About Me
I think the best place to start my story would be in high school. I was always a very conscientious student. I didn't talk much in class, but I loved school. The highlight of my day was always math class. I've always had a childlike fascination with numbers and equations.
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Fast forward to my senior year of high school, and I signed up to be a peer tutor at my school. No one signed up for peer tutoring, so I convinced my good friend Brandan to let me teach him calculus during study hall. He was not even taking calculus, but he was a very receptive audience. And that's where I started to transform my skills from a student to an educator.
Fast forward to my sophomore year of college. I'm studying to become an electrical engineer at Penn State main campus. Another friend from high school, Jordan, was already tutoring with a private tutoring company, and he told me it was an easy way to make extra money. So I applied to become a "Lion Tutor".
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Before the interview started, the hiring manager told me they normally only hire freshmen, not sophomores. (I was thinking, "I wish Jordan told me that...") During the interview, I had to actually give a physics lesson as if I were giving it to a group of students in an exam review. At the end of the half hour, he hired me on the spot. I guess I did pretty good.
For the next 2 years, I was doing everything from 1-on-1 private tutoring to leading exam reviews with 60 students. People don't believe me when I tell them, but I was very shy for most of my life. But when I'm tutoring math or physics, I feel confident, poised, humorous, exhilarated, and I feel good that I'm helping struggling students. There is no better feeling in the world than being in front of the classroom.
I eventually graduated with my electrical engineering degree and got a job as a systems/software engineer. But an inside voice was telling me that I wasn't done with tutoring yet. And then something very interesting happened: COVID19...
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Every student in America moved from the physical classroom to the virtual classroom. And I did not let this rare opportunity go to waste. On June 5th, 2020, Dan the Tutor was born. Sales were not great at first... I had to tutor for free that whole summer (just to get my name out there). Of course, I still had my full-time job, so I was doing fine financially.
After those first 3 months and the fall semester started, I got my first paying customer - a Calc 1 student at the University of Delaware. And then one student turned into 2, and 2 turned into 3, and before you know it, I had 14 students by the end of the semester (not too shabby).​
The next semester, I had even more students, and it was starting to become too juggle my engineering job and my tutoring side hustle. So after the Spring semester ended and the following Fall semester began, I took a risk and went part-time at my engineering job.
And the gamble paid off. I met with over 60 students that Fall semester! No, I was not tutoring for 60 hours a week (that would be nuts). But I'll admit, I was working a lot of hours. My family and friends were worried I would feel burnt out. But luckily, that never happened. Sure it was challenging, but I loved every minute of it.
So at this point, I was having a fair bit of success with my tutoring side business. The goal was definitely to become a full-time tutor, but if I made the switch, I would be making a lot less money (and losing my 401K match and all my benefits).
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It was a tough decision.
I knew if I didn't make the leap, I would regret it for the rest of my life. So I quit my engineering job and become a full-time tutor.
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Coincidentally, another thing happened that would also change the trajectory of Dan the Tutor.