UCF Alum Turns Ardour into Revenue with Digital Tutoring Startup

While many aspiring educators brace themselves for modest earnings, School of Teacher Education alum Steven Keys ’14MAT embraced it. He challenged himself to attain monetary independence and has now turned that have it right into a worthwhile endeavor — one which has taken him from a trainer’s wage to millionaire standing.

For Keys, the recipe was a mixture of many various elements: self-discipline, frugal dwelling, tutoring, instructing, and entrepreneurship amongst them. It’s why he now spreads the wealth of data he’s gained alongside the way in which by means of mentorship in each teachers and way of life.

What started as pursuing his ardour for training advanced right into a startup on-line tutoring service, which made its debut at UCF, to proceed the work he loves, all whereas co-running a life-style weblog to encourage others to do the identical. Here’s how he did it.

Road to Success

Keys obtained his grasp’s in science training by means of a resident trainer partnership program between UCF and Seminole County Public Schools. As a part of this system, he labored as an area public college trainer for 2 years whereas incomes his diploma, an expertise that he says formed each his instructing type and entrepreneurial mindset.

He graduated debt-free with each his bachelor’s and grasp’s levels and supposed to maintain it that manner.

His path to success first started with years of intentional sacrifice. While he was growing his ardour for training, Keys and his spouse adopted a minimalist way of life, reducing pointless bills, studying each technique obtainable to save cash and committing to constant investing.

Before their entrepreneurial journey even started, Keys and his spouse had already reached millionaire standing for themselves on their early-career salaries alone. The self-discipline that requires is one thing they now attempt to go alongside to others.

“When I first started my career, I was making $38,000 a year,” he says. “My wife and I were determined to be financially successful regardless of our salaries. We developed this life philosophy of frugality and minimalism. Being happy with less and learning to live on less, money-wise. Even on those relatively low salaries that we started with, we managed to save and invest over 60% of our income our very first year having full time jobs because we lived really frugally, shared one used car and lived a small apartment, all that stuff.”

Just a few years into his instructing profession, Keys shifted from the classroom instructing to personal tutoring. He discovered success however bumped into a brand new drawback: the demand for tutoring companies exceeded one particular person’s bandwidth.

“I thought, ‘There’s got to be a better way to do this to help more students and be able to charge them less.’”  — Steven Keys ’14MAT

“As a one-on-one tutor, you only have so much time to sell,” he says. “At one point, I was charging up to $200 an hour. I was turning away students because I had no more time. I thought, ‘There’s got to be a better way to do this to help more students and be able to charge them less.’”

Education Meets Entrepreneurship

Eventually the couple saved and invested sufficient to be semi-retired earlier than embarking on their subsequent journey: co-founding a web based tutoring service. CramBetter is a 24/7 on-line tutoring service constructed to assist school college students by means of skilled help with their programs, with an emphasis on robust introductory programs — particularly in STEM disciplines. Launched in 2023 with UCF as one in all its pilot campuses, the platform now serves college students throughout the nation.

Working along with his spouse, Lauren, and enterprise accomplice, Marty Parks, they created a tutoring mannequin that might attain 1000’s of scholars at an inexpensive worth. Instead of conventional tutoring classes, they curated a library of examine guides, video classes and observe exams they designed utilizing their mixed tutoring expertise.

CramBetter focuses on the programs that Keys says mostly “weed out” college students in pre-health and engineering pathways — like chemistry, physics and calculus — and are sometimes taught in massive lecture halls with restricted customized help. It’s additionally obtainable to college students who wait till the final minute to check and can’t see a standard tutor.

“It’s accessible 24/7, so if they’re at the library at 3 a.m., they essentially have a tutor with them,” he says. “A lot of tutoring requests come at the eleventh hour, when students have an exam the next night. That’s not the way that I recommend people study, but that is the reality for a lot of college students.”

Lifestyle Tutoring

Keys and his spouse additionally co-run a weblog and YouTube channel known as “Trip Of A Lifestyle,” the place they element their private philosophies and paths to success whereas offering free suggestions to assist others obtain financially steady lives, particularly by means of related nontraditional or sudden paths.

“Don’t let people tell you not to go into teaching because there’s no money in it,” he says. “There are all sorts of things you can do with a teaching background — not to mention that it’s a worthwhile endeavor because it feels good to teach. I have no regrets about going into teaching, even though I supposedly could have had a more ‘lucrative’ career in some other discipline.”

Through CramBetter and Trip Of A Lifestyle, Keys is now mentoring far past the classroom, serving for instance to college students and educators that with persistence, planning and creativity, it’s doable to construct each monetary safety and significant affect.

He hopes his story can encourage college students — particularly these learning training — who might fear about profession limitations.

“We just try to be positive and inspire others to chase their dreams,” he says. “You don’t need a big inheritance or salary. You don’t need to win the lottery to start a company or do other things you dream of. You just need to be consistent with saving from whatever job you have. If you set your mind to it, you can make it happen.”