I was a penniless single mum-to-be when I launched my online business – now it’s worth £4m
Sara Lou-Ann Jones jokes she was nicknamed Del Boy at school for her money-making schemes
SARA Lou-Ann Jones was single, pregnant and struggling to keep a roof over her head after her long-term relationship ended in 2011.
Desperate to provide a secure, happy future for her and her baby son, the 36-year-old from Macclesfield decided to have a go at creating her own online educational course business.
Determined Sara set herself a goal of moving out of her cramped rented flat and buying her own home, for £250,000, within a year. She smashed it and bought one for £280,000 outright, in cash.
In 2012, Sara went on to set up the Centre of Excellence, an online course provider that covers a range of subjects from yoga to dog grooming. In 2019, her business is set to generate over £4 million.
Sara spoke exclusively to Fabulous Digital for #BOSSINGIT, our new series about ordinary women who have launched incredible businesses.
She said: “I came out of a long-term relationship of six years and we went our separate ways. It was then that I found out that I was pregnant.
“When I told my ex-partner he decided he didn't want to be involved in our child’s life so I started thinking about how I could support myself and a baby on my own, financially. I wanted to create a wonderful life for my child and be involved at every step of the way.”
Sara jokes her nickname at school was Del Boy, after the wheeler dealer Only Fools and Horses character, because she was always finding ways to make money by selling sweets and books for a profit.
She decided against university and started her first business aged 19, selling advertising space before eventually going on to teach courses in Neuro Lingustic Programming.
This involved teaching a personal developmental set of tools to businesses, doing staff training and teaching classes from low hire cost venues like cricket clubs.
But Sara believed what she was teaching in person could be taught online and would reach a far wider audience at a more affordable cost.
She said: "At the time, I had been teaching classroom-based courses and so was away from home a lot. With the baby on the way I wanted something that would enable me to work from home so that I could spend as much time as possible with my baby, this is where the idea for running online courses came from and hence Centre of Excellence was born.”
After pestering popular online deal sites Wowcher and Groupon to advertise her courses, Sara says the business just flew.
She says: "No-one was selling educational online courses. Groupon and Amazon Daily Deals were only selling products and services. I kept pestering and when my on-line course appeared I suddenly got hundreds of orders.
"I contacted a local university and asked some students to create a website for me in return for a reference and spent my whole pregnancy working on the business. I even got a foreign student to help me for free."
Following on from the success of her online course she started to build her 'Centre of Excellence'. All of the courses, which are certified, accredited and can be paid for in instalments making them open for anyone to change their life.
Sara raked in £60,000 just one month in from her sales on Amazon and says her phone never stopped ringing. She realised her life really was changing.
Shortly after she gave birth to a baby son Luca, now six, she bought her own house in cash for £280,000.
As a time-poor single mum and businesswoman, Sara recalls having to get creative with childcare. She said: “When my son was very young I would set up a mini baby assault course around the room including things like a baby gym with a swing and different toys that would keep him entertained.
“I would move him around every 20 minutes to the different baby entertainment mats to keep him occupied while I worked on the settee next to him.”
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With no funding or childcare help from friends or family, she recalls her first moments as an entrepreneur: “I was breastfeeding the baby whilst on the phone to a customer.”
As the business expanded Sara rented her new home out and moved in to a £1 million rented house instead. And when Luca was two-years-old she met her current partner, digital marketing professional, Markerle Davis, 36, online.
The pair now have two children together Aurora, two, and Delilah, three months and bought a £2 million manor house in Cheshire six months ago - a far cry from the dark, cash strapped days of her early pregnancy.
The business now has 1,000 different courses created by experts, who Sara sources and pays a fee, and she sells them to 150 different countries worldwide.
And despite being offered as much as £10 million to sell her company she has no plans to give it up.
Sara says juggling kids and a business can be challenging but she is able to work from home and makes sure she and her partner make time for each other with a weekly date night.
She said: "Sometimes the darkest times turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Struggling for money and going through dark times makes me appreciate what other people go through and face. But you can still learn and change your life from home.
"The highlight for me is our growing community of customers. We have 1.4 million followers on facebook and I love learning how people have changed their lives through the courses.
MOST READ IN FABULOUS
Sara Lou-Ann Jones shares her top five business tips
- Follow your passion, set up your business around something that you love to do and be clear on your reason for setting up the business. If you know your ‘why’ this will keep you motivated through any tough times.
- If starting out with no money or on a low budget get creative with ways of getting set up. Contact your local college or university and enlist the help of some of the students looking to gain experience working on real business projects. Give them a great reference for their CV in return for their work on your business. Examples would be web design, building a social media following etc.
- Believe in yourself. There is no one out there that is better than you. Everyone starts somewhere, the most important thing is to take action; even if it’s just small steps, keep going until you get to where you want to be.
- Find a mentor, somebody who is already doing or has already done what you want to do. Success leaves clues; don’t be afraid to reach out to people and ask to interview people for tips on how they got started. Most successful entrepreneurs are more than happy to share some tips with you to help you on your way.
- Write out your goals. I’m very big on this, I have a big whiteboard that I write all my goals on for things that I want to achieve in my life. I split it into different columns. Family, business, finances, relationships, fun and travel. You can name your columns anything that you like but the act of writing your goals down keeps you really focussed on what you want to achieve.
"Sometimes I have to pinch myself and I wonder how life turned out this way. You just have to have the right mind set and think, ‘What can I do?’”
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