Kumon Australia & New Zealand

Five years ago, Carmel Davies swapped careers and became a Kumon franchisee, opening Kumon North Hobart Education Centre. In this Q and A, we hear about Carmel’s experience and how her career with Kumon is progressing. **Q: Could you outline your career prior to Kumon?** A: I had a very varied career prior to Kumon, completely different to what I'm doing now. I started out training in hotel management, went overseas for seven years and travelled around, and lived in the UK. During that time, I fell into human resources. When I came back to Australia, I headed to Western Australia, and worked in the mining boom over there in HR with one of the big mining giants. Then over the years, I decided that I would work my way into operational leadership, so that's what I did. I had quite a big team, but my family and I decided we needed to stop moving around. We lived in the Pilbara, in Northern WA for a number of years, and it was very hot there. So, being from Tassie, we decided to come back here. When I returned to Tasmania, I had a job with Origin Energy. I looked after all of the drivers, the terminals, the schedulers to deliver gas to King Island and all of Tasmania, so that was quite fun. But then they gave me all of Victoria, and Eden and Wagga Wagga in New South Wales. Again, I was always traveling, so it was time for a change. **Q: Why did you choose to become a Kumon Instructor?** A: My main driver in the beginning was to just stop travelling. I can remember coming home from a work trip and my kids said to me, "Oh, we didn't even miss you this time." And I was like, "Oh my gosh," shock horror. I was talking to a colleague at Origin about what's next, what do I do? He actually, whether he was joking or not, he raised joining Kumon as an Instructor. He said, "You remind me of my kids Kumon Instructor in Adelaide." I started looking into it from that day. I'd heard of Kumon, but I didn't know the ins and outs of what it would mean. **Q: What convinced you to take the first step and open a franchise?** A: For me, it was working for myself. I had worked pretty hard in male dominated industries for a number of years, and I was a bit burnt out, so that was one of the things. The other was that, as I've mentioned, I was away from home a lot and I wanted to be here. As I started to look into it, I thought, "Yeah, this is something that I think I can do." I've got a big learning curve, but I could make a difference really. So started looking at it and it's gone from there. **Q: Five years on, what motivates you to continue as an Instructor?** A: My motivation is completely different now to when I started. Then it was all about just being home, having something different in my life. Now it's about the excitement that I get when I see kids get excited, they build their confidence, and families are thankful. Families love what Kumon can do for their kids, whether it's just study habits and developing those, or whether it's really extending and catching up in their work. It's really now just those experiences with kids and families that keep me going. That's the fun bit. It takes a while to build those relationships, and I've got some kids who've been with me for over three years of my five that I've been open and others, you may see for six months and they have what they need. But it's the joy of seeing and experiencing that with them. My job in the centre is primarily assessing classwork and giving homework. I get to see every kid when they finish, we celebrate if they get a hundred on their work that day straight out, or get a reading score of one, really sort of having a personal best time for their work. We're very specific with that feedback and so they get excited by that. But then on the flip side, I have families who call me or in our sort of monthly catch ups, they'll say, "Oh, little Johnny was so excited because he got to be the banker when we played monopoly on the weekend, because he's now more confident with maths." This morning I had a mum tell me that her daughter now can read her text messages better, so she's excited. It's those real-life impacts, I think, that make it worthwhile and celebrate with the kids. **Q: As an Instructor, what does the average day look like for you?** A: I get up just naturally around 6am, check emails very quickly. Then I go off and exercise myself, my dog, shower, get ready, and I probably don't start work each day until about 10:00am. Mondays and Thursdays, we have our long class for about four hours. Tuesday and Fridays, two to three hours, depending on numbers. I'll do some admin at my home office for probably two hours during the day to three hours. Then I'll have parent calls, from maybe four to six parents each day. Then I'll head into the centre after having lunch and relaxing at about 2:30pm, and be ready at 3pm for a 3:45pm start. Wednesdays, I try not to work at all unless I've got head office training and things like that. I've become a lot better at not what working on a weekend. It's really four days a week for me, and juggling all the things I need to do in that time. **Q: Does your schedule allow for strong work-life balance?** A: Absolutely. In my mind, that's one of the best things of being an Instructor is being able to self-manage your time, not doing the crazy nine to five and the commutes and all that sort of stuff. I'm still strolling around the dog park at 8:30am when everyone's bustling to get into their job. That's one of the biggest things for me is that I can dictate when and how I work. **Q: What are some of the challenges of being an instructor and how do you overcome them?** A: I'm in year five as an Instructor, and it took me four years to realise I didn't have to do everything myself. Instead, I could find the right person who could help me. Luckily, I had that person who could help me with tasks such as doing certificates and entering achievement test results into the system. there are various things that I really don't need to do and have an impact on. However, as with staffing, this person has now moved on to her ideal job. I've got to start from scratch on that aspect. So things change all the time. Another challenge I overcame early on I was around setting up some structure with communication to families and parents. A lot of the time they come to Kumon because they don't know what's going on at school. I wanted to close that gap for them, and that was a challenge to get on top of. But now, I have a very smooth system that works for me. I talk to parents, well, every one month, three months, six months, nine months, 12 months. And then when things change in terms of the work as well, so we are regularly talking. There are always going to be challenges, but I think there are solutions if you think outside the box and realise you don't have to do everything. **Q: What advice would you offer to people considering becoming an Instructor?** A: Do it. It can be the best life change ever. I was from senior leadership and had a business brain, I established all of my systems for rostering, payroll, superannuation, pretty quickly, so that I didn't have to think about that stuff later on. And while I’d say treat your franchise like a business, set yourself up for success by setting personal boundaries, because I'll get text messages at 9:30pm on a Saturday night from a parent because that's just when they're thinking about what's meant to be happening in the next week. But I don't respond then, I respond at a time when it’s more suitable for me. So set your boundaries up, set your business up and then once you've got all your processes and systems in place, it leaves you time for the real stuff, which is the interaction with the students, the planning for them, and the instruction. **Q: Is there anything else you might like to say?** A: I was very, very lucky in my first two or three years with Kumon, head office were wonderful. I asked a lot of my field consultant and he expected a lot of me back. I suppose what I learned from that is that, is to take on board the suggestions you receive from elsewhere. I would try everything my FDC asked me to do. Some of it I really liked and I've kept. Other things I'd say, "No, that just doesn't work for me." So, until you find the right thing, I think just take on board all of the suggestions and information you get from elsewhere, ask head office to help because everyone there is more than willing to do so. The teams there have all got specialties that we Instructors don't have, such as marketing and they are really forthcoming with a lot of information.

Q&A: Hear from a current Kumon franchisee with five years' experience