In this episode, Jeff Gargas, COO and Cofounder of the Teach Better Team, talks about how he works with educators to increase student engagement and improve student success. Jeff previously owned an online marketing firm where he worked with entrepreneurs and small businesses, and we talk all about building your own business as an educational consultant.
Listen to the episode in the podcast player below, or find it on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
Tips to becoming an educational consultant
Daphne:
Hey, Jeff, thanks so much for being here today.
Jeff:
Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Daphne:
We connected in these business groups where business owners were just asking each other questions and learning from one another. Man, I’d love to really get into how you actually help other people in their businesses, but first, getting started, share with the audience your experience in education and who you are.
Jeff:
Yeah. Jeff Gargas, I operate as a COO and I was a co-founder of a team called Teach Better, and a fun twist on that is that I’m actually a four-time college dropout, and we work with teachers and got there in a unique way. Actually, have started a lot of different businesses and actually, oddly enough, went to a lot of different colleges, that’s a whole nother story, but started a bunch of different businesses, and one of them was actually in the music industry, owned my own record label and management company. And turns out that a guy that I managed in a band, who was a drummer in a rock band, later on, became a teacher and developed something that we now call the Grid Method and then came to me about taking that and sharing it with others, and that was about almost nine years ago now.
And so, for the last nine years, I’ve worked as a COO of our business. We work with school districts and teachers helping them primarily around their instructional practices and their pedagogical needs, using a couple frameworks that we have that are proprietary, but also all your standard hot topic, hot button, hot whatever you want to call it, like standards-based grading and classroom management strategies and trauma-informed practice and things of that nature. We work with school districts to put together a plan to help support their teachers and the really, really important and difficult work that they do every day with their students.
Daphne:
A lot of people get confused because this is such a vague term, but basically, it’s educational consulting, is that correct?
Jeff:
That’s what it is, yes. We refer to it as consultants, strategy, strat planning, but, yeah, we’re consulting them in a way and supporting them, yeah, so that’s the easiest term to use.
Daphne:
Yeah. And it’s one of those vague terms that can apply to a lot of different types of activity, but with this, you’re working directly with the school districts. Do you actually work with a lot of teachers who do the presentations, or even former teachers, who do the presentations for the school districts?
Jeff:
In our primary work, we are the ones doing the presentation, doing the coaching, doing the work and everything with the teachers. Now I have the pleasure … I get to work with a lot of educators that do similar work to us because I’m the one who gets to lead a couple of masterminds that we run for educators that are side hustling and doing stuff, and actually quite a few now that are full-time in the world of consultant and speaking. In that realm, I do get to do that. We have a community for edu-creators that are also possibly doing that type of stuff, but our primary work, we’re typically the ones going in, doing the presentations, doing the workshops, doing the follow-up and stuff like that. We work hand in hand with the teachers and go from there, but personally, I get to do a lot of work with educators who are doing the same or similar types of work.
Daphne:
Yeah. The reason I asked, and that you did a great job of making it an easy segue for me, was when I was working for a Fortune 500 company after I left the classroom, my role was a learning consultant, or an educational consultant, and I was going into the schools and the districts and it was something that was paid for by the company. They weren’t actually paying me, the school districts weren’t paying me directly, but many of the teachers would find out that I was a former teacher, it was part of my presentation, or I would be sitting with them and helping them, just taking things off of their plate and doing work in the classroom to help simplify things Using the technology program.
Many of them would start asking, “How the heck did you get this job?” or, “How do I do something similar? I’ve always been passionate about leading the professional developments, or I’ve done them from time to time. I actually found out I really love teaching adults.” And I was wondering if that has been your experience, as well, is people start to work with you and start to ask questions about how they can do what you are doing?
Jeff:
Yes, absolutely. And, actually, I’m the only one on the team that wasn’t a teacher, just because I happen to be one of the guys that started it and I was the, quote-unquote, the business guy. Everyone else has been a teacher, and actually pretty much, I think, everyone on our team came from … we weren’t necessarily working a the district, but they might’ve found us via an online course or a live stream we were doing or Twitter chats when we used to do them, or whatever. They got into our community and said, “Hey, I think what you’re doing is cool. I think I want to be a part of that,” or, “I think I want to do that,” and that’s how we’ve got them. If I think about our lead trainers right now, with Chad, who’s my co-founder, being our lead trainer, then one of our newest one, Katie, she utilized the Grid Method, one of our frameworks, in our classroom and eventually was like, “I think I might want to share this with more people.”
So yes, but everywhere we go we get that. And as you know, over the last several years, it’s even more so than before, but it’s always been the case where they’re like, “Hey, I want to do what you do. I want to travel around and speak to teachers. I want to help teachers. I have ideas and stuff.” Yes, everywhere, and I think that’s just teachers have a natural knack for and passion and drive to try to impact more and more, and they see that opportunity. And also, I think, sometimes it looks fun even, when maybe they don’t think about all the other backend side of it and the travel and the stress and being away from your family, but, yes, that has absolutely been our experience so far.
Daphne:
I can speak for all teachers, I usually don’t like to generalize, but right now, I can, not all professional developments are made equal. Some of them are harder to sit through, but the ones that are actually fun or the ones that teach you something that you can immediately have this aha moment of, “Oh, shoot, I see how that would work in my classroom.” And I remember the ones, for me, Kagan strategies was a really big one. When I learned those, I was like, “Dang, I wish I learned that my first year as teaching. It would’ve really helped me with things.” And there were a couple different professional developments that really had that impact on me where I thought, “Oh, I could see myself doing something like that.”
When you have people who are approaching that conversation though, like you said, there’s a lot of backend work. There’s learning how to actually negotiate and talk to different districts. There’s things that I never actually even did in my role as a learning consultant with a Fortune 500 company. It was those were conversations that happened-
Jeff:
Before you came in. Yeah,
Daphne:
Yeah, and then I was sent in to do the professional development. But, with your role, you actually get to do it, all of it, all the different steps of the process, and I think that’s where you’re finding a lot of success with people who are going to you to learn how they can either make a couple side dollars or start to do it full-time with things that they’re equally passionate about that they know that teachers would find really super valuable and is a gap in whatever people are learning in professional development.
Jeff talks about how to get started as an educational consultant
What are some of the biggest questions that you see people coming to you and asking when they’re first getting started?
Jeff:
I think probably most common … a few of them. One is around pricing always, like, “How do I price it? How do I drum up and get connected to the right person to make the decision in the district to get them to hire me?” That goes hand in hand with, “How do I start an email list and grow and get people to actually pay attention to me?” and stuff like that. I think that all comes together with, “I have an idea. I have a passion. I think I have the talent, but I’ve never done the, quote-unquote, business stuff. I don’t know how to do that stuff.”
And so I think the biggest ones are, “How do I build a list?”, which leads into, “How do I get people to want to hire me?”, and then, “If someone, God forbid, wants to hire me, what do I charge them?” I think those are the three biggest questions. One of the roles that I like to get in is making sure they’re asking all the other questions too, but I think those are probably the three biggest things that they typically ask.
Daphne:
Okay. I hope you don’t mind, I’m just going to on the spot because-
Jeff:
All good.
Daphne:
. . . I feel like we’re chummy. I’m going to make this role play for a second because I know what my questions are. I have this really genius idea for professional development for schools that I think would be really impactful and really help teachers, and I’m passionate about sharing it with other people, but also I want to be compensated for my time, and I know that school districts are willing and able to financially compensate for this type of training. Do I make the training in its entirety before I start approaching the school districts, or should I try and find product-market fit and figure out if people are going to buy it with just this overview? What would be your advice there?
Jeff:
Obviously, the other factors potentially considered, I would, most of the time, would say, “Well, no, you need to figure out who are you actually trying to sell this to? Who’s your, whether you want to call it your avatar, your ideal customer, all the other names that we have for people, but who are you trying to sell this to and what is the pain points that your genius idea is actually going to solve?” That’s important because then you can figure out, okay, well, how do you go figure out if those people are actually interested in this or if you were just thinking it? And, for me, that is building some sort of online presence, community, where you can feel that out and start to learn about that.
Now, if you’re trying to rush a little bit more, maybe you don’t have the time to take the process of building that, then it might be a little more aggressive of like, “Okay, we’ll find those people, and you need to be reaching out and talking to people purely from a research standpoint to figure out, one, does this actually make sense, two, what kind of pricing should I be do. . .” because what you don’t want to do is put all this time and energy and potentially money into a product and then have no one to sell it to.
Because what a lot of times happens is, if you spend the time doing the research and, or building the audience and start, you actually figure out that maybe what you initially thought isn’t actually what they need, but it’s pieces of that or a different version of that. And maybe it is a much lighter version, where you were about to spend hours and hours and hours, but actually, your target audience isn’t even there yet, because your genius idea is actually a little too progressive and you got to get them to the first step first before you get them to the next step, if that makes sense.
Daphne:
Yeah. There are some schools that I would go in and they would want me to teach how to teach coding, and there are some schools where they would say, “You need to show them how to check their emails.” Those are completely different lessons, and if I went in with one or the other to the wrong audience, they would say, “Unfortunately-“
Jeff:
You almost get laughed out. Yeah, it makes no sense. And we had that. Our thing that started everything was this framework that we use called the Grid Method, which is a framework for mastery learning, and all the data in the world supports that mastery learning is actually better than the traditional way of teaching. There’s no argument. When you look at the data, the research, it backs it up. However, it’s a big shift. It’s a big mental shift for teachers. It’s a big logistical shift. It’s not an easy shift. And what we found early on is, wow, some people were super excited and they jumped over and they wanted everything right off the bat. A lot of people just weren’t ready for it. Either they weren’t ready for it because they just learned what it is, and they’re just learning that, “Oh, this does make sense. How the heck do I start?” or not ready for it because it’s just too big of a lift.
And so we actually created a lot of what we do really well right now based on going, okay, our initial idea is actually not the actual product. It’s actually these 38 products that actually lead up to that thing or all together create that thing, but usually it’s a stepping stone. And so the risk you have if you just try to put it all together and build it all at once or whatever is that you might miss the opportunity for much better suited products and better product-market fit, as you were talking about, with smaller products that are a lot easier to create and take a lot less time.
Daphne:
I had probably a catalog of 40 different topics of some sort so that they could pick from whatever it was that was the most important for them as a school or as a district to implement, and then that’s what we really moved off of. And then, after that, I had templates that I was able to build out uniquely for once they said they were ready to move forward with one.
Jeff discusses how to approach consulting an educational environment that is already overwhelmed with change
And it also sounds like you are very aware of, and I think many educational consultants are also aware of, how the work that they are doing with schools and districts impact teachers’ day-to-day operations, because especially in the last four years, there have been changes after changes after changes, and schools saying, “You now have to do everything digital,” and then schools saying, “We don’t like computers anymore. Make it all paper. You have two weeks,” just so many really large shifts that lead to the burnout that lead to that overwhelm.
When you’re approaching these conversations with the schools that you’re working with, how do you start to see which ones might be too much of a huge change? Do you even approach that in the conversations of, hey, there might be more initial pushback about this if you move forward because these are the changes that the teachers may have to make and it might impact their happiness too?
Jeff:
Yeah, we do, and we’ll actually sometimes, and it sounds like a terrible business model, but we’ll pull back from what someone might want, and it’s a person that has the ability to make the purchase might want the full picture to really see something, and we’ll pull back for that reason, either, “You’re going to run into some pushback because we’re not there yet, and that’s going to ruin it. It’s just going to become another thing that you tried and didn’t work, or because we noticed that, look, you mentioned these gaps. We’ve got to give them this or it doesn’t tie in properly to what they’re already doing and stuff.”
It’s really important for us to, one, not be a one and done, it to be a long-term plan. It’s less about the framework we use or the product or whatever we’re trying to sell or work with them and more about what are they actually trying to accomplish, and is that actually what the teachers are trying to accomplish too, which I think a very important part that isn’t always looked at or listened to, which is bringing teachers in the conversation, like, “What are we actually trying to achieve?” and then, “Okay, great, now where do we fit into that potential solution? How do we fit into there and how does someone else fit in?”
And, honestly, more often than not, it’s not the full thing. It’s how do we pull back, and we got to put together the foundational blocks, one, to help them, because they do have so much on their plate, we don’t need to put more on, we need to tie it so that it actually makes everything better and hopefully easier in the end, but also so that we actually have success in implementation. And I think, if you have that long-term vision, you have less of the year-to-year or semester-to- semester, heck, week-to-week changes where, “Hey, this was important last week. It’s not this week.” For us, well, if we’re focus on the long-term goals, then it’s always important and we’re always able to implement it, if that makes sense.
Daphne:
Yeah, absolutely. I feel like it’s such an important conversation, and I know it’s so easy to look at admin or school districts in general and just point fingers and say they are not paying attention to how these decisions are impacting teachers, but I know that is not universally true. I have had these conversations with the tech TOSAs, with the school districts, that have said, “Hey, this is our biggest concern. We want to help get X, Y, Z taught to our teachers, but we also don’t want to overwhelm them. We also want to make sure it ties in with what they’re teaching in the classroom.” Not every school district is going to do that. Not every educational consultant actually comes with that in their sales strategy.
Do you think coming at it from the lens of, “I’m in the classroom, I understand what teachers are doing, and this is how this is going to be something that I believe is going to be well received by teachers,” do you think that that is a selling point of, when you talk to school districts and admin about them bringing you in, do you think that they do become more receptive to, “Hey, I’d like to help you, even from a consulting basis, make these changes in a way that’s going to be more sustainable because I have been in that position myself?”
Jeff:
Yeah, absolutely. And, honestly, as we’ve grown, and when Chad left the classroom, as the business grew and as he’s been further and more and more years away from when he was in the classroom, that’s been one of our biggest fears is … that was a big point because Chad was literally going, “Hey, this helped me in my classroom. Let me see if I can help you have it help you in yours.” And that’s actually why most of our team are our full-time teachers that work part-time with us because we want that connection, because we want to make sure that we’re not pushing stuff that we just think, but things that we actually know are being used in classrooms.
It’s why most of what we do, we’re in classrooms all the time with teachers, which is different than being the teacher, but being in there, having conversations with the teachers and getting their honest and true feedback when they’re in the mix, so that we can continue to say, “Well, this is how it’s working.” While Chad might not be able to say, “This is how it works in my classroom,” right now because he’s not in a classroom right now, we have teachers on the team that can say that, we have trainers that can say that, and we’re constantly in classrooms so that we can continue to make sure that what we’re doing is actually working, and it’s not just a good idea, but it’s actually currently in place and working and it’s feasible for the teachers, it’s not killing them, and it’s actually producing results.
Jeff shares how to make pricing decisions as an education consultant
Daphne:
And moving on to probably one of the more uncomfortable conversations, even though it shouldn’t be, but I do feel like this is where people get really squirmish when it comes to pricing. Because I’m going to go off of numbers that I remember, and this is 2017 California numbers, which could be different than other types of numbers, but I would say a full day’s professional development, an eight-hour Saturday session, from what I remember with other people, once again, I was not the one who was charging, you could get paid, I think, about $3,500 per trainer, or just for the day session, but I could be making up that number in my head. Is that even close to-
Jeff:
You could definitely do that, but you could do a lot more than that.
Daphne:
How do you know?
Jeff:
One thing it depends on is whether the district has any money, but whether or not you, for lack of a better term, using business stuff, whether you command that money or not, but whether you bring in actual value to them, and for lack of a better word, whether you’re selling them. I don’t mean that in the tricking them into … but you’re able to help them see that you are worth that. You can absolutely make that, but you can make more than that too. You can go more than double that. But, again, I think the key, you said it somewhere, and I can’t remember where you said something about strategies or tools that you can put in place right away, and I think that’s a big piece is it’s got to be something that’s actually going to make an impact for the teachers in the classrooms, and then the admin, the people that are making the purchase decision have to see that.
They have to understand that, “This is actually going to impact us. This is actually going to put us on the right path.” And I think, with us, we look at it’s a much bigger picture, so it’s not like, “Hey, we’re going to come for two days and that’s the thing that’s going to do it.” It’s, “Hey, we’re coming for a day or two or whatever, but we’re working with you over the next couple years to make sure that this actually sustains and isn’t just another thing that you tried, that it’s actually something that has sustainable and long-term positive impacts on your teachers, and therefore, your students, and therefore,” obviously, from their lens, “into your bottom line, all that type of stuff, because your students are doing better.” And so, for us, it’s about make sure that they see that vision and that’s where we’re trying to go. Yes, you can go higher than that as well.
Daphne:
And, when you say that the schools, whether or not they have the funding, this is something that I feel like obviously makes teachers really upset, “How can we not get paid more if the schools have funding?” That’s usually a completely separate funding amount. And, once again, we do have an episode with Sharon McMahon, you should go back and listen to it, about how to write your legislators, about how to fight for changes, because that is the overall bigger picture here.
Jeff:
That’s such a good episode.
Daphne:
It’s a really good episode. But, when it comes to looking at these schools that might have unused PD funds that are looking for how to spend it, is there a certain time of the year that they’re usually looking to find new professional development?
Jeff:
That’s such a common question. We were talking about the common questions, that’s one of the next ones. And I usually answer it the same way, which is like, “Well, yes, but no.” It depends on who you’re talking to, because if you think about it, if you break it down into when schools spend money and why, it’s really easy to get caught up and be like, “Oh, well, it’s like this machine.” I’m like, “But,, really it comes down to usually a person or a couple people.” Most school districts are July 1 to June 30th fiscal year. That’s when they’re spending the money.
You have some people, whoever it is that has the decision, whether that’s the superintendent assistant, the principals, whatever, because every district is different on who has the ability to spend whatever. Some people like to just get it all allocated and done right away, because then they’re like, “I’m done. Everything’s spent for the year and I’m done. I don’t have to worry about it.” Other people hold onto it and they’re like, “Well, I don’t want to spend any money until the end of the year, because what if I need it?” And then they get to the end of the year and they’re like, “Crap, I didn’t spend any of my money. I have to spend it all now.”
Those two different people, it’s like, well, so it’s that August, that July, August, maybe even September, and the other one’s like, well, it’s that April, May, June-ish that I need to really be talking those conversations. But then, in the middle, you’ve got people who are like, Well, I don’t really want to spend much money because I don’t know exactly what my staff needs yet, so I’m going to wait until maybe closer to winter break when we’ve had a little bit of feel for what’s this set of students look like and what’s that new mandate we have to follow? What do I need to actually put money into?” and they’re spending money in December and January.
All that is to say that, no, there’s no real rhyme or reason. Now, if you talk to 10 different educational consultants, you’ll probably get at least 50% of them that are like, “Oh, it’s always in June when they’re planning for the next year,” but it’s not always in June. That’s been our experience. I will say that, most of the time, July is pretty quiet. You’re not going to close a ton because most admins are on vacation, they’re disconnecting, but as far as when they spend it, again, it really depends on who the person is and how they like to approach it. And that can change, literally, year to year and definitely district to district because sometimes it’s one person that has that full say, and sometimes it’s a group, and it all depends on how they run it. I know that’s not a clear answer, but that’s the answer.
Daphne:
Yeah, sometimes there’s not a one-size-fits-all answer for everything.
Jeff:
Absolutely. With all that, you should be always marketing, always selling, always having the conversations, because you never know. We close a lot of random deals in the middle of the year, end of February, that make no sense, but they maybe were planning for some late year PD or thinking of next year, or whatever.
Daphne:
For someone who’s trying to start this type of work, though, it can’t just be a cold email that says, “Hey, this is who I am. Please send me $7,000. Here’s my idea.” Do they need to create an online presence, create a website, do all of that upfront work before they even approach that conversation for credibility?
Jeff:
I don’t think they need to, but I would recommend it. But it could be, when you first started saying it, I’m like, “Well, it could just be the cold email, but not with they just send me $7,000,” but it could be you can absolutely go cold with outreach of just trying to get in a conversation with them. I definitely wouldn’t tell them how much it is, but you could approach them, because school administrators, all their emails are public information, so you can get ahold of them. You can email them. Is that going to work? Probably not. It’s going to be a numbers game. You’re going to email thousands and thousands and thousands to maybe get one that has a conversation and stuff. If I was going to go that route, I would go probably … you could also do that on LinkedIn and stuff. We’ve had success with that kind of outreach, but I wouldn’t recommend that.
What I would recommend is building the online presence, building your authority as a thought leader and an expert in the industry, building content and resources that allow potential leads and potential customers to not only get to know you, but also get to know the ideas that you believe in, the passions you have, so that, if they’re not familiar, they essentially get educated around them, and then, if they’re the right fit, get educated around them and then decide that they want them. Obviously, that’s a much longer process. That’s not a start today and you’re making a bunch of money in a month. That’s going to take some process getting there, but that is definitely how I would recommend doing it.
Daphne:
Yeah, and that’s something that I’ve said on other past episodes. If you haven’t listened to any side hustle episode before, side hustles are not replacing your income by next month. This is very much a long game. I highly recommend, if you are the most burnt out, you are the type of person that looks for a full-time employment, and then, once you maybe start to feel better, get your mental health back, then you can begin to really pursue a side hustle as a potential full-time path. There’s this really great quote, and I feel like I’m going to botch it, Derek Sivers, I think.
Jeff:
Derek Sivers, yeah.
Daphne:
Okay. Good. It’s something like, “Change careers like Tarzan. Don’t leave one vine until you have the other one in your hand.” I feel like there’s so many snake oil salesmen, business coaches for business coaches, and all those people who are saying, “Hey, I can guarantee you income by the next two months.” I always feel like I have to screen this from them.
Jeff:
Just create a lead magnet and start a MailChimp account and you’ll be rich. Yeah.
Daphne:
Yeah. And I just have to put that disclaimer, and I’m happy that you put that out there too. I know that you’ve worked with a lot of teachers who are building side hustles or are even full-time in your community EDUcreator Club+. I know the bulk of what we have talked about is consulting because that’s something that you’ve got a lot of experience with, but you also have experience with other type of side hustles and coaching teachers and other types of income streams. Do you mind sharing just a high level overview of some of the other types of income streams you’ve seen teachers do in that community?
Jeff:
Yeah. Obviously, there’s consultant or different variations of it. There are things that you’ve seen in a lot of other industries, creating online courses, online academies, which, when you’re creating basically, you’re creating videos and such and putting them in order in the course and they’re going through it. If you go the route of a Teachers Pay Teachers or something of that nature where you’re creating materials, curriculum materials, study guides, journals, you name it, that type of stuff that you can then sell, whether that’s on something like Teachers Pay Teachers or via Etsy or Shopify or on your site. We have a few that it’s just the speaking side of things, which can be connected and can be a piece of all the other ones and can help drive that, but it’s just straight up through speaking, getting paid to go speak and inspire.
We have someone in one of our higher level masterminds that is just killing it on TikTok, and she now has a bunch of actually really low ticket products on TikTok that are selling crazy. We were actually talking today, and she’s like, It’s crazy, because they’re five bucks and seven bucks, and now it’s a bunch of money,” and it’s a really soft sell because she’s just sharing a bunch of ideas out and now she’s launching more things. There could be memberships, communities. Obviously, you know the power of community and stuff, and we have that too. That’s something that I’m a big fan, a big component of. I’m trying to think of what else. Tutoring, you can go into tutoring. We’ve seen some tutoring side hustling, some coaching, some support for specific maybe. . . we have a guy who supports primarily assistant principals, so it’s very niche down into them.
Another that is very specific to middle school math teachers, and it’s sort of consultant, but it’s more on the individual level, and it’s not just about necessarily the work in the classroom, but also the life that comes with being a teacher. A lot of different varieties of stuff that you could start, and also, there’s also a bunch you could do that have nothing to do with education too, by the way. That’s perfectly okay too. You know what I mean? You could have a quilting thing. I got a guy who does woodworking, does beautiful signs and woodworking. He found a passion in it, now he’s selling. There’s a lot of ways you can go at it.
Jeff explains how his company helps new education consultants get started
Daphne:
In your program EDUcreator Club+, what types of things are you helping these entrepreneurs, these educator entrepreneurs, actually go through, the business side of things, setting up a business entity, all the scary stuff, what a sales email should look like? What are some of the types of things you do to support them?
Jeff:
Yes, a little bit of all that. Obviously, I’m not going to be doing any kind of legal advice, but I might share experiences and guide them in the right direction. There’s three levels of the community. The EDUcreator Club community, at its base level, is a community. It’s built on Circle platform. It’s a space for you to come and ask questions, find support, find advice, and hopefully, get some resources and the help you need, and connected with some people that are going through similar things or have gone through. Then we have two levels of masterminds too. The masterminds, you get meetings in person. You get a little more individualized coaching and stuff. Those, we might actually get into, “Let’s work through creating your LLC and building up. . .” or whatever.
But, in general, a lot of the common things are, like you said, how do I start with email marketing? What is content marketing? How do I create a website and get people somewhere to go? How do I set up a Shopify site? Or how do I even set it up so that I can sell this awesome piece of curriculum support or whatever that I have? I have it. I have the idea, I’ve got this Google Doc, what do I do now?”, or, “I have this awesome idea for this course, but I don’t even know where I go.” It’s conversations around that.
Lots of times, those conversations can lead into the actual, “Let’s actually connect and work through it together and actually go through the setup.” We might do a lot of website reviews or product reviews as just doing Loom videos and critiquing, that type of stuff. And then a lot of support of just like, “Hey, I’m struggling. I need to be reminded of why I’m doing this,” or, “I’m stuck here,” and come together. And I think, as people have been in the community longer, the questions understandably get deeper, and then we get into more things. There’s some that we’re talking about cashflow and cash planning and projections and protecting yourself legally and all that type of stuff. It’s a variety of things again. “How do I start a podcast?” There’s a lot of different ways you can go.
Daphne:
Yeah, I think, especially as an educator, we’re so used to doing things and figuring it out entirely on our own. That was something that I very much struggled with was working in a silo. And so it’s why I created the Teacher Career Coach course community is I knew people needed to have that sense of community, but as a business owner, I’ve seen so much value in finding similar communities and similar people struggling and brainstorming together. You just make so much more growth when you do actually invest in finding the people who are working on the same types of goals and learning from them and researching and doing that back and forth.
For people who are looking to join the EDUcreator Club+ community, how can they reach out to you or find you?
Jeff:
If you go over to teachbetter.com/educreators, or there’s a lot of ways you can get there, but EDUcreator or EDUcreators, it’ll take you to the landing page with all the info of the community, and you can join right there. If you’re interested in the masterminds or whatever, that, you’ll connect with me and it’ll link you to me to do that. If anybody wants to reach out to me, I’m just Jeff, J-E-F-F, @teachbetter.com. I take all emails, and happy to have a conversation around it, but that’s the easiest way to get in, and it’s got the info there and you’ll jump right in. Right now, we still currently have our Founders pricing going, so it’s lower than it’ll ever be. That’s available right now. But, yeah, and it’s pretty simple. I think it’s simple, at least. I guess tell me if it’s not and we’ll fix it.
Daphne:
Yeah, email Jeff with your feedback on whether or not-
Jeff:
Yes, if it was difficult to figure out, tell me so we can make it easier.
Daphne:
Well, Jeff, this has been a pleasure. It’s always nice to connect with you, and I just really appreciate you having this conversation and giving a lot of insight into this.
Jeff:
Well, thank you. I love having you. I love what you do. I think it’s really important for teachers to know that they’re not alone in this type of journey and that it’s okay, and there’s nothing wrong with it, and lean into this community. Appreciate it.
Daphne:
I want to give a huge thank you to Jeff for coming on and sharing all that great information. And, if you are still just toying with the idea of starting a side hustle, I recommend you go back to episode 10 where I talk about five reasons why to start.
Thank you so much for being a listener of The Teacher Career Coach Podcast, and we’ll see you on the very next episode.
Mentioned in the episode:
- Find Jeff at www.teachbetter.com and on IG at @_JeffGargas
- Our career path quiz at www.teachercareercoach.com/quiz
- Explore the course that has helped thousands of teachers successfully transition out of the classroom and into new careers: The Teacher Career Coach Course (If you are a Teacher Career Coach Course member, you can also sign up for our one-on-one Career Clarity calls.)
