Hen House Honored to Guide a New Company and Offering Launch for College Counseling Elevated
With great honor, Hen House Ventures is proud to announce College Counseling Elevated. This company has been in the idea-stage for a long time, but then the entrepreneurs kicked into gear after Hen House Ventures gave the two co-founders, Michelle Rasich and Coral Azarian, a crash course on Starting A Company. This crash course taught the entrepreneurs how to choose a business model, establish their business plan, and commit to a go-to-market plan for their product and company launch.
Our first meeting happened on May 5, 2020. These two ladies drank from the fire hydrant when it came to deciding on what their business is, who they were going to serve, and how they were going to track the capital (both on sales and spends). They presumed that starting a business was easy because they are experts in their field, however during our kick-off conversation, Hen House quickly discovered that many fundamental business decisions hadn’t been made, potentially exposing future threats to their business vision and ability to execute.
Today, May 29, 2020, with the help of Hen House Ventures, College Counseling Elevated launched the company, its website, and also available offerings. Just 24 days later after getting the crash course with Hen House, these two committed co-founders have done what many people dream to achieve — becoming an active business entity.
First, a quick introduction to College Counseling Elevated (CCE). This company is a Technology-enabled Service that provides high school students and their parents or guardians helpful insight and tools to prepare for the college application and selection process. What is commonly a daunting task that causes confusion, stress, and frustration within families, the CCE founders have several decades of experience with the arduous process around college selection and college admissions. These co-founders have formulated a process and best-practices so that high-school students get into the best college for them, acknowledging barriers such as financial aid, educational direction, and more. CCE’s vision is to educate and prepare students and parents for the college admission process in a harmonious, reasonably-paced manner. Meet the co-founders in this video. CCE initially planned on hosting in-person events, however, due to the COVID-19 social distancing, CCE had to pivot their package to go 100% virtual. Thankfully, this pivot was easier to do as the company was being formulated during the crisis.
Hen House Ventures instilled very important values for business creation as well as leadership decision-making. Fundamentally, they had to design and deliver a Product to a Customer at a perceived bearable Price so that the company makes a Profit at every sale.
Their Business Model became their company’s plan for making a profit. It identifies the products or services the business will sell, the target market it has identified, and the expenses it anticipates. Their Business Plan identifies and orchestrates the revenue and expenses upon a timeline so that the company is sound from a cash flow perspective. Their plan quickly becomes the Litman’s test if they can or can’t do specific marketing, sales, or development activities. By looking at the business from a cost-perspective, commonly known as bottom-up financial planning, CCE understood how they were going to make money, and what they could afford to spend to in fact earn income.
Over the next week, the co-founders worked on their business plan, identified their Target Market, selected a Pricing Strategy, and outlined the Packaging according to Competitive and Market Research that they quickly completed. They also figured out their Rev 1 of offerings based upon a natural trade-up cycle according to the possible concerns or objections their target market would have.
Then, we got into the website design as that was going to become their business transaction hub. Over the next two weeks, Hen House supported the co-founders during their website design and testing, including the eCommerce engine, their lead generation process, and SEO optimization.
Upon looking back at May 2020, we are thrilled with the accomplishments that both Coral and Michelle attained. These two just got an MBA while creating their company, and today they launched both their brand and their services. Here is a video of us launching their company and website via Zoom together, as this is a moment that every entrepreneur celebrates — crossing the starting line.
Hen House Ventures wishes College Counseling Elevated the best of luck. And if you are interested in launching your company in under a month, please contact us about our Startup Services.
