Meet Jay Veal of It’s Not Complicated Tutoring (INC Tutoring) in Dallas Ft. Worth

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jay Veal.

Jay, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My background is in IT and Tech primarily and one week, I kept getting emails concerning informational sessions of teaching. At the time, I was looking to be a CIO of a Fortune 500 company and hadn’t even thought about being an educator but I knew I was a great tutor since I had been tutoring College Algebra since I was 10. After the 3rd time of me receiving the email, I decided to give it a shot. I actually ended up liking it and in 2008 I started teaching back at my alma mater, Townview SEM. I taught Pre AP Geometry, Pre AP Algebra 2, and Pre AP Precalculus to freshman all in one year so as sophomores, they could take AP Calculus. It was a very accelerated course of which my students earned 100% commended on the state exam. Next, I taught at Cedar Hill Ninth Grade Center teaching Algebra 1.

Then, I moved to Uplift Charter Peak Prep HS where I was a Math Instructor for AP Calculus and Precalculus in addition to being a girls Assistant Basketball Coach. Lastly, I taught Math Models and Algebra 2 at Duncanville HS. Later, I left education to go back to Corporate to work at Microsoft Corp as a Technical Account Manager. After being in that role a couple years, I decided that education was my true passion. I then was hired back in Dallas ISD as a Campus Math Instructional Coach bringing the school from 62% passing on the STAAR Algebra 1 exam to 92% passing within a year and a half. After 2 years there, I was hired at DeSoto ISD as one of their District STEM Instructional Coaches leading educators in a STEAM program in partnership with the Department of Education in Washington D.C. After my year there, I left in July 2017 to run my company full time.

I started INC Tutoring by myself knocking door to door. No funding or VC money. Very bootstrap style. I advised people that we were a new tutoring company in town tutoring 35 subjects across the board and wanted to help the community in education. After a year of doing that and marketing, getting my website together, and branding, we gained traction. Since then, we have rebranded again to tailor to the younger market and be more relatable and not a “corporate brand”. The logo and colors you see today is what we have become. We grew from a 1 person show, to a 2 person show (my mom, Gloria Veal, is our Chief Communications Officer) to a 34 consultant team nationwide! We have earned Tutoring Company of the Year multiple times, been featured in 35 media outlets, and I have been honored as one of 2017 Dallas Business Journal’s Top 40 under 40 for the company. We have decided to partner with a few other organizations this year and one of our key current partners are the Jack and Jill chapters in DFW. We are working on a couple partnerships currently which will be announced soon.

In addition, I am a Board of Directors Member of Rae’s Hope (July 2017) and now Big Thought (Jan 2018) contributing to our youth and education in the City of Dallas and Beyond.

Has it been a smooth road?
The road to entrepreneurship has not always been smooth. I started the organization as a part time venture starting in mid-2013 officially and then went full time in July of 2017. It was difficult managing a full time job and staying up until morning of the next day working on partnerships, client follow ups, HR, Operations, and more. Hiring the RIGHT people tends to be something that is never-ending. You think that a person is the perfect fit. Then, you may find out they do not contribute enough or market enough to grow the company although they are a rock star in intellectual capital. Getting control of streamlined operations via a CRM App that we use named Pocketsuite has been a blessing. It has allowed us to have clients, messaging, calendar appointments, invoicing, classes, contracts, surveys, and more in one central app location. Now, the challenge is streamlining some processes and data analytics functions. In addition, because we support our client population heavily, there are many times that I am up until 2 am doing problems for clients to prepare them for midterms, quizzes, or final exams even after tutoring sessions are completed because we CARE about our students holistically.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the It’s Not Complicated Tutoring (INC Tutoring) story. Tell us more about the business.
INC Tutoring is one of the TOP private, prescriptive tutoring companies based in Dallas and the #1 AA owned private tutoring company with consultants in Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, North Carolina, Peoria, Syracuse and NYC. In addition, we tutor students from 5 years old to Doctorate level in all STEM Subjects, Test Preps, Reading, Writing, and Foreign Languages. Our mission is to provide a world-class educational experience that is holistically driven to increase and retain knowledge while utilizing a one-on-one CUSTOM tutoring session that is fun, yet effective. INC Tutoring assists students in reaching their highest potential and mentors them to success while providing full support. This is what sets us apart from any tutoring companies nationally.

DFW was missing the element in private tutoring that minority students could be successful with. INC Tutoring was the solution to this problem for DFW and other cities and now hundreds of minority students are moving from failing to earning As and Bs, building confidence and performing when they believed they couldn’t before.

By providing a custom prescriptive, holistic tutoring experience coupled with mentoring INC is curing the education crisis one student at a time. This is a formula that no one is using in tutoring and we have found the sweet spot of success with our method that keeps the city talking about our organization. Currently, we have been featured/highlighted in 35 media outlets and offer great VIRTUAL tutoring as well.

As of now, we have also released some NEW divisions of INC Tutoring: INC Dance (in partnership with Passionz Hip Hop) and INC Academic Coaching (in partnership with Darlington Scholars). We tutor students also in technique and choreography of African, modern, step team/drill, ballet, hip hop dance and more in addition to assist students in their academic journeys in academic and career coaching.

I am most proud of our team and high level performance. When you come to INC Tutoring, you get a feeling of “prestige” and getting tutored by the best. We are a millennial driven team of 90% millennials and for a team of 35 people nationwide, we have over 77 degrees total. I would say we have the most intellectual capital of any tutoring company nationwide with degrees from UT, UTA, Duke, Columbia, Texas A and M, and more.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Over the next 5-10 years, INC Tutoring will build multiple partnerships with organizations and schools to exclusively tutor their students to success in their academic journeys. We anticipate to launch and INC Los Angeles and INC Atlanta in the future and then roll out to most major metroplex areas in the U.S. with 5-10 consultants in those cities. Eventually, we would like to launch an INC Dubai overseas to target and reach international students to help them in ESL transition and stay keen in Mathematics learning.

The trending continues to move in online learning and the EdTech space. So expect to see more things come from us in virtual tutoring and possibly a platform in the future. There is also talks of doing something in the beauty space regarding education.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.inctutoring.com
• Phone: 682.305.3720
• Email: info@inctutoring.com

Image Credit:
Kauwuane Burton (professional pics at SMU)
Jay Veal Other pics

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