← The CEO Teacher Podcast
The CEO Teacher Podcast
What No One Tells You on the Road to Your First $100k
00:14:03
Teachers Looking for Monthly Recurring Revenue to Hit the Next Business Milestone- Stop Here… The creator economy is going full force, making it easier than ever for entrepreneurs to develop their seedling ideas into full-fledged business plans. A...
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- [00:00]
A
Hello CEO teachers. Welcome back to the show. Today we're going to be talking about what life looks like and what no one tells you on the road to your first $100,000 as a teacher. Don't worry if you haven't made it there yet. This is for anyone looking to build an online business. I just thought it would be good idea to kind of dig down into the details and think about where my mindset was 10 years ago versus where it is today. So stick around. You don't want to miss it.
- [00:31]
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Calling all current or former teachers. I want you to grab your favorite highlighter and get ready to dig in. You know all of those lesson plans that are on your desk or in the depths of your computer? They are full of gold and we are about to use them to take the guesswork out of turning your teaching skills, resources and other things into a profitable online business. Whether you have no idea where to start, zero tech skills, or a serious allergy to marketing itself, you're in the right place. Let's face it, you're ready to make 2025 a whole lot sweeter than its younger sibling. And I've got just the thing. Get your hands on the free guide to start or expand your online teacher business in 2025 by going to Casey morris.comstart that's K A Y S E M O r r I s.com start inside you'll find my best tips, strategies, shortcuts, mindset shifts, and hard won lessons for turning your teaching magic into income, flexibility and influence both within and beyond.
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The four walls of your classroom.
- [01:35]
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Strategies like turning your lesson plans into a thriving teacher business without adding hours to your already hectic work week. The difference between teacher businesses that make consistent sales and those that result in crickets. Hint yes, there's more to your success than just creating a resource and I'll show you exactly what's missing. All while helping more students. Because that's really what matters most.
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Am I right?
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You've already got what it takes to build a successful teacher. You don't need all the answers, you just need to put one foot in front of the other. Come download this guide by going to Casey morris.com start and I'll see you on the other side.
- [02:16]
A
This is an unknown quote, but it says the grind includes Friday nights and early mornings. And I don't think I've been as honest about what life used to look like as I should be because I like the rainbows and butterflies kind of part of life. But in reality, if I'm Thinking back to what life was those first couple of years, whenever I was working as a full time teacher and also trying to build a business, I think back to sitting there instead of watching tv. I was working on my business. I remember bathing my boys, the ones that are now almost grown, and we'd read a book, brush their teeth and I put them in bed and then I'd go to work and that was about 8 o'clock. I religiously put them to bed at 8 o'clock and I would work until almost 2 in the morning and then I would go to sleep and I would get up and I would go to teach all day and I would do it all over again. A lot of time, actually many, many nights. For the first couple of years I worked every Friday night and then I would get up on Saturday. And I've said this story a million times, but I would drive to Valdosta, Georgia for about eight hours every Saturday and I would learn at books a million. And I would try to get as much information as I could to bring back for the next week. Now, sometimes on that grind, I was watching webinars by Amy Porterfield or Jenna Kutcher or Pat Flynn and I was learning everything I could about online business. But most of the time I was sitting there creating lesson plans. I had gotten a really good system down where I had templates and I had these processes and I could duplicate products pretty quickly, which is why some of my product lines became my best sellers. And it was like this really cool snowball effect. But I want to be really honest with you, it was an absolute grind. And sometimes I forget that. Sometimes I forget to share the hard part. But the thing is, is that the world is changing, especially the online landscape of what things look like when it comes selling. Did you know that the creator economy is going full force, making it easier than ever for entrepreneurs to develop a full fledged business plan online? Which is good news if you're listening, but it could seem like bad news if you've been doing this for a while, like myself and you feel like you just don't know where to start because you aren't well versed in the creator economy. The global learning management system market is expected to grow 47.47 billion billion by 2030. Things are changing in the background of search engine optimization. All of these changes, including some really wild AI advances, are supposed to take place between now and 2030. Now we could look at this as an opportunity for our businesses to go south, or we can think back to some of the wealthiest people of all time, like Warren Buffett. And he says, during times like this, maybe even a recession, this is the time where people become insanely wealthy because everyone's mindset is in the gutter. But if I can keep yours just above that and we can work towards something great together, I think you're going to feel really good about the future of education. The education market makes up about 21% of the learning management system market I was talking about earlier, which was that 47.47 billion, which is a pretty good chunk of the pie. The good news is that consulting and coaching, aka teaching, are also about 7% of that. So we're looking at about 28% of that $47.47 billion by 2030 that teach could put inside of their bank accounts. And I'm hoping that that means CEO teachers are going to be at the forefront of that. Now let's get into what could be holding you back from really getting in, to selling your resources, to thinking about the grind, to just saying, you know what? I don't have it in me. I'm tired. At the end of the day, you're probably experiencing a lot of fear, probably thinking, who's going to buy this? There's tons of other things out there. People have already created it all, and I just don't even know where to start. You could be thinking, I got a million ideas in my head, but I just don't know what to create. And you get overwhelmed. We call that procrastination, stagnation. But one of my favorite quotes that I think we decided I created, but the team and I, we really aren't sure, but I think about this all the time. It's action brings clarity, and clarity produces results. But you're never going to get clear on exactly who you are and what you're going to do in the online space unless you take massive action. That means every day you show up consistently to do the thing, even if it's just 20 minutes a day. You're probably also scared of putting yourself out there. I've been on Instagram stories since, I think, 2016. I'm not sure when they rolled out, but it's somewhere around there, which is a long time. And I will tell you that to this day, I still am afraid of putting myself out there. Now, the reasons are different. For one, I don't like people knowing my business. I like to put out about 1% of my life on the online space. But for two, now my fear is I'm getting older and I'm not as relevant as I was 10 years ago, but my fear 10 years ago was, was that I was too young and that I didn't have enough experience and that no one wanted to listen to me. So if I could take that fear and just put it into 2025, I'd be okay. But I want you to know that fear is normal. Fear is absolutely something that every single human experiences. When working with teachers, I want you to remember that you already have the heart. And because you have the heart, people are looking to you to listen to. Now, eventually you're going to sell to them offers or products, but right now we just want to get them to listen. Another way you could be struggling on your road to your first $100,000 as a teacher is you probably lack business basics. And I go back to this. It's like, hey, we went to school to be teachers. We did not go to school to be online marketers. So now I'm having to take all this education that I got and throw it to the wayside to learn how to build a business. Things like, I got to have a brand, a name, an llc. I need to learn about sole proprietorships, copyright, trademark laws. And as someone who is not well versed in any of those things, or I wasn't for a very long time, I got caught in the weeds and so I would be like, well, my branding's not done. I just won't keep going. Or I don't have an LLC yet, so I'm not going to keep pushing. But I just want you to remember this, it isn't that deep. It's not as deep as we tend to make it. Okay, you don't have an LLC yet. Get it next month. Okay, your branding's not done. That doesn't mean you shouldn't start. You can easily find a tax or law professional who can help you. In fact, it cost $125 for me to start an LLC and I started it about five years after I started my business, which is not the way I would recommend. But if you find someone who understands working with creative entrepreneurs, it will be so easy. And I live in small town USA and I promise, if I can find it, you can find it. I don't want you to spend all your time worrying about the way things look, all the intricate little itty bitty details like the COVID of your products, or if you have a website that's holding you back. There are ways to humanize your brand without it being front and center. Covers that look beautiful. In the beginning, remember this quote? Action brings clarity and clarity produces results. Now you may be struggling on the road to your first $100,000 because you don't understand the research. I think this is prob. Probably the hardest thing for people to conceptualize because they think to themselves, well, I know how to make it cute. I'm really good at teaching. I'm going to make a lot of sales. But the reality is, is that they put it out into the world, and because they haven't been in the business long enough, they don't hear very many sales. If you're going to create anything worth its weight, you got to learn how to research. You got to know what's needed in the marketplace. You got to know where the fires are started so that you can pour gasoline on them. And you want to be able to make teachers lives even easier. So nerding out inside of research is key. You may also be struggling with time. I think we all struggle with time. Someone messaged me on Facebook earlier today and said, man, I wish I'd had time to work out. And some people hate this quote. And it is, it is super cringe. But it reminds me, I always think about it. It's like you have as many hours in your day as Beyonce. And that's so true, though. Like, we all have the same amount of hours in the day. Some of us have a lot of kids, some of us have a lot of activities, some of us have both. There are always enough hours for you to make time to do something you want to do. That's. That's just the way it is. Doesn't matter how many kids you have, how much money in your resources are, there are always enough hours in the day for you to prioritize what's important to you. I know it's a hiccup, but you can do this. We have the same amount of time as everyone else. Believe me, using just 20 minutes to an hour a day could have you going from a couple hundred dollars a year to $3,000 a month. Work smarter, not harder. Streamline the process so that clarity is your main focus, both for you and your customers. But the good news is, is that once you get to $100,000 or once you have established yourself, you've got those good routines, you're being consistent, you're seeing sales. There is a much easier way to create what we call M. R.R. which stands for monthly recurring revenue. And this is where the magic happens. This is where I stopped working every single day after I put my kids to sleep and read them a book and work till 2 in the morning. It's when I got my Friday nights back. It's when I stopped going to Valdosta on Saturdays for eight hours and I started to truly live. I only wish that I had known about this so I didn't waste so many years of my life trying to figure it out the hard way. The easiest way to create monthly recurring revenue is by figuring out a system and a process on how not to just create one product, but how to create product lines. These are offers related to content that eventually build on themselves. You could also create seasonal resources. This doesn't have to be holiday themed, it could go so far beyond that. Like back to school or math praxis or AP exams. It could be holiday focused, right things around Christmas and Thanksgiving. It could be summertime focused, it could be year long curriculum. But seasonal resources are super effective when it comes to thinking about ways you could create monthly recurring revenue instead of just a one off purchase. You also could create an offer that solves a singular problem by instead of going wide and figuring out all of these products you need to create, you could go really, really deep. This would allow someone to not have to recreate the wheel, but teach a basic concept like classroom management or back to school activities and routines that you need to do. That's one topic that you could choose to go really deep on to help teachers for an extended period of time. The good news is, is that you're here, you're listening, we're helping you make a strategy on your road to $100,000. And the bad news is is that throwing random $3 resources up online probably isn't and shouldn't be the end all of your system friends. This episode is step one for helping you create a real strategy and a plan so that you can reach the next milestone in your business journey, which not only involves a monetary gain, but most importantly involves freedom, flexibility and fun. Again, because we weren't built to just work all the time. You've got a life to live and it all starts today. Thanks so much for listening to this week's show. As I said, this is step one. We've got a lot more steps coming your way in the coming weeks. I hope you'll check us out. This podcast airs every Wednesday and we hope that you always remember your best is yet to come and I'll see you next week.