Little Beginners Christian Preschool, Jennifer and Bethanie
For several years it was a family joke: whenever they saw an empty building, they said that it would be a good location for a private school. Jennifer and Bethanie, a mom/daughter duo, shared a dream and they worked well together. Jennifer and Bethanie worked together to successfully raise funds for a younger family member’s senior grad party. They both experienced preschool education when Bethanie interned as a teacher’s assistant and Jennifer agreed to spend her summer helping out. As a youngster Bethanie accompanied, Jennifer, to school on “bring your child to work” days. Education was a big part of their lives. They had the education and several years of experience in the public school system. Jennifer had volunteered as her children attended school and has worked as a paraprofessional in middle school. Bethanie has her bachelor’s degree in K-8th grade education and Special Education and a Master’s degree in autism spectrum disorder and has taught special education. Searching for a preschool for Bethanie’s son was the spark that ignited them into action to make their dream a reality. But there was a big hurdle. They didn’t have the experience, education, or knowledge to run a business.
The lack of business knowledge didn’t deter them. The success of fundraising for the senior parent group gave them confidence and they started researching what they would need to do to make this a successful venture. They were still working and in their spare time, each would research a different aspect of what opening a business involved. When Jennifer was researching business licenses, she stumbled on SCORE on the business licensing page. The investigating and hard footwork learned from the senior project drove her to investigate what SCORE was and she quickly told Bethanie “We need this!”. They submitted a mentoring request, were assigned to mentor Clint Pickett, and the journey began.
In the very first meeting, they developed their first business plan. Bethanie described it as brutal but she liked the process of working on the plan, sending it to the mentor for review, and getting it back for more refinement. Clint would direct them to investigate and evaluate different resources to assist with the business plan. They quickly gained the confidence to ask questions until they totally understood a concept. Jennifer was surprised by SCORE’s plethora of resources. Bethanie compared SCORE to that one teacher that doesn’t give up on you. SCORE doesn’t do the work for the client but will assist, direct, and listen to provide valuable guidance and support.
“Once we discovered SCORE and started utilizing them it felt like we started coming together as a business,” Jennifer stated. She went on to say, “The information that they give you helped put all that’s in our head into categories making it more useful. It showed us how to move forward in specific areas like marketing. We still pull out our notes”.
They had lost contact with their first mentor and submitted a new request to continue their relationship with the SW Washington Chapter of SCORE. Their new mentor, Tigue Howe, met with the educators several times and brought in co-mentors to assist with marketing, website design, and pricing. The co-mentors provided marketing templates and assistance to find the best pricing model and “how to” tactics to increase prices. Clients can meet with one mentor or many mentors for the life of their business.
The tools SCORE provided were game changers especially the proforma/forecasting spreadsheet that allowed them to do what-if analysis. Bethanie could input different enrollment figures and forecast the impact on their business. Bethanie was excited about using the models to forecast and predict outcomes for many different what-if scenarios. She continues to use the spreadsheet models as they move forward. More templates are available on the SCORE website.
When asked if they will continue to use SCORE Jennifer replied, “The business moves quickly. If you’re not staying on top of it and constantly tending to it, it can get away from you very quickly. The mentorship and the wisdom SCORE provides helps us be successful.”
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