Casey Morris (0:00)

Hey CEO teachers. Welcome back to the show. Today we're going to be talking all about the first five steps to selling your lessons online. That's right. We're taking it back to the old school. If you know someone that is just starting out on learning about selling their lesson plans online or someone who has started selling their lesson plans online but is not making as much money as they want to, maybe that's you. I want to share with you today the secret sauce, the secret recipe to getting there faster than ever before. So stick around, you don't want to miss. Welcome to the CEO Teacher where educators turn what they already know and love into a successful and sustainable online business with actionable strategies, simple business tips and mindset shifts. It's a weekly lesson plan for teacher business owners whether you're teaching full time in the classroom or rocking the small business from home life. I'm your host Casey Morris, a former Georgia English teacher, Momentum turned seven figure online teacher, business owner and founder of the CEO Teacher Movement. Three teaching degrees got me a few extra bucks each year, but what I will show you will help you make that every single month. If you have a heart for education and a passion to use your experience to help more teachers and families, you belong here. Walt Disney once said the way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. And then Simon Sinek said dream big, start small. But most of all start. So the original is back, bigger and better than ever. In 2018, I was seven months pregnant, I was eating a chocolate chip cookie, drinking a diet Dr. Pepper and I launched my first course. Well, technically it was my second course. My first course was a dud out into the world. It was called Transform youm Resources. This was a course that taught teachers step by step not only how to sell their lesson plans and create beautifully aesthetic looking lesson plans online, but it gave to them the secret recipe that took me years to master and that was making sure those lesson plans land on number one search in Google, in every single search, every single time, teaching them search engine optimization and all the nerdy behind the scenes things that are so much more important than just what your lesson plans look like. And it's coming back bigger, better, revamped, refreshed and ready for you this Friday. Black Friday. You don't even have to leave your couch. You can get on the wait list right now by going to Casey morris.com tyr that's K A Y S E M o r r I s.com T-Y-R and we will send an email to Your inbox with a discount on Friday morning for Black Friday. I know that starting a teacher business can feel confusing. It can feel way too complicated, especially if you've never done it before. But I got you. And even if you have done it before, I love to ask my students this question. Are you making the money that you want to be making? And if the answer is no, it just means not yet. There's so much power in the word yet. And I am so excited to tell you that whenever you start learning the behind the scenes stuff, the stuff that nobody wanted you to know back in the day, no one wanted to tell you, that's when everything changes. Even if you have all the necessary parts already, you just aren't sure how to make them work for you yet. This is your time. It's wild to me that something as small as teaching resources, lesson plans like activity books or interactive foldables or editable site word games could help you make more than your teaching salary. I was making about $100,000 a year after year three of selling my lesson plans. And that jump went from $600 a year to about $6,000 a year. And then the third year I made $95,000. And it wasn't because I was doing anything that much different. I just learned the behind the scenes part to search engine optimization. And don't worry, I teach all of you that inside of our course. So let me guess. Life feels really crazy right now. You're having a bit of a hard time dealing with everything on your plate in the classroom and you're wondering, is it really time to take on another responsibility? Can I really do this? Or maybe you're struggling to find your main thing. One of my favorite authors of all time is Dr. Stephen Covey from the book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. And he says the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. And I know you because I was a teacher too. You probably have too many ideas swirling around and you just don't know how to put them all in a beautiful package. You just know that you are destined for more and you're wondering if you are really ready to take this next step. Don't worry, I'm going to teach you the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 the ABCDEs of how you can do this. Let's take your teacher inspired ideas and turn them from bland to beautiful in five easy steps. Let's go. All right, so first you got to decide what you will sell and who you will sell it to. Here's the thing. Narrowing down your niche or niche, however you want to say it is more important than ever. You may want to create resources like I did from K through 8. So I had an early childhood elementary degree, but I was teaching middle school. And so I was like, I'm going to do kindergarten resources. I'm going to do 8th grade resources. But the problem with that is that you start scattering your ideas in so many different directions. I once heard this saying that says you can be good at anything or you can be great at one thing. And when I really started to focus in on my main thing and think about my North Star, I got really good at something and I became known for that. I want you to think about McDonald's or chick fil A. I know Chick Fil A is really about the Lord's chicken, but honestly, when I think about Chick Fil A, I think about how well they do at customer service, right? Whenever they're supposed to say thank you, they say my pleasure. Whenever they're supposed to get you through the drive thru line, they're like, come on, can you pull up? They have such a great system and it's amazing to me that they could take something as simple as chicken and make it into an absolute movement because they focused really, really hard on the customer experience. If you set yourself apart, your people will find you. I want you to narrow down your audience and then I want you to give them the best you have to offer rather than spreading yourself so thin and making mediocre content that is just going to be like noise online because there are so many people doing so many things right now. I want you to be great at one thing. Step two is I want you to brand your new teacher business. Or maybe it's a teacher business you've been doing. I went through a lot of rebrands. My business was originally called Teaching on Less and now it's called the CEO teacher. And sometimes that just takes time. I love the saying action brings clarity and clarity produces results. Yes, this is a business you are creating, not some little thing you do. So you need to name it and you got to brand it so people can find you. Now, some people love alliterations like Tina's tiny trinkets, and that's fine, but to me, that doesn't tell me anything about what you're going to sell. For example, the CEO teacher is something that encompasses who we are as a brand. CEO stands for chief executive officer. And I wanted teachers to be the chief executive executive officer of being a teacher, of knowing what that meant. I Want you to remember this saying. When you confuse, you lose. So although it's catchy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want you to know that. Rhyming names or alliterations? Alliterations are fine as long as they tell you a little bit more about the brand. But I want you to be able to tell your audience who you are and who you serve in your brand, because that'll help people know how you can help them. Step three is I want you to learn the foundations of true graphic design. Now, I know you're just a teacher and I know you loved Chevron borders back in the day, and you probably have some outdated clip art, but you got to stand out from the crowd. You got to be a little bit extra. I want you to think glitter and glue and all that, but I want you to think about it in your own way. Teachers are perfectly designed to be creative, keep your head above water by taking a break and thinking outside the box. I talked about systems and processes when I was talking about Chick Fil A. And how can you create a brand that is so easily identifiable to who you are? And how can people see it and go, oh, that is the CEO, teacher, or whatever your thing is. You can create templates to get started, plug and play things that'll help you save a few extra minutes. Because we all know you don't have that much time when you're already working 40 hours a week. Next is design your resources. When it comes to everyone talking about how they're going to get started with their teacher business, I don't know about you, but I want to know details. Are you designing products in PowerPoint or Canva? Are you launching new resources on social media? Do you even have a social media? Are you researching what to create? Do you know what people are searching for? Are you spending hours every night after teaching creating another product? Because just creating a product doesn't mean it's going to sell. Learning, search engine optimization, how you will name that product will allow you to get found above all the noise. And investing in learning all the details could be the difference between making a couple of hundred dollars every year and making hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. And let me tell you, when I jumped feet first in this online world, there was no one sharing the how, the step by step of how to go from 0 to 60 and from 1 teacher to another. That didn't sit well with me. I want you to be able to not just design beautiful resources, but to understand that there are steps behind the scenes required to make products to help Your resources get to the very top of every single search, every single time. Things like identifying and naming your previews, your cover images, optimizing titles and blog posts and descriptions. Some things that go on behind the curtain and the veil that people will never know about unless you're inside of our program. And then finally you gotta design your online shop. Whether you decide to sell on a well known platform like Etsy TPT or build your own land and create your own Shopify store, something like that, where you're going to put out your newly created resources. It's not your fault if you think to yourself all of these ideas have already been done before because even though someone may have done your idea before, the world has never seen you do it in the way that you do it. Love to give the example about thinking about your favorite teacher. It wasn't so much what they taught, but how they taught it. And your how to is truly what'll help you build a beautiful business online. Your platform is going to give you some street credibility and it's going to allow you to test the waters and see what sells and what doesn't. I will say most people realize after the first few resources that building business on their own land is not as scary as you might think it is. I just want to mention one more time that we are pulling out all the stops for the original OG Transform your resources course. It's back and better than ever and it'll help you get started with each of these five steps that we chatted about today in a proven step by step strategy. So if you need templates to simplify your life or you want to understand all of the extra how to behind the scenes or even if you need support one on one to design your own storefront or start building your own website, come hang out with us. Come check it out in all its glory before you head out to caffeinate and scour your town for Black Friday. You can get on the waitlist by going to caseymorris.com tyr and if you have any questions about any of this specifically send me a message on Instagram. Let's get chatted up in the DMs so that I can help you a little bit more. Thanks so much for listening to the CEO Teacher podcast. You know where to find us. Right back here. Same time, same place next week. And as always, remember your best is yet to come. I'll see you soon.