I had never really envisioned myself as a small business owner. I wasn’t interested in the leg work of attracting customers, keeping accurate accounting my finances and paying taxes. I went into business purely as a matter of economic necessity and only after being forced into did I realize that my career arc actually fit quite well with that of many successful small business owners.
I began teaching SAT classes for Kaplan Test Prep in 1999. Over time I realized that the only way to make decent money with Kaplan was to teach more subjects and to tutor as much as possible. I cross trained for the ACT, GRE, GMAT and TOEFL. In 2007 I earned TEFL certification. From 2007 to 2010 I moved abroad to Turkey, where I began teaching English. It was around this time that my writing career began to take off. With Istanbul as a convenient base I was able to travel all over Europe and write about it for various magazines and guidebooks like Time Out, Fodor’s and Executive Travel Magazine. In 2010 I also began writing for Wild Cat Publishing, which owns an oil and gas trade journal and a business magazine.
I moved to Boulder, Colorado in 2010 where, to my chagrin, I found that Kaplan already had too many teachers. The job market in Boulder at this time is terrible unless you’re a computer programmer or a medical professional so I began to consider teaching independently. I knew the tests I teach well enough to be able to work from different books supplemented by my own material. I began advertising and joined online tutoring services like Wyzant. At first it took a while to get responses. By the fall of 2010, however, I had dozens of students.
After fifteen months, my business enjoys steady growth. My expenses are limited to payroll taxes, office equipment and the cost of a personal website. There are a few reasons for my success. First, I am good at what I do. I have extensive teaching experience and I’ve become an adept writer. Second, I have many income streams. My main business comes from private students; however, I also contract through Wyzant at a lower rate. In addition, I work as a subcontractor for two other companies. Campus Prep based in Boulder hired me to develop and teach GMAT and GRE classes at CU. Another company, Next Step Test Prep, based in Chicago, has contracted me to teach GRE and GMAT students online. I publish Rocky Mountain travel articles for Associated Content as a featured contributor and I still work extensively for Wildcat Publishing.