• Jerome Barty-Taylor has been a private tutor in Hong Kong for the past decade.
• He says he’s had to learn not to get ruffled by things like extremely expensive gifts.
• For the ultra-rich, he says, tutoring isn’t just about books — it’s about maintaining values.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jerome Barty-Taylor, the 35-year-old British-Australian owner of a private tutoring business based in Hong Kong. This essay has been edited for length and clarity.

When I first landed in Hong Kong in 2013, it was just meant to be a stepping-stone stop for me to save up some money. I didn’t have enough money to make it back home to Australia from Oxford.

I began tutoring after being headhunted by one of the private education companies here. And when I realized how much I loved teaching, I launched my own private tutoring business, BartyED, in 2016. Today, we’ve grown to an 11-person company.

I worked with around nine families at the start. My business now has a core group of around 80 families whose children we tutor — mostly in 1:1 settings. My rate for lessons is 2080 Hong Kong dollars per hour, or around $265.

My clients are generally upper middle class or above. Many are what could be described as “Hong Kong old money.” There’s also the Shanghai industrialists who came here in the 50s, and the new money families.

Over the course of a decade of working with them, these are the three main lessons I’ve learned about their world.

1. You’re expected to be available whenever, wherever your clients want you to be

When you work with high net worth individuals — whether it’s old or new money — I’ve learned not to be ruffled by how different their expectations can be.

They expect you to be available on their time. If the father of a student is the CEO of a multinational company, he might only be able to speak to me at 9 p.m. on a Saturday night, so I have to adjust to that.

When I first started working in Hong Kong, a parent wanted to meet me at an airport lounge to talk about his child over Champagne because we both had flights that evening. For him, it was the most efficient use of time.

As a tutor, it’s my job to be understanding and humble in what is effectively a service business.

At the same time though, some clients have also been extraordinarily generous, through birthday gifts like a magnum of Margaux.

2. For the ultra-rich, education isn’t just about books. It’s about maintaining values.

For the very wealthy, their primary interest when looking for a tutor is to find someone who can pass their values on to their children.

That’s so their children don’t fall prey to the curse of “one generation to make it, and one generation to spend it.” I think that’s why a number of my early clients liked my emphasis on hard work and accountability.

There’s a culture of aspiration here, and Hong Kong really values academic achievement.

And private tutoring is a multimillion-dollar industry here. Around the time when I launched my company, another company made headlines for offering a tutor from a rival company an $11 million salary to jump ship and join them instead. It can get really cutthroat.

3. Word-of-mouth referrals are your most powerful advertising tool

In the first year of running my business, we didn’t spend a single cent on advertising: It was entirely word-of-mouth referrals. Some of those original clients from 10 years ago still refer the clients that I work with today.

I definitely didn’t anticipate the strength of the relationship I’ve built.

It’s been really heartening to be drawn into these families as an honorary uncle or a godfather-figure. I catch up with my ex-students for dinner whenever they’re back in Hong Kong, and sometimes, I receive late night calls or WhatsApp messages seeking advice about job interviews or problems with university life.