The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
I Abandoned My TPT Store... Now What?
Feeling overwhelmed and unsure where to reignite the spark in your Teachers Pay Teachers business? Join me, Lauren Fulton, as we explore the art of the "quick win" to help you regain momentum and motivation. Discover how to disconnect from stress-inducing tasks and focus on invigorating aspects that inspire you. Whether it's figuring out if your old Instagram account deserves a second chance or brainstorming the coolest new resources for teachers, I promise you'll walk away with actionable steps to breathe life back into your TPT venture.
Together, we'll break down the daunting into the doable, turning overwhelming tasks into manageable actions. Listen as I share insights on composing compelling content for your email list—even if it's been a while since you last reached out. Through a simple 30-minute brain dump exercise, you'll unlock fresh ideas and recapture the enthusiasm that fueled your initial TPT journey. So, grab your pens and paper, and let's reignite your passion for creating educational resources that not only sell but also make a difference in the teacher community. Get ready to enjoy your business journey again!
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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. If you're trying to revive your TPT store, then we need to talk.
Speaker 1:I've gotten this question many times from TPT sellers. Where you started your TPT business, you put some products in your store you maybe even seen a few sales, done a little marketing and then boom, life got crazy, things were hectic and you just didn't have the time or the energy to invest in your TPT business anymore. And now you're at a point where, like okay, life has slowed down, or maybe you've realized, just, it's not going to slow down and so you're ready to refocus your energy and efforts on your TPT business. But you don't know where to start, because when you come back into the business, it starts to feel overwhelming, just like it did when you were a brand new seller. Like, okay, do I revive that old Instagram account? Do I start fresh? Do I continue finishing out that product line? Do I start a new one. Am I supposed to start with email marketing? What do I say to my email list who I haven't emailed in months, or I haven't even started an email list? Is that where I'm supposed to start? So we're going to break it down today. We're going to make things really simple for you, and if you're watching and you're like I haven't abandoned my TPT store but I'm feeling really unmotivated and struggling to find enough energy to even care to kind of get going again, well, we're going to talk about that today.
Speaker 1:So let's talk about quick wins and the importance of a quick win. Number one you need to focus on the quick win. The quick win is super important when you're getting back into the swing of things or you're trying to refine your motivation. When I'm talking about a quick win, I'm not just talking about, like, maybe updating a cover or writing a checklist or opening your computer, although some of those could certainly be quick wins. What I'm talking about is something that provides an equal emphasis on both the quick and the win. We want it to be a true win. We want you to feel like you've actually accomplished something and moved your business forward, but we also want to do this quick. Now we're not talking about five, 10 minutes, but we're talking about something that you can do in one sit down period. It's either going to boost your motivation or make you feel like you've accomplished something inside of your business, and the key for this quick win is that you don't want it to be connected to anything that's stressing you out already in your business. What that means is that if I am stressed out by email, then a quick win for me is probably not going to be trying to figure out what I should send to my email list who's been abandoned for the last six months. That's not going to be a quick win. It might be a win if you do it, but it's going to be a pretty stressful one.
Speaker 1:Okay, what we're talking about here is something that is completely detached from the things that are overwhelming you currently in your business. We're talking about choosing a win that is going to be quick, easy, painless and for most people, that's going to be something like creating a new resource. When you're creating a new resource, you're kind of going back to the beginnings of your TPT business, when you are feeling inspired, you're feeling motivated and you are feeling excited about the resources that you are creating and bringing to the teacher community, and that's the kind of thing that we want to recapture in order to get you back into the groove. So here's what I would focus on if I were starting back. I wouldn't go to a template or anything like that. I would sit down and I would do a 30-minute brain dump. I would get a piece of paper and some colorful pens. I would write down a list of all the coolest products that you could think of to create, and at first these ideas might not come to you. So in the beginning of you creating this list you might sit there for a minute, but I want you to at least start by writing something down. So it may not be the most exciting or the most incredible product that you're thinking of in the beginning, but I guarantee you, if you start to write down something really simple, like task cards, which isn't exciting or interesting, but if I write that down and then I ask myself what would make task cards fun and I start trying to think of ways to make those engaging or interesting, then the ideas can start to flow.
Speaker 1:Probably about 20 to 25 minutes into the process you're going to have so many ideas you're not going to be able to write them down fast enough and some of them probably not going to be very good. But the whole goal here is to just start to brainstorm. After that 30 minutes, I want you to take five minutes to go back over your list and see is there anything on that list that's not going to make any sense to me when I come back to it in an hour. You know how sometimes you jot something down so fast and you're like, wow, this is an amazing idea. I'm never going to forget this idea. I'm just going to write a quick note about it because I'm never going to forget what this idea was. And then you come back to it 30 minutes later and you're like what the heck was that? I know it was great, but I'm never going to remember it.
Speaker 1:Take a moment, take five minutes, look over that list and make any necessary notes to that list that you need to make, and then you're going to put the list away, because that's what you're going to do for right now. You can come back in 20, 30 minutes, an hour later or even the next day, and from that list I want you to pick one resource. Did you think I can make a template for this right now, and I want you to start making the template. Even if you can't finish it in that designated period of time, you can at least come back to it the next day and you know exactly what you're working on. And what we're doing is we are honing in on this one thing that is separate from all the rest of the overwhelming stuff in our business, and we are going to get this one quick win. We're going to get it done. We're going to create the template and then we're going to create a product from that template. We're going to list it and we're going to feel really good about it.
Speaker 1:Now, it may be that after you finish creating that first product and putting it up and you've gotten that quick win, that you say to yourself okay, now I feel like I have something that I can tell my audience about. So, instead of showing up on social media and saying you know what, guys, I've been gone for a really long time, but I'm back, you can say you know what, guys, I've been gone for a while, but it's because I've been working on something really special and I'm excited to share it with you. And this is what it is. So the focus isn't so much on I'm gone and now I'm back. The focus is I've been creating something special for you and now you have a message that adds value to them and to your relationship with them, rather than just being like I was gone. Now I'm here and let's start chatting again. Right, we have some sort of message to give.
Speaker 1:So that's why it's super important to focus on the quick win, because a lot of times, once we get that quick win in, everything else seems to start to line up Like oh, now I have a product created, so I've gotten the ball rolling. I'm actually making progress on my TPT business. And because I'm making progress on my TPT business, I feel more confident about showing up in other aspects of my business. I feel more confident about sending that note to followers, feel more confident about sending that email, showing up on social media, even if it's just talking on stories. I start to feel a little bit more confident because I have something to talk about other than just the fact that I ghosted them right. So that would be step one for me.
Speaker 1:Step one create the quick win. Step two then use that quick win as fuel to approach the areas of your business that feel a little overwhelming. Now, if you have other things in your business that are feeling overwhelming because maybe you have that product line that burned you out in the first place, where maybe you thought I'm gonna create a whole curriculum for second grade science and now you're like I don't wanna see another second grade science resource for the rest of my life, but you still know you need to finish it so one thing that you can do is you can put a system in place for yourself where once you've completed so many of those tasks like once I've created five Pinterest pins then I have to go and I have to create one more of these resources, or I have to spend 30 minutes working on that product, whatever it is. I'm sure there's a more scientific, psychological name for it than this, but this is what I call the protein and berry motivation method. It's a silly name and I don't actually call it that, but that's what I think of every single time. I set up a method like this in my business, because my four-year-old follows the same method at dinnertime, you eat your protein and then you can eat your berries.
Speaker 1:And we have to do the same thing in our business sometimes because, let's face it, we're all humans. We all have things we don't wanna do, so sometimes you gotta find something that's gonna motivate you to do the tough thing. So if you spend 30 minutes working on this product or if you batch out two emails, then you can work on this part of your business and I do this a lot myself all the time, and when I run out of business things that are fun, then I think of something else fun to do, and then we start a really unhealthy cycle that we're not going to talk about in this podcast. All right, so let's review Number one.
Speaker 1:If you're trying to jump back in or get re-motivated inside of your business, one of the biggest things that you can do is find a quick win that you can accomplish in your business that is completely detached from the items in your business that are stressing you out or causing you to feel overwhelmed. Okay, the next thing you're gonna do is you are gonna use that quick win as fuel to start on the overwhelming tasks, right so? Like sending out that email or jumping back into social media, and then, finally, what you want to do is you want to create a method for managing the overwhelm. I'm going to do these things, and then when I finish these things, I get to do this over here in my business, and so that way it creates a little bit of balance. Because, let's face it, if I knew that starting my business back up guaranteed that I was going to have to do things that I don't like right away, I would never start it back, and that's the truth, and that's going to be the truth for the vast majority of people. So we want to start by focusing on doing the things that you love and then creating a balance between doing the things that are reinvigorating you and doing the things that are overwhelming you. Unfortunately, we can't run a business by just ignoring the overwhelming and stressful parts of the business, because that wouldn't be a business, that would be a hobby and that would make you hobby money, which is probably not what you're interested in, because in this economy, hobby money isn't even going to cover the cost of your hobby. So we don't want that. We want business money, and in order to do that we are going to have to do the things that we don't want to do. But we can find a balance and create a plan for that in the very beginning, because, if I have to sit at the table until I'm finished with my spinach, probably never going to eat again, or at the very least I'm going to have an unhealthy relationship with eating. And the same is true for my business. If I can't get started until I do the things that I don't want to do, then I'm probably never going to do them or I'm going to have an unhealthy relationship with my business. So go ahead and build that balance in.
Speaker 1:This podcast episode was actually a special request. So if there is something that you would like to learn about, if there's a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast or something you'd like me to talk about, please send me an email. Lauren at the rebranded teachercom Love a good podcast request because it really helps me not have to brainstorm all of the ideas. So be sure and send it in. And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure and leave us a little review. I know most of you guys are listening on the go, so you can't leave a review while you're driving or anything like that, and I get it. But when you get to where you're going, if you don't mind, take a second, hit that five star button, say thank you so much, a couple of little words. I don't know. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate, it can be something simple, but leave us a review so that other TPT sellers can find this podcast too. Thanks so much for being here. You guys are the best.