www.leor.com.au
Entrepreneurial Journey told by two students
Story written by Niki Sio
“I mean personally I didn’t like pre-school. I wanted my children at home at such a young age and I just felt like taking them to big childcare centre just wasn’t something that I wanted. I’d talked to my husband, so we wanted something that was more comfortable and more tailored. I wanted to create a childcare alternative for my own children, that allowed them to access education at home. Once I came up with the idea, I felt that my diverse work experience as a lawyer, an accountant, and a company director provided me with the skills I needed to get this business off the ground. It’s really about using all of my skills together but doing it in a way that aligns with my values. I think what I find in terms of being an entrepreneur, mixing with other people is that you often find people who have a passion, and they might go into doing a business with a passion, but they don’t always have the skills to make the business work, so I think that experience has made it much more effective for me. My family owns businesses all of my life, so I had been always exposed to people who were very entrepreneurial. When I was working in my last role, I had a really good experience of trying something new and how to do things differently. And then, my boss in that role, resigned. He didn’t put me into his role which was promised to me. I was overlooked, so I thought I would challenge myself and see what I could do for myself really that’s, that was kind of a spark. At the beginning of the venture, I always thought that I was going to fail. I remember when I was training to be a lawyer in my early days, and I was within the litigation team, so we would go into court all the time. In one of our trading sessions, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court said to us, ‘when you stop being nervous before you’ve walked into court that’s probably the time that you need to start doing it because you need a little bit of nervousness’, and I think the same thing applies to entrepreneurship. As a leader, I have to be very alert to what’s going, think about the risks before anybody else and train my team to have those types of skills. We’re also taking the responsibility to create a better working environment for the educators. I’m happy that when we do our engagement surveys with staff we just get really positive feedback, but that’s something that we still try to do.”
Story written by Zengyang Zhong
“ My family’s always in business so I’d always been exposed to people around me who we revery entrepreneurial. When I was working in my last role, as legal, a very entrepreneurial concept, first because of its kind, it really gave me a lot of experience trying something new,t rying things that don’t work and how to do something different. And then, I was overlookedwhen my boss in his role resigned. So I thought I would challenge myself and say what Icould do for myself. Really, that was kind of a spark, I’d already been thinking about doingsomething on my own and I was inspired to do something very innovative and push myself tochallenge myself to prove to myself that I could do it. ” “Yeah, so I think all of my experiences come together. I’ve worked in the corporate side, thegovernment side, the risk side, in the not for profit area where it’s more compassionate andmentorian. So I’ve brought all of that together to create what’s a commercial business that hasmore heartfelt values and where we can deliver services by balancing profit with purpose. It’sreally about using all of my skills together but doing it in a way that aligns with my values.”“I did a lot of research on the concept and looked at journal articles and research studies thathave been done around home based Childcare and Education. And then I had the idea ofthese different concepts so by that stage I’d already sort of understood the landscape of thesector. ”“We deliver home based childcare, essentially bringing early childhood education and careinto the family’s own home. We support mainly children that are in preschool, but we alsosupport children with artists and vacation care as well. We became an NDIS provider at thestart of this year, but we were doing disability support before that. And that’s mainly aroundthe children community, who need to achieve certain outcomes and try to get them the bestoutcomes in their early childhood if they’re having developmental delay or a deficit identifiedby a therapist or doctor.”“What we’re finding is the individualized learning together with a holistic model where wetake into account a lot of the child’s needs. So doctors, therapists and parents are resulting inthe child achieving goals faster than they would have if they just attended therapy, and alsomeaning that they’ve been to prevent long term developmental delays.”