The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
The Real Reason Your TpT Store Isn't Growing
Balancing strategy with action is often the key to overcoming common hurdles in your Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT) business. I will share my personal journey into the world of content creation on Instagram and TikTok, where the challenge of turning strategy into action becomes all too real. If you're caught in the cycle of endless planning or impulsive action without a plan, learn how to identify your natural tendencies and harness them to propel your business forward. We'll dive into three essential strategies and their corresponding actions, like optimizing keyword research for SEO or maintaining regular engagement with your audience, to help your TPT business grow sustainably.
Let's connect and learn together—your insights are invaluable, and I'm thrilled to engage with fellow teacher entrepreneurs on this journey. Tune in for practical tips, shared experiences, and a supportive community ready to elevate their online presence!
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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. Heart to heart, friend to friend.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about why you're stalling out in your TPT business, why you're doing all the things to try to grow, or at least trying to do all the things so that you can grow, but you're never getting past a certain point or your store is just not taking off like you want it to, and usually this has to do with stalling versus strategy. And I'm gonna start you off with a little story. Right now, your girl is doing something that I said I would never do, but every now and then I get like a wild hair, a bee in my bonnet, whatever the other Southern sayings are and I feel like I have to do something, like I'll get an idea in my head and I'll think I'm going to do that, and then I go all in on it for a certain period of time. So for right now, that is content creation on Instagram and TikTok. Now we're talking. I know nothing about TikTok and it's been years since I've tried any type of Instagram marketing strategies. That doesn't mean that I don't kind of stay abreast of some of the current happenings and trends and like what's working and what's not. Like I still try to list, tune in to some of the strategies, particularly when it comes to Instagram marketing. But, like I've never even had a TikTok account, like, if I've ever watched a TikTok, it was probably a TikTok that was then reposted to Instagram. So I know nothing about the platform, so I'm brand new to this area, and I'm saying all of this to say that one of the things that I'm having to be really careful of is that I'm balancing being strategic with being action oriented, and so chances are, you fall into one of two camps and you need to figure out which camp you fall in.
Speaker 1:Because if you're stalling but you're doing a lot of work, or you feel like you're doing a lot of work and putting a lot of time into this, it's likely because you either spend a lot of time on strategy or you spend a lot of time on actions, and what we really need to do is we need to marry the two of those together. If you're a strategist and you're the person who wants to do everything right the first time and you're doing the research and you're finding the right hashtags to follow that TikTok example that I was talking about earlier, you're watching and consuming all of the content from the social media gurus on YouTube, but you're doing so much consuming and so much strategizing that you don't have the time to actually put everything that you're learning into action and that's gonna stall you out. Now, on the flip side of that, you could be the action-oriented person which tends to be me, like this tends to be me. I am very action-oriented. It's like, okay, I'm gonna do this. And so when I set out and I was like I'm gonna do content creation on Instagram and TikTok, I was like I'm gonna do it for 30 days. I'm gonna post a reel and TikTok every single day for 30 days, no matter what. I'm very action oriented. However, because I know that about myself, I know, lauren, hold up, take a second, like yes, post the content, do it every day for 30 days, but make sure that you're actually trying to learn something about the platform, because if all I do is action, like yes, I can learn by doing, absolutely 100%. You can learn by doing. But you can also waste a lot of time by doing things wrong that someone who's gone before you can just tell you hey, tweak this, change this one little line of your messaging. Maybe you're looking for keywords the wrong way or you're over-tagging your grade levels on TPT, like whatever it is. Listening to that strategy side and pulling from that strategy side and marrying that with that action is going to be what keeps you from stalling out. It's going to be the thing that is going to push your business forward.
Speaker 1:I see a lot of people who spend a lot of time trying to figure out what's wrong in their business. Why is this not working? Why am I not growing? I feel like I know all the things, I feel like I'm doing all the things, but really it's usually that there's a disconnect between what they're learning and what they're doing, or they feel so overwhelmed by what they're learning that they don't feel like they could possibly do what they need to be doing because it seems so overwhelming.
Speaker 1:So if you fall in the strategist category of sellers, then really take a second and say, okay, of all all the strategies that I've learned in the last month or the last six months, their last year? From what I'm hearing, from what I'm consuming, from what I know, what are the three biggest strategies that I'm under utilizing in my business? And then take those three strategies and I want you to pair each strategy with an action. So maybe I'm not sending a note to followers. Okay, every single week, I'm gonna put a reminder on my calendar. I'm gonna sending a note to followers. Okay, every single week, I'm gonna put a reminder on my calendar. I'm gonna send a note to followers, even if it's two sentences of hey, go check out this new product or have you downloaded this freebie yet? Whatever, make sure I'm sending out a note to followers every single week.
Speaker 1:Done, that's on my action list. If it's, I know that I need to be doing a better job of researching keywords and search engine optimizing my resources. Great, let's put an action behind that. Every single month, I am gonna sit down for two hours and I am going to search engine optimize five resources, okay, or 10 resources, however many you can get done in two hours, right? So there, you've put an action behind that. Maybe number three is finishing out those product lines and finally getting them bundled together, or maybe it's something like putting an email opt-in in all of your products in your store.
Speaker 1:Put an action behind that. I'm not utilizing this strategy to its fullest potential. How am I going to remedy that on the action side? And then tell yourself this this is the key part. If you're a strategist okay, if you're a strategist you tell yourself, great, I'm not going to consume any more content, research or plan out any more strategies apart from these three until I finish these action items on my list. So if I run in and I do all of that at the beginning of the month, then I could spend more time learning more strategies and trying to put them into action. But these are the things that I have to do before I can continue my strategizing for the month. Okay, this is a lot like trying to get your toddler to eat. It's like you put the bananas on the plate and you put the chicken on the plate and you say you can't eat the bananas until you've eaten your chicken. Sometimes we've got to do that to ourselves inside of our businesses. It's not fun, but it's absolutely necessary if we want to grow.
Speaker 1:All right, now let's talk about if you fall into the action category. I want you to ask yourself what am I doing that's taking a lot of my time but not giving me the results that I feel like it should be? So if I'm spending a lot of time on product photography but I'm not getting the views from those covers that I should be getting, then I need to think of a strategy that I can pair that with. Okay, so product photography I feel like I'm doing a great job on that. I'm spending a lot of time on it. It's coming out beautifully, or maybe it's not. Maybe that's a strategy. Maybe you need to learn product photography, or maybe you need to learn how to utilize mock-ups, whatever. But let's say it's going well for you and the photos are coming out looking great, but nobody's clicking on your cover. So I say, okay, I'm doing this product photography in order to get more eyes on my resources, to make eye-catching covers. Why is no one clicking on them? That's a strategy that I need to learn. So I need to learn. Okay, how am I gonna make what I'm spending my time on actually work for me? So I'm going to pair that action with a strategy, right? So product photography not getting me the views I want. I need a strategy for increasing views.
Speaker 1:Then we go to the next thing. Maybe I'm spending a lot of time and energy creating resources, but buyers are not purchasing my bundles. So I'm having lots of little bitty sales, but nobody is purchasing my bundle. Okay, I need a strategy for how to increase bundle sales. What am I going to do? And so I need to go learn a strategy for that. And maybe number three is something like I'm doing a lot of social media marketing to drive traffic to my store, but nobody is watching my content, nobody's clicking over. Or maybe they're watching but they're not clicking. I need a strategy for increasing my click through rates to my store so that people will purchase my product. So, taking a look at what am I doing that's taking me a lot of time but not giving me the results that I want and then finding a strategy to pair that with. And in the same way, we're going to tell ourself I am not allowed to do anything apart from these three things until I've found a strategy that works for these three problems. So I'm not going to focus on anything else. So if I'm trying to work on my social media marketing, I'm not going to be trying to go start email marketing just to drive more traffic when social media marketing is not working right. I'm gonna figure out how to solve this problem before I move on to anything else. Okay, so make yourself do the thing.
Speaker 1:So whole thing here is if you are finding that your growth is stalling out on TPT, you probably have a disconnect between strategizing and putting strategies into action. And if you say yes, lauren, the disconnect that I have is called time. Well, let me tell you, I promise you, if you use this method of picking three, time is also not gonna be a factor, because a lot of us feel like time is the biggest enemy in our business, and for sure it's an obstacle. Don't get me wrong. I have multiple businesses. I have two kids, I work from home, my kids are always here, so I totally get it. But I'm going to tell you that, for sure, if you really pare this down and you say, okay, I'm going to start with three strategies and I'm going to pair them with an action, or I'm going to start with three actions that I'm doing that aren't working and I'm going to pair them with a strategy until something works, if you follow that recipe for success, your business is going to change and, even though time might be one of your biggest enemies, you can pare this down as much as you want to. You can say I'm going to focus on one strategy and pair it with one action item and then move on to the next one. I'm going to focus on one action item that I'm doing and get more strategic about it and that can help you. So, even though you might move a little bit more slowly, you're still going to see some forward progress.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for being here, you guys, and for listening to the podcast every single week. If you're an Instagram or TikTok guru you had a little experience hit me up, tell me the tips, tell me who I need to follow, tell me what I need to do. I don't know what I'm doing out here and I need to start pairing a little strategy with my action. You can find me on my new account at Lauren Chapler. I'm gonna spell that last name for you because it's tough and I know you guys know me by Fulton, but all the Lauren Fulton names were taken because it's way too common, so I'm using my married name, my actual name now, that's T-S-C-H-A-P-P-L-E-R and yes, I know it's a mouthful. That's why I usually go by Fulton. But yeah, check me out. There's a link down in the description below. Check me out, send me all your tips and advice. And thanks so much, you guys, for being here. I'm gonna see you right.