A Time of Change: The Future of Our Business
Happy October to all of our wonderful clients, students, and business partners! Brady Gilliam here. It's been a busy few months for the Group, but I've finally gotten a chance to sit down and reflect on our organization's recent growth. I'm happy to share my thoughts with you in today’s blog post.
The Gilliam Writers Group is growing. (Oops!)
When I chose to make my way as an independent educator during the first months of the Pandemic, I had no intention of expanding my teaching practice into a multi-person enterprise. In fact, the Gilliam Writers Group came into my life as a bit of a surprise. (That is, I guess I surprised myself!) At a certain point, I just couldn't meet the demands of my growing client base on my own. In an act of either hope or desperation, I formed an LLC and started reaching out to writers and teachers I knew -- young people whose work I admired, and who I trusted to care for my clients in the same way I do. A little over a year later, here we are: a fledgling education brand somewhere between a writer's workshop and a microschool. Who would have thought?
The future of our company / who we hire
The Gilliam Writers Group isn't going to become a standard tutoring or coaching company, nor will it become another vast "umbrella platform" that impersonally connects clients with instructors while taking an unduly large cut of their earnings. Employment-wise, our objective is, in fact, very personal: we want to fortify the skills, influence, and financial independence of young writers of unusual talent -- the kind of talent that has little to do with resumes.
CV's are out. Instead, our hiring process evaluates: 1) writing samples, 2) emotional intelligence, 3) creative spark, and 4) raw intellectual ability (as judged through both conversation and written work). No other qualifications are prioritized. No stylistic dogmas are foisted onto our employees. This makes the Gilliam Writers Group relatively unique in our approach as an educational organization. Learn more about our current team here.
Thank-you's and questions
To conclude this post, I'd like to thank everyone who's worked with me or one of our other instructors this year. It takes a lot of trust to hire a coach or tutor, and I'm touched that so many of you have stayed with the Gilliam Writers Group through all its recent transformations. I've learned more than I ever thought possible throughout this whole entrepreneurial process, and I'm eager to continue. For me, the future of education, and of intellectual communities in general, remains a thrillingly open question.
I envision a learning experience that is age-diverse, value-driven, and confined to neither physical nor virtual space. I envision a network of collaborating institutions -- public and private, large and small -- between which learners can move as they please. I envision high-quality, accessible writing instruction that brings the joy of language into countless people's lives.
What do you envision?
