Today we’d like to introduce you to Cody Friedrich.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
Growing up I always had a passion for helping children, especially from lower economic areas, as I grew up in a lower income situation myself. Throughout high school and college and I volunteered my time, traveling to lower-income areas such as Phoenix Arizona, Skidrow in Los Angeles, inner-city Wilmington Delaware, and even as far as Montego Bay, Jamaica to help students. I initially wanted to be a child counselor, but during my time in college I was offered a grant to teach in low-income schools in Tulsa, OK to help pay off my loans. I took the job initially just to pay off my loans but quickly discovered that helping students learn and showing students their own potential was my calling. As I taught, I began to work for a tutoring company on the side but quickly realized I could start my own business, and with the help of my mentor, I launched I Will Academy about a month before COVID shut down the country. I had no clients and no way to meet people, so my mentor told me to go where the people are, so I began to go to Walmart and grocery stores, talking to people and handing out business cards. My business grew, from 2 clients a week, to where it is now, where we employ several other tutors and see hundreds of clients a month. A side job quickly became my primary source of income, and as we worked with students and our name spread, we began to work with students from all over Tulsa, Oklahoma City, and as far as Indiana, helping students to raise their test scores, as we brought life to learning to students from all over.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Something I’ve found in business is there’s always a need to continue to grow. If my business isn’t growing every day, I don’t view it as successful, and with grow comes uncomfortableness. Whether it’s needing to expand buildings and taking on more overhead, to branching out to covering new topics, to accepting larger size groups, I Will Academy constantly has put me in a position to grow, something that I’ve learned to embrace and not to view as a struggle.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
At I Will Academy we bring life to learning, as we help students from all over Tulsa and beyond with a variety of topics. We take in students as young as Pre-K and we help students all the way through college and beyond with tests such as the GRE, MCAT, and LSAT. We provide one-on-one and group sessions, and we employ only highly trained tutors. Instead of employing college students or novices in their field of study, we employ engineers, bankers, and highly trained educators. Our tutors are proficient professionally, highly educated, and are excellent communicators as well as role models for our students. I am most proud of the team that we have assembled, and I believe the level of instruction we are able to provide at the price we do it for is the best value in the tutoring industry.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
I love to listen to the Faith Ignite podcast and the Suddenly podcast. They are filled with testimonies of people using their faith to overcome situations.
Pricing:
- $50 for one on one tutoring
- $60 for test prep
Contact Info:
- Email: codyfriedrich@iwillacademy.org
- Website: iwillacademy.org
