Juggling Teaching, Parenthood, and a Thriving TPT Business: Coaching Call with Rebeca Fox
Mar 25, 2024
Lauren Fulton - The Rebranded Teacher
Ever feel like you're spinning too many plates? Join us for a coaching call that peels back the curtain on the intricate dance of balancing a bustling teaching career, parenthood, and an online business venture. We dissect Rebeca's unique approach to creating indispensable resources for her librarian peers and plot her course towards conquering the world of Teachers Pay Teachers.
Strap in for a deep dive into the strategies that will skyrocket your TPT store's efficiency in the coming year. As we wade through the importance of crafting solid templates and the wisdom in the creation of a select few resources, you'll learn how to avoid stretching yourself too thin. Whether you're considering doubling down on a specific product line or bundling up your best offerings, this episode is brimming with tips to help you navigate the creation process with finesse. We also crack open the email marketing treasure chest for TPT store owners, weighing the benefits of an early start against the draw of joint events. Perfect for those looking to make their mark while keeping their sanity intact, this episode is your playbook for thriving in the TPT marketplace.
Ever feel like you're spinning too many plates? Join us for a coaching call that peels back the curtain on the intricate dance of balancing a bustling teaching career, parenthood, and an online business venture. We dissect Rebeca's unique approach to creating indispensable resources for her librarian peers and plot her course towards conquering the world of Teachers Pay Teachers.
Strap in for a deep dive into the strategies that will skyrocket your TPT store's efficiency in the coming year. As we wade through the importance of crafting solid templates and the wisdom in the creation of a select few resources, you'll learn how to avoid stretching yourself too thin. Whether you're considering doubling down on a specific product line or bundling up your best offerings, this episode is brimming with tips to help you navigate the creation process with finesse. We also crack open the email marketing treasure chest for TPT store owners, weighing the benefits of an early start against the draw of joint events. Perfect for those looking to make their mark while keeping their sanity intact, this episode is your playbook for thriving in the TPT marketplace.
Welcome to the rebranded Teacher Podcast. My name is Lauren Fulton. I'm a full-time teacher, author and seller on Teacher's Pay teachers, and I help other teacher entrepreneurs grow their TTT businesses in a way that's purposeful and sustainable. So if you're looking for actionable, step-by-step ways to grow your business, you're in the right place. Let's get started.
Speaker 2:
This week we have another fun coaching call for you, and we're talking to Rebecca, who is a secondary librarian. She just started her TTT store early this year. I'm so excited for you guys to have a listen to this conversation because I think it perfectly represents a lot of what new sellers go through, or even intermediate sellers go through, when trying to build their store while also balancing working full-time and being a mom full-time and maybe not being able to do things exactly the way that you would love to do them in your business in order to meet your goals. And so we're going to be talking about ways that she can balance and tweak her operations for her business in order to still serve her students in her classroom with her resources and meet her current needs. All right, I want you guys to meet Rebecca. Hey, rebecca, how are you? Hi?
Speaker 2:
I'm good, good. I'm so excited to chat with you today. When we did this form the application to be on the podcast and do one of these coaching calls, one of the reasons why your application stuck out to me was that you started just this year, so we're recording this in November. You started in April, so you've been going for about seven months.
Speaker 3:
I have. Yeah, it's been a whirlwind.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so I'm so excited to chat with you because you're brand new, but I'm really excited to hear about what your visions are for your business in 2024, some of the things that you want to work towards. I think it's going to be a really helpful episode for a lot of people who are listening. Her is still at that beginning stage of their business.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I hope so. I mean, anything I can glean from this is just icing on the cake, and anyone who, like me, is brand new, can take something from this. I know we can all use the help right now, so definitely, I'm really excited.
Speaker 2:
Absolutely so. Tell us a little bit about you, how you got started on TPT and what your niche is.
Speaker 3:
So I've been a teacher for 18 years. The majority of my time was in the classroom for 12 years and then the last six I made the transition into the library and I'm currently a middle school librarian. I have been for three years and before that I was an elementary librarian for three years. I am in Texas, so it's a lot going on right now in that world, but I love it, it's great. And I started TPT in April of this past year just because, with inflation and I have two very little girls at home, it just got to be a lot, as I'm sure everybody else knows right now, and so I was looking for a way to help my family and see if we can make this a thing. But then also, I really enjoy teaching. It's my passion and I love it.
Speaker 3:
And in the library it's hard, really hard, to find good lessons, especially stuff that's ready made, because we don't necessarily have a set curriculum. We have standards and we do a lot of collaboration, but in terms of finding quality lessons that are done and activities that you can just plug and go, it doesn't always exist, especially at the secondary level. And so that's where my niche comes in is I knew I wanted to do libraries and reading because, prior to being in the library, I was a reading teacher and I saw that there weren't a lot of secondary librarian resources. So that's when I decided okay, let me give this a try, this is something I can do. I know I can do well. My lessons are good, they're quality, they're fun, which is something that I really try to promote with my students and, like other librarians at my district, let's just have fun in the library.
Speaker 2:
So you've got kind of a unique niche but needing a really unique need in the market for secondary librarians, which I love. I also heard you say you're in Texas, which I'm also in Texas and I know that you know I know there are other states that are experiencing some really similar things in the book world and in the literature community, like that kind of thing. So some unique circumstances and trials and things for librarians to navigate right now, which I think is really interesting and really I'm going to say really great. But it presents a great opportunity for teacher entrepreneurs to help teachers and librarians like meet those needs, fill gaps and things like that. So I think that's really great. So talk to me about where your business is right now and then looking ahead into 2024, where you want it to be.
Speaker 3:
So my baby business is indeed a baby Like we're not even in the toddler phase going yet. I have 26 products, I think 26. And I know I've heard you say again and again to make product lines. But I'm so strapped with time between kids and working full time that it's really hard to find and carve out that time and actually make that happen. Like I have the start of some good product or I think they're good product lines, but learning to find that balance and learning to juggle that has been a real challenge. I don't have a lot of marketing at all Like one of my goals going forward is to try and do email marketing, but that's pretty overwhelming and I know you have a previous podcast where you talked about like how to start email marketing. So that's definitely one that's I'm planning on me visiting in the new year, but as of right now it's on the back burner.
Speaker 2:
So I understand I totally get where you're coming from when we're talking about like, yes, absolutely Ideally, you'd be building out product lines and we can talk about that a little bit more, maybe some ways to try to make that doable if it's possible in the coming year. But I'm assuming that the reason it's so challenging is because you're creating resources that you can use right now, yeah, and so it doesn't necessarily fit to do the same type of thing every single week, for example. You're kind of changing it up a little bit, which I totally get. That is a challenge. It's a legitimate challenge and for sure. I just want to start by saying that creating resources that you can create and you can get listed is more important than following a set pattern and creating those product lines. So I totally get it.
Speaker 2:
The next thing that you touched on was email marketing, which we will for sure talk about, because you know I'm a lover of email marketing. So we've got these goals, we've got these challenges for meeting those needs. You also had mentioned something inside of your form about wanting to make sure that the visual aspect of your resources, like your product covers and previews and things like that we're doing your products justice and making sure that they were highlighting, visually appealing, but without looking like everybody else's right, like that kind of thing. Yeah, so we definitely want to take a look at your store and we take a look at everybody's store, regardless of where they started. But I think in the beginning it's really nice and for anyone listening, just having somebody take a fresh set of eyes and look at your store. It doesn't have to be a professional, it doesn't have to be somebody that you've paid to do it. I would say, like going into, for example, our free rebranded teacher community and asking people hey, take a look at my store. What are some things that you notice? Now, to be clear, before you do this and you open yourself up to criticism, just make sure that it's a good week, like you haven't had like a bad week in school. You know you weren't, you didn't receive a bad evaluation or anything like that. Make sure you're in a good place mentally and you're ready to like hear some things. But I've seen so much great feedback that you can get from the teacher author community absolutely free. But we're going to take a look at your store together and obviously, if you're listening on podcast, you're not going to be able to see her store, so I would encourage you to go. We've got this specific audit. It's on YouTube, so if you want to just go watch the audit, you can go watch the audit on YouTube. There's a link for that down in the description, but we'll come back and we'll recap this for you so that you can know what the main points were that we talked about when we looked at Rebecca's store. Okay, so let's go take a look at that store.
Speaker 2:
Now we're here with Rebecca from the Fox Reads and she's a new TPT seller. She's been selling for a little over six months and we're taking a look at some of her resources. We're going to take a look at her store and these are quick audits, so these are not in-depth audits. But basically, what I'm doing is I'm looking for red flags and maybe even some orange flags and giving TPP authors some things that they can work on within their store that will help them meet their goals. And if you want to watch the full coaching call with Rebecca, I encourage you to check out the link it's at in the description. You can watch this entire video. But let's take a look at your store. Okay, so we took a look at your store, rebecca, so excited. Your store looks great, especially for a brand new seller, and I encourage you if you're listening to this on podcast like, go watch it. It's a short video. Go watch the video. There's a link down in the description.
Speaker 2:
We talked about on your covers really making sure that we're steering clear of scripties, girly fonts, things that you can't read in a nanosecond right Things that I'm going to have to stop and slow down and pay attention to. Also, in your particular case, we looked at sticking to some of your branding a little bit more closely with some of those alternating colors that you have, because it did make it stand out. For me personally, it made it a little bit easier to read than using one of those really dark colors with the black outline. The next thing that we talked about on your covers was making sure that you had a value grab and really justifying that price, and for anyone listening at this point, you've probably heard me say that on almost every single coaching call now and this is always. You know, having a value grab has always been a really big deal, but I think now, especially in this economy, it's really really important as teachers are taking a closer look at their bottom line, they're really looking at that price and considering that price point a little bit more heavily to make sure that we're justifying that price on the cover before they go over to look at it in the search.
Speaker 2:
The next thing that we talked about was on your previews. We talked about the importance of really walking the teacher, or walking the buyer, through your product. We talked about deciding in the very beginning whether or not this is a product that offers an experience for students or teachers or offers convenience, and the steps that we need to walk them through. If this is a product that is offering convenience, then I need to make sure I'm highlighting the features of that product that are going to be convenient for the teacher and telling them the desired outcome that they're going to get. So in your case we said, like this is specific form for a librarian, here's a volunteer form not just telling them that it's a volunteer form but then also telling them what that's going to help them accomplish with that volunteer form. And then we talked about with experiences, making sure that you're being really sequential when you're walking them through that product, what that experience is going to look like for either the student or the teacher from beginning to end, and also highlighting what the desired outcome is going to be for that experience, with both cases, making sure that they understand what desired outcome they're going to get with your product, that being a key piece or a key factor in getting that sale to convert, or getting that product to convert into a sale, because it's allowing that teacher or that buyer to visualize utilizing your resource, which takes them that much closer to clicking at the cart.
Speaker 2:
Okay, so we talked about those few things. Now what I want to do is I want to talk about how to take that information and the goals that you have for 2024, and the hurdles that you have for 2024, and make everything kind of work together. So one of the things is, when you're creating resources, if you're really focusing on like hey, I'm going to take a couple of weeks and I'm just going to really focus on my templates for my product covers or my product previews and make sure that I've got those nailed down, I've got them solid, then when I'm creating those resources and popping them out for my classroom or for my library students, then it's going to make the process of listing that much quicker, but it's also going to make it that much more effective because I'm not having to constantly, like, go back to the drawing board every single time, and it's going to make that process of listing so much easier for you. The second thing that it's going to do is, when you're doing that process of going through and making those templates, what I really want you to do is I want you to sit down and I want you to think Okay, what are the main resources that I am using in the library right now?
Speaker 2:
What are the main resources that I'm using with my students? And we talked about before where you said, I know you said do product lines? Focus on product lines, get it out there. But it's not really in the cards for me right now, which is totally fine. But I would say, let's pick four or five main things that I'm doing and I'm going to stick with creating those four or five things. Everything else I'm going to purchase, or I'm just not going to do it, and I know that that's really, really hard to say, because it's like, well, I don't want to just not do it because then my students are missing out. I don't want to just not create it because then they're missing out.
Speaker 2:
But when I really focus on saying, okay, I'm going to hone in and my students really love bulletin boards, they really love these lessons, maybe they love the slides, maybe I really need forms or maybe the scavenger hunts, whatever, when I'm having to narrow down and pick.
Speaker 2:
I promise your students are not going to get bored from doing scavenger hunts. I know, I mean, if that was the only thing you were doing, sure, but maybe I have scavenger hunts and I have this. Like I have two things for students. I have two things or two or three things for me. So two or three resources for students, two or three resources for me, that's also two or three resources for other librarians students and two or three resources that are specifically for those other librarians. And when I'm doing that, so I'm going to say, okay, I'm only going to make templates for these items and these are going to be the ones that I focus on. I'm not going to be able to churn those individual products out like super quickly, right, because I can't just go okay, all the scavenger hunts done, but I'm still going to have a method for how I'm adding those resources to my store. So I'm still going to be able to get those product lines completed faster because I'm not making as many things.
Speaker 3:
Just not making as many things Okay.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so I would choose those templates, create those templates, stick to creating those specific products and maybe, in the process, choose one of those products that you're like. Okay, this particular product line let's just say it's scavenger hunts for students. Let's just say it's that. Right, I'm only going to make eight of these, or I'm only going to make 10 of these, before I bundle them and here are the ones that I'm going to make I would say that you don't have to do this for every single product line or every single one of the templates that you're creating, but just starting with doing it for one will allow you to maybe knock those out a little bit faster during your down seasons.
Speaker 2:
And I'm putting that in quotation marks, because there's really not a lot of downtime, but like if you have a couple of days during fall break or if you have a couple of days during holiday break, winter break or a day off somewhere, like you have one of those magical unicorn days where your kids are in daycare or your kids are in school but you are not, because they're in another district which may not apply to you, but I know it happens to some people every now and then or maybe their dad is like taking them to the park one day or something like that. You already have a plan for that product that you can create. That's part of that product line that you've already laid out, and so maybe that would give you something to kind of work on and maybe get one of those done. But we're not going to sweat trying to wrap up those bundles super quickly. We're just going to have a goal of maybe having them wrapped up by the end of the year. So maybe by the end of the year I've got all of those morning slides done. Maybe by the end of the year I've got all of those forms done, something like that. I've got a couple of those product lines that are ready to go for next year. So that's what I would say to kind of help streamline that piece of it.
Speaker 2:
On the email marketing this one's kind of tricky because you're still building your store. So I'm going to give you two options, because I know people say it's never too soon to start building your email list. It's never too early to start. But sometimes starting too early can be incredibly overwhelming and not worth it. I am team. If you have the extra time to create an opt-in, add it to your products, build your landing page, do all of that and just collect emails and write an email every couple of weeks, then by all means go for it. Otherwise, I would personally wait until you have the time to participate in a collaborative event with other librarians or other people inside of your niche. And my reasoning behind that is you have to consistently market in order to get results from your email list. If I don't have the time to consistently market, then it's not really going to be worth it to me. But also, if I'm making the time to consistently market, I actually want to get a return on my investment. I don't want to feel the burden to send an email out to 10 people, 80 people, like even 100 people. I don't really want to feel the burden to do that because in general you're going to make about 10 cents per lead per month. So if I have 100 people on my list, I can make $10 a month. Writing four emails a month is going to take me at least an hour, so I'm working for $10 an hour and that's working very quickly. So I hate to say I know some people are going to be like it's still worth your time, you're still building for not worth my time. To be honest with you, it's not worth my time. So that's where having that collab piece come in, where, even if I can get 400, 500, 800, maybe even 1000 people on my email list, even if it's just 500 people, I'm then working for $50 an hour, which comes a lot closer to where I want to be for my time, and so it kind of starts to make that investment worth it for me.
Speaker 2:
I was actually talking about this with RTA members this month. They were like oh, there were several people in there who were saying I hate email marketing, I hate email marketing, I hate email marketing. And I said wait a second, are you making money with email marketing? And they said no and I said well, that's why you hate it.
Speaker 2:
Like nobody wants to do things, that's not making them money, like no one wants to do it. So I would say, if you have the extra time and you want to go ahead and start collecting emails and you're okay with putting the labor into it and not getting anything back for a little while, by all means go ahead and do it. Never too early to start collecting in that case. But if you're like, no, I'm limited on my time, I want to make sure that I'm getting a return on my investment, then I would say wait till this summer where you can organize a collaborative event with other librarians, or wait till you have the time to go ahead and do that and then make the jump on it and go full force.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I like that because it's super overwhelming, and just the idea of oh my gosh, how am I going to fit in one more thing at this point is a lot on my plate.
Speaker 2:
Yes, it is, it really is, and it's a lot like in the beginning. It's a lot especially when you're like I have no choice but to create products, right? So I talk about seasons a lot, where there's a season for product creation and maybe we spend several months creating resources and then we pause and we focus on something else for a little bit. In the beginning, that season for product creation is very long because you have to have resources in your store, like you have to, or you're not going to make any money, right. But still keep in mind that you can bust your behind creating resources for the next several months and then take a month off in the summer to focus on doing something else and, like, take product creation off your plate and just be like I'm not going to do that, just going to focus on this one thing.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, that makes sense. That's, it sounds hopeful. Yes, Eventually at some point I'd like to get to that spot where it's just yeah, I can take a break.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, absolutely, and at 50 products. Rebecca, you can take a break, like you can do that at 50 products for sure, and then just tell yourself like I'm going to do 50 products and then I'm going to do 20 products and take another break, and then I'm going to get to 100 products and I'm going to take a break, like build them in and make sure you're still taking breaks. But yeah, for sure, in the beginning it's a lot lengthier for product creation.
Speaker 3:
And then it's building the, like you said, building the templates. Taking the time to do that. I'm doing it all from scratch and I did not realize how time consuming that was because, like everybody says, you build it for your classroom and that's one thing, but then to make it like, go in line with copyright and make sure that it looks visually pleasing to lots of people, as opposed to just yourself and making sure all the little things are correct, it's very time consuming. So it's good.
Speaker 2:
It really is, but you've gotten the big pieces out of the way, like you've got to start for all of these incredible product lines, so hopefully it'll be a little bit faster moving forward.
Speaker 3:
It has gotten like, oh my gosh, night and day. The amount of quickness that I can do it now. It still takes time, but it's. I feel way more confident. I feel like I'm slowly getting the hang of it.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, absolutely Awesome. Do you have any other questions for me?
Speaker 3:
No, not really. I mean, I'm sure as soon as we hang up I'll come up with a million more.
Speaker 2:
I hear you. Well, we've covered a lot of information today, so thank you so much for being here. Where can listeners find you if they want to connect with you?
Speaker 3:
So I'm on Instagram at thefoxreads, or you can send me a message at Rebeccaafox at gmailcom.
Speaker 2:
I love it. Well, thanks so much for being here, Rebecca. You have a great rest of your week.
Speaker 3:
Thanks you too. Thanks for all your help. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:
Thanks so much for being here. You guys. I put out weekly content for teacher entrepreneurs. We have lots of great coaching call videos in the library, so make sure you catch up on those. I'm going to see you guys right back here next week.