We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sydney Turner a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Sydney thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

Risk has so many definitions and meanings behind the four lettered word. One of the definitions I have chosen is an act or fail to act in such a way as to bring about the possibility of (an unpleasant or unwelcome event). I would like to interchange the word risk with leap. The greatest leap I have taken was birthing a business in the middle of a pandemic. I quit my guaranteed job which gave me a guaranteed income every two weeks to educate children who have been quarantined and not exposed to anyone other than their families. Crazy right? Well the leap which now is identified as faith landed me with 40 children and 7 staff members. I’m the middle of chaos I was not only able to provide for my household but I was able to help children still learn in a capacity where they were not losing any instruction time.

I took the leap of faith because I felt I was failing preschoolers by teaching them via zoom. I believed I had the strategy of how we could overcome the shutdown of the world. However I realized quickly there was only me and we live in a country with 50 states and there was only one me (lol).

The leap of faith has been the best thing I have ever done to create a legacy for my children and their children.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have been in education for over 12+ years. My passion and desire is to build the foundation for early learners and help their parents engage in their learning journey.

My program Ready 2 Transition solves the problem of “my child can’t read” or “my child doesn’t understand” by completing diagnostic assessments upon enrollment. Our assessments narrow down the gaps of what the child may be missing or where they are frustrated at. With being able to identify the gaps we are able to build bridges over the gaps so they are able to continue their learning journey without falling behind.

My team communicates with parents and schools to make sure we are in alignment of the goals for the learner.

We are dedicates to our families. We sit in on IEP/504 planning for children as we advocate for whats best for the child.

we host family engagement workshops for families to understand materials and receive resources on how to become a better support their learner.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Word of mouth. As much as we would like to thank social media and the marketing team does a great job unfortunately, word of mouth has been the best resource for the continuing of Ready 2 Transition. I have personally went to childcare’s to drop of business cards and show my face, emailed schools, partnered with other organizations but my return has came from other parents BRAGGING how well they have seen a turnaround with their child academically,emotionally and mentally.

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

My near death experience was last year. I had taken on a huge project to build an after school program for an organization I was in partnership with. The team and myself worked day in and day out to make sure we were able to service the school and put the policies and practices into play.

We had a successful year and saw the growth in the children which the teachers were excited as well. However, when the contract was over we didn’t have any children enrolled in the program because they were all enrolled under the school and we neglected the children outside of the organization because our focus was solely on making sure we executed the assignment.

January came and there was one student enrolled. I had to make the executive decision to lay my assistant off which I dreaded to do. I had to find other ways to funnel kids through and continue the dream of Ready 2 Transition.

Through that I was able to launch my crayon line called Transition Crayons to generate more revenue. I was able to creat more partnerships through offering our FREE cpr and first class to children K-12.

Being a business owner isn’t peaches and cream it requires us to reset and revamp even when we believe we have the perfect strategy.     

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.Ready2transition.org
• Instagram: Ready2transition
• Facebook: Ready2Transition