The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
A Day in the Life of a TPT Seller
Are you curious about how a busy teacher entrepreneur balances family, education, and business? Join us as we explore the intricate routines of a TPT seller navigating the demands of daily life. In this episode, we share insightful strategies that have emerged from real-life challenges, including the often chaotic mornings, the struggle to keep a tidy home while running a business, and the delicate balance of homeschooling engagement with time for work.
Listeners will discover the transformative power of simplicity, such as selecting a weekly breakfast routine to minimize morning stress and focusing on actionable tidying strategies that engage children in maintaining order. The narrative unfolds with relatable anecdotes that enrich the conversation, providing tips and tools that resonate with anyone striving for balance in their professional and personal lives.
Learn how embracing flexibility and adapting to life’s unpredictability can reveal productive insights and sustainable business practices, enhancing your journey as a teacher entrepreneur. Engage with us and share your balancing tricks—let's foster a community of support and shared experiences! Subscribe to our podcast for more enlightening discussions and tips to support your growth in the TPT world.
Check Out My YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/laurenfulton
Link to Rank my Resources Bootcamp: https://rebrandedteacher.kartra.com/page/mnx229
My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurentschappler/
My Other YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LaurenATsch
Free Rebranded Teacher Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/749538092194115
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.
Speaker 1:I can't tell you how many times people have asked me what my day-to-day life looks like as a TPT seller and how I'm able to get everything done, because not only do I have a TPT store, but I also manage several other businesses alongside of TPT, and so I'm going to take you along with me for what a typical day in my life looks like. So the very start of my morning is kind of flexible. If the kids sleep well, then I get up before the kids, get dressed and ready for the day, kind of check on emails and things like that. But this morning that did not happen. The kids did not sleep well. So I'm getting dressed and ready for the day while the kids kind of play, and then the kids head into the playroom to play while I fix breakfast for them and you'll kind of see my other camera in the background there, and throughout the course of the day, there's a chance that you may see my other camera around, and that's just because I'm trying to kill two birds with one stone and film portions of my morning, my more of a like lifestyle I'm not exactly sure what it is yet Not really influencer, because I haven't tried to get anybody to buy anything just yet. This, yet Not really influencer, because I haven't tried to get anybody to buy anything just yet, but like my lifestyle social media account, which is at Lauren Chapler, by the way, on Instagram. So I'm trying to make sure that I'm filming both of those, and this is what filming typically looks like as well. Like I don't go out of my way to film videos. I typically just film whatever I'm doing and then just edit the voiceover and the content later on in the day.
Speaker 1:We usually keep breakfast really simple and, honestly, I usually pick one breakfast for the week and we eat that same breakfast for the entire week. So some weeks it's like protein pancakes, other weeks we might have something like smoothies. This particular week, we're having sausage with berries and toast, and the reason that I do this is just to cut down on the number of decisions that I have to make in the morning. If I don't have to wake up and think what am I going to feed the kids or what are we going to eat, then it really makes the whole morning run so much smoother and I can prep for whatever it is that we're going to eat. So if we're having protein pancakes, I can make a big batch of the mix and then just add in our almond milk and cook them up. Or if we're having smoothies, I know I just have to throw everything in the blender and while it may not be ideal at this stage, you know kids and if they like a meal, they'll eat it over and over again and, quite frankly, in this department I'm kind of like a big kid, so I'll eat the same thing over and over again if I like it. And this is just what works for us and saves us time and allows us to be able to fit in a lot of the things that we try to fit in throughout the course of the morning.
Speaker 1:The morning is by far the busiest portion of our day and this morning I'm squeezing a little bit more in. While we're eating breakfast, listening, I'm catching up on the TPT town hall I usually can't make it to these things live, and so I'm just kind of listening in while we eat breakfast, and this is honestly how I consume most of the town hall events. Like most TPT sellers, I would say that it's probably pretty rare that I ever sit down and actually just watch a video or consume information. I typically kind of listen on the go, whether that's podcasts or, like the TPT town hall, just kind of listen as I'm doing other things. That way, my dedicated work time can be focused on tasks that need my undivided attention. As soon as breakfast is over, we'll tidy up for a few minutes and then we get the girls dressed and ready for the day and then it's time for us to do our time tidies.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to lie to you housework is probably one of the most difficult things for me to keep up with and, if I'm being honest, there are even moments now where I feel like it's almost impossible to keep up with housework and be a business owner, and for a long time I outsourced a lot of things. I outsourced laundry. I had a mother's helper who would come in a few times a week and help me catch up on things, which was really nice, but then I started to notice that I was sending laundry out, it would come back all nice and folded, and then I was struggling to even just get that put away because there was no system in place for that. And then the mother's helper as wonderful as she was, she didn't have a set schedule because she worked multiple jobs, and so there was never really a routine or any structure around what she was going to do and when she was going to do it. And so there was like one period of time at the end of last year where we were all sick, like she was sick, and then we were sick and she couldn't come for a while.
Speaker 1:And I noticed that during that period of time that she couldn't come, my house stayed a lot cleaner because I was able to follow a system and have a little bit more structure, whereas when she came, not only did it cost me money and the house would look great when she left, but I would sometimes let things pile up in thinking, oh, she's going to be here on such and such day, or she's going to be here tomorrow, so I'll let her handle that when she gets here, rather than just kind of staying on top of everything. And so I gave myself a challenge at the beginning of this year to try to build systems and routines that would work for our family. Now I can tell you right now that my house is never going to be the kind of house that you're just going to be able to pop in unannounced. You're gonna have to give me at least a 15 minute heads up. You know what I mean. But it implementing some of these things like timed tidies, which is what we're doing right now.
Speaker 1:After breakfast, after we get dressed, we go into the bedrooms and we set a 10 minute timer and during that time we tidy up, we make up the beds and if there's time left at the end of the timer which most of the time there is then I'll take those three or four minutes and I will fold and put away clothes. And then, for the girls, one of the things that's really helped me with them is you can see I have a ton of bins on top of their dresser and while this is not aesthetically pleasing at all type A people would not approve these bins really kind of helped me stay sane. So when I am folding laundry, what I'll do is I will just take clothes out of the laundry hamper and I sort them into different bins by day. So I'll take an outfit for the baby and an outfit for big sister and throw them in the same bin so that whenever it comes time for us to get dressed in the morning, all we have to do is pull a bin out and it's ready to go. So everything on top of the dresser is like bins that are either like part full or empty, and then their closet has a little shelving system in there and these bins fit perfectly into that shelving system, and so I just take them and stick them inside the closet and the goal is to only have a couple of bins on top of the dresser, but most of the time that doesn't happen because I'm usually behind on laundry. But anyway, we're working on it. Staying on top of these Tom T tidies and doing them each morning really just kind of helps us stay on top of the mess and makes me feel like we're not living in chaos. After we do our tidying it's time for us to head into the office, and this is also the time where we tidy up the office real quick. We usually take about five minutes, just kind of tidy things up before we start homeschooling.
Speaker 1:So I homeschool my daughter. She's four, she's in kindergarten right now. My daughter she's four, she's in kindergarten right now. And it takes us a little bit of time. So we usually do some of her easier things like math, or if she has an easy day for reading, then we'll do some of her. We'll work on some of her literature, handwriting, sight words, whatever. I'll look through what she has for the day and I'll pick some of the easier tasks and we will do that before the baby goes down. So I kind of get her started and then I try to find something that she can do independently, like maybe she gets to a color by number or something of that sort, and then I go sit down and play with the baby for a few minutes and then after that it's time for the baby to go down for her first nap and big sister and I we head into the kitchen and make a cup of coffee and then we go straight back into the office to finish up her homeschooling.
Speaker 1:And this has been one of the harder transitions, like as she's getting older and her school is. I mean, it's just kindergarten, it's not difficult, but you know what I mean. As it's becoming more time consuming, it's a little harder for me to fit some of my work in in the mornings than it used to be, or I'm not able to fit quite as much in, but we sit for a little bit together, we work on schoolwork and then after she finishes her school she has a cart inside of my office that I restock every month and I'll put like seasonal sticker packs, seasonal little Play-Doh jars that I get from Etsy, and usually a sensory bin, and then it's not uncommon for her to have like a Yodo or a Tony to listen to during this time. And then she also has a bunch of books that she can choose from in the office closet. So she'll usually do a combination of those things and then maybe listen to a book on her Yodo or listen to a story on her Tony, and this particular day, while she played, this was my time to check in with our project managers. So I have a project manager who works with different VAs to make sure everything's getting done on time, to make sure I'm getting stuff done on time and to just kind of oversee all of the things that are happening. And then Brooklyn, my business partner, and I we have a project manager for our joint summer projects that we have together. So I checked in with each one of those, answered the questions that they had and then did a couple of other small things and then scheduled out a couple of emails and then it was time for me to take a nap.
Speaker 1:I'm not gonna lie when I say that the baby was up last night. Like the baby was up last night, and I have learned over the years that sometimes it's just not great to push yourself. So if I'm feeling super tired and I'm struggling to keep my eyes open, I don't sit there and continue to try to work, because it's gonna take me five times longer to do something 50% as good as I would if I'm working at full capacity. So I just go ahead and take a little nap, and that's what I did today until the baby woke up. And when the baby woke up we went and got her, and then big sister usually has a lot of energy after this point in time, like she's been very quiet, she's been really good. So she usually likes to play a game. So we play a little game before we do lunch. Sometimes we pretend like we're going to the zoo. Sometimes we pretend like we're making phone calls.
Speaker 1:Today I was the kid and she was the grown up and she was trying to put me to bed and so I had to ask for like 5 million glasses of water. You know, know, go to the bathroom 10 times all that kind of stuff. So we did that and then it was time for the kids to go outside. While I fixed lunch, then we tidied up from lunch and headed back outside. Whenever the weather is above 60 degrees and less than 90, we're usually outside in the afternoons. So we headed outside and we are hopefully going to get our garden up and running this year.
Speaker 1:So we worked on picking out some different vegetables that we wanted to plant, some different herbs and flowers and things like that, and we went ahead and got those seeds started and after we played outside for a while, we came back in, laid the baby down and then I read a book with big sister and then it was time for me to go do some work. So I was feeling super ambitious whenever I was setting those goals, but the reality is that I pulled up a lot of the work that I had done on the task cards. I had gotten about a third of the way through three sets of task cards, and so I thought I'll just pull them up and finish them real quick. But two things happened. Number one, I realized that PowerPoint must have crashed on me and it did not save. So that's a rookie mistake, I didn't make sure that it saved. And number two, the baby woke up about 15 to 20 minutes after I started working, so I hung out with her. After that, my husband came home about four o'clock and from four to six o'clock I worked on those task cards for a little bit longer, answered a few more questions that team members had for me, and then I started work on editing my video for my social media channel.
Speaker 1:So, all in all, did not get a ton of work done that particular day, which is why, honestly, is so important that I have my Saturdays and that I have a team, because without my Saturdays and without my team, my weekdays could not possibly look like this.
Speaker 1:They would be so much more stressful.
Speaker 1:There would be no naps in the middle of my day and there would be no flexibility to be able to, say, work on my social media or anything like that. So this is just what a typical weekday in my life looks like Prioritizing some of the big things, which is making sure I have that big picture view that everything's getting taken care of. I'm answering any questions that my team has, I'm sending out marketing emails and I'm helping to fill in gaps where it's possible, but I'm also not having to stress out about filling in those gaps. If you wanna see what a typical Saturday looks like for me and the things that I'd normally get done on a Saturday, which is my big work day, then leave a comment down below and let me know and, as always, thank you so much for being here. Make sure you like this video and subscribe to the channel. I put out weekly content for TPT sellers to help you grow your TPT businesses. Thanks so much for being here. I'm going to see you guys right back here next week.