Bryn Bonino: Make A Leap: From Teacher To Entrepreneur

How can you go from barely making it as a language teacher to become a successful language entrepreneur? After 3 years in the making, Bryn gathered the stories of 34 independent language educators and coaches in order to help others to successfully make the leap. In her talk, she shared the themes and trends in what all of the interviewees found to be successful.

Bryn repeatedly affirmed how much she has learnt from these conversations. In fact, there’s a lot of people out there with a lot of valuable advice. However, just because something worked for others, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll work for us too. In this regard, before telling us her findings, Bryn encouraged us to take a moment for self-reflection first: 

“Think of who you are, what values you hold dear and how you see the world”

The recurring themes included: starting a business, mindset, branding and positioning, designing a product, sales and new business, marketing and market research, organic and paid social, carving a niche, networking and referrals and identifying the right business coach/community.

During her presentation, Bryn mainly addressed the first five, quoting some of the interviewees and sharing some of the take-aways that emerged from her conversations. 

In a nutshell: 

1. It’s important to connect with real people and have conversations with them about potential partnerships. Don’t be afraid to pitch collaboration opportunities to larger businesses, especially when you’re first starting out; 
2. Having the right mindset is key. Love yourself enough to believe that you can do this;
3. Know yourself well enough to create a brand that is authentic for you;
4. Package your services into a product that’s easy to imagine, see and refer;
5. Use processes and a conversation guide for your sales conversations. And remember not to assume another identity, be you.

Learning about how Bryn met all these people and hearing their stories of success has been incredibly refreshing and insightful!

After the talk, the last 15 minutes of the session were dedicated to the Q&A, during which the attendees got to share some of their personal considerations too.

About the Speaker