Very Short Interview No. 1

My interview with Debbie Shaw:

Debbie Shaw owns a home daycare business. She has successfully managed this business for eighteen years and throughout the years has expanded to provide tutoring services and swimming lessons. She is an entrepreneur because she assumed financial, career, and social risks to start this business along with investing her time and money. She has created value in this business by providing special nurturing and educational skills that have guided young children to grow into mature adolescents ready for a bright future.

1. How did you decide to leave your previous career to begin a new business?
• I was originally a school teacher. And to be honest, I had a child of my own and did not want to put my own child in a daycare, so I started a daycare business so I could stay home with my child and earn a living taking care of other people's children.  Had I not had a child of my own, I probably would have continued teaching. I saw the value of being a stay at home mom, so I chose the best of the both worlds: I got to continue to teach, which was my chosen career, and stay home with my children.
2. When you began your business, what did you bring to it that was unique from other home daycare's?
• Other home day-cares don't offer swimming lessons, homework help, tutoring, field trips, or service part-time needs (many home day-cares only take full time children). I cater to all ages, infants to 12 year olds, meals, and transportation to school.  I was a certified teacher. That gives me more credibility when I offer tutoring services, I had been taught how to best educate kids. Most home daycares are just some lady without any degree at all, just babysitting. I'm providing education: reading and writing skills that can better prepare them for kindergarten than the average home daycare operator.
3. What do you wish you had been taught in school before starting your own business? 
• That's a tough one. I didn't go to school to start the business, I went to school to be a teacher not a home daycare operator. I do okay with budgeting as far as supplies and food and I don't think I needed help there. And I knew how to talk with parents about children's behavior. I guess before starting my own business I wish I would have had more computer skills which would have allowed me to take certification classes with ease. I could have budgeted using the computer for food, payments, receipts, printing delinquent payment notices. Using Word and Excel would have helped write newsletters and create my attendance roster and menu charts. I have to log attendance, I have to log transportation, I have to log income which all would have been easier if I had the skills to use a computer.

I didn't originally think of Debbie as an entrepreneur. She didn't fit the profile I had in my head of someone who creates a new invention and turns it into a business.  I didn't know of anyone else that owns their own business, so that's why I interviewed her. And it turns out, I really do think she is an entrepreneur because she brought her teaching skills to her business and offered a wider variety of services than the typical home daycare does.