This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Adam Caller, CEO and founder of Tutors International. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I spent seven years as a high school teacher in the UK, working with the same students from ages 11 to 18.
The thought of continuing for another year bored me, so I decided I’d had enough of school teaching and began searching for more interesting roles in education.
I came across a job advertisement for a full-time private tutor with a company that no longer exists, and I landed a position that took me between Switzerland, France, and Greece. However, I noticed that the company didn’t understand the families or their needs — they had specific problems and required the right person to solve them. So, in 1999, I started my own company to do it better.
Wealth comes with headaches
When I started the company, I aimed to have 40 clients and a gross margin of 160,000 pounds a year. Then, I had a client in Italy who told me, “How can you do something of this quality for so little?” He insisted on paying more.
If families of significant means have a complicated problem, the value they place on a solution is far beyond what I initially imagined.
As my business grew, I’ve met billionaires and many more worth hundreds of millions. I’ve lived their lifestyle for short periods — seen their restaurants, wine choices, and home décor — but my sole reason for visiting is to understand their children and determine their best teachers.
I don’t meet these families and want to live like them. Having a big yacht and multiple houses sounds glamorous, but I’ve seen the headaches, too — managing properties in five locations, maintaining a yacht, and dealing with accidents and repairs.
Enormous wealth is challenging to maintain, support, and protect. I don’t want that lifestyle, with an executive personal assistant and staff everywhere. My role is to support the kids.
It’s about the people
One thing that has always driven me, and still does, is the children.
In a way, who the parents are and what they’ve done is fascinating, but it doesn’t alter how I look at their children’s needs. A child who is struggling from a socioeconomically-deprived background and a child who is struggling from a background of enormous wealth are still both children who are struggling.
Having that child not struggle, helping them learn the material, find success, and enjoy what they’re doing — that’s what drives me.
We’ve had some dramatic, what I call “saves” — children who were massively off the rails, involved in drugs, refusing to go to school, or engaging in self-harm. We managed to straighten them out, help them rediscover the meaning of life, and get them back on track. Some of these children went on to university, became doctors or research chemists, or simply found happiness in life. Those are the ones that make the biggest difference to me.
The teachers who stay with us long term are the ones who don’t get changed by the wealth around them. They came into it for the right reasons — to benefit the children — and they’ve stayed entirely grounded. They don’t take advantage of the client’s wealth.
If I ask a candidate what they think the best part of the job will be, and they talk about private yachts and fine wine, I know they’re not the right fit. But if they talk about how they can help the children, I know they speak the right language.
For me, it has always been about the people. Whether it’s the children we help, the families we work with, or the team I’ve built around me, the people matter most.Do you have a story to share about working around wealth? Email this reporter at [email protected].
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