Inspiration
This mother became an entrepreneur to provide quality education to her children.
Not satisfied by the quality of education delivered at school, Priya Venkat hunted for ways to improve her children’s learning. When local centers did not yield results, she decided to take matters in her hands and took up a franchisee of ‘Best in Class’ and hasn’t look back ever since.
Name: Priya Venkat
Franchise: Best in Class Education Center
Franchise locations: Allen, Texas, and McKinney, Texas
Number of years in business/Number of employees: 2 and a half years / 11 part-time employees
Initial franchise fee: $27,000 – $30,000
Total investment: $90,000 – $100,000
That is an impressive set of figures spliced from any angle. The credit for this success story hinges on one simple life changing decision. For Priya Venkat, it was enrolling her children in a Best in Class Education Center.
Armed with her bachelor’s and master’s degrees, Venkat moved to Seattle where she spent the next 14 years in the field of medicine, specializing in fertility. As amply indicated by her background, she values education highly and was very conscious about what her children were learning — or what they weren’t. “After toting around parent-teacher conferences and checking my children’s homework, I became alarmingly aware that the education my children were receiving in school fell short,” she says.
Not someone to sit back and let a situation take over, she decided to take matters in her own hands. She shopped around for an education program that would help her kids, but she had a tough time finding the right one for her family. “After visiting … ‘household name’ centers, I was convinced that their curriculums were outdated, repetitive and didn’t offer the necessary strength to uphold advanced lessons,” she says. “In 2007, I brought my 4-year-old to Best in Class and have never doubted my decision since.”
Her husband’s job transfer from Seattle to Texas gave Venkat an opportunity to chase her entrepreneurship dream. She instinctively knew she wanted to own a business, and the franchisee route would be the most appropriate as it would allow her to be a part of a proven system and have corporate resources and experience at her disposal. Looking back at her experience with ‘Best in Class’, “It was my first-person experience as a mother that inspired me to open my own center in Plano-Allen, Texas,” she says. “I used my personal experience and what I saw going on in my own children’s school to inform my decision-making about becoming a franchisee with Best in Class.”
Maternal instinct aside, she did her research online before getting into the business. The rest was as easy as 123. Venkat says she didn’t face any unexpected challenges getting started due to the support and preparation she received from the company’s corporate team.
Today, Venkat is a proud owner of 2 franchisees of Best in Class and is eager to expand. She also has plans to give back to the community through philanthropy in the future. For those who want to follow in her footsteps, she offers this lesson: “Bring enthusiasm, drive, energy, a paper/pencil and a smile to work every day!”