own skills at a pace that is conducive to their learning.
Melissa, 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?
Along with being the business owner of ML Tutoring, I am a Certified Child Life Specialist. (However, at the time I began this tutoring company, I was still studying to become certified). Why is this relevant? Well, these two careers have allowed me to combine my knowledge of child development and developmental theory, and my past experiences as an educator to help ML Tutoring students reach their full potential. My goal is not only to help the student succeed academically, but personally as well. I want students to feel confident in their skills and their ability to cope with difficult tasks in and out of the classroom so they can better adapt and learn from any situation. When creating ML Tutoring, I understood in order to reach this goal I needed to personalize each and every student and tutor interaction. Although, I am not personally providing the tutoring services, I am recruiting and hiring highly qualified teachers and tutors, many with their Masters in Education, to work with ML Tutoring students. I have created an assessment for all parents/guardians to complete upon enrollment, and with this information, I make a professional assessment that allows me to identify who to hire specifically for each individual. All students are matched with a tutor who will compliment their learning styles, who will build authentic rapport with the student through his/her interests, and who will challenge and support this student appropriately to meet the student’s/parent’s goals. These key points will facilitate a positive learning environment and allow students to work both academically and personally at their pace that is conducive to their learning and development.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
Partnering with private and charter schools has been the best source of new clients as these schools endorse ML Tutoring services and they will refer parents to our company. Then our tutors have the ability to work directly with the student’s teachers in these schools to ensure they are positively progressing. These parents see their child’s progress and then refer us to their friends with children in the same school or other schools, which allows ML Tutoring to expand to reach students in different districts, counties, and even states! I am so thankful for all the families who have referred ML Tutoring.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
I think past student, who no longer need tutoring services, have helped ML Tutoring build our positive reputation within our space. Many parents have shared incredible testimonials about their child’s growth, tutor, and experience with ML Tutoring overall. These testimonials can be found on our website and I am constantly adding more as I receive them.
Contact Info:
- Website: MLtutoring.net
- Instagram: @MLtutoring
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ML-Tutoring-109902834489161
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-leonard-ccls-a66765b3/
- Other: Email: [email protected]