Meet Harley Monteleone

We were lucky to catch up with Harley Monteleone recently and have shared our conversation below.

Harley, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

I have been a little hustler since probably the 5th grade. Little me in the classroom selling candy and things from the store I made my mom buy me with food stamps. I didn’t have money for lunch growing up and for some reason I wasn’t able to use the free lunch program. I had to do whatever to eat, honestly. Flash to 16. One day I asked my dad for some cash for a movie or something and he opened the garage door, gave me a bucket and said to come back with money. I washed cars all summer. I earned $200 a day washing cars.

Both of my grandfathers are over 80 and still working their business. Everyday. Working with startup hustle. These things shaped me. These people shaped me. I am now doing what I love. Teaching. English. Learning. I never really cared about money so much. Just doing something that’s mine. Being myself.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

I started this business teaching English out of pure necessity. After years and years of studying language and spending half of my life outside of the country, learning other languages and interacting with other people, and working for large businesses outside of the US, this is what I wanna do. This is what I wanna do for the rest of my entire life. I’ve spent the first two years purely teaching. I started teaching at a point where I had no idea what I was doing. I can’t believe the first students that I had actually appreciated my classes, knowing what I know now.

I have been working tirelessly for the past two years with one goal in mind, and that is expanding into other countries and teaching employees English – business English, and helping companies expand into the American market. Whether we like it or not, English is an extremely important language in business and also whether we like it or not America is a great country to do business in. I want to facilitate that and I wanna provide good English services real colloquial English services to these companies so they can help their employees become better for themselves and serve their company better. This is what I’m doing and this is what my team is doing right now.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

When you first started a company just like any relationship it’s gonna start off with passion and inspiration, but it very quickly or at some point will turn dark and be lonely. You’re gonna search for inspiration and search for reasons why to continue and you have this urge to move onto something else exciting again. This is why it’s so important to just do something you absolutely love, even if it means making less money because the moment that you truly impact people and start connecting with people with your passion, this is when the money comes if that’s what you’re searching for.

It sounds really corny, but the thing that you need the most is fire. Just be excited about something no matter what it is. Be excited about something.

And the thing last that I can say, that is the absolute most important thing is reading. Not just scrolling on Instagram and reading quotes but actually reading disciplining yourself to read something read everything read fiction, non-fiction, everything. As a matter of fact, I went through a phase where I thought nonfiction was the only thing I could learn from, and that was absolutely not the case. Reading fiction actually helped me get to a deeper level understanding what characters think and put me into a position where I felt empathy different and I understand how people work differently.

So these are the two things I would say reading and fire – passion.

Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?

I think the most important thing for me has always been reading. And honestly not taking yourself too seriously. I think that sometimes we have this habit in life as humans to take ourselves so seriously that’s including failure. You know I really feel like the advice that people give on failing is quite cheap. People say the failure is a part of growth and I honestly don’t really believe this. I think that his failing will show you the way not to do it but not taking yourself too seriously and having small gains and small successes will show you the right way to do it. Don’t take life too seriously honestly.

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Harley Monteleone

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