ENTREPRENEUR

Early Endeavors
Leigh Bortins got her start in business as a newspaper carrier when she was in fifth grade. The next year, she put her sales skills to a new use. At that time, organizations would send out catalogs inviting people to sell their products in exchange for a portion of the profits. At age eleven, Leigh became a successful door-to-door saleswoman of everything from wrapping paper and chocolates to Christmas ornaments. She used her contacts from her newspaper route to develop rapport with her customers. Leigh says they began to ask her, “What are we selling today, Leigh?” when she came to the door.  Check out this fun announcement for Leigh as honor carrier.

After her freshman year of college, Leigh needed to raise money for her second year, so she and another engineering student made a bet that they could earn $4,000 in one summer. In 1984, that was an extremely ambitious goal. Leigh worked two jobs. From 5 a.m. to 1 p.m., she worked in a plant nursery. Then she went home, took a shower, and waitressed until midnight. But by the end of the summer, she had met her goal and was able to pay for her sophomore year of college.

After her boys were born, Leigh started her own business painting wooden cutouts of Mother Goose that said, “It’s a Boy” and “It’s a Girl.” She rented them to new parents to place in their yards. Although she only had two-dozen customers, she made her first television appearance when she gave one of her cutouts to the first baby born on New Years’ Day.

The Roots of Classical Conversations
By the time Leigh moved to North Carolina, she had a good sense of what it took to organize a group of people. When her oldest son Robert was ready for high school, Rob and Leigh looked for schools with a classical approach. They were not satisfied with any they found, so Rob encouraged Leigh to invite other students into their home once a week.

Leigh put an ad in the Forsyth Home Educators’ newsletter. At 6 p.m. on the day of the interest meeting, Leigh had all the chairs set up and the snacks ready. No one came. At 6:15, she began to put the chairs away. Then, at 6:30, the cars began to pour into the driveway—somehow, the advertisement had posted the wrong time. Leigh and Rob pulled the chairs back out, and from the twenty people who came to that first Classical Conversations meeting, eleven students signed up for Leigh’s first Challenge I class.

In the third or fourth year of Classical Conversations, Leigh’s friend Ben McIndoe helped her write a business plan and enter it in the 2002 Spark Competition with the Triad Entrepreneurial Initiative, a branch of the Piedmont Triad Entrepreneurial Network. They were one of five winners at this stage! The staff at PTEN met with Leigh and taught her how to do cash flow and income statements. Leigh read lots of books, including Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which helped her think about money and success in a different way. She met with a professor at the Wake Forest University Babcock School of Business. She entered another contest, the 2003 Verge Preliminary Business Plan Competition also with PTEN, and received an honorable mention. Classical Conversations continued to grow.

Even though Leigh had no formal training in business, she received support from many skilled individuals who believed in what Leigh and Rob were doing. An early member of the program, Jean Seward, taught Leigh how to use accounting software. The lawyer she worked with to incorporate the business never sent her a bill because he said he was proud of the work she was doing. The owner of a local Christian bookstore helped her find an accountant. Heather Shirley joined the team and set up the company’s email and web communications. On the other side, tutors like Dawn Blackburn, Linda Tomkinson, Phyllis Babcock, Pam Greenholt, and Carrie Pippins worked to make curriculum choices and spread the word about Classical Conversations.

Moving Forward
Leigh has come a long way from that first job delivering newspapers, but some things have not changed. The word ‘no’ does not bother Leigh. Going door-to-door taught her that. “I’m like a duck,” Leigh says. “It all rolls off my back.”

More importantly, Leigh says, “It’s never just me.” Good friends and willing support make all of her endeavors possible. She says she is grateful to the many early participants in Classical Conversations who are still here and still committed. As Leigh looks toward the future, she says the most encouraging signs are the second-generation Classical Conversations members who were students in the program and are now enrolling their own children, continuing the process of restoring education as entire families.