Ms Jones had just gotten out of a long-term relationship when she realized she was pregnant with her now 10-year-old son and was determined to give him an amazing life. After a decade, Ms Jones’ CoE has a presence in 150 different countries with over a thousand courses and a turnover of almost £13 million.
Ms Jones started her first business at 18 instead of going to university, with a classroom training business specializing in neurolinguistic programming and hypnotherapy.
As life went somewhat according to plan, the 39-year-old from Macclesfield found herself single, pregnant and struggling to keep up with the bills.
The father chose not to be involved with his child, leaving Mrs Jones to find a way to support himself and her son while trying to find a way to work from home once he arrived.
She shared, “Although it was a shock, I was determined, even as a single mom, to create an amazing life for him. I wanted to be able to work from home so I could spend as much time as possible with my son.
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“I spotted an opportunity in the market to create affordable and accessible training for everyone that can be studied online from anywhere in the world. I started by transforming the NLP and hypnotherapy courses that I was teaching online courses, then I found experts in different fields to help create our other course topics.
“It was very daunting at first to start a business as a single mom, but my main goal has always been to create a happy and stable life for my son, which has always been my motivation to overcome my fears and move on. “
The Center of Excellence was established in 2012, on a shoestring budget that required Ms. Jones to think outside the box in order to keep costs low.
She explained, “I contacted my local university and enlisted the help of two tech students to design and build a simple website for me. They did the job for free in exchange for a great reference they could use on their resume.
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“I then found a company that places international students looking for work experience in small businesses, helping them in any role from marketing to administration, again for free. Students were looking for valuable experience that would help them gain a future career.
Ms Jones revealed that during this time she ‘could pretty much pay my rent every month’ and hadn’t invested any money in her start-up simply because she didn’t have any.
Regardless of her financial troubles, she put her first live class on Groupon and reinvested all the sales rapidly expanding to 80 countries in just three years.
Now the Center of Excellence’s latest turnover was just under £13m after 10 years of working remotely and raising its children.
Since starting the business, Ms Jones has had three more children and noted that ‘it took hard work and determination to run a business and babies’ but it allowed her to be there for her children , the freedom to travel and work online. .
In fact, Mrs. Jones and her family even lived in Bali for a year: “I was able to work from our bamboo house in the jungle, above the coconut trees and have the most magical experience immersed in a new culture. .
“My son went to Green School there which is famous for its holistic education and my online activity introduced us to a completely different way of life.”
Not only was she able to provide everything she hoped for for her growing family, Ms Jones really loves what she does, noting how anyone could potentially change their life with the courses on offer.
She said, “I love seeing our clients learn new skills and improve their lives. The stories are so heartwarming from people around the world and it’s always amazing to see their confidence improve, new lives shaped and to be part of their journey.
“The world is changing so much right now with the introduction of new technologies and AI, so much so that in the future there will be a lot of jobs replaced by new technologies and even robots! So, I think we’ll see more and more people looking for new ways to make money, either on the side or full time.
“Online learning is so affordable and accessible these days that anyone can improve their skills anywhere in the world as long as they have access to the internet, whether on their laptop or even on his phone. So for anyone looking to change careers or create their own side hustle, there’s never been an easier way to do it.
She concluded: “These 10 years have been so amazing, full of ups and downs and many lessons learned.
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