The Rebranded Teacher
The Rebranded Teacher
Beyond TPT: Ways to Diversify Your Income with Carlin Liborio
Carlin Liborio returns to share how she's expanded beyond TPT to double her income by selling directly to school districts through purchase orders. She explains her diversified business model including professional development, digital resources, and her new venture into Amazon workbooks.
Grab your ticket to Teacher Seller Summit to learn more about diversifying your income streams as a teacherpreneur. This year features over 60 incredible sessions including Carlin's workshop on purchase orders, plus many masterclass sessions, and opportunities to connect with other sellers in your niche.
Get your ticket to the Teacher Seller’s Summit:
https://laurenfulton.krtra.com/t/oTIxSLPqfhYf
Connect with Carlin:
https://impact.carlinliborio.com/
Listen to Carlin's Interview from Last Year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_YdZI0X10U
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:
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 2:I am so excited because today's guest has been here before. Karlyn Laborio was on the podcast back in 2023, and she was kind of a not to say fan favorite, because I don't know that we have fans here on the podcast but her episode was a favorite by many TPT sellers because she talked about how she made the jump from being a brand new TPT store to a six-figure TPT store in under a year. She also shared a lot about how she did professional development and left the classroom to pursue her new business full-time. And now Karlyn's back because she's doing even more than that. So let's talk. Hey, karlyn, how are you?
Speaker 3:Hey.
Speaker 2:Lauren, it's so good to see you again. It's so good to see you. Tell us what's happened since we chatted, because it's been a year and a half, almost two years. What's going on in your world?
Speaker 3:So much is happening and so much has changed since I was last on your podcast. I'm so excited to tell your listeners I'm so excited about Teacher Seller Summit. This year I'm gonna be talking about purchase orders and that is one of the big game changers I have been doing. My TPT store has exploded and so I've also been doing purchase orders directly with school districts selling my curriculum. The whole professional development thing has blown up. So that was great. Last year I got to travel all over Texas and train so many teachers.
Speaker 3:My big word is impact, so I am trying to just make as much of an impact as I can on teachers' lives and my niche is language arts, so I'm helping Texas teachers with language arts, especially as it relates to the STAR test, all of the essay writing and also reading, comprehension and all that good stuff. So have an online course. All that's going great. I have district PD and I have digital resources that I'm selling on TPT but also directly to districts, and it's actually my teacher salaries, what I'm making on TPT, what I used to make as a teacher, and then the purchase orders are equal to that. So it is definitely worth doing, and I'm also I just got into doing Amazon workbooks with Crystal. She's going to be a teacher seller summit. I finally got around to doing the workbooks. I've wanted to do it for about two years since I've known her. I met her through Digital Course Academy with Amy Porterfield and I published my first three workbooks 11 days ago and I've already sold 50 workbooks.
Speaker 3:Stop, it Made over $1,000 on my first, so I'm so excited about that new adventure.
Speaker 2:I love it. I was telling you this off camera before we started the podcast and I love one of the things that I love about every time I chat with you and I've chatted with you, like on the podcast. We've done a little few voice memos back and forth, I think, here and there, and then also at TSS, whenever we're doing like Q&A panels or discussions or whatever. You have such a growth mindset, but you also have you know, so many TPT sellers have this mindset of like I'm going to keep this information to myself, like I'm going to keep this private and I'm not going to tell anybody because, like what if this messes things up for me? Or like they just keep everything under wraps? And you have this like abundance mindset that I love and I think think is so beneficial for TPT sellers and for really business owners and, honestly, for ourselves to have that kind of abundance mindset of like I have wisdom to share. I would love to share it with you and we're so excited to hear from you because you're always doing so many things and you're doing them well, so let's jump into it, which, by the way, if you're interested and she's talking about PD she came on the podcast back in 2023. We'll link to that episode down inside in the description so that you can go back and you can listen to that episode if you want to learn more about getting started with professional development.
Speaker 2:But let's talk about selling direct to districts, because this is one of those things that it's not necessarily difficult to do. It's hard in the beginning to figure out how to start with purchase orders, whether or not it's going to be worth it, how do you get the word out to districts, all of that kind of stuff? So let's start with just talking about, like, what types of products could you sell, or can you sell direct to districts? Maybe a better question might even be this may be a little bit more nuanced than you want to get into but, like, what type of resources make good resources to sell to districts? Because if I think about like a two or $3 maze activity, you know if my store is filled with like little things like that, maybe that's not a good fit or maybe it is. Tell us a little bit about that, yeah.
Speaker 3:So great question. So that's exactly where you have to start. Step one is making sure you have quality resources. So probably the maze types of things are not going to be that appealing for districts to buy directly. You never know. But what I would suggest and this isn't necessarily a beginner thing, but I would say, even if you're a beginner listening to this podcast or watching this on YouTube even if you're a beginner, I think you can get a lot out of this episode because it can create your vision of what you might want your TPT store to look like over time, and so you could be thinking about this now. If you've been a TPT seller for a while, then this is definitely something to think about.
Speaker 3:So, first of all, you want to have quality resources. You want to have something that teachers are. Just you are changing their lives for the better, because what you're giving them is filling a need, it's filling a gap. We all know that there's curriculums out there, and if those curriculums were perfect, we wouldn't have a business. So that's what our job is is to fill that need and supplement their curriculum with what it is lacking. Okay, cause there's no perfect curriculum. So let me tell you first of all. You have to have quality resources. That's number one. Number two is bundles. So if you can have and I know you talk about this all the time but if you have bundles, you are going to be able to sell directly to districts you have to bundle your things together, especially if you have grade levels. Even if you're third, fourth and fifth or you're middle school or you're high school, whatever grades you do you can actually bundle those together and sell those to a whole school.
Speaker 3:Okay, and let me tell you first of all, let's back up and say why. Why should you do this? What's the benefit? So I know a lot of you guys listening. You might be thinking about selling on your own website. You might even be thinking about Shopify and doing all that exciting things. That's on my list, by the way, for maybe next year, but I haven't gotten there yet. But the great thing about this is you don't need a website. You don't need to deal with sales tax because school districts are tax exempt. So if you're selling directly to a school district, you also often don't need to worry about credit card payments, because they pay with a check. You get 100% of the commission. You're not giving part of it to TPT. So those are all great reasons why you might want to do this.
Speaker 3:The first year that I started doing this, I was making about my teacher's salary on Okay. So that's when I gave my notice, left the classroom. Live in the dream. I'm just going to do TPT. What happened was I started doing purchase orders, and it can be as simple as and if you come to Teacher Seller Summit, I'm actually doing a 30 minute workshop on how to get started with this. So if you're interested, come sign up. It's one of the best things you can ever do, and I went as a participant when I first started my TPT store and learned so much about diversifying your income, and so that is the whole.
Speaker 3:Key is to put your eggs in different baskets so that you are going to have all these different income revenue streams, okay. So as far as setting it up, it's actually pretty easy, and in the course, I'm going to show you how to do a quote. I'm even going to give you a free template that is, the quote and show you how to send that to the principal, the teacher, the school district, whoever it is, but it's just a matter of putting your email on your resources and this can be in an email opt-in. This can be inside of your resources. On your terms of use page you can say interested in purchase orders? Email me for a quote. That's all you have to say. You can put that on your Facebook or your Instagram, whatever you use your YouTube, your podcast. You can put it on your email marketing and in the bottom of the email you can say interested in a quote? Send me an email. So that's how you get it out there.
Speaker 3:You spread the word that you're able to sell directly to these schools if they're interested. If they send you an email which you're hoping they will they will ask you hey, what do you have available for middle school math? What do you have available for elementary school math? Whatever they're going to ask you, you give them recommendations. So you can say I have this, this and this, and how many teachers do you have? And what I do is I bundle. I normally bundle everything together and say the teacher licenses are free. So you're basically bundling. You know hundreds I'm talking about bundles that cost a hundred $120. So you're adding all of those together and the total might be anywhere from $500 to $1,200, $1,500. But you're giving them a break because they're not having to pay the teacher licenses, maybe. And if you look at the rules on TPT, as long as you're bundling things in a different way and you are creating a new product, then you can do whatever you want, and so that's kind of how you get around.
Speaker 3:Those details Obviously read it yourself, but that is how I got around that, and then you basically send them an official quote, which I have a template, and then they get a purchase order. They send you an email and say it's been approved. And once you get that, you email them all of the resources just in an email, just the links. It's so easy, you don't need a website, you don't need fancy software. And then, once you send them that, you send them an invoice and then they send the check in the mail and that is 100% commission on all that. I love this.
Speaker 2:So, when we're talking about types of resources, you said high quality. We need really high quality resources and you want to make sure that we're doing bundles. And I want to kind of talk about this for a minute, because this is definitely what we run into with taking purchase orders, whether it's for summit tickets or for product. We have a threshold and I don't know if you do or not. Do you have like a certain dollar amount that they have to spend to do a purchase order or will you take a purchase?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, to me. I mean, it's just not worth it for one little resource. So I would never do that. I always do. I don't have a dollar amount but I would say, you know, $50 or higher, but usually it's more like in the hundreds or thousands.
Speaker 2:Which is great because you don't need that many if a district is going to purchase it and we have a hundred dollar minimum, just you know, for like summits or something like that, because most districts they can use their credit card, they can whip out a credit card and they can pay for something. If it's under a hundred bucks, you know, and you don't have to, like, wait for approval or anything like that. But the a hundred dollars it definitely is still a process you have to keep up with everything. You have to make sure did I get the check for this Wait and look for that purchase order, and I would imagine that it might be a little bit different for you.
Speaker 2:And when we typically do purchase orders, we're doing them for summits, so something over a short period of time, or for short term sales, and so it's over a short period of time. But a lot of times we'll get districts reaching out to us and asking for quotes. And when we send them a quote with the licensing for each teacher, a lot of times they're like, yeah, no, nevermind. A lot of times they're like, yeah, no, nevermind, because I can just buy one on your website and send it to everybody rather than paying full price. So we definitely get that, which I like what you're saying. And maybe we should consider something a little bit different this year, when we're running some of those sales, to say, if you're buying so many licenses, give them a break. If they're purchasing so much, I'd give them a break from the licensing. So it cuts back on that temptation to just say, well, we'll just go buy off of TPT and do a purchase and then just share it in a Google drive.
Speaker 3:You have to give them some reason for doing the purchase order. So I think giving them a discount on something is key. Even I've had districts where they've had 80, 90 teachers and that's a lot to be sharing. In that case, like when I first started out, I would just think of a random number, and a lot of times I'm just making this up as I go, but I would, for example, I would say, $10 per teacher or $20 per teacher in addition to the bundles. So, as long as it's something that you're comfortable with and you got to think of, the bottom line is, if you're pulling in $900 or $1,000, do the teacher licenses really matter if they're buying that many bundles? Yeah, and the other thing you have to think about is it's really very little effort because you're making one quote and you're sending one email with all the links and the work is already done. The digital resources are already made, so you're really not doing extra work to give them those. You know what I mean. So it's just extra money in your pocket.
Speaker 3:And I do this also with online courses and in-person courses. So, for example, they will do a purchase order for an online course that's $180. I will do it for that, and I think you have to have some sort of way of organizing it all, so I talk about that in the course too. That's going to be a part of TSS this year, so I share with you in that workshop my spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet is key to keeping track of it all and that's what you can use to follow up. Did they pay? You can also use that for your taxes at the end of the year to see how much you actually collected.
Speaker 2:That's smart. I love that. What are three things that I need in order to get started taking purchase orders? Okay.
Speaker 3:So number one is you need an invoice, you need some type of a form that you can send to a principal or a teacher or a school district that looks like a quote.
Speaker 3:They call it a quote when it hasn't been approved yet, and once the purchase order has gone through, they call it an invoice. It's the same thing. It just says quote at the top or it just says invoice at the top, and that is the template that I'm going to give you for free if you guys come to TSS. So the first thing you need is an invoice or quote, some type of form. The second thing is you need to let your audience know that you're available to do purchase orders and, like I told you, that's just a matter of sending it out on your email list, posting it on Facebook, putting it in your products, having it in your email opt-in that, if you're interested, email me for a quote. I do purchase orders, direct purchase orders, something like that and then put your email or a QR code that goes to your email, but I normally just put my email. The third thing is you do need an address for them to send the checks to. So, with that, if you guys have an LLC a lot of you listening. You might already have an LLC set up if you sell on TPT. If not, that's okay too. You can definitely use a forwarding mail service. I do that and I pay $20 a month. It's called Northwest, so the people send the checks to that address and then it gets sent to my house and that way you're not giving out your home address. So these are like little things that you need to think about before you start, but they're not major things. They're not like setting up a Shopify store. They're not. You know, you don't need a website, you don't need to deal with sales tax. So I feel like the most important thing I think is to make those quality resources and with that, I think it's super important to really research the standards.
Speaker 3:If you're doing a particular state or if you're doing Common Core, whatever you're doing, really, really research the standards and make sure that you're putting out quality materials that the teachers are going to be able to show their principal an example. Maybe they bought it off TPT and they're going to say look at this, can we get this for our grade level? Can we get this for our campus? Because that's what you want. And let me tell you it's not about going to the principals or the administrators and trying to sell to them.
Speaker 3:A lot of people think that the actual secret is to sell to the teachers. The teachers are the ones. If they love your product, they're going to show it to the principal and ask we have some grade level money? Can we do a purchase order? Can we buy this so that we can use this with all of our students? And a lot of times you can get these orders for the whole school district and they might have multiple campuses and that's going to. Another thing you got to think about is when you have the districts and the campuses paying for this, you're helping teachers Because, let me tell you, especially with this economy today, teachers do not have a ton of money. I don't know if you noticed. Everybody talks about the sales going down, and this is a way for your sales to go up, because you're basically getting the districts to buy the resources that teachers need, and that should make you feel good and that will definitely make make you feel good.
Speaker 2:And that will definitely make the teachers feel good and you know a lot of what you're saying, karlyn really goes hand in hand with the professional development that you have to offer, because through this you're building such a massive know like and trust relationship with your customer base, because you're in their classroom now every day, where they may not have been able to afford to have you in there every day, but now they're utilizing these resources, they're experiencing firsthand the impact that your knowledge and expertise is having on their classroom.
Speaker 2:And so if you do offer professional development alongside of that, that's huge. But I think it goes back to being super specific, like you're saying, where you know your standards and you know who you're targeting. And it's not, like you know, I create resources for US classroom teachers, like I have a few resources for Texas, but for the most part it's US classroom teachers, and I don't do big curriculums. I don't do anything like that. I make my living selling tiny products like little resources here and there. So offering purchase orders for those small resources may not be like a huge moneymaker for me, but if I think to myself like, oh, you know what that sounds like a golden opportunity, then maybe that's where I start to structure my TPT resources to be a little bit more in line, realizing that if I do niche down, then it can actually open more doors than what I'm thinking it's going to close Exactly.
Speaker 3:And I have to tell you something else. Crystal has been a presenter at TSS. She's a good friend of mine and I met her through DCA and Crystal's going to be doing a workshop at TSS on Amazon workbooks. Well, I finally took her and I know you've taken her course. I finally took her course in March this year and that's just another way to put your curriculum out there and it's interesting because a lot of people make Amazon workbooks for parents or homeschool parents. That it's just kind of a different audience.
Speaker 3:Well, what I'm doing is I'm actually making Amazon workbooks for teachers and it's just almost like a student workbook that they can buy and the kid can write in the workbook. So, even though they have the same resource on TPT and it's slides and it's task cards and it's you know, some of it is interactive where they can drag the circle. They have that. They can print it if they want to, but this is a workbook that the kid can actually write in. And I am just amazed because I've only I just published three books.
Speaker 3:First time ever doing this in my life and in 11 days was when I published the first book 11 days ago, and I have already sold 50 workbooks and made over a thousand dollars, and I'm not saying like everybody's going to have that success, but this was just advertising with my audience, just putting it on Facebook and saying, do you guys want this?
Speaker 3:And asking them, and they were like yes, and then saying like here it is, it's ready, they just grabbed it, and so I'm so excited about this new revenue stream and I'm hoping that I'm going to be able to tie that in with districts buying workbooks with purchase orders and even like combining that with PD. So if I'm doing a PD, I'll stick a box of workbooks in the back of my trunk and bring those how many do you want? And so I'm trying to just expand by doing that as well. But the digital resources through purchase orders I think I loved what you said about you could definitely have some bundles that are really curriculum based. Teachers need help, especially with those standardized tests, so anything that you can make that helps them with that is always going to be a win. I love it.
Speaker 2:I love this. So everything kind of ties together where we're talking about like going back to the very beginning of making sure that the resources that you're creating are high quality and meeting a specific need for your audience. That way, when you go to offer these resources as part of purchase orders, they have a reason to want to purchase this but also making sure that you have a way to bundle them together in a way that makes sense and it's not just like a random pairing of something just to get to a certain dollar amount or a certain dollar value, but really stocking your store in such a way that you're able to bundle these together in a way that makes financial sense for you to do the extra work of the purchase orders and sell those direct to districts. So I love this. Tell us what we're going to be learning about in TSS and then tell us a little bit about your course and where listeners can connect with you to learn more about that.
Speaker 3:So TSS and I got to tell your listeners that you know, like I said, three years ago, I was a participant and I will tell you if you're just starting off with TPT, just like I was, go to TSS, pay the VIP one so that you have six months to watch the videos and you're going to feel like there's just so much to learn. But let me give you some advice. Go to the live UNA sessions. That is my favorite and that is what I think sets your summit apart is all of the live interactive opportunities where you can ask experts questions that you have. And the other great thing is you don't have to do your hair because you're not gonna be on camera. It's like a webinar style where you can type in your questions and you get to see the people that you're asking the questions to and you can ask anything and there's all different topics.
Speaker 3:So I would say, if you don't get to watch all the workshops over those three or four days, don't stress about that. Pick one or two, pick just a few that interest you, but go to the Q&As. Try to go to as many Q&As as you can, because that is where I learned the most. I learned how to basically diversify your income, because that's what it's all about. We're not just doing this to be sellers on TPT. We're doing this to make a huge impact in the world and just to make a difference with our resources and to have financial freedom too.
Speaker 2:So amen to that For some of us the opposite like same things, but the opposite, like the financial freedom and then everything. So if you're like me and you're like, well, you know the other stuff is great, but no, I'm just, I'm just kidding. I think you're very right about the impact and how important that is, because it gives your job purpose. It helps drive your business and move it in the right direction, because if you're constantly thinking about how can I serve my customers and make their world better, then it really helps benefit your business.
Speaker 3:So where can we connect with you? So I have a website, carlinlaboreocom, and that has all of my links to YouTube, facebook, all the things. I have another website that I'll send you just to make sure you have it it's impact and then a slash carlinlaboriocom, and that one is more for where you would find a teacherpreneur. I have like a little side part of the website, but, yeah, when you come to TSS you'll get lots of freebies. You'll get the quote and the invoice template and step-by-step how to get started with purchase orders, if you're interested, and it's only about 30 minutes, so it's not a long workshop and I'll be at some of the Q&As. So if anybody has questions, definitely jump on there and ask me because, like you said, lauren, I really want to share. I'm not, I don't have a business for teacherpreneurs, I just want to help and I want to be an open book, because that's what you guys were for me and still are. I'm still learning.
Speaker 3:My best advice for your listeners would be to just listen to your podcast. I still listen to your podcast and I still learn things every day. So listen to podcasts. Listen to audio books. My absolute favorite book is have you read? 10x is Easier Than 2X, benjamin.
Speaker 2:Hardy, no, I haven't.
Speaker 3:You need to read it. It's one of my favorites. So read books, listen to podcasts if you're a beginner, and come to TSS, because you will just learn so much to kickstart your business. I love it.
Speaker 2:Well, carlyn, thanks so much for being here today, for sharing your wisdom, for sharing all of your years of accumulated knowledge and, honestly, for just being an inspiration, because I think it's so helpful to hear how people are practically diversifying their income streams, because we often think like it's going to be doing so much, but it's really just taking what you're already doing in your TPT business and moving to the next logical step. So I love this and thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3:Thank, you for having me Bye.
Speaker 2: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. 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. In fact, this year we've done something new and we've added a library of many 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.
Speaker 2: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 channel yet, make sure you hit subscribe. So many of you guys who watch on a regular basis are not subscribed, and I get it. You probably think you're subscribed because you keep watching, but you might not be. So make sure you hit that subscribe button, turn on the bell so that you get notified every single week whenever I upload new content to help you grow your TPT business. Thanks so much for being here. I'm going to see you guys right back here in the next video and I'm going to see you at TSS.