The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
From Discouraged to Delusional
We're flashing back to August of 2017, where I hit my first 3 figure month, then tripled that amount by October of the same year. And I'm on target to follow that same trend now, 7 years later - but with less than 1/4 of the products.
And I'm sharing exactly how I got here and how I plan to hit that goal!
Okay, as promised, let's talk about some pivots that I'm making right now in my business. So, first things first. I was making these large preschool workbooks that were designed to last like six to eight weeks, be six to eight weeks worth of work, over 120 pages. They were working well for me and for my daughter until they weren't and a couple of things happened almost simultaneously, which was really great, weren't, and a couple of things happened almost simultaneously, which was really great. The first thing was I realized, okay, these are pretty simple to create. I guess I should say Not necessarily quick, but fairly simple to create. I can do the outline for them, choose the clip art, my VA can do the rest. Like, these are fairly simple to create and to duplicate, and so that part is fantastic. And just focusing on basically interest-based pre-K workbooks. At the same time that I was starting to realize, okay, I'm putting quite a bit of effort into the marketing of these. Even though it's marketing to a whole audience, I'm still putting a significant amount of effort and money behind this and people really are not biting. Right, they're not biting. I need something different.
Speaker 0:When life got busy, I had to pivot in homeschooling my preschooler and she wants to do school. She enjoys school. I love doing school with her. We do school through the summer, like we do school all the time. But the issue became during moving, illnesses, traveling, all the things we didn't even have time a lot of days to just like go pick up the book and do a couple of pages, because by the time we did, you know, each page was one skill, one number recognition for one number, or letter recognition for one letter, and each time that we'd pick up the book we'd do a couple of pages. And then I was out of time, or many days I just didn't even have the time to just be like, okay, we're going to sit down for 10 minutes and work on school. The time just wasn't there and life was just getting away from us. So I decided that I was going to create something that could all be on one page, something where I didn't have to print out a book, I didn't have to bind the workbook together, which I mean you know, you don't have to bind a workbook together. But it was just what I was doing at the time. We could do one page and it would have all of the basic skills that she needed on that one page, kind of like morning work right.
Speaker 0:Took a look at the morning work that was on the market. Of course I'm not going to purchase anything if I can make it myself, which is not a great attitude to adopt, but in this case it worked and I knew that whatever I created, I was going to attempt to sell it as well if it worked well for us. I also wanted to add in a couple of other skills that weren't currently in my workbooks, like writing your name and identifying the day of the week, and I felt like that would work best on these one-page worksheets. So I created these one-page sheets. They're still themed, so it's still interest-based learning, which is what my audience is interested in. That's kind of the draw for them when they join my email list is their child is interested particularly in dinosaurs, and so because their child is interested in dinosaurs, they're interested in downloading these dinosaur worksheets et cetera, and so it's kind of catering to the child's fixation right, or to the child's interest to get them to participate in the work. Same basic concept, but really scaled down so that we don't have page upon page upon page, and I was like I'm going to give this a go, so I created the worksheets before sending them off to my VA, tested them with my toddler. She loved them. It literally took us two, maybe three minutes to do an entire page. And we're talking like writing your name, two counting activities, tracing, letter recognition, like all the things, like three, number of the day, letter of the day, tracing and counting those and then three other activities and then writing your name, day of the week, right. So really really simple, but it would take us two to three minutes and I cannot tell you how freeing that was and I'm going somewhere with this, besides just telling you guys about, you know, my child's education I couldn't tell you how freeing it was to just grab one page, set it on the table and say trace your name, I'm going to come right back. Okay, now dot these numbers. I'm going to come right back and then make the letter maze. I'm going to come right back. It was so simple that if I needed to step away, she could do it on her own and she was learning, she was having a great time and I was completely freed up and didn't dread like, okay, let's drag out the book, let's get all the markers out, or anything like that.
Speaker 0:The reason I'm saying this is because I market specifically to busy parents. My store is the busy homeschooler, right. Even though my workbooks are simple, they're engaging, they don't take that long, it still looks like a lot of work to that busy parent who still has to print the whole thing out, who still has to find a way to bind it all together right, it still looks like a lot of work. It still looks like a lot of time because it looks like the same old, same old. And it kind of dawned on me like, oh, my marketing isn't working because what I'm saying my product does which I know it does do doesn't line up with what they're seeing. If they were to purchase the product, print it out, utilize the product, like yeah, they're going to find it's extremely intuitive, very user-friendly, they just print and go, all of that kind of stuff. But they're wanting something different. They're wanting something that says I am so busy that I don't think that I can spare that much time to even print a whole workbook out, right? Or sit down with my child and do multiple pages a day because they're feeling like I feel. So let's start with this one page a day.
Speaker 0:So we started creating this and my email marketing started to speak specifically to that. That's when things started to shift. Now I'm not saying they're flying off the shelves, like I still only have. I have less than 2,500 people on my email list. Things are not going to fly off the shelves and that audience is still from cold traffic, from paid ads, so they're not a super warm audience. I'm still having to warm them up.
Speaker 0:But in doing this, in switching my messaging from hey, I have these things for your child based on their interest, it's going to make your life easier because they're going to enjoy school. It's going to make things easier for you as a busy mom, as a busy teacher. All of that Two hey, I don't have time for this, and I know you don't have time for this either. But just because we don't have the traditional amount of time doesn't mean you can't still cover some essential skills. So here's a solution to your problem If you have two to three minutes a day, then you can focus on teaching your child some essential skills. Not only does this appeal to the parent the busy parent on my email list. This also appeals to the teacher, who may be on my email list as well, because this is morning work for them. They're covering everything in one page and then they go back throughout the day and they're able to focus on other things through the lesson.
Speaker 0:But it's morning work, essentially, and that's when I started to see the sales come in. So I'm going to tell you what I did is that once I saw that this was selling, I immediately purchased a lot of clip art and I went and I was like okay, sent it off to my VA and was like let's do the same thing with these themes. And right now I have three themes up. This was end of August. I think that I made my first listing. I think I had one during the site-wide sale up which just ended. It was just last week, so I think I had one, maybe two. I just listed another one yesterday and then I have two more in the works. So that'll be five, and those are more seasonal some fall, halloween, and then we'll move on into some of the other seasons.
Speaker 0:I am really really excited about these because I think it really speaks to the parent who is busy and it meets that immediate need. But the other thing that it does is it creates a lower barrier of entry. Basically, instead of having a workbook that costs $9, I have worksheets that cost $3 because it's a fraction of the length, it takes a fraction of the time to create, and so it's a fraction of the cost. Now it's just $3, which is, I mean, $9 isn't that expensive, but $3 is kind of a no brainer. So for those people on my email list knowing that they're still pretty cold we're still building that know, like and trust factor it's a much smaller leap for them to go ahead and pay $3 than it is for them to pay $9. Much lower risk $3 than it is for them to pay $9, much lower risk. So that converts them from leads into customers, hopefully gets them using my products.
Speaker 0:And this is the type of product that, as a homeschool parent, this is exactly what you want, no matter what niche you're in. This is the type of product that if your customer prints and uses it, they will want to continue to print and use it because they will be so excited with how it works. They're gonna get the results that they want. They're gonna feel great about what they did with their kid that day, even if they're just a parent who doesn't homeschool but they're just doing extra work with their toddler. They're going to feel successful and they're gonna continue to make these purchases with these different themes, to continue to work through these same basic skills, and they can easily continue to do that because it's $3, basically $3 for an entire month, right? So that's what I did, that's how it's working.
Speaker 0:Sent out an email about it, got some sales sent out another email. Sent out an email about it, got some sales sent out another email, got some sales. And then what I did was I just duplicated the email, changed a little bit of the email and sent it out again. So I think sometimes we think with email marketing, like, okay, I sent out this email, it worked, so how can I do that again? And the answer is you just do it again. You clone the email, you change out a little bit of the information. So in my case, I changed it out from announcing that oh, we now have a vehicles theme to we now have a farm theme and change the intro story just a tiny bit. Same basic message, but just change the intro a little bit.
Speaker 0:And today I've sold five units, which is the most I've ever sold in a day. So I'm really excited because I feel like and some parent of like somebody bought two of them, which means they plan to use these on a regular basis, and this is what I'm really excited about, because this is easily a product that I can bundle everything together and they can get all of these morning work themes all together. I feel like this is gonna be a really great seller, and I told my husband today. I said I have found my moneymaker in this niche. Now, when I say moneymaker, I don't mean like I'm going to make thousands of dollars off of this, but I mean I found the thing that's going to get the ball rolling that I can really build off of, and I'm really excited about that.
Speaker 0:You might be listening to this podcast and thinking, okay, she sold five units. She does sound a little delusional, and I am, but that's kind of what got me here, kind of is. I was a little delusional back in August of 2017 when I sold $160-some-odd dollars worth of product, but here I am running a multi-six-figure business. It may have been delusion it still is a lot of delusion, not going to lie but it got me here, and so, on that note, I want to challenge you that if you're looking at numbers and you're like these numbers are small, right, I sold two products today, or I sold six products this month, like whatever it is.
Speaker 0:If you feel like maybe you're being delusional about the success of that, just lean into it and let it kind of drive you and push you forward. If you're on the other end of the spectrum where you're seeing those numbers and you're feeling very discouraged, let me tell you you also can feel a little delusional about your success. Like you can flip that and you can say, wow, like six people chose to purchase this thing that I made. And let it push you to keep going and tell yourself I can scale this, this is scalable. So even if you're just selling one resource, that's scalable. If you're selling 10 resources a month, that's scalable. If you're selling 100 products a month, that is also scalable. And you know what? It's easier to scale from one to 100 than it is from 100 to 1,000. Or from 100 to 200 even. It's so doable. You can absolutely do this.
Speaker 0:And if you're feeling like I was with the email marketing, you're feeling a little discouraged, you're feeling discouraged in your marketing and you're like I'm not finding anything that's working, keep trying different things. And if you have an audience and they're not purchasing what you're selling. Try different things in terms of marketing, try hitting different pain points. If that doesn't work, maybe try a different product Maybe it's the product and then keep trying, like keep trying until you find something that sticks. I'm not saying be all over the place, but maybe you just need to do what I did and maybe lean in a little bit more to the pain point and just take it a little bit further. Once you find something that works, you just keep doing it. Like don't stop. It doesn't matter if you feel like you've said it before, you have say it again. If it's working, lean into it and continue to lean into it. As long as it's working, all right.
Speaker 0:I'm going to see you guys next week. I'm going to catch up with you guys and let you know how this continues to go, as I continue to market this new product line and as we continue to churn out some more resources. Really excited for fall. I'm also kind of working on the affiliate marketing side. I'm looking forward to kind of picking that up a little bit more and hoping that I can see a little bit more growth. In fact, I'll probably talk about that in my next podcast episode. Talk a little bit about Amazon affiliate marketing, because I've been doing that for a little while now. So I'll probably share some numbers with you guys on that and how that's looking in terms of advertising things and blogging about different things that would be relevant to my niche. So, yeah, I'll see you guys right back here next week.