The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
The Middle Ground: Finding Success Between DIY and Delegation with Janice Cook
Ready to grow your TPT business but unsure if you should hire help or improve your systems first? Janice Cook, owner of Cook Family Resources, brings her unique perspective as a project manager who works with both teacher entrepreneurs and virtual assistants to share what really works—and what doesn't—when building your team.
After 12 years as a music teacher, Janice found herself in the online business world and quickly became the go-to person for managing projects when other TPT sellers needed support. Her position gives her remarkable insight into both sides of the hiring equation, seeing firsthand why some working relationships thrive while others fail miserably.
We dive deep into the four essential elements you must have in place before bringing on help: clear communication channels, documented standard operating procedures, time allocated for feedback, and clarity about who's bringing the expertise to the table. Janice explains why jumping into hiring without these foundations often leads to frustration on both sides, wasted money, and the dreaded "hiring horror stories" that make entrepreneurs hesitant to delegate again.
You'll discover practical advice for determining when you're truly ready to hire, how to choose the right communication systems for your team, and what questions to ask yourself before writing that job description. Janice also shares her insider perspective on finding the right match for your specific needs, whether that's through referrals, specialized freelancers, or more cost-effective solutions.
Whether you're considering your first hire or looking to improve your existing team dynamics, this conversation will help you create the systems that make delegation successful, allowing your TPT business to grow in a way that's both purposeful and sustainable.
Get your ticket to the Teacher Seller’s Summit: https://laurenfulton.krtra.com/t/oTIxSLPqfhYf
Get Janice's Free Hiring Guide: https://www.cookfamilyresources.com/hiring-guide/
Check Out Janice's Book Club: https://www.cookfamilyresources.com/summer-book-club/
Check Out Janice's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/teacherjaniceva/
Check Out My YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/laurenfulton
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 it.
Speaker 1:We are in for an absolute treat today because we are here with Janice Cook and I want to tell you a little bit about Janice and I didn't actually know some of this until we started our call. So Janice owns Cook Family Resources and she helps teacher entrepreneurs by managing different projects that they have. She's a project manager, but I knew Janice as a VA for teacher entrepreneurs Like in my mind that's what it was and she's gonna be talking about hiring out today and let me tell you why this is important and why you really wanna listen to this conversation is because she is kind of the middleman between both the entrepreneur and VAs, so she sees a lot of what goes wrong on both sides both with a poor VA and with a teacher entrepreneur with poor systems, and how you can get the most out of your hiring experience and how to know whether or not it's time to hire, or it's actually time for systems. So I want you guys to meet.
Speaker 1:Janice hey Janice, how are you? Hey Lauren, Happy Saturday. Happy Saturday, I'm so glad you're here. So tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get to being a project manager for teacher entrepreneurs? Tell us about you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we always have a winding road. I was a music teacher for 12 years that was my public school chapter and I actually taught as a middle school band director for the last 10. And I've been a middleman like my whole career where, like the high school, people wanted your program to do one thing for them and the elementary people wanted you to serve them in another way. And I tell you, my whole career I've been trapped in the middle, which is fine, but you get a lot of perspective seeing both sides. I also did some time as the vice president of our teachers union, another cool role where you're like I see where you're coming from. I see where you're coming from. We have to find a path forward that serves everyone. And my last two years in the classroom I fell into the land of online business. I was teaching online and I started a store to sell the resources I was using in my classroom and I just met all these amazing people that were making money on the internet in different ways and that's how we all got started here. So I started my own TPT store and my blog and my website and my email list and all the things like we do.
Speaker 2:But along the way one of my friends in my mastermind chat got burned by a service provider. She had a hiring horror story and she had already, like, counted her chickens before she hatched. She had already given that time on her schedule for that task away and she didn't have time to take that task back and do it over again. And so we've all been there. She didn't do anything wrong, it wasn't her fault, but she delegated something and it didn't go well and she had a problem and we had the same tech stack. I knew her business and her funnel really well and I offered, I said what if I did that task for you just until you found someone new and I still do that task for her? Today that was like four or five years later. She never found anyone else and that's okay.
Speaker 2:But then she told a friend and a friend told a friend and I slowly had to make the decisions we all make where we look at our time in the week, and I had to decide did I really want to keep pouring into my own TPT store or was this more fun? And honestly, I have loved supporting other TPT sellers and making an impact that way, because if you can't keep the wheels on your bus. The new resources are never going to make it to your store shelves and so if I can help with the behind the scenes messes in TPT businesses, that's a super cup filling way to spend the day for me. So I was a service provider. I've hired service providers in my own business and I often work as a project manager, where I get to know the freelancers and hear their frustrations and their wishes and what's going well, and I get to meet with the CEOs and hear what they want to happen and I try to find that like middle ground where like we're all winning and we're all getting what we need.
Speaker 1:I love that. And you know, this really hits home for me because for I would say, two, maybe even three years, I had multiple VAs. I was trying to manage them all myself, with zero systems in place and a couple of my VAs in fact one of them was on not a salary because she's still a contract worker, but she was contracted for a certain number of hours. So whether or not she hit those hours and was actually working that number of hours, she still got paid. And there were so many times where she would be emailing me like Lauren, I'm waiting for a job to do, I'm waiting for a job to do, and I'm like I don't even have time to pause what I'm doing to send you next steps.
Speaker 1:And when I onboarded, actually, a lady who already did some VA work for me and I was like I need some project management, like I need somebody to oversee all of this, I can't keep doing this it was kind of painful to really try to tear everything apart and say, well, let's find systems for this, because people can't just be waiting on you for some random project. That's going to be something. So it definitely hits home this topic today because you can throw away a lot of good money if you don't have systems in place before you start hiring. So can you talk to us a little bit about, like, what are some of the system failures or pitfalls or whatever that you see a lot of business owners make, especially early on, when they're like I'm going to hire someone for this task, this is going to take a lot off my plate, it's going to allow me to be more productive, to make more money, and then it backfires on them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think systems are a lot like when you clean your playroom, where your house gets so much worse before it gets better and you have to see it to the other side. Anyway, we all have that moment where we want to burn our house down and just go buy another one. I think systems in your business is a lot of the same sticky process where you have to have the accountability of someone holding your hand and crossing the bridge with you and promising you that you are going to get to the other side. But often as TPTers, we come from the classroom, where we never had time to get it all done, and now we're in our business running things the same way we did before, having more things on our plate than we could ever possibly accomplish. But now we have this lifeline.
Speaker 2:We hear about virtual assistants and we think, well, I have too much to do, I need another person. That must be the next step. And we hire someone out and then they start asking us questions and they ask us to pass and we don't know and that's just a sign that we hired too soon. And I think that that's probably the typical path people go into. And if that first hiring experience doesn't go well and people don't feel the confidence to ever hire out again, and you could spend your whole business trying to do it all by yourself when really there was just a knowledge gap and you didn't know what you didn't know. So I think the good thing about slowing down to speed up is that there's probably four things you need to think about before you hire someone, like before you make the job posting or take the referral from a friend. So the first one is communication.
Speaker 2:You mentioned your first VA. I think when you hire your first team member, you're like we could probably just email back and forth, I could probably just send them a text, I could probably just Marco Polo them when I need something. But that system won't be sustainable as your business grows. So you have to be like no, where does business communication actually take place? Like that's not how Target's doing business, that's not how Amazon's doing business, they're not sending an Instagram DM. So we have to have a place where that communication is going to happen, and making that thoughtful choice before you hire one team member helps you be successful when you have two and three team members and then you have an interview I'm trying to remember who it's with.
Speaker 2:But you talked about SOPs and the fact that we have to have a signature process before we hire out. I was like clapping when I watched that video on your channel, because so often we find someone who says I could make you a TPT cover, but unless you have like a trusted way of that, your covers look in your store and they convert and you know how to save the files and where they go like beginning to end a signature process I can't help you until you learn what a good cover is. I can't help you until you have that clarity on your signature process. And so it's hard when you're in the thick of it and you want help. It's hard to hear these truths, but you do have to know what your signature process is before we repeat it again and again.
Speaker 1:And I think a lot of times too, people think well, I'm going to hire someone on Fiverr, for example. I've seen this I'm going to hire someone to make my Pinterest pins on Fiverr or to make my TPT product covers on Fiverr. And they're the expert, they know what they're doing and they can develop this for me. And I'm not saying that that is never going to work. But if you don't have the knowledge and expertise to gauge whether or not what they're making is actually going to be good for your business, you can spend and waste so much money getting all these Pinterest pins made, getting all of these covers made that look really cute but are not based on market research for your niche, and then realize, oh, I'm going to have to do it all over again Because chances are the type of person who really is good enough. You're not going to be able to afford them and they're sure not going to be on Fiverr, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's a good point, and they probably have something to bring into the conversation if you invite them into it. They probably know what's working right now on Pinterest, but you probably also have some data about your customers and your specific brand that they couldn't possibly know, and so, unless you share that information with them and also invite them into the conversation, a two-way dialogue is always going to be the best way for you to share your expertise with them and them to do the same, because we have to make sure, when we hire people, that we set that expectation that they're allowed to push back a little bit and share thoughts if they see opportunities. Some people don't want to hear the feedback, they want the deliverables, and you just zip it and you just have to know that. And other people are like you saw an opportunity in my business and you're just telling me now, please tell me right away. You have to anticipate the questions at the beginning so that you don't have those awkward interactions after you've hired.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Okay. So how do you know that it's time to hire out? What would you say you have to have in place? And then you know, like okay, now it's time to hire out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when you sit down to make that standard operating procedure, that SOP for the task, before you hire out, you notice that you have something that works in your business, that's repeatable, that you could teach someone else to do, and it doesn't necessarily mean it's hard. It might be a task you really love doing. It's not always going to be the task you want to get off your desk, but, to your point, if you're still figuring out what works for your brand on Pinterest or on the blog or on social media, don't hire that out yet. You got to do the work and figure out what works. But if you have something repeatable that's working and you have templates and you have your workflow written down and you have all the digital things organized, now that's something you might be able to hire out. And then you need to know two questions about your own time. You need to know how you're going to reallocate the time you get back while the team member is doing that task so that you get positive ROI on that money. But you also need to save some time to give that team member feedback and I would say that's probably the biggest pothole people run into.
Speaker 2:There are so many people in this space that send out a big job, especially when we're hiring someone low cost from the Philippines who's lightning fast and can get work done faster than we can like get them more things to do. Often we haven't saved time in our schedule to look at the stuff that they give back to us, to give them feedback and get it all the way to the finish line on the shelves of our store where it can make money. And so if that's ever happened to you, I promise you you are not alone. But we fill up all of our available time slots and then this VA, bless their heart, does just what we ask them to and they give us this work back and we are afraid to open it, we're nervous to open it, or we just don't have time.
Speaker 2:So then you're in a sticky situation, like the one you mentioned, lauren, where you have a retainer and they're like I'm ready for more work, you're paying me, what do you want me to do next? And you couldn't possibly know what you want them to do next until you get to open up the first batch of stuff they gave you. And now the clock is ticking, time is money, and you've just traded one kind of stress for another, and the FBA doesn't want to take your money and not do work in exchange for it. They also can't read your mind and if we're a virtual assistant and we make things for you and we see them not make it to your marketing funnel or not make it to your store, we don't want that either, because we don't feel like we really truly helped you or your customers. So you have to leave yourself some margin for that communication. There's going to be more at the beginning and you have to know that, like team feedback is a non-negotiable that has to have space for it.
Speaker 1:I love that because that's definitely something that with that first VA that I really struggled with it even now, but it had to be reallocated to someone else, like somebody else on my team had to be the person to review the work when it came back in, because it just wasn't going to get done.
Speaker 1:And then, like you said, how do you tell them to go to the next step if you haven't even checked the first step or in my case, I wouldn't check the first step until it was time to upload it, and then it's too late to get them to fix it. So then I have to fix it and I think sometimes as business owners, especially when we have a lot on our plates, we can be, if we're not careful, like the weakest link in the chain. And so you really want to make sure that if you're hiring out, the breakdown of communication is not I mean, sometimes it's just going to be your fault but like it's not costing somebody else money or costing someone else time, because even if they're not on retainer and it's not costing you money for them to wait on you they want to be able to know. If I send this in, I'm going to get feedback pretty quickly to fix whatever needs to be fixed, because they have other jobs that they're managing as well.
Speaker 2:So I can imagine that'd be frustrating and it's so interesting with contractors because you can't say, like, do this by four o'clock on Tuesday, right, we have that like nebulous timeline world that we all live in, but you can open things up for communication and start to notice patterns. So as a project manager, I know what time zones people are in, I know who's working after their kids go to bed, who's doing a nap time hustle, who's working first thing in the morning, and I have a pretty good idea when my best time in the day or week is to catch a certain team member if I need to have a conversation. So I just know that if I put something on someone's desk on Monday but they're a weekend worker, I can't be upset when I have not heard back from them on Wednesday. And so if my boss says, hey, are they done with that, I'll be like no, actually they do most of their work on Friday night. And that's like my life as a project manager in the middle and when I help people make systems inside their business and we put these systems into place, I always talk about like the non-negotiable 20 minutes in every day. So we're recording this episode during my spring break Our car is packed, we're going to eat lunch and hit the road, and my team knows I'm out of office next week, but they also know that I will be in there for two tasks every single day.
Speaker 2:Even when we're on the road, I will always check my customer service inboxes and TPT Q&A to make sure there's no teacher who, like, bought our stuff, who can't use it and is like in a pickle next block. I will always check for that one today. And then I will always check just my team inbox to make sure I'm not the bottleneck in my own business. So if someone's waiting for feedback on me or a quick question, if I can answer that quickly while I'm on the road, then they can be working while I'm gone. And so if you wake up with a stomach flu, if we have a snow day, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:Those are my two must-dos in my business. And if I just get comfortable and build systems where I can do that on the road and it's not taking me away from my family, I'm not opening up any other tabs in my business, but you better believe that if certain people's names pop into my inbox on the road, I'm going to get back to them as fast as I can and so they know, oh, she's out of office, but like I can still ask her a question, it's not going to bother her, she's not going to snap at me and they're still free to work next week even if I'm gone. I love that.
Speaker 1:I want to go back to something that you mentioned earlier and this is partly curiosity for me, because you mentioned something that I do which was you were talking about communication and thinking about systems for communication. How am I going to communicate? Maybe we could text, maybe we could, you know, have people, team members who wanted to do WhatsApp. I have one team member, in fact, my main project manager. She wants to communicate via Facebook Messenger and that's totally fine with me. And then we have people who communicate via email and then Asana.
Speaker 1:So for the most part, most of my team, my project manager, puts the projects into Asana and she communicates with them via Asana and then may answer some clarifying questions via email or something like that. And then we have two project managers, one who handles summer and one who handles year round events, and my year round does Facebook and my summer does phone, and both of those work for me, because I don't check my email but like we're still all over the map. You know what I mean. So when you were talking about like communication systems, like what in your mind, like what is a really good way to communicate, if you're saying like email is probably not going to cut it, like text is probably not. I mean, what would you? What are some of your suggestions?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not in the business of fixing systems that aren't broken, so the important thing I heard you say is that works for me.
Speaker 2:You're okay with your summer person being on your phone and your school year person being in Facebook, because that still gives you one place to put your attention. And you said that that team member knows that they're talking to everyone else inside a sauna and so I run a very similar thing. So if I'm your project manager, you probably have direct access to me and I have direct access to you because I need to be able to text, you, call, you, send a smoke signal, whatever. You're probably going to have a whole bunch of more tiers of emergency access to me if something is blowing up in your business. But everyone else on the team is just chatting with me and Asana. They're commenting in that task, in that project, where all the information already is, where everyone can see the status, whether we're in office or we're not. Super easy to share things back and forth. And then there probably is someone that's like an executive assistant that has more access and you can break the rules with a little bit. But when you hire that first team member, you're like oh, I always chatted with this person on Instagram, so we'll just keep chatting there and I will say my clients know that I don't mind Instagram DMs. I always keep them open on my second monitor all day, because sometimes people do need to verbally process something, but after we're done verbally processing they always know I'm going to say like it sounds like we have a good direction to go in. I'm going to ask you to go tuck that into Asana, yeah, and so we always like capture the final decision and we need to go put it in the business project management system to make sure it actually makes it to the finish line, because we don't want lost ideas caught in like a scrolling chat that you then start talking about something else. That's not what that platform is for.
Speaker 2:So if you do end up having a conversation in the wrong place, that's really fine, but at the end we're going to be like okay, but I need like a two sentence summary to make it back into the business project management system. Otherwise you risk great ideas and decisions not getting acted on, but also team members being out of the loop. We can't ask people to read our mind about private conversations that happened in social channels that were never for business. So we have to bring that conversation back into the team space. So Asana is free.
Speaker 2:I'm an Asana girl through and through, but that Asana inbox is the first place my eyeballs go in the morning over coffee. I look through everyone's business I'm a part of and I go through their Asana inbox and I read bottom to top and I catch myself up to speed on what other people have been doing while I was sleeping. And so if business happened somewhere else, I don't know about it and that's the only way for someone like me that's the only way I can be in a dozen different businesses in a week is if all the communications in one place and for you, if you have two people that you're talking to but the project manager is talking to everyone else, that can work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, okay. But basically we're talking about just having one spot that you're communicating with them with, and I think you know when you're talking about like a sauna with them with, and I think you know when you're talking about like a sauna. One of the things that I found was that if somebody was going to be in, like I needed for them to be able to communicate with me in a place that I didn't mind being bothered, you know. So, like, if I didn't want my text messages blowing up all day with people asking me work questions, then text is not a good spot, or same with Facebook messenger. But now I just get to a point where, like, I just turn off my you know iPhone has that setting now where you can manage interruptions. I can say, like, only bother me if it's my husband calling me and then, like the rest of the time, I just don't check my phone because people are like I don't have to, because all that communications in a sauna and I don't have.
Speaker 2:Asana on my phone, so like I can sit down for my kids dance recital and I'm like I'll see you tomorrow.
Speaker 1:That's so funny and this is a little off topic, but I think it speaks a lot to different personality types. Where I don't log into Asana, like I just don't do it, I try not to even look at my inbox because it's stressful, it's overwhelming to me, like I don't want to see any of that, I don't want to know what's going on because I get bogged down with the details. And I think that that's a huge part of like just knowing your own personality too and knowing what's going to work for you. But at the end of the day, if you're managing the team, if you're overseeing things, you really do have to know the details and you have to have a way to go in and to say, okay, everything's going to be right here in one place and it is really nice in Asana.
Speaker 1:So last question is you know you've mentioned before about hiring horror stories and I think that that's one of the big questions that people ask. So we've talked about one of the big ways to avoid being a hiring horror story is to just make sure that you have standard operating procedures for whatever task that you're wanting to hire out. But are there some other pitfalls or some other common things that we can avoid. That would make the hiring experience a lot more enjoyable. Might not be the right word, but a lot less painful, especially for first-time hires or for those who've been burned before.
Speaker 2:I love when people have a super specific job description. It is my love language because it means they sat and agonized over exactly what parts of the task they wanted to keep and have ownership of and exactly what they needed support with from someone else, and that's such a sign that, like that's going to go well for both sides. You mentioned Fiverr before. I was so glad. One of the big things that I think is important to find clarity on is who's bringing the systems. There are virtual assistants that'll just do whatever you tell them to do. You bring them the SOP, you tell them exactly what to do and when you need it back, and they say you got it and they do it, and we love them. There are also people who will bring their own systems right.
Speaker 2:It's like a general VA versus like a freelancer who like specializes, and so sometimes you don't know what you need and you might say like I could never start an email list because I don't even know where to start. Well then, don't hire a VA from the Philippines, right? Because they're going to be looking for guidance and you're going to be frustrated that they're asking you questions and you don't have the answers. You need to go find someone who's one level more specialized, who's like oh, I have a signature system for that, you're coming into my system and I got you, and so it's about picking from the right menu.
Speaker 2:Both of those situations can be a win, but only if you hired the right level of person for the level of support that you wanted. It's about more than money. It's about, like, how involved you want to be. If you have your signature process for how your email goes and you want someone to execute your SOP, you're hiring someone totally different than someone who says I have a signature process that I know what works and you're coming into my business. And I think so many of us skip that moment of clarity. Both types of service providers are out there, but we like call them all VAs sometimes and then we end up with the wrong kind of person and that's sticky for everyone.
Speaker 1:So write a super specific job description and know what you're looking for and the level of expertise that they need to have, based on the role that you're willing to play. And is there a specific place that you would recommend, like going to look for a VA? Or I mean, obviously you have a VA service. So tell us the difference between, say, hiring someone who is vetted and has a lot of experience working with teacher authors versus, say, hiring someone on Fiverr or hiring someone in the Philippines, or even just going into the TPT VA finder group and just trying to find someone to take care of a certain task for you.
Speaker 2:It just depends on what outcome is most important to you. If you're just trying to save money, then you're gonna find a cost-effective option, but you're gonna have to do more training, you're gonna have to bring your own systems and your PD and you're gonna have to be patient with the timeline. Other times you need a quick turnaround and you don't want to know anything about it. You want to be hands-off, white glove, and you need someone who can do that. And so it's just different seasons of business. You'll look for different things based on what you need. Is it the speed that you need? Is it the price that's more important? Do you want to be involved? Do you want to not be involved at all? I have a free hiring guide that kind of walks through, like the questions to ask yourself. But you know someone in your network who knows the right person for your job. Most likely and I think we forget to tell our TPT besties in six months I think I'd like to hire out X. Do you know anyone good? And also, do you know anyone not good? Because they do. They know a friend of a friend of a friend who fell into a hiring horror story and they will tell you if you ask, and sometimes we just forget to ask the people in our network. I have people who DM me on Instagram or book a coffee chat with me for free, just for a matchmaking service. It's not like an official service I provide. I just know a lot of people in the TBT space, and so I will ask those questions to try to drill down what they're actually looking for Right. Like you need a website oh, my goodness, there's like 10 amazing web designers in this space. I love them all.
Speaker 2:But, like what do you want your website to do? Like, what's your goal? Are we doing a shop? Does it have to be visually stunning? What's important for your brand? Let's pair these people up with the people that they're most likely to be happy with, and so don't be afraid to ask other people around here. We probably know a person you should avoid and a person you'd be really happy with. So sometimes we feel like we have to do it ourself and go to the job board all by ourselves in the middle of the night, when we're frustrated and stressed, and we might just have a better outcome if we ask around. As teachers, we would tell our students like, ask three, then me. We don't do that. As business owners, though, we don't tell our friends that we need help. You probably have someone in your network that has someone who's probably looking for more hours or work or has done something stunning for you and you'd love to share about their name.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So you mentioned a hiring guide and then I know there's another tool, so tell us a couple. You've got a couple of free tools I do If you're interested in hiring.
Speaker 2:On my website, cookfamilyresourcescom. I have a hiring guide, so it's hiring-guide and it's just for teacher business owners and it's that signature, repeatable process that I've walked through with so many business owners when we're making systems. I just zipped it up into a PDF so anyone can use it. It's not like a guide to hiring me, it's not about my services, it's just those questions we talked about today and it's seven steps, because you probably realize which step you skipped during your last hiring story. As you walk through the guide and then you're like, oh yeah, if I had done that, we probably would have had a shot. So that's out there for anyone.
Speaker 2:And then there's a book by Michael Hyatt. It's called your World Class Assistant and it's such a cool book that I find a lot of people haven't read. But it has like one chapter by the CEO of that department in their business, and then the next chapter is their project manager and it alternates back and forth and so it says like here's the things I've learned about what I need as a leader. And then the next chapter is like here's the thing I learned about how Lauren works and how I can be a good support to her, and reading all those different stories just gave me so many aha moments like how I could be a better boss in my own business for the team members I work with, but also just how different everyone is. And it gives new ideas of the types of support that you could leverage, because we don't even know what people can help us with until those ideas are out there. So I have that set up as like a little.
Speaker 2:We did it as a summer book club, but it's just like an email, like chapter by chapter. Every Friday it shares my takeaways and relates the book back to like our world of TPT and that's totally free and available out there too. So that's cookfamilyresourcescom. Summer slash book slash club.
Speaker 1:Awesome. We'll put the link to both of those inside of the show notes or, if you're watching on YouTube, inside of the description. Janice, you're going to be at Teacher Seller Summit, which we are super excited about. Tell us a little bit about what you're going to be presenting on there and what we're going to be able to learn from you, because we're super stoked.
Speaker 2:It's such a great way to kick off the summer.
Speaker 2:I am presenting about project management and I am presenting about paper planning tools versus digital tools, and that relates to today's conversation, because we have these favorite like notebooks and binders and paper planners where, like, all of our ideas live.
Speaker 2:But no one can help you in your business if all of your things are living in a binder on your desk and in your brain. So my like middleman job is usually getting those signature processes out of your brains and in your brain. So my like middleman job is usually getting those signature processes out of your brains and off your post-its and into a digital space maybe not all of them so that people can jump in and help you. And so I'm never going to rip all the paper tools away. I have paper notes with us today of things that we need to chat about, things I need to do before we pack the car. I'm never gonna take all the paper tools away, but that session is an exploration of like when paper is a winner and when paper is like holding back the ability for others to step in and help us.
Speaker 1:I love that. We're so excited. You can grab your ticket to Teacher Seller Summit down in the description below. We even have a free option for attending this year, so make sure you check it out. Janice, thank you so much for being here. So we're going to put a link to your website, cookfamilyresourcescom. Is that right? You got it. Put a link to your website down below so that listeners can connect with you if they want to learn more or if they want to hire you or schedule one of those coffee chats to find the right person to hire. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2:Janice, I'm so glad we could chat about hiring out. You don't have to do everything in your business and there are so many free steps that you can take to make yourself feel a little bit better.
Speaker 1:I love it. Well, thank you so much and we're going to see you at TSS. Bye, if you haven't grabbed your ticket to Teacher Seller Summit yet, then you want to be there. Let me tell you what we've got going on this year. We have over 60 incredible sessions. That's right, 60.
Speaker 1:You will not find another conference, especially a virtual one for teacher authors, with as many incredible sessions that are packed into Teacher Seller Summit.
Speaker 1:In fact, this year we've done something new and we've added a library of mini masterclass sessions. These are power packed, five to 10 minute quick sessions so that you can learn more, grow more and do more a whole lot faster, and those you can access absolutely for free. We also have meet and greets, where you can meet up with other TPT sellers online and discuss things inside your niche, inside your geographical area, and so much more. We've provided so many opportunities for you to connect with other sellers and to learn from others, both experts and people who are in your niche, who are in the weeds just like you. So make sure and check out the link inside of the description and grab your free ticket to TSS right away. Thanks so much for being here, you guys. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast yet, then go ahead and hit subscribe. I'm going to see you guys right back here next week and I'm going to see you at TSS.