The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
3 Tips for Growing Your TpT Business When You're Time Poor (Or Massively Overwhelmed)
Unlock the secrets to skyrocketing your Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) business, even when you're pressed for time. Ever wondered how some educators seem to effortlessly balance product creation, marketing, and a personal life? Discover the strategic trifecta of focus areas that can significantly boost your revenue: product creation, search engine optimization, and email marketing. Join me, Lauren Fulton, on the Rebranded Teacher Podcast, as I share my tried-and-true strategies for managing time effectively, focusing on tasks that truly move the needle, and avoiding burnout with a well-structured work schedule.
You'll get practical tips on how to batch your tasks—dedicating focused periods to activities like product creation or SEO—to maximize efficiency and productivity. Listen in to understand how to streamline your marketing efforts by honing in on the most impactful platforms, such as email marketing, ensuring every minute spent on your business counts. I also express my heartfelt gratitude for your ongoing support and tease an exciting upcoming topic: starting a second TPT store. It's time to transform your approach and propel your TPT business to new heights.
Check out my YouTube Channel!
https://www.youtube.com/@LaurenFulton
Welcome to the Rebranded Teacher Podcast. My name is Lauren Fulton. I'm a full-time teacher, author and seller on Teachers, Pay Teachers, and I help other teacher entrepreneurs grow their TPT 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 it.
Speaker 2:Let's talk about growing your TPT business when you don't have a lot of time. So if you're finding that you don't have a lot of time or you feel extremely overworked, like you have way too much on your plate and you're trying to figure out how to grow your business, this episode is for you. I'm going to be giving you three tips for helping you focus on the things that actually matter and are going to move your business forward with the little bit of time that you have. All right, here we go. Let's get started, because you don't have a lot of time. Number one pick your top three revenue generating focuses and only do those things, only do those tasks. What three tasks or what three focuses are going to generate the most amount of revenue for me? And then you're only going to complete those tasks. Now I'm going to give you a little hint here. Marketing isn't a focus. Okay, it's way too broad. And the reason I say it's way too broad is because marketing encompasses Instagram marketing, email marketing, blogging, sending note to followers, all the things, not to mention Pinterest, tiktok, all the things, right? So if I just say marketing, then that gives me license to focus on way too many things, right. So I really need to read that and say what specific form of marketing am I doing that's actually generating revenue for my business, or I know will generate revenue for my business if I continue to do it.
Speaker 2:What is tried and true? What are the experts all saying? They're all saying email marketing, by the way. That's what they're all saying. Some of them are saying blogging, but email marketing, for sure, everyone is saying. So what is everyone saying? Or what am I experiencing that's bringing me in money? That's generating revenue for my business? That's the one I'm gonna focus on. So if I'm time poor in my business and I only have a few hours a week to work on my business, I'm picking one focus, one platform to focus on, whatever, so that I'm not having to spend a lot of time showing up everywhere. Now, the only time that I would say marketing, and say marketing in general, is if you're at a place in your business where you already have all of the resources, all of your products already created, your store shelves are stocked and your SEO is on point, like all of those things are looking great and really you just need traffic generation from outside sources, then yeah, sure, go ahead marketing, but then from there, splitting into three focuses so maybe you're doing Facebook ads, maybe you're doing email marketing three focuses, so maybe you're doing Facebook ads, maybe you're doing email marketing and maybe you're doing social media Okay, and then just focus on those three things. But basically we're just trying to pick three revenue generating focuses that, if you're like Lauren, I have no clue. I have no clue because I'm not making any money Then the three big things that I'm going to say are product creation, search engine optimization and email marketing, and those would be the only three things that I would do until you start to see one of them really take off and then you're going to be spending a little bit more time on maybe that one thing. Okay, so those would be the three. If I had to pick three focuses, those would be the three focuses in the very beginning of your teachers pay teachers journey. Okay.
Speaker 2:Number two you need to create a schedule. I talked about this in a previous episode, how it's really important, especially if you're a parent of littles or you have a lot of social obligations or what have you that you really need to have a work schedule. That way you always know when you're going to be sitting down to work and those around you, who are an integral part of your life they always know when you're going to be sitting down to work. And those around you, who are an integral part of your life they always know when you're going to be working and they know what that expectation is. But, within that work schedule, you need to know what you're going to be doing each day. So maybe, for example, you sit down three days a week and on day one you're working on email marketing, on day two you're working on search engine optimization and day three you're working on product creation.
Speaker 2:However, it is that you set up your schedule. You need to have a schedule and you need to know exactly what you're gonna be working on any time that you sit down. I know, for example, on Mondays, I'm always going to be working on the math membership on Mondays. Apart from touching base with my team and getting them anything that they need on that day, I'm just. My sole focus is working on the math membership on Monday, and so I cannot get distracted by creating YouTube videos or by scheduling out broadcast emails or anything like that. I really have to focus just on that one area of my business on that one day.
Speaker 2:So create a schedule, have a work schedule and then know what you're going to be working on anytime you sit down. It doesn't have to be a one day. So create a schedule, have a work schedule and then know what you're going to be working on anytime you sit down. It doesn't have to be a specific day. You could even batch things. You could say week one, I'm going to be working on product creation. So anytime that I sit down to work during week one, I'm just creating products. Week two, I'm just scheduling emails or building a funnel or creating a landing page whatever it is email marketing. And then week three I am solely focused in week three on search engine optimization and only optimizing resources that are already in my store. Okay, number three this is a really big one, and I think this is a really big one, and it's don't overwork, okay. So let's talk about this for a second.
Speaker 2:There's this productivity hack that a lot of people use and I've used it myself and that is if you don't feel like working, set a timer for 10 minutes or 15 minutes and tell yourself you only have to work for 10 minutes or 15 minutes and then, when the timer goes off, chances are you'll have felt so productive, you'll start to feel really good. You'll have felt so productive You'll start to feel really good, you'll be in the group and you'll want to keep going. Okay, this works really well for some people under certain situations. The only stipulations I'm going to give you is that if you are someone who is prone to depression, it works really well for that, like just getting started on the task, if you're feeling incredibly overwhelmed by your business and you are avoiding your business like the plague. It works really well for those types of situations, any time where you're just finding that you have a pattern of not wanting to do the thing.
Speaker 2:So maybe, for example, once you've created that work schedule, you can tell yourself if you're having a really bad day. You can say okay, you don't have to work the whole hour, lauren, if you just go ahead and start and work 10 or 15 minutes, then after that, because you've had a horrific day, then you can go ahead and hop off. Right, you don't have to do the whole hour that you had set aside on your schedule. It's really great for something like that, but the trick here, but the important thing here, is that you can't work past your max amount of time. So if I have my schedule created and I know that on Saturdays I'm working six hours on Saturday, then I really don't need to work past that six hours. Because what ends up happening is this especially if you're a mom Moms, I'm talking to you, but this is true for everyone If you work past that amount of time that you're supposed to work, you're going to come out of your office.
Speaker 2:You're going to come out of your workspace. You're going to come out of your office. You're going to come out of your workspace, you're going to look around your house and you're going to see all of the things that should have gotten done when you were doing that extra amount of work, and you're going to feel behind and that is going to mean that you're going to have to spend more time trying to catch up on those things right, and you're also going to have this subconscious dread about going into your next work session because you're going to go, I'm going to work, and then the laundry is going to pile up and then the dishes are not going to get done, and then I'm going to come out to this big mess in the playroom. Whatever it is. It's going to subconsciously make you not want to go and work because you overworked, which kept you from doing other things.
Speaker 2:So we talk about this like work-life balance and how there's no such thing as a work-life balance and while that's true, like you can either excel at one or the other, you're probably not going to excel at both for the majority of your life. That's true. There is a little bit of a work-life balance that we need to create here. We need to be able to say, okay, I do need to work on my business, but life things have to get done too. So life things need to get done, work things need to get done, and that's where that schedule going back to that schedule, that's where that schedule becomes really important is that you don't wanna spend all your time trying to make sure that your house is immaculate, that you don't have time to work. You don't wanna spend so much time in your work that you don't have time to do the things that are important in your own personal life.
Speaker 2:All right, so those are three tips for growing your TPT business. Even when you're time poor, focus on the things that are actually generating revenue in your business. Create a schedule and stick to the schedule and do not overwork, because if you're time poor, you cannot afford to rob time from other parts of your life and invest it in your work, because other areas of your life are going to suffer. All right. Thanks so much for being here on the podcast. You guys so appreciative of every one of you, every single one of you, who support and watch week in and week out, and I am going to see you right back here next week. We're going to be talking about starting a second TPT store. Yeah, you're going to want to listen to that one.