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

Stephnie, appreciate you joining us today. Alright, so we’d love to hear about how you got your first client or customer. What’s the story?

In the summer of 2016, I was working as a teacher in a local community center. I worked Monday through Friday teaching stem lessons two first through ninth grade. My supervisor asked me to give a presentation to some of the donors for the program, our presentation and telling what exactly we do, why it is beneficial for the students, and some of the data behind student progress. So, of course, I accepted, and began preparing the presentation.

It was the last day of the summer program, a Thursday, I remember going into work being super nervous, because I would have to give this presentation to some of our biggest donors for this program.

As I get into work, I jump right in, and I gave a fabulous presentation. The end of the presentation, a woman approached me. I assumed she would ask me about the presentation and a more detailed questions on some of the data that I had provided during the presentation. To my surprise, she Told me that she loves the information that I provided and could tell I was very passionate about supporting in educating students. She then proceeded to ask me if I knew any companies are people that tutored, she had two daughters that needed a little extra support when it came to academics.

Before I could even stop myself, the words came out of my mouth, “I tutor!” “ I can tutor your girls for you!“

We exchanged contact information, and from that day forward for about a year, I tutored her two daughters 1 to 2 times a week. That was the unofficial start to what now is One Brain Learning Center.

A year later, in May 2017, One Brain Learning Center became official.

Stephnie, 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?

My name is Stephnie Sahadeo. I am 33 years old. I am of Guyanese and Trinidadian descent, born in the United Kingdom, and move to America at the age of seven.

As a child, I always wanted to play as if I was the teacher, instructing and teaching and helping others even if it was just a game. Throughout my life, I have always felt the need to support those around me, in high school and through college, and even past those years.

In high school, I changed my major several times and finally landed in a place where I felt the happiest, getting a degree in Elementary Education. Current day, I am certified as a K-6 Elementary Teacher as well as Exceptional Student Education (ESE) K through 12th grade, with a Reading and ESOL Endorsement. I have been a teacher now for 13 years, teaching first grade, fourth grade, fifth grade, as well as GED courses at a local Technical College.

Today I am the proud owner of One Brain Learning Center, a mobile tutoring company is five years old. Our company makes it easy for the parents and the students by allowing the tutors to travel to them either to their homes or to the library. We are a one on one in home tutoring service.

One brain learning center and the tutors that help to support students, allow students to invigorate their entire brain by creatively enhancing the techniques needed to succeed. With certified and qualified individuals that are equipped with knowledge and strategies, which allows students to feel comfortable with the content, helping them to feel safe and guided as we help them through the difficult academic road blocks.

We tutor early childhood through select college courses, as well as SAT, ACT, and ASVAB prep, specializing in students with special needs like IEPs, 504 plans, or those with attention deficit.

I’m so excited to be able to continue to grow One Brain Learning Center with our 5 year anniversary this May. With a small business with one employee to now having over ten employees is a blessing! One Brain Learning Center is fortunate to support those learners in our community and will continue to support the learners!

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

As previously mentioned, I officially started One Brain Learning Center in 2016. By 2017, I became official, legal, and registered as a LLC.

I became the owner, the HR manager, payroll, scheduler, the creative, and the one and only tutor. I was doing it all. With my background in education, and as a current full time Elementary School Teacher, I was getting a lot of clients whose parents knew me as a teacher of their child’s school or referred by a parent of a student at the school I was teaching. I went from tutoring two hours a week in 2016 to tutoring up to 12 to 15 hours a week after teaching all day. What a blessing! By the end of the school year in 2019, my popularity continued to rise. There just weren’t enough hours in the week, for all of the current clients as well as clients that wanted to get booked for a tutoring session by me.

I always dreamed of having my own school, and having my own staff. But that thought, that dream, is easier dreamt about then executing. Going into my third year as a tutor, second year as an official LLC, it had just been me. I know, at this point, I would have to make a hard decision, a decision that came too quickly for me to even process. In order for me to continue to grow One Brain Learning Center, I would have to expand my company and start hiring tutors. As a first time business owner, there are so many things you don’t know until you know, and hiring employees is one of those things.

I knew, at that moment, in May 2019, that if I wanted One Brain Learning Center to continue to be successful, I would need to swallow my pride, become vulnerable, and ask for help. In the fall of 2019, at the beginning of the new school year, I let my guard down, and listed a job opening for a mobile tutor. Like I said, as an entrepreneur, you don’t know things, until you know them. When I first started hiring tutors, I only wanted to hire teachers, a teacher, that had the same level of understanding as I did, because after all it was my reputation that was bringing in business to the company. My first go around of hiring, I interviewed about nine tutors, I on boarded all nine of them. Some of these tutors didn’t work out within the first two weeks, and we had to part ways. Out of those nine, three tutors blessed me with the ability to expand. Two of these tutors stuck with me for two years.

In the process of becoming more comfortable with hiring, I began to fine-tune and identify exactly what I was looking for in a tutor, whether a teacher or not. Today, in October 2022, I have 10 tutors on the team, and five members of a marketing and content creations team.

I no longer tutor myself, as my main goal is to continue expanding in every way possible.

Expansion, by hiring my first few employees, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do for my company. Being able to trust another person to care for the clients of this company the way I did was so hard for me. The more I opened myself up to trusting others, the more I grew. I am so grateful for this experience.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

As a new entrepreneur, with a small business still in its young stages of life, there have been many unforeseen challenges. When COVID-19 graced us with its presence, one brain learning center had an average of 25 tutoring sessions a week, every one of these sessions were face-to-face.

Still adapting to new tutors, new personalities, new clients, and bringing in new parts of the business structure, I did with any business owner with you, keep your clients happy.

Myself, like the rest of the world, invested in several paid Zoom accounts, in hopes to transfer all of the face-to-face sessions to virtual sessions. In my mind this was a great idea, and a happy medium for the tutors and the clients to remain safe as well as tutors still earning, and clients still getting support. I thought this was a wonderful idea! But, in a very big but there was, majority of my clients need one on one instruction, need that face to face in person support.

Some clients were willing to give virtual sessions a chance, while others automatically knew this was not going to be the right fit. So we tried! We all quickly learned how to troubleshoot Zoom. With students being at home, trying to navigate their own day today online school platform, many students weren’t remembering to login for their sessions, and being online all day for school, and then jumping online for tutoring session, well, you can imagine the burn out on a student and the lack of attention they could give at that point.

As much as I would like to have been more hopeful, and more positive, I just knew this wasn’t benefiting a lot of our students. We kept trying! I got to a point where clients were slowly falling off of the calendar one by one. I felt so defeated as an entrepreneur, as a leader, and as a teacher. I thought this would for sure be the death of one brain learning center.

As an entrepreneur, I communicate with all of the clients monthly, checking in, sending updates, giving information, and just trying to support in anyway that I can. The clients had a lot of trust and faith into one brain learning center, and without them and the patience of the tutors, we would not be back up and running in a face-to-face manner today.

We did what we can during the pandemic to survive, and the good thing is that we were all going through this together, we made it!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.onebrainlearningcenter.com
• Instagram: @onebrainlearningcenter
• Facebook: @onebrainlearningcenter