Querer es Poder with Sarah Farzam

Listeners we're back this week with Sarah Farzam.

Sarah is the Founder and CEO of Bilingual Birdies Sarah is half Mexican and half Iranian and grew up speaking Spanish, Farsi, and English. She’s from L.A. and graduated from UCLA with a BA in English. From there Sarah moved to Mexico City and later NYC where she taught high school and waited tables for a year before getting the idea to start her own educational company when she was only 24 years old.

A lover of music, language, and culture, her intention was to create a space to celebrate diversity with children. In 2006, with zero business experience, Sarah launched Bilingual Birdies, a foreign language and live music program for children up to age six in NYC after months of passing out fliers in public playgrounds which yielded a total of three enrolled students (two of which were her twin nieces).

She bootstrapped every step of the way and even invested her own saved-up tip money to start. Soon after she became the recipient of the Lenovo Heart of Business Entrepreneurship Award ($25K prize) as well as the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship Pitch Competition ($20K prize). After completing Goldman Sach’s 10,000 Small Businesses Program, Sarah began to set the framework to build an online platform that would help her expand nationally.

Today Bilingual Birdies teaches Spanish, French, Mandarin, and English to thousands of children per week across 21 cities in the US, Canada, and Australia through their online training program which certifies and licenses bilingual and educators to launch their own Bilingual Birdies businesses in their own city. Enrolled families benefit from original Bilingual Birdies products such as bilingual ebooks, music albums, and the most adorable bird puppets you have ever seen in your entire life.
Under the leadership of Sarah, Bilingual Birdies educators have traveled to Guanajuato, Mexico to volunteer and perform in the children’s section of La Calaca Festival. They have also journeyed to Paris, France to train early educators on how to implement their methodology to teach English to children in a fun and musical way.

Most recently they traveled to Nairobi, Kenya to volunteer at Little Ray of Hope, an informal preschool in Kawangware, the country’s second-largest slum. Nearly 13 years after Sarah started Bilingual Birdies she is more motivated than ever to identify bilingual educators with an entrepreneurial spirit who are looking to share their language and culture with children, make money doing what they love, and transform their communities to encourage future generations of global thinking, open-minded humans.

This episode is brought to you by Righteous Mamas

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During our conversation, Sarah and I talked about:

• Identity
• Not speaking Spanish as a kid
• Using language as a bridge
• Business school vs hustle
• Leaving her other jobs to "go for it"
• Investing in the internal dialogue
• Kids and mindfulness
• The art of the pivot
• Treating money as a friend
• Mentors
• And more...

Find Sarah on all things social:
Bilingual Birdies Instagram
Sarah's Instagram
www.bilingualbirdies.com

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