At 23 years old, Kate Shand was laid up with a broken back from a skiing accident when she started her private tuition and schools advice company Enjoy Education.

“When less good things happen, it’s all about how you deal with them. I didn’t want to sit around doing nothing, and I wanted to give something back,” she remembers.

“A lot of the best things in life… their path almost happens despite you.”

With no financial backing, Kate’s startup today counts more than 5000 learners of all ages worldwide, providing tutor support from pre-school to university admissions.

It also advises families on finding the right schools, and recently launched an online tutoring platform.

Read on for Kate’s advice on scaling to quality, and managing through communication.

EXPANDING AMBITION, TUTORING ACROSS TIME ZONES

Working one-on-one with children, no job is the same.

Every child and family is different, and it’s a constantly changing process. As a company, we have become more and more ambitious.

Our mission statement evolves every year, its scope has become larger and larger. We’ve had to evolve from just tutoring, to building out a new side of the business with our schools advisory.

Two years ago, we launched our bespoke online teaching platform, during a UK trade delegation trip to China — it has the functionality of video conferencing and screen sharing, allowing students to do high-level maths, quadratic equations and annotate texts.

We can have tutors working full-time, but across time zones — they’ll be tutoring British kids after school, and Chinese kids after school — but in the British morning.

QUALITY AND CONTROLLED SCALING

Quality is the absolute nuts and bolts of your business.

In every single decision that my team and I have made over the years, we’ve always made sure that no matter how we grew, we kept quality at the forefront of everything.

We could easily have scaled much more quickly, we could have been in many more countries by now.

But we needed an infrastructure, and to make sure that the teaching platform was state of the art.

We didn’t want technology to hamper the teaching process, and that could be a worry, with different firewalls and internet speeds.

W e’re really ambitious as a company — but we pace our ambition.

BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURE AND PROCESSES

You have to invest in infrastructure and systems. Make sure you’re being as smart as possible with any processes you can automate, whether it’s coming from the sales or the invoicing side.

Processes are vital. The bigger a company gets, the more process-driven it has to become — because people need to understand how systems and your sales delivery works.

It’s a challenge and we’ve really had to drill down on that. How can we make sure our service is always as streamlined as it can be?

ADAPTING YOUR BUSINESS TO AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

One of my favorite quotes is from Wayne Gretzky, the famous ice hockey player. He said, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

I think that’s so true of everything we do at the moment. Technology is changing everything so fast, and we have to think about the next step, what’s ahead.

Not how the kids are learning now, but where the kids will be in five or ten years.

So many jobs haven’t even been created yet for today’s teenagers and younger students — and it will be difficult to marry up what they learn in school with their work lives.

CODING — THE FUTURE LANGUAGE

I’m delighted that coding is now part of the curriculum, because it’s such an important part of the future.

If you’re not teaching your kid to code, maybe it’s because you’re almost scared of it yourself.

But coding isn’t the dark arts. It’s a process, and basically just learning how a computer works. It’s a language.

A lot of kids will need to know coding to get on in life — to be able to address technology, to really think about its potential and how to utilize it to create bigger and better, new and innovative things.

THE CO-FOUNDER CHOICE

I started the business by myself, I’ve never had a partner or a co-founder.

I recently met someone who has had a complete nightmare with their business partner, it ended up very badly — and sometimes I think it’s a good thing that I never had one.

On the other hand, when you haven’t had a day off, all year… there are obviously pros and cons to it.

You can’t force a business partnership, but if there’s someone who naturally complements you, that’s something on which to really drill down.

Do they really complement me, my skills… and what will they bring to the company?

LEADERSHIP AND HUMILITY

Leadership is a key motivator. You have to be fair, and spend a lot of time on management. If you don’t really think about people, and how they want to progress in their careers, you won’t get the best out of them — or the best out of your company.

I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t hired amazing people. We have exceptional talent in the team, and really exciting people on the board.

We’re going from strength to strength, but I’m not scared to hire fantastic people who really push other members of the team, and me — people who are always growing and challenging what we do.

You won’t be successful by thinking that your decisions are always right, but by involving other people.

TEAM AND TRANSPARENCY

We’re a people business and we have great office dynamics. We put our heads down and work really hard, but we also have lots of laughs and get on really well — and I think that’s because we have a shared goal.

It’s really important that people feel that they’re part of the growth and that no matter what stage you’re at — whether you’re new in a startup or you’ve been with the company for while — everybody feels that they are contributing to its success.

You have to stay transparent, and keep trust. You have to invest in your employees, and they have to invest in you.

It’s worth getting it right. You spend a lot of time training people and it’s very disruptive if people leave — so you want to get the right people on board, the first time around.

MANAGING IS COMMUNICATING

Management is definitely challenging, and I’ve gone through my ups and downs.

Communication is key. As an entrepreneur, it’s very easy to be flexible, to change your mind and move forward. But other people don’t always operate like that — and they need clarity.

We have quarterly presentations to help the team understand where the company is going, what we’re trying to build — so people aren’t operating in mystery.

Be careful to explain any changes in your company’s direction — and don’t be afraid to address the elephant in the room if someone resigns, or is unhappy.

One colleague wasn’t very happy, and after we talked it through, we realized that there had been a couple of misunderstandings. That was a “eureka!” moment for me. People can’t read your mind — you have to make time for them.

THE FALSENESS OF THE JOB INTERVIEW

When hiring, we look at different things. We have tests that people do before the interview to show their project management skills. The interview itself is such a false situation.

You only see one side of a person, but we try to find different ways to help people open up and be themselves.

I believe that a job interview is a two-way street, and there’s no point in somebody putting on a brave face or saying something they don’t believe in.

We try to put people at ease and see if it’s a right fit, for both parties.

PICK YOURSELF UP, DUST YOURSELF OFF

If you’re just starting out, you’ve got to have passion and really care about what you do — because you’ll spend a lot of time doing it, and it’ll be hard at times.

You have to love the idea, believe in what you’re doing — and have a lot of grit. You have to really pick yourself up and dust yourself off when things don’t go your way.

Be open to improving as a person, all the time. You can improve on everything that happens — even when it doesn’t go your way, you’ll learn from it.

And make sure that entrepreneurship is right for you.

Is it right for you, personally, to just drop everything and focus fully on your career? You have to give it 150%, the whole time, and you’ve got to live your brand.

IN EDUCATION, SUCCESS IS WHEN YOU’RE NO LONGER NEEDED

When people don’t need tutoring, then our job is done — that’s success. Kids need to learn how to think creatively — but it’s not only about tutoring. It’s about mentorship and support, giving them confidence and challenging them in different ways. We help them learn how to learn best.

KEY INSIGHTS

• Balance your growth and scaling with quality. Make sure that one does not come at the expense of the other.

• Think one step ahead, and into the future. Visualize how ways of doing things might change — and be sure to address those changing conditions.

• As your company grows, invest in infrastructure, systems and processes. Automate what you can, and streamline.

• There are pros and cons to having a co-founder — but if you do, make sure that you co-founder complements you.

• Leadership is motivating — but stay humble. Make sure your staff feel that they’re part of the company’s growth, and important to its success.

• Managing is communicating. Keep things transparent, and talk to your staff about the company’s direction, and any worries they have.

• If you fall, pick yourself up and dust yourself off. And learn from it.

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