George Scholey

And how long did it take you to realize that actually you could turn this into a job?

Very recently, as the Rubik’s Cube community has grown, the idea of having a job, you know, related to the Rubik’s Cube has grown. And it’s only really within the last three or four years that professional Rubik’s Cube speed-solvers has become a thing. And that’s actually not exactly what I do. I’m not like a Rubik’s Cube speed-solver just as a job. I do it alongside other Rubik’s Cube related things to earn enough money to make it a job. The other things are, so public speaking, talks at, like, assemblies and schools and businesses as well. I do corporate speaking. You see, kind of using the Rubik’s Cube as like a problem-solving tool, teaching people, you know, how it teaches diligence and stuff like that. And then a big one is coaching. So, I coach people how to either solve the cube or how to get faster at solving the cube. But that’s kind of a big part of what I do is the coaching. Since 2019, I’ve been an ambassador for the Rubik’s brand. My day-to-day varies, but typically it will involve coaching. It will involve a presentation. Weekends, it will always involve competing. A lot of the time I’ll be competing, but also, you know, to compete, you can’t just compete and compete. You need to get faster, you know, so that the competitions are worth going to. So, learning more algorithms, doing solves, you know, practising is a big part of it, too. And despite that, I always really like to stay active. I don’t want to, like, be stuck in, like, a dark room and, like, develop claws, like just solving the cube, you know, for hours on end. But yeah, day-to-day it’s coaching, presentations, solving.

Do you have a typical client who comes to you and says, “I need help solving the Rubik’s Cube”?

I found more people that want to solve it than want to get faster in terms of the people that I’m teaching and coaching. They often may have heard of me from being in the Rubik’s Cube space, the speed-cubing community. The most common demographic is younger kids. And they’re often quite young. So, it’s not kind of a thing that they’re typically able to just sit down for hours and go on YouTube and do it. Maybe it requires someone being there, someone helping them, giving them the right steps. And everyone learns differently, right? Everyone takes something on [differently]. And there are so many ways you can teach someone how to solve a cube and learn. And I truly believe anyone can learn as well. That’s obviously why I do what I do.