Definition Deep Dive
I think it’s funny when friends call me a business owner or an entrepreneur. I guess, technically speaking, it’s not wrong. There is a business and I am the owner. Entrepreneur comes from the French word, entreprendre, meaning undertake, and TriTutoring has been quite the undertaking. (I did look that up. I do not suddenly know French.)
But what is the modern English definition of entrepreneur? Merriam-Webster (I stopped myself from quoting Wikipedia here) defines entrepreneur as “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise”. So, maybe my friends and family did their research; maybe they Google’d entrepreneurship, read a few definitions, and rationally determined it was a fair label for me. But did they dig deep enough? Did they think critically enough? (Am I being too ridiculous?)
Enterprise, from the above definition, is defined as “a project or undertaking that is especially difficult, complicated, or risky”. To paraphrase like a good millennial would (shout out to Twitter for proving to me that I cannot write short thoughts), an entrepreneur is a person who manages something and takes on the risk of the complicated thing. Sound familiar? Sounds a lot like parents or teachers!
Where am I going with this convoluted deep dive, which has now ruined the English language for you? Unless you’re going to call teachers entrepreneurs, I’d prefer a different label. Let’s go with a gardener.
Ready for a nicely stretched, to the point of snapping, analogy?
Gardeners take seeds and soil (and probably other things that I would know about if I could successfully grow a plant) and, with patience, dedication, passion, and lots of sun and water, nurture those seeds into something beautiful. Gardeners are in it for both the process and the final product.
I love education. I love working with students one-on-one and watching their confidence grow as their fundamentals strengthen. I love mentoring. I will toot my own horn here and say that I am, coincidentally given the analogy, patient, dedicated, and passionate, when it comes to my tutoring experience, even before it was called TriTutoring. Would that be enough? No.
The sun and water of TriTutoring are the families and tutors who have trusted me with their experience, whether that be as a student, a concerned parent, or a tutor looking to cultivate students’ skills in the areas they are most passionate about. I believe my high school biology teacher would say this is a symbiotic relationship (which I also had to look up). TriTutoring doesn’t just help students grow and tutors be their best. TriTutoring is also nurtured and encouraged by those same people.
Yesterday was TriTutoring LLC’s one year anniversary of being an LLC, which is the one year anniversary of me finally saying “this can grow” to the world. I can definitely say I am proud of myself. Emotionally, it was a risk to take something I cared so much about and let others have a hand in it. More than proud, though, I am grateful. Thank you to the sun and water who chose to grow with TriTutoring. Here’s to another year of growth!