Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in tutorial services but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Morgan Bissett-Tessier, Marketing Director and Managing Tutor of MyGuru LLC, located in Chicago, IL, USA.
What's your business, and who are your customers?
We are a boutique provider of 1-1 tutoring and test prep with a core concept-led approach, meaning our objective is to help our students understand the fundamental concepts, not tips and tricks. All of our independently contracted tutors have many years of tutoring experience and impressive academic backgrounds. We require a minimum of three years of tutoring and/or teaching experience. All of our tutors have undergraduate degrees, and most have advanced degrees, from highly selective academic institutions. We also require standardized test scores in the 95th percentile at a minimum. We have a small but highly qualified team, and one of our founders personally interviews each tutor. We believe that tutoring requires a different skill set than classroom teaching. We know that simply understanding a given subject well doesn’t create a great tutor. We also stress the importance of mindset, strategy, confidence, effective study habits, and time management and organization skills in achieving superior performance in school and on standardized tests.
Tell us about yourself
Mark Skoskiewicz holds a B.S. in Business Administration with a Major in Finance from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business (he received additional minors in Philosophy and History). At IU, Mark was an undergraduate economics instructor teaching supplemental small group sessions for the department’s introductory economics course. During his junior and senior years, he was a private economics, finance, and accounting tutor. After Indiana, Mark spent eight years working for Marakon Associates, a boutique strategy consulting firm that works with Fortune 500 clients to help them address their most complex and important issues (i.e., identifying the most attractive customer segments, evaluating major opportunities to enter new markets, launch new products, or acquire other companies, etc.). Mark founded MyGuru in 2009 to make it easier for parents and students to find high-quality yet affordable tutors. His belief was that while there are hundreds of tutoring options and many websites offering to connect parents and students to tutors, it still wasn’t easy to find a great tutor at an affordable price who would help build core academic skills through a transparent process where prices, session objectives, and overall expectations for the tutoring relationship were clearly defined. While Mark continues to optimize the MyGuru approach to providing high-quality 1-1 tutoring in Chicago, he’s working hard to expand MyGuru to other cities, which currently include New York, Boston, and Minneapolis. MyGuru is also focused on expanding its online tutoring options. He’s also leading a more recent charge to redefine the MyGuru brand. While he wants MyGuru to always be known as a source for excellent tutors, we want to also be a thought leader on how to improve academic performance through shifts in mindset, well-defined study plans, improved study habits, and even stress reduction strategies. He believes these ideas are a powerful, critical complement to working with an expert private tutor.
What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?
Growing MyGuru until a national tutoring company (from its base in Chicago) and expanding its online tutoring offering so that MyGuru tutors are able to work from and with students from all over the world.
What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?
Remembering to take time for myself and my family; turning off the phone and email every once in a while to be present with myself and/or loved ones.
What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?
- Persevere and get creative when you run into roadblocks.
- Keep an eye out for opportunity in unlikely places
- Networking and maintaining business relationships are important and will inevitably come in handy.
Where can people find you and your business?
MyGuru LLC
If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solopreneur that you'd like to share, then email community@subkit.com; we'd love to feature your journey on these pages.
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