Kelly Heo On The 5 Things You Need To Know To Create A Highly Successful Service Based Business

As a part of my series about the “5 Things You Need To Know To Create a Successful Service Business”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kelly Heo.

Kelly Heo has over 15 years of experience in the education industry as a teacher, college counselor, and education consultant. She has helped hundreds of students around the world get into the most competitive U.S. universities, such as the entire Ivy League, MIT, Caltech, Northwestern, Duke, Cornell Qatar, and NYU Accelerated programs. After working at educational consulting powerhouses Crimson Education and Empowerly, as well UC Berkeley Undergraduate Admissions Office, she decided to start her own boutique consulting firm, LEP Education Group.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I graduated high school during a financial crisis and worried that I wouldn’t be able to attend college without a scholarship. I still remember vividly telling my college counselor about my family’s financial situation and hearing him say, “If you need a scholarship or financial aid, you should shoot lower.” Rather than giving up, it instilled in me a mindset that if you want something done, you have to do it yourself. I worked a part-time job and bought every college admissions book I could find. While at Duke University, I stayed involved in the admissions space by working at the Duke Admissions Office and found that I enjoyed mentoring. This motivated me to work other jobs from Academic Tutoring to Career Services where I could interact and work with other students. I never intended to become an educational consultant or a business owner, but I believe that life took me where I was meant to go all along. My first job out of college was being a teacher and I soon moved into college counseling at an international school in Seoul. That was my first foray into college application consulting.

What was the “Aha Moment” that led you to think of the idea for your current company? Can you share that story with us?

I give a lot of credit to my husband for helping me decide to go out on my own and create my own company. As an HR Business Partner, he’s highly skilled at looking through people’s self-imposed insecurities and challenging them to find or even extend their limits — think of it as a personal trainer, but for your career. He knew that I had a different vision for education and college application consulting, and when I was at my limit bottling up my frustrations, he fueled that fire so I could take the final leap.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

It’s not necessarily a funny mistake, but my company was originally called Enigma Admissions because I wanted to be an enigma. I didn’t want to put my face and name out there, and educational consultants are often considered a family’s secret that they don’t often share with others. Several of my early clients commented that the name didn’t make sense as I was demystifying an enigma and yet our company was called Enigma. This motivated me to rebrand to LEP Education Group with the LEP standing for Logos, Ethos, and Pathos. Aristotle’s three elements of persuasion are all needed to stand out in a competitive pool, whether it’s college admissions or the workforce.

Thank you for that. Let’s now pivot to the main focus of our interview. Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven business” are more successful in many areas. When you started your company what was your vision, your purpose?

When I started LEP, I identified three key values: (1) Human First Development, (2) Strategic Differentiation, and (3) Long-Term Readiness. Education consulting isn’t really about college applications, but about helping young adults build depth and distinction. For Human First Development, I don’t want to develop resume builders, but students with genuine curiosity, original thinking, and an authentic voice. For Strategic Differentiation, I show students that what they may think is impressive is not distinctive at the global level. This part is about helping students test their limits and build critical skills early on. Finally, for Long-Term Readiness, I focus on preparation for the workforce. Especially with the rise of AI, anxiety among parents and students has hit an all-time high. Now it’s not just about finding a major that a student is interested in and is competitive for, but one that’s also worthwhile for the future we are entering. It was also critical to me that every member of my team understands how important and life-changing our work is. I’ve met many consultants in my industry who treat this work as babysitting or running through checklists. Getting a full scholarship to Duke literally changed my life so I bring that level of seriousness to my work. I tell all of our consultants to feel that level of responsibility, where their work can directly impact someone’s future, and be accountable for that.

What do you do to articulate or demonstrate your company’s values to your employees and to your customers?

Our company values are integrated into our curriculum and consulting approach. All of our students are highly recommended to complete assessments to help identify their interests and strengths. I also arrange meetings with mentors who go over topics like personal values, leadership, executive functioning, AI skills, and more. I don’t want to steer students towards interests just based on what’s strategic but help them find genuine interests and develop relevant skills during their high school years. For our team, I am very clear about my approach and expectations in our hiring process. As a company, we put a lot of time and care into hiring early and hiring right because we want to invest in their training and development, too. In that way, I view my employees similarly to my students. I hope that they feel that I don’t just see them as employees, but also as partners whose futures are important to me. I am also very active in client-facing work, often working side-by-side with the team. I conduct research, edit essays, send notes, and talk with parents just like they do. I think it’s a good reminder to show them what my standard is not just through words, but through my actions.

Do you have a “number one principle” that guides you through the ups and downs of running a business?

Whenever I’m facing ups and downs or making critical decisions, I think of the students first. If this student were my son or daughter, what would I expect or hope for as their parent? This helps me value and consider both the knowledge we bring to the process, as well as the customer service experience.

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up? Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

When I moved from being a solopreneur doing the business as an extra stream of income to really taking on the identity of a business owner and that being my primary income, I struggled with shifting my mindset and being okay with more risk. Hiring employees, delegating out work I couldn’t sustainably do anymore, and rejecting clients were all hard pills to swallow. I never considered giving up, but I did often ask, “Why am I doing this to myself? Am I unnecessarily choosing a harder path?” At that time, the people I surrounded myself with were so crucial. I had fellow business owners who could empathize with my troubles and I had close friends and family who provided consistent encouragement and constructive criticism. I think it also helped to think that it’s hard at this moment, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s hard or always going to stay hard.

So, how are things going today? How did your values lead to your eventual success?

We are growing exponentially, to the point where I now have to be more careful about staying true to our values rather than cutting corners to keep up. While identifying my values was really important, it was also key for me to consider how I want to communicate these values with our clients and practice that. These days, our clients often tell me that they choose to work with me because they can feel how much I care about their student, even just from one call or remote meeting. That kind of emotional reaction doesn’t happen from me saying, “I care about you.” It took a lot of thought and even more practice over countless calls.

Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a founder or CEO should know in order to create a very successful service based business? Please share a story or an example for each.

1. Have a routine for self-care. As a service provider, you may often feel that you’re at the whim of someone else’s needs and emotions, and it can be hard to not take on their emotions and stress as your own. For me, this was especially hard because I’m also a parent and when I’m not working with my clients, I’m usually serving a similar role with my kids. I started playing pickleball and it’s been a great way for me to focus on just the ball rather than all of the other people in my life who may want or need something from me.

2. Build systems with a long-term view rather than a short-term one. When I first started out, I was stingy about adopting systems that I felt were unnecessary for just a few team members. However, the company has grown more quickly than I expected and, because our work is client-facing, the clients also distinctly feel every change; for example, an invoicing system or a scheduling platform.

3. Understand the value of leverage. As a founder and CEO, there will come a point where you cannot do everything on your own or you may literally lose your mind. For me, I first leveraged someone for social media. I’m not particularly good at using social media, nor do I want to become better at it. If you feel that way about something, why go through the hardship when you can hire someone who truly does enjoy that work?

4. Savor and protect time. Perhaps because I am a consultant myself, I much prefer personalized coaching and feedback over generalized content or classes. There’s a level of accountability and you see results faster. I feel this way both about work (refer to leverage — I’d rather pay someone who is an expert than try to learn and be mediocre) and my personal pursuits (I got much better at pickleball taking two private lessons than I did taking one class and playing recreationally for a year).

5. Never hire in a rush. This was one of my biggest pet peeves when working at larger companies and it always led to disastrous consequences. In a service-based business, it’s very likely that your employee is your product and thus the quality of their work is the quality of your business. We put out feelers or start recruiting a quarter before we think we actually need the person. If we can hire, great. If we can’t, we waitlist clients rather than stretch our current team. This way, every client gets the experience that I promise and our team also feels valued and protected, making them more likely to stay long-term.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I mentioned this before, but I never would have started a company without my husband’s support. My husband often jokes that he should write a book, “How I Made My Wife a CEO” because of the amount of effort it took on his part to get this off the ground. When I was starting my career, my husband often suggested that I seek a promotion, to which I replied, “I’m better at supporting than leading.” But, every time, he told me to just do it and see if it works for me — individual contributor to team leader; team leader to director; director to solopreneur; and finally, solopreneur to full-fledged business owner. As you can see, it took a lot of time and effort for me to change my mindset.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Pay teachers more. Teachers don’t just teach subjects — they inspire, develop foundational skills, and help define what it means to become a positive contributor to society. If you want the best and most capable people to do that job for the future of society, we have to make it a more desirable and valued profession.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

We just started an Instagram account (@lep.education.group) and would appreciate your support.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!