Welcome to the Jazz Shapers Podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut due to rights issues.
Elliot Moss
Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today is Naz Nankali, founder of Powertutors, a UK tutoring agency. Born in Iran, it was while growing up in Ukraine that Naz found herself struggling in school with her dyslexia yet to be diagnosed by her family or teachers. But when her mother got Naz a maths tutor when she was ten years old, she went from always finding herself at the bottom of the class to within a few months thriving in the subject and loving it. In 2016, now living in the UK, Naz turned that passion for maths into tutoring the subject herself and driven by her positive impact and how rewarding it was for her, she launched her agency, Powertutors that same year. Helping neurodivergent children and young people through personalised learning experiences, Powertutors supports schools and local authorities and offers one-to-one tutoring with a simple powerful goal, to help every child and young person believe in themselves.
I’m so happy you’ve made it. I love it when a guest comes and they’re the recommendation of another guest. For those of you that don’t know, that’s what happens sometimes, people say, “you must meet x” and Helen Tupper, who was recently on the programme, said “You must meet Naz” and here you are, it’s fabulous to have you here.
Naz Nankali
Thank you so much for having me.
Elliot Moss
You’ve had an interesting life, you’ve lived in lots of places. Where is home for Naz, in her head?
Naz Nankali
Home is wherever my family is. So, it doesn’t matter what country, where, we’ve always moved around, I mean, as you said when I was two years old we moved from Iran to Ukraine and that was a really incredible experience as a child, it was 1991, post-revolution in the USSR and no one looked like us so, we were there and we, we were constantly stopped by the police because we looked different, we had different haircuts. It was normal for me because I didn’t know any different, I thought this was, this was the, this was the life but there was a point where I said to my mum, “Is everyone deaf because they don’t understand what I’m saying?” I was talking to them in Farsi and expecting them to reply to Farsi and I did not understand as a two year old why do people not understand Farsi so, it was really fun I would say but, yeah we lived there for thirteen years and…
Elliot Moss
And why was that, why from Iran to Ukraine?
Naz Nankali
So, my dad got expelled from university and he was going through a really tough time and so after that he went to Ukraine with his uncle to do an export deal and he called my mum and he said, “My god, it’s so, so nice here, it’s really relaxing” and she said to him, “Stay there, I’m going to come.” So, six months, we packed up, well she packed up, she did not listen to any of her family who were like “you’re crazy” and off we went, me and my mum, to Ukraine and didn’t come back for a long time.
Elliot Moss
And then from Ukraine to the UK or Ukraine back to Iran and then the UK?
Naz Nankali
No, from Ukraine then to UK. My dad finished his university, he studied dentistry and he did a PhD and then afterwards we were like what shall we do and we decided to come to UK because we, you know, as immigrants do, they think the land of opportunities are in the UK and we had some family here as well so it just helped to make that decision.
Elliot Moss
And your first interaction with English was much younger though, before the UK, I’m assuming you’d learned English or not?
Naz Nankali
Well we studied Russian in my school as our second language. We did a little bit of English but I learned English here, when I came here in 2004, they put me into a year below because I didn’t, I wasn’t able to speak. I used to say a few words but I wasn’t able to have a conversation.
Elliot Moss
And how old were you in 2004?
Naz Nankali
Erm, fifteen.
Elliot Moss
Okay.
Naz Nankali
Yeah, so it was just the year prior to GCSE I believe. So I was really upset and I, I wanted to be in my year, I didn’t want to do an extra year so, luckily, I was really good at maths so, for the reason of the fact that my mum got me a tutor and that’s purely because I was an absolute failure in school. In Ukraine, was at the bottom of the class for everything and I used to hide the parent evening invitations. So, once my mum kind of made it to school and one of the parents saw her and they said to her “Are you coming to the parents’ evening?” and she looked at me and she was like…
Elliot Moss
“What parents’ evening?”
Naz Nankali
“What parents’ evening?” and I knew I was in trouble. So that night I was sweating before she comes home and she came home angry, she was so angry, she was like “You never told me you’re struggling in school, you’re failing in every single subject” and yeah, so after that she got me the maths tutor and that was the best thing that happened to me really.
Elliot Moss
What was the name of the maths tutor, do you remember?
Naz Nankali
Maria Sarkovna.
Elliot Moss
And that was where? In the UK?
Naz Nankali
In Ukraine.
Elliot Moss
In Ukraine, okay. And what was that like in those first few lessons that you had with her? What happened?
Naz Nankali
Well, that was my first maths tutor, I had a few others as well because as you grow up, you have you know different levels but it was just the fact that someone believed in me, I didn’t have that before, you know, you were kind of left and doing your own thing in school, as you do, as must of us do, there’s thirty of you, there’s no chance that the teacher can you know dedicate that attention to you as a sole person and if they do, that’ll be favouritism, so the other students will say “why don’t you give me the same amount of attention?” and you physically can’t as a teacher so, the fact that I had the opportunity to have that one person focus on me, figure out how I learn and give me the tools that would help me, enable me to fall in love with maths and I really fell in love with maths.
Elliot Moss
And do you remember when that from methodologically you once your Maria had, had, Maria that right?
Naz Nankali
Yes.
Elliot Moss
I’ve said it correctly, you’re laughing at my Ukrainian pronunciation, I do have some Ukrainian and Russian somewhere in my lineage I’m sure. Do you remember what it was that she did that took you from “I don’t get this” to “hold on a minute, I know how to crack it”, was there a moment or was it just over a period of time?
Naz Nankali
I don’t think so. There wasn’t a moment, it was over a period of time but it was, it was just the fact that someone gave me the attention and someone said to me, “You can do this”, that was all I needed and…
Elliot Moss
And what was the feeling like a falling in love, as you described it with the subject?
Naz Nankali
Falling in love was not being able to think about anything else but maths. All I wanted to do was algebraic equations and geometry and I would do it in my spare time because I didn’t you know have much else to do, I didn’t have a phone with a social media scrolling ability. So, so that’s all I was thinking about is, ah what if I get this equation and put it with this equation, what would happen? And, and the harder the equation, the more excited I would get.
Elliot Moss
And you mentioned, and then you went on to do a maths degree obviously and that was I think at City in London, you mentioned, I talked about the dyslexia, were there other things going on for you as well with regard to learning or was it, was that the main thing?
Naz Nankali
I just, I wasn’t able to read. I remember one of my best friends, she would help me out with most of my subjects because I was failing, I was, I was getting the bottom of the grades for everything. I didn’t want to read, I didn’t want, when I used to be asked to read out loud, I mean most of us who have dyslexia, have the same feeling, you start to panic and you start getting this flustered feeling and the heartbeat goes up and when I was reading I would, I would get the words wrong and then the kids would start laughing at me and I thought that’s the end of the world, you know, so I just didn’t want to do it, I didn't want to do it.
Elliot Moss
And Naz now, looking back as an adult, obviously are you comfortable now reading? Are you kind of, I mean, because I have…
Naz Nankali
I force myself to read.
Elliot Moss
Do you? Because a lot of my friends, adult friends, older than me are still dyslexic, still very uncomfortable, much prefer to listen or to watch, highly, highly intelligent as we know.
Naz Nankali
Absolutely and I listen to a lot of things, I love podcasts, I love audiobooks but I also force myself to read and you know a normal person will read one page and that will be enough. For me, I’ll have to read that page five times to understand what it is, to get comfortable, certain letters I see the wrong way so I, I misread the words, then I’m like oh wait that doesn’t mean that so I go back and I re-read it but that’s mainly because I don’t want to kind of get complacent in the sense that oh I’m dyslexic, I shouldn’t read, I know reading is really important in life and so it’s training my brain to understand what letters do I see different, what words do I see differently and it’s okay if I have to read it five times, I just see it as a mental training.
Elliot Moss
We’re going to find out what happened to the mental training and how that was applied to setting up the business, which of course we will get to very shortly. Much more coming up from Naz in a couple of minutes. Right now we’re going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Innovation Series, which you can find on all the major podcast platforms. Lydia Kellett invites business founders to share their industry insights and practical advice for those of you thinking about getting into an industry and starting your very own thing. In this clip, focussed on the EdTech industry, we hear from Chris Kahler, co-founder and CEO of Kinnu, a gamified learning app, designed to increase the rate of knowledge acquisition.
You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers, lucky you, on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can hear this very programme again if you pop the words ‘Jazz’ and ‘Shapers’ into your podcast platform of choice. My guest today is Naz Nankali, founder of Powertutors, a UK tutoring agency. So, here’s this person, they’ve come through it, they, they’ve learned from a tutor and then one day, is it one day, Naz says, “you know what, I’m going to become a tutor” and then another day she says “and now I’m going to set up a business.” Talk to me about both of those days, briefly. How did you come to those conclusions?
Naz Nankali
Well, it, sometimes things just happen for a reason, right. I did, after working at Blumberg, I did try and have different businesses which failed miserably but I see that as a Master’s degree that I had to pay for basically.
Elliot Moss
And what kind of stuff? What failed miserably?
Naz Nankali
I had a renewable energy with my dad that I was really passionate about, we were trying to launch a walk-in platform powered by hydropower. We thought that’s going to be revolutionary but that didn’t quite work out. Then I had a t-shirt business, a gluten-free business, I say business, you know, I wouldn’t call it a business.
Elliot Moss
An endeavour but a thing that could have been bigger.
Naz Nankali
An endeavour. I think that I thought was going to be the next big thing. So a lot of, a pencil business as well, like I thought pencils were really cool.
Elliot Moss
They are really cool, I…
Naz Nankali
I called them Banana Ninjas.
Elliot Moss
Banana Ninjas, pencils, I love a pencil, a sharpener and a rubber.
Naz Nankali
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
I’m, I can’t be happier than with those three things, plus a pen.
Naz Nankali
So I lost a lot of money just doing that. And then I called my friend once, saying to her “I know you’ve got a job. Can you get me a job where you have a job?” not knowing where she works. Turns out she was working for a real estate company, developer, in the UK so, when I’m there, worked with them all over Asia, six months later they fired me, I wasn’t good enough so, after that I had even more debt and I thought I need to do something because I’m lying to my mum saying I have money but I have no money. And you do not want to lie to an Iranian mother, she knows.
Elliot Moss
Your eyes just then, opened up and went really, I’m being very serious here.
Naz Nankali
Yeah, I’m being very serious, she knew.
Elliot Moss
Did she secretly know that things weren’t working out do you think?
Naz Nankali
I think so because she kept saying to me, “Go and get a real job”, like “what is it that you’re doing? This is, you’re wasting your time, you don’t ha… you don’t have a husband, you don’t have a real job, what are you doing?” So, she’s very honest.
Elliot Moss
Which way did you go around there first? The husband or the job?
Naz Nankali
No, the job, the business.
Elliot Moss
Yeah, good, get your priorities.
Naz Nankali
Yeah. Priorities. And so at that point I thought what can I do? I know maths, my dad was doing a little bit of tutoring back then because he was doing his dental exam here and my dad was coming out of it and he said, “why don’t you take my students?” and I thought okay, I could do that, I could really, I could really do with the money. I started tutoring, I fell in love with it, it was…
Elliot Moss
And what did you love about it?
Naz Nankali
It was just this ability to influence someone who’s really struggling at a subject that you’re good at and you know how to unlock the potential and I knew some students were more willing to work with me than the others and you have to pick your battles but you know you try and do your best as a tutor. But some of the ones that I really enjoyed working with were the students with dyscalculia, students with autism, students with ADHD, I was able to engage them in a way that school wasn’t able to engage them and they ended up going from failing maths to getting really good grades. And that feeling of being able to influence someone at that young age where they actually end up feeling more confident as well to do other things, I can’t put a price on that.
Elliot Moss
And then just briefly, taking that amazing feeling which if you could bottle it, we would all want, we would all want that feeling, at what point did you go I can scale this?
Naz Nankali
So, I went on a local kind of business course because I didn’t know anything and they helped me understand the basics of things and I thought okay I’ve only got a limited amount of time, I wanted to grow and I wanted to influence more students and I knew that to do that, I need people so, I started taking on tutors, working together with other tutors that were like-minded. It wasn’t until about Covid that I realised how scalable the business was and I didn’t really understand what I was doing until after Covid, so I was still tutoring quite heavy, I was tutoring seven days a week, I was tutoring 9 to 5, I wasn’t really working on the business, I was working as a tutor and with a side hustle of you know a tutoring agency so, when Covid happened, I lost everything and I had to start from scratch, so that was a great opportunity for me to think and learn how to run a business.
Elliot Moss
Talk to me about the two or three inputs to the recipe that allowed you to go from “I like tutoring, I’ve got a few people working with me” to “I’m going to create a structure, I’m going to build a business, I’m going to help more kids.”
Naz Nankali
So, when, when Covid happened, I ended up creating online kind of shorter school days for people that were working but didn’t have the time to homeschool their kids, so that blew up, you know I had so many students on waiting lists, I had, I had famous people begging me to let their children come in and I thought oh my god, this is really cool, I’ve got so many students that want to do what we’ve created and that gave me confidence, I think that was the, that was the most important part, suddenly we grew and I incorporated the limited company as well in 2019 just before Covid so it gave me the push to think I need to learn about business, so I started watching loads of videos on people with businesses.
Elliot Moss
Did you?
Naz Nankali
Yeah, I thought what do these business people do?
Elliot Moss
What are they doing these people?
Naz Nankali
What are they doing? What was the secret source?
Elliot Moss
How many people do you now, how many kids are now recipients of…?
Naz Nankali
I think right now on our books is 300.
Elliot Moss
300 and how many different, how many tutors do you have in the, in the structure?
Naz Nankali
So we’ve got 120 freelance tutors that work part-time as a second job for us.
Elliot Moss
And how do they organise themselves? Is there some kind of tech platform with a time thing on it or is there…?
Naz Nankali
Yeah, so we’ve got a platform where they go in and they structure their days and we’re there to support them so we’ve got like educational lead who was an ex-head teacher that is always there if they have any questions or they need any guidance, so we’re there to help them but we also want them to bring out the best of themselves, we, we know that every single tutor has their own ability to teach a student a certain way. I don’t think we should standardise that.
Elliot Moss
But I was going to ask you about that, is there a philosophy there rather than necessarily the way that they teach, is there a way that you want them to think about how they help?
Naz Nankali
We want them to be purpose led like us, so we, you know when we have a chat with them we talk about purpose, vision and values and see if that kind of fits, besides the, all the stuff that we need to do which is the vetting process, which is quite thorough but it’s about do they fit our values, our mission is, and purpose is so clear that we want children and young people to believe in themselves. Do they share that, you know and we have a chat, we have a conversation with them. Values, do they, do they fit our three values and you kind of can tell who is on board and who isn’t. We’ve been really selective about that, who we work with and so our students have benefited from that and I don’t want to standardise anything in terms of our tutors because they’re so great, honestly our tutors are the best, you hear all the stories about what impact they’ve made and we work with local authorities and schools with students who have EHCPs and…
Elliot Moss
So what’s an EHCP?
Naz Nankali
EHCP is an Educational Health and Care Plan and the students that we work with are out of school so, they’re waiting for a school placement. We make it our mission to help them get back into school so, a lot of students have social anxieties nowadays, especially after Covid, that’s on the rise. Autism diagnoses are exponentially growing and so is ADHD. I believe 80% of children with autism have ADHD as well so, you know there’s a lot of needs that we need to fulfil and schools just don’t have the capacity yet, they’re growing, you know they’re growing and they’re trying to build more schools but in the interim if the student doesn’t have a school placement, we come in and we help them with education, homeschool education until they find this place. And our success is getting them back into school, that’s what we want to see, to get them reintegrated with the people in the school, the educators, the students and find that belief in themselves that they can do it.
Elliot Moss
And what does it feel like doing the role you’re doing now versus being the tutor for a number of students? Because it’s a business, a business role now isn’t it obviously?
Naz Nankali
It was really different. Yeah, I really miss my students.
Elliot Moss
Do you?
Naz Nankali
I do and you can’t do both because business takes a lot out of you and you have to support your, your team, you have to support your leadership team, you have to consistently think of your business as chess pieces or a football team because things change so rapidly. If you’re a growing business you have to be thinking about who fits where, what skillsets do they need and so forth or, or hiring you know, you just, you just become kind of a glorified I guess recruiter.
Elliot Moss
With a strategic brain of a chess master. Don’t forget that bit, Naz.
Naz Nankali
With a strategic brain. Yeah, apparently, I don’t, I don’t, I’m not good at chess. When I was younger I would turn the chess around when it complicated towards my dad.
Elliot Moss
I think you must be pretty good at chess because your business is doing really well and as you said purpose led.
Naz Nankali
Well we have grown. We have grown but that hasn’t been because we have been strategic about our growth, it’s just because we really want to get to as many students as possible and help them thrive so as a result we’ve grown like 100% year on year until this year we’ve grown a little bit less but that was intentional because we wanted to make sure we put all the things that were needed to make sure the quality is good and I listen to my tutors a lot, you know if someone’s not happy, we listen to them, we will never turn them back and we had some tutors that were not happy with how we were running things and I, I wanted to speak to them so I speak to them, I hear them out and I thought okay, we need an educational lead and we need an educational team to put more support.
Elliot Moss
So you created one.
Naz Nankali
So we created it, we’re consistently investing and hearing people out.
Elliot Moss
It’s interesting you call it not a strategy, we just, you know we just do the right thing kind of thing and here we are growing 100% a year so, we’re going to find out what that’s about in my final chat, Naz. We’re going to uncover that last bit. Naz Nankali, my Business Shaper, founder of Powertutors, she’s going to be back in a moment and we’ve got some Eliane Elias for you too, that’s in just a moment.
Naz Nankali is my Business Shaper just for a few more minutes. I just want to take you back to, you said something about your mum, your mum’s obviously decided “I’m coming”, your dad had gone, your mum says, “I’m packing up the bags”. Incredibly gung-ho, what is it about your mum that makes her so open to change?
Naz Nankali
Ah she’s, she’s incredible. So, I’ll just give you a little bit, so when we went to Ukraine, we were in a student accommodation, it was a room, we didn’t have our own toilet, so we had shared toilets and they had to hide me because they weren’t allowed to have children in there, so they’re hiding me and they needed money so my dad was studying and my mum was then and quickly she thought what do I do, I’m going to cook food, that’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to cook food for everyone here so she started kind of conveyor belting her takeaway from the shared kitchen and it got so big that she hired everyone that worked in that student accommodation for her, so they were all in the little kitchen trying to cook for everyone. She never intended to have a business. My mum always created opportunities to make money because of necessity, not only that you know a little bit later when we left there, she went to the embassy and she said what can I do to make you know a little bit of money, what jobs can I do and they said well why don’t you have a warehouse and we’ll send you some export and import people, so she did that, she wasn’t scared, she knew she had to do it, she knew she had to feed us and then later on, loads of people came to her, used her warehouse and she said okay well, I now know what works so she started importing her own goods.
Elliot Moss
So you’ve seen all that and then has that just become second nature to you, the way that you approach things, do you think you’re like your mum?
Naz Nankali
I was so lucky to see a very brave woman at a young age, she was in her twenties, an Iranian woman in her twenties, I haven’t seen many of those that were such go-getters and so fearless. I think that had a huge effect on me because I didn’t have that fear that my other friends had who were Iranian and I thought anything could be possible and she really gave that to me. Later on in life I think she became a little bit scared because she knew how difficult it was for her so she didn’t want me to have the same struggles but nevertheless I still went for it and I’m so lucky to have such supportive parents, I’m really lucky.
Elliot Moss
And that has enabled you to create this business which as you said I just kind of you know, I worked out how to make it bigger, you said it very humbly about no strategy, I’m not sure that’s true, you’re involved in the EY, the Earnst and Young Entrepreneurial Winning Women accelerator programme, I believe. So that again, you’re in a community now of other brave, fearless women, what are you learning from them?
Naz Nankali
I’m learning that there’s not enough women doing big things because of our ability to believe in ourselves to do big things. And by big things I mean you know I’ve seen so many women who are doing absolutely fantastic work and they’re purpose led but we think for example that, I don’t know, £1 million is a really big business, which it is, you know but then you meet someone else who is a male co-founder and they’re wanting a billion, and you’re like whoa how can you do that and so joining this fearless group of women, my mind has been blown because you have women who have sold their businesses for £100 million, you have women that have revenues of £100 million and above and you see them and you think my god, we’re not that different, that’s amazing. I’ve got now the, the confidence that maybe I can do it one day as well and not even that, it’s the EY community, EY people are so great at nurturing entrepreneurs, I’m truly grateful to all of them for putting us into that ecosystem where magic happens. That’s the only way I can explain it.
Elliot Moss
And tell me just before I let you go and we ask you what your song choice is before I let you go, that magic, what’s it going to do for the future of your business? Is Naz going to be coming back in five years’ time and saying “Elliot, it’s £100 million and I’m going the right way”?
Naz Nankali
I truly don’t care about the number, I want to be a big business for our purpose. I want to get to as many children as possible with my team. My team is incredible by the way, really grateful to them. I want to get to as many students as possible and help them believe in themselves, that’s all I want to do, I don’t care about the number, I just want to be that person that helps children believe in themselves.
Elliot Moss
Bu you like numbers, don’t forget that. Of course you do, I know the purpose but purpose first but you’re the mathematician so you’re going to like…
Naz Nankali
Well you need money to you know accompany the purpose.
Elliot Moss
Absolutely. It’s been lovely talking to you, really, really cool.
Naz Nankali
Thank you so much for having me on.
Elliot Moss
No, it’s been a pleasure. Just before you do disappear, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Naz Nankali
It’s something that I normally listen to after a hard day at work and it just makes me smile, it’s called My Babe by Little Walter.
Elliot Moss
That was Little Walter with My Babe, the song choice of my Business Shaper today, Naz Nankali. She talks about the importance of being fearless and how she has learned that from not just her mother but from the great community of other female entrepreneurs that she is involved with. “I want to be a big business so that we can deliver our purpose.” What a great reason to want to grow. And finally again, I go back to the thoughts of the immigrant mother who talked about the importance of opportunities to make money out of necessity. A great lesson for all of us. That’s it from Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You’ll find hundreds more guests available for you to listen to in our archive, to find out more just search Jazz Shapers in iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to mishcon.com/jazzshapers.