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Lately, I've been reflecting on my journey from kindergarten teacher to entrepreneur, and I thought I would spend this time talking to you about some lessons that I learned.
And I thought it was, first of all, just an interesting practice to look back from the time I was a classroom teacher to now and to try and kind of make sense of my path of how I got here.And so I encourage you to do this practice, too.
Really look back at your career or really anything in your life and audit it, create a career audit and think about the different chapters of your career.
When I thought about this, I came up with four different stages, actually five, if you count the stage I'm in now, which we're always evolving and growing, right?
And so I thought I'd walk you through these five stages or chapters that I've gone through in my journey from kindergarten teacher to entrepreneur. So the first was leaving the classroom.I left the classroom when my daughter was born in 2012.
I had really only been a teacher before then and I say quote unquote only because we know teachers do all the things and do many multiple jobs at once. And so I decided to leave the classroom.I had a thought about this before.
I knew I wanted to be able to stay home with my daughter, but I also knew I had to make at least my teaching salary.And I saw a posting from Teaching Channel.
They were looking for education consultants who could help guide the content of their videos.And I applied actually before my daughter was born in February.
And I heard back from them and it became this awesome collaboration where I got to contract with them.And it was almost enough to have me leave the classroom at the beginning.And then they actually had a phase where they had to cut their budget.
And so before I made the decision to leave the classroom, I had been doing some consulting with them, hoping it would turn into more.
And they decided they actually had to cut their budget because the CEO had read this book called The Lean Startup, which I pettily decided not to read for like years after that.
So I was like, I roll the lean startup, but I actually do like it now and have read it.But anyway, so she had read this book and decided they were growing too fast so they couldn't bring on more people.So I was pretty heartbroken.
I had had it in my head like this was my path to be able to work flexibly in education.And then to receive that news and think, oh, I just have to go back to the classroom again.And what am I going to do about child care?
And like, I don't want to leave my baby daughter, like all the things was overwhelming.But I realized in that moment that there's never just one way. I had really thought this was my way out and this was my way forward, I should say.
But in that moment, I realized there are other ways to get to where I want to go.And so I started looking for other contracts and thinking about ways I could make up my teaching salary while being able to stay home with my daughter.
And I realized there were lots of ways.And the funny thing was Teaching Channel actually came back to me and said, actually, we've decided to move forward and we can offer you a 20 to 30 hour a week position.
And so that actually, it did end up being them at that point that allowed me to leave the classroom and feel confident with that.
But that's all to say that sometimes we can just get so attached to certain outcomes because that's what we thought or that's what we expected we would do. And if they don't work out, that's ultimately, yes, absolutely disappointing.
But there are so many other options.So I really learned from this phase that when you have a goal in mind, when you're committed to meeting that goal, it almost doesn't matter how you get there.
Like it's through the process of trying different things and realizing that there are so many different options that you get to where you want to go.
In this leaving the classroom stage too, I realized that I was ultimately building a business without even knowing.I was doing this consulting for Teaching Channel, but I also was doing coaching.I was also doing curriculum writing.
I was really doing anything possible that I could do flexibly in education with a baby at home. And I had to get clients, right?I was looking for jobs.I was building a pipeline of people who are interested in my services.
I was doing all this without even knowing the words for what I was doing.Like I never would have said I was building a pipeline of clients.I was just trying to have enough income coming in while being able to stay home with my daughter.
But by doing that and by going step by step, I realized, oh, I'm building a consulting and curriculum development business.And so I started getting interested in that.And it really evolved through the process of it.
And so I learned a lot about how to get clients, about how to negotiate contracts, about how to tell when invoices were due, like all the things.And I learned by doing it.
In that stage, too, I started to transition to the second stage, which was building Educator Forever.And this happened really naturally.I was having a lot of teacher friends come to me.
I'd been out of the classroom for several years, and they were coming to me and asking about what I was doing. And so I found myself having coffee almost every weekend with a different teacher.
And I was telling them the same things about how I got started, about what options were out there, about what was hard and what was easy, all the things, right?I was telling my story.And I realized that that was valuable.
that that experience that I had had, leaving the classroom, finding work flexibly in education, being able to position myself as an education expert, growing my consultancy, all these things were things that other people wanted to learn about.
And so through those coffee conversations, I realized, huh, I'm saying the same thing over and over and people find it helpful.And so I took those conversations and I turned it into Educator Forever's very first course called Beyond the Classroom.
It was a digital course and I realized that if I had all these in-person teachers that I was talking to, there must be people out there in different parts of the country and different parts of the world who would find the same information valuable.
So I found myself in this stage building an online business.And I didn't know about building an online business until I was doing it.
So I learned about building an email list and starting an online course and having students in this new way, you know, adult students, no longer kindergartners.And in this stage, I really was committed to listening.
I started Educator Forever from listening to teachers, listening to the questions that they asked me, thinking about how my experiences could be helpful to other people who are going through the same things.
And I really learned the importance of listening.So often we can start businesses because we want to, right?Not that I didn't want to start this business, but it came out of a real need, right?A need that other people had.
And so if I had had an idea of like this is a new business that I'm having and this is exactly how I'm going to build it and be really stuck in that, it wouldn't have been that successful.
I had to start with listening to the needs of the people I hope to help and build a business from there. So that led me to stage three, which was growing Educator Forever to include the Educator Forever Curriculum Agency.
So we have two sides to our business.One is teacher facing, Educator Forever.And the other, we work with ed tech companies and school districts and nonprofits to create curriculum, our agency side. This also started kind of organically.
I was doing curriculum development while also running Educated Forever and running the Beyond the Classroom course, and I got a message on LinkedIn from somebody I'd never met before who wanted to start an edtech site.
And he wanted a group of people to create curriculum for his EdTech site.Or actually, he wanted just the curriculum created.
I think he originally reached out to me as one person wanting an entire year long curriculum for all the grade levels pre-K to five.And I realized one person could not do that in a short amount of time.Right.But I did realize, huh,
I have all these teachers that I've been helping through Educator Forever.I bet I could have other teacher slash curriculum developers help me with these projects.
And so again, organically from this ask, from listening to what people needed, I built another side to our business.I realized, huh, I could train teachers in curriculum development
And then we could take on large-scale curriculum projects that I wouldn't have been able to do by myself as one individual.Through this process, I got to bring on curriculum writers and work with more people.
And I also realized that training educators in curriculum development, there were some key skills that teachers needed to learn.
I, through that process, decided to start our Curriculum Development Foundations program because I realized that teachers, of course, would be the best people to create curriculum, but that there are some key writing and foundational skills that they need to be successful.
And so I wanted to teach those skills.And now Curriculum Development Foundations is our most popular program.
Here at Educator Forever, we've trained over a thousand teachers in curriculum development, and it again happened kind of organically from what I was seeing working with teachers transitioning to curriculum design.
So after stage three, which was the beginning of Educator Forever Agency, I moved into stage four, and this was probably two years ago, where I really started building a team.
So up until this point, it was basically me and April, our amazing director of learning and development, who actually started as my virtual assistant, gosh, like five years ago, something like that, and has grown through various different roles in Educator Forever.
But we realized as our business grew, as we took on curriculum projects, as we had more curriculum students who we give personalized feedback to, we needed more help.So this meant me hiring my first official employees, which was terrifying.
And this was a stage of business that I really did not know how to go about it.You know, I mean, I knew how to actually hire the employees.I figured that out.
But, you know, just this new pressure of having employees making payroll twice a month, having a whole team to be responsible for was a huge growth phase for me and for our business as well, because now we were able to take on more curriculum students and give them personalized feedback.
We were able to take on larger curriculum projects and run them effectively.All of that came only after and through building a team.But I would say as a leader, that was a huge growth period for me personally. moving out of kind of the day-to-day.
Of course, I still teach our programs and have lots of contact with our students, but I don't do as much of the day-to-day running our programs, giving feedback to students, all these things, writing social media posts, writing emails, like all these things that it used to be just me doing.
Now I have a team to do it, which is really great. But moving myself out of the day-to-day and into the leader role was and is hard.And so definitely a big growth curve for me there.
And now I feel like I'm moving into stage five, which is scaling the business.
Because I have the help of my team in the day to day, I'm able to take a bird's eye view and really think strategically about how I want to grow our business to help more teachers, to help more students, to have a bigger impact.
And so I'm just embarking on stage five and thinking about all that lies ahead there. But I hope it was helpful to hear a little bit about these different stages that I've gone through along my journey.
And when I think back, I really think about some themes throughout.
I know that throughout I've always been listening and starting with that first phase, right, listening to what teachers needed and thinking about how I could fill the needs I heard them talk about.
That's continued throughout, you know, really listening to other people, which I think as educators we're really good at, can be so helpful as you think about creating impactful services and products.
Along the way, there have been many bumps in the road.And so starting a business, being an entrepreneur comes with a lot of risks and it comes with a lot of uncertainty.
And so I've had to learn how to manage that and to embrace that and to have confidence that I could see myself and my business through the ups and downs. And that's come with adjusting.I think as teachers, we're used to that too, right?
To some extent, we have to adjust things when they don't work.Same thing when building a business, you have to adjust.You have to say, oh, I was really excited about this program, but not that many people signed up for it.
So maybe it's not the program to run right now.And so being able to make those decisions and pivot, it has been super important.
And then last but not least, really having a commitment to learning has seen me through a lot of this, knowing that I for sure do not know everything about anything.Does anyone?But really thinking about that as teachers we can learn anything.
We're experts in learning.And so committing to learning new skills, to figuring out problems, to staying in things when they're hard, and to really persevere and learn through the process has been my biggest lesson.
So as you think about your professional journey so far, I want you to think about what have the different stages or chapters been in your journey?And what have you learned from those different stages?
Then think about what stage or chapter are you moving into next?And intentionally think about what do you want to gain or to learn from this next chapter? Ready to find rewarding, impactful work in the education world?
Take our free quiz to discover your next right career step.Will you be a curriculum developer, an education consultant, instructional coach?The list of possibilities goes on and on.
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