If you were to tell Adrienne Pierce “it can’t be done”… you’d be wrong.

• Launch a Tutor Doctor franchise with 8-mo-old twins?
• Be solely responsible for the money now flowing into her account?
• Find a satisfying balance between motherhood and mompreneurship?

Read how she has made it all happen in less than six months and the surprising lessons she’s learned along the way.

Corporate Just Wouldn’t Cut It

Just last year, Adrienne Pierce welcomed twins into her world! Like many moms after three months of maternity leave, she didn’t want to be away from her babies, but she also craved adult interaction and couldn’t wait to get back to work. Adrienne also knew that, when she did return to work, she didn’t want to go back to a corporate office job. So, she went shopping.

Adrienne started looking for franchise opportunities through a broker because she knew she wanted what corporate couldn’t offer: schedule flexibility, high margins, time at home with her babies, and to be able to afford daycare to help socialize them – and for an occasional, well-deserved Mommy’s Day Out.

Her broker recommended Tutor Doctor – not her first choice, Adrienne admits, because she wasn’t interested in teaching or managing people. But she dove deeper into the Tutor Doctor concept and realized the franchise would empower her to work from home and give her access to immediate cash flow. She says she was attracted by the low initial investment and strong economics, and when she saw there were only a few remaining territories near her Houston home, she jumped on the opportunity.

From Mom to Mompreneur

Armed with a seemingly endless supply of supermom energy, Adrienne launched her Tutor Doctor franchise in mid-August – with a pair of 8-month-olds. She laughs about it now, but Adrienne says her first few months as a franchise owner were rough. She was convinced she could run her business successfully – but it wasn’t going as smoothly as she expected.

“I had already been part of two successful startup launches, so, in those first three months at Tutor Doctor, I thought I had everything figured out. But I didn’t meet my 60-day goal and I didn’t understand why – and I got frustrated. I had just spent all this money on a business that wasn’t working the way I planned.”

Adrienne says it took weeks of hearing the same advice from her Launch Support Specialist and the Tutor Doctor corporate team over and over again before she got the message – she says they were persistent and always professional. And once she decided to go with the flow instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, she says, “the money started coming in.” She put her trust in the Tutor Doctor team – and nearly doubled her 180-day goal.

And now?

“I have been so happy,” she says, “I make my own hours, make my own schedule. I work eight hours a day – I spend about four hours on tutor recruitment and management, and the last part of the day on student recruitment and management.”

It Takes A Village

Adrienne has discovered exciting similarities between her mom life and her entrepreneur life. Specifically, she’s found that having access to a network of experienced and like-minded people makes both jobs a lot easier.

“They say, ‘it takes a village to raise a child,’ and you know what? It takes a village to run a business, too. I’m a member of these online twin mom groups – groups of women around the world who are there for each other and have the experience to say ‘no, no need to take them into the emergency room over a 101-degree fever.’

And the network of Tutor Doctor franchisees in the Houston area is a lot like that. We all signed on within about nine months of each other and we do our best to stay in touch and help each other out. We’re working on setting up regular meetings to touch base and see how we can expand our reach and marketing efforts together.”

You’re Not in This Alone

To other franchise candidates hoping to join the Tutor Doctor system, Adrienne offers just this poignant piece of business advice: “Put your trust in the franchisor. You’re not in this alone.” She says if she could start the process over again from the beginning, she would put her trust in the Tutor Doctor operational processes much sooner. “They’ve been doing this a long time, way longer than I have. They know what works and they know what they’re doing.”

And only about half a year into her journey as a business owner, Adrienne is impressed by her own personal and professional growth. “My favorite part of owning this business is how much I’m growing as a person and as a mother. I’m so self-reliant, it’s hard to come out and ask for anything – whether it’s asking for business or for a Google review. But as a franchisee I’ve learned ‘no’ isn’t the end of the world and that the yesses you get are so great, it makes the ‘no’s worth it.”