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Rowan Kunz, 2011 Anthill 30under30 Winner

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What is 30under30?

30under30 is an Anthill initiative launched in early 2008 to encourage and promote entrepreneurship among young Australians. Each year, we invite our readers to nominate young Australian entrepreneurs deserving of recognition for their outstanding entrepreneurial endeavours. More.

Rowan Kunz, NSW (b. 1987)

Name: Rowan Kunz
Age: 24 (Born: January 1987)
Gender: Male
State: NSW

This year, more than 70,000 students in New South Wales will sit their Higher School Certificate exams, which can be daunting for those who have university ambition but don’t know what to expect from the exams themselves.

Thanks to the Art of Smart Education, the tutoring business founded by Rowan Kunz, they have greater resources at their disposal to succeed.

At 24, Kunz is still young enough to remember when he was in the same situation: he wanted to study Combined Law at the University of Sydney. To do so, he needed to achieve an elite admission ranking — one that would place him in the top one-half of one percent of students.

“I knew what I wanted, but I had no idea how to go about excelling at school,” he says. He started creating study notes for himself, focussing on time management, and planning everything around his impending HSC exams. At the end of Year 12, he got the exact mark required to enrol in the Law program.

Proud of his hard work, Kunz nevertheless wondered if his success story could be replicated. He spent seven years talking to NSW students in Years 11 and 12 with the highest marks, learning how they dealt with the study challenges.

That research fuelled his first book, Secrets of HSC Success Revealed. Kunz initially published the book himself, eventually finding a distributor with persistence and persuasion. Thereafter, there was no looking back for the Art of Smart (AOS).

AOS concentrates on the What and the How of exam preparation: there’s the actual teaching of the syllabus for specific school subjects (the What), and then there’s the equipping students with the skills to tackle those subjects (the How).

Kunz has grown AOS to formidable proportions: begun as a one-man organisation in Sydney in 2009, it consists of more than one hundred tutors throughout NSW today. No one can accuse Kunz of not doing his homework on the higher education market.

So, what ever became of that law degree? Kunz completed his studies, and even though he does not currently practice law, he believes his studies refined his approach to AOS.

Fundamentally, AOS offers students life skills, not cheat sheets for exams. Life skills apply to whichever discipline the student pursues, including business. AOS combines Kunz’s personal experiences with a strong business model to solve students’ problems more effectively.

“Studying Law cultivated within me an interest to solve problems,” he says. “My entrepreneurial drive comes from that desire to solve problems and teach skills.

Rowan Kunz’s favourite quote:

“Be so good they can’t ignore you.” — Steve Martin

“I live by this quote — if you focus on excellence at a certain point, so long as you persist, you will prevail, because people cannot ignore you.”

Rowan Kunz: Secrets of HSC Success Revealed

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To check out the full list of Anthill’s 30under30 winners, click here.

Rowan Kunz, what motivates you as an entrepreneur?

My activities are driven by a desire to solve problems that I see and experience, and to equip young people with lifelong learning skills so that they can excel at whatever they put their mind to.