By Susan Holly

Nina Velasco may have taken on more than the usual quota of

stress in opening her new business in Naples last year. First, she moved to a

new city, started a new job at International College, and got married. Six

months later her new husband was diagnosed with lung cancer. Velasco,

meanwhile, was working on an idea for a new business, based on one she had

started more than two decades earlier in Brazil.

With her husband’s encouragement, she quit her job and

opened the Naples Language Center last January. Four months later her husband

died, and Velasco was left on her own — a single mom with a 13-year-old

daughter and a struggling new business.

“You know that list of the ten major stressors in life?” she

says. “I had just about all of them in the past couple of years.”

Persevere she did, however, and now her one-year-old Naples

Language Center is finding its niche. Velasco remains committed to her idea of

a private language school for Southwest Florida. Though she has had a few

people tell her it wouldn’t work, she believes in it. “They didn’t see the

opportunities I saw,” she says of the naysayers. “I really believe mine is

going to work.”

Velasco, who is fluent in both English and Portuguese, sees

Southwest Florida as a very international community of people with a need to

learn foreign languages. The only options for adults have been public adult

education programs or college courses. The adult education classes tend to be

large, says Velasco, and the college classes are more of an academic approach

than many people want.

The Naples Language Center falls somewhere in the middle,

says Velasco. Its classes are small — about six to eight students — and

emphasize conversational fluency rather than memorizing vocabulary lists and

rules of grammar.

“This is an area of the country where this type of business

is lagging,” says Velasco. The East Coast of Florida has many language schools,

she notes, but so far, that’s not the case in Southwest Florida.

Velasco’s initial market was targeted to those who need to

learn English as a second language, commonly known as ESL. This includes a

growing Spanish-speaking population, as well as Germans and people of many

other nationalities who are buying second homes in Southwest Florida.

A second market for Velasco consists of English speakers who

travel and want to learn the languages of the countries they visit. A third

market targets Southwest Florida residents who want to learn Spanish, notes

Velasco. “Business-wise, it’s very smart for them to know more of it,” she

says.

The Naples Language Center started out offering ESL and some

Spanish, and has since added German, French, Italian, and Portuguese. Classes

run for 15-week terms, four hours a week, and are available on six levels from

absolute beginner to advanced. Tuition for group classes is $500; private

classes are $45 per hour.

One of Velasco’s favorite success stories is a Mexican-born

man now in his 30s, who came to this country as a migrant farm worker when he

was a teenager. He never learned to speak English very well; nor did he even

read Spanish all that well, says Velasco.. He eventually moved into the

construction trades and opened his own drywall business, but realized he was

losing contracts because of his lack of English. He began coming to the Naples

Language Center for ESL classes four evenings a week. Velasco beams with pride

at the progress he has made.

In addition to individual students, the Naples Language

Center has some corporate contracts — for example, teaching English to

Haitian-Creole employees at a nursing home so they can communicate with

residents of the home, and teaching Spanish to the human resources staff at a

hotel on Marco Island so they can interview Spanish-speaking job applicants.

Velasco believes the market for her services here can only

expand. That is more than a gut feeling; it is based on years of experience in

the language business. The Naples Language Center is not the first such school

Velasco has owned and operated. Since 1978 she has run the American English

Center in Brazil, teaching English to Brazilians.

Velasco, whose American parents were missionaries in Brazil,

grew up speaking both Portuguese and English. “I was 12 years old when I first

taught English and have been involved in ESL ever since,” she says. She lived

in Brazil until her high school years, when she moved to the United States.

After finishing college in the U.S., she returned to Brazil, married a

Brazilian, and opened her language school in a room “with 12 desks and eight

students,” she recalls. Within six years, the school had its own building and

was teaching 400 to 500 students. Eventually, she opened a branch school, also

in Brazil.

When she divorced and moved back to the U.S., she bought out

her ex-husband’s portion of the school. Her brother, who lives in Brazil, helps

watch over the business, “but it is difficult,” she concedes, “being out of the

country, trying to run a business there, and starting one here.”

The business here is still trying to establish itself, and

she has to put in long hours to make it work. She teaches as many classes as

she can herself, in part to minimize her payroll. “Not only do I run the

business and teach, I empty the trash,” she says.

Her biggest challenge so far has been simply breaking even,

Velasco says, although the business started to do so toward the end of the

year. “You always put more money into a new business than you expect,” she

notes. Her only start-up financing came in the form of a loan from a relative.

Banks were less than enthusiastic about giving her a loan, she explains. “I did

not have much of a credit history in this country. It was a new kind of

business, my husband was dying — I was not a great prospect.”

Although money has been tight, the best investment she has

made, she says, has been on her visible location in a shopping plaza on U.S.

41. This has brought in walk-in business from people who might not otherwise

have noticed. “Even my $35 Kinko’s laminated poster on the window brings in

people. And there is a speed bump right outside my door,” she says with a

laugh.

She could use more space than her 1,200-square-foot facility

allows, but high lease rates in Naples preclude that for now. An agreement with

the attorney’s office next door to use a conference room after hours has helped

alleviate the classroom space crunch.

Despite all the emotional turmoil she has experienced in the

past several months starting the business and losing her husband, Velasco

remains upbeat about the future. Her goal is to open a second school in Fort

Myers or Cape Coral within the next two years, once the Naples location gets on

solid ground. “Once I get the map drawn here, it will be easy to duplicate,”

she says.

From there, who knows? She can see this business working in

any number of locations. At 55, Velasco says she wants to devote the next 10

years to the business. At that point, she says, she will be ready to relax.

Susan Holly is a freelance writer based on Sanibel.