The origins of Hola People (and an interview with its founder Esteban Tejedor)

• Categories: Education, Lifestyle, Personal development, Travel, Work
• 24 Nov 2020

Hola People is approaching its 5th year of age. Either if you have been following us since our early years, or you knew recently about this brand, you may be curious about how all this started.

We then must go back to the beginning of 2016, when Elena and Esteban Tejedor, two siblings from Madrid (Spain), headed to Liverpool to take part in a programme for entrepreneurs organised by the Liverpool & Sefton Chambers of Commerce.

After an application and an interview, they were successfully admitted along with several other young entrepreneurs.

Since 2009, Elena (the oldest of both) had already been managing —tirelessly and eventually successfully— her Spanish company called Aula inglés. Aula inglés helps Spanish speaking people to learn English (both in-person and online) and to travel and work abroad.

Esteban, in the meantime and during the previous years, had had a stimulant digital nomad life all around Southeast Asia, and had recently decided to take another step in his life by moving to the UK.

With the valuable support of this entrepreneurial programme in Liverpool, they decided to open a British branch of Aula inglés, doing —so to speak— the other way around, that is to help British and other English speaking people to learn Spanish and to find jobs in Spain.

As local people seemed not to understand what “aula inglés” (English classroom) meant, they had to look for a different name, more suitable for the UK branch. After an intense brainstorming session, Hola People was born.

Soon after, Elena went back to Madrid to keep focusing on her Spanish company, while Esteban remained in Liverpool, owning the British one. To work independently, yet collaboratively, was the best decision… if you have any brothers or sisters, you will know that it is not always easy to agree on things, not to mention managing a business together!

So, Esteban found himself on the mission to make brand-new Hola People grow. Since most British do not show great interest to learn Spanish (fairly speaking, due mainly to lack of necessity), Esteban had to re-adjust the business model. Here is when he started to organise a variety of events in Liverpool, from language exchanges to Salsa classes, Spanish parties, day trips and eventually, personal and professional development courses and workshops. For this last category of events, Esteban created a different brand, QLU Project (QLU stands for Quantum Life University).

By today, Hola People and QLU Project (both brands contained by Atlas & Cosmos Ltd., the official name of the company) have organised hundreds of events, first in Liverpool and currently online, due to the current exceptional circumstances.

Our vision for the future is to be an international reference in the Education sector, not only by teaching languages and personal and professional skills but also providing worldwide travel and work opportunities.

We encourage you to accompany us on this journey by reading our blog updates, following our educative and funny posts on social media, and by trying our languages classes or personal development online courses.

If you have liked the story of Hola People‘s origins, or if you want to know more, please leave us a comment below!

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