I let the Right travel and tutor. I charged up to $155 an hour for this.

Tutoring took off very quickly. In my hometown of San Luis Obispo, California, I taught math, physics, and statistics for the SAT and other college entrance exams for $135-$155 an hour.

Working with tutoring in my travels

In June 2017, a friend asked me if I wanted to go on a trip to Japan.

At that point, I had done all the in-person guidance and realized I could do it online and travel more.

I was in Japan for three weeks. Then I continued to Southeast Asia, traveling all the way. During that time, my student base expanded to the US, including some international students.

I fell into a rhythm of spending three months abroad and three months at home in California. I traveled to Western Europe and bounced around North Africa, South America and Central America until the pandemic hit. By that time, I had earned a six-figure salary from tutoring.

I work the tutoring job wherever I am. I settle in the same place for a week and open the times I want to be available for tutoring. I spend the rest of the day exploring.

One of my favorite photos from my travels is of a small village in Guatemala that doesn’t appear on Google Maps. There was excellent cell service, so I opened a few calendars and connected to my cell phone’s Wi-Fi hotspot. There is a picture of me sitting on a chair in the jungle giving classes. It always makes me smile.

The pandemic gave me the chance to try new things

My training slowed down significantly at the beginning of the pandemic, so I had a lot of free time. I decided to teach data science myself.

My family friend’s farm near my hometown was short staffed, so I agreed to help pick cilantro for about two and a half weeks. It was very hard work and less financially rewarding, but I was always fascinated by agricultural field work.

Together, interweaving work, life and travel

One dimension of wealth I struggled with was choosing freedom over time. When a student pays me for an hour, it’s money for my time.

Practicing law was the same. At the law firm I worked for, we billed in six-minute increments, which messed with my perception of time. I didn’t like to think of time as having monetary value.

With my travels and mentoring, I could have stayed home and been more efficient, but I wanted to weave work, life and travel together.

In 2021, I started a new career as a data scientist, working at the intersection of law and data science. But after I moved to Chicago, I started getting more questions about tutoring. Now, most of my students are in high school and I help them take standardized tests to get into university.

I recently started learning web development; maybe I’ll find ways to monetize that too.

I don’t regret going to law school, but I realized pretty quickly that the practice of law was not for me.

Looking back, I wish I had tried more things. I’ve heard the analogy of a sail on a ship: you can’t guarantee the wind will come, but the more sails you put up, the better off you’ll be when the wind does come. So putting yourself out there, taking more risks, and learning new skills are all ways to set more sails.