In episode 167 of the Teacher Career Coach podcast, Elizabeth Suto chats with Stephanie Cronulla, a former high school English teacher who transitioned into marketing.
Stephanie shares her journey from the classroom to becoming a content strategist and brand marketing manager. They discuss the motivations behind her career change, the challenges she faced, and how her teaching skills translated into her new role.
Stephanie offers practical advice for teachers considering a similar move, emphasizing the importance of showcasing transferable skills and maintaining a balanced life.
Listen to the episode in the podcast player below, or find it on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
Explore the course that has helped thousands of teachers successfully transition out of the classroom and into new careers: The Teacher Career Coach Course
Mentioned in the episode:
- Use code “TCC” to get 50% off of everything at Aspireship
- 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
Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth: Welcome back to the Teacher Career Coach podcast. Today, we are joined by Stephanie Cranola. She spent 13 years in education, teaching high school English, and now works for a marketing agency as a content strategist. And brand marketing manager during this episode, we learn about her career transition journey, how she used her skills from audio editing and running a theater company to help translate her skills and build her portfolio.
She believes that if teachers are capable of engaging students with learning all of these different concepts, they would make great marketers as well. Join us today for a great session and hope you enjoy.
welcome back to the teacher career coach podcast. I’m your host Elizabeth Suto and today we’re very excited to have Stephanie with us. She was a teacher and now is in marketing. Welcome, Stephanie.
Stephanie: Thank you so much for having me.
Elizabeth: We’re so excited you’re here and we can’t wait to hear all about your journey and transition.
And would you let us know a little bit about, um, your education background and what got you into teaching in the first place?
Stephanie: Yeah, so, I, uh, I was not The kid who played teacher, I didn’t have any like childhood dreams of becoming a teacher, but when I took my PSAT, the score that I got back, the state of Massachusetts said, we’ll let you go to college for free if you promise to be a teacher. And so I said, Okay, well it’s either this or Disney on ice.
And so I went to college and got into teaching.
Elizabeth: Wow, that’s awesome that they offered a scholarship for that, so.
Stephanie: it was really helpful. It was full tuition through a state school. And the school I went to was known for being a teaching college. Like it originated as a teaching college. So it felt like the best path for me.
Elizabeth: Were there parameters like for example, was it like if you teach in public school for this many years?
Stephanie: think. I, I’m not sure about public versus private. Private wasn’t really something that I was interested in, in going into so I didn’t look too much at the rules, but I think it was a minimum of three years. So,
Elizabeth: Oh, how cool.
Stephanie: kind of worried that if I, if I left because I went and got my master’s degree in the middle, after my second year of teaching and I was like, are they gonna, you know, come after me for, for my tuition, but I don’t think they really kept track.
Elizabeth: Oh, oh, good. And, and what did you end up teaching? For how long? What was your experience like in the classroom?
Stephanie: I taught high school English and college composition for a total of 13 years.
Elizabeth: Oh, wow. And what was the point or time that you knew you were ready for a career change?
Stephanie: So I loved teaching. Um, it is something that even though I came into it kind of untraditionally for, for a lot of teachers in their stories, I, really good at it, and I really loved it, and I think that it’s something I could have done forever, but there were just so many outside forces that, I mean, teaching through COVID and after made it really difficult to feel safe in a classroom environment.
There was a day that, the, the, the day that I knew I needed to start thinking about it, My husband and I went to the climbing gym before school. I took a really nasty fall, wasn’t feeling great over lunch. I called my doctor and she said, go to the ER right now. And I was like, Oh, okay. And so I hit up the sub coordinator and I said, Hey, I need to leave to go to the emergency room and she said, no. We don’t have coverage. And I was like, Oh, okay. Of course, because teachers are wonderful and the best, like a couple teachers around me managed to take my classes in or cover my classes. So I could go, but that was the beginning of like, Oh, like, I don’t think I can do this forever. And then in my last year of teaching, there were some issues with administration.
We had an incident with a weapon on campus and teachers found out the information from, uh, like a neighborhood website rather than from administration themselves. And when we called them out on it to ask them questions, we were absolutely berated for wanting to know the details. And at that point, that was when I was. All done. Didn’t sign my contract when it came in, like two weeks later. It was just the, the straw for me that if even the people who are supposed to be looking out for us in this building, don’t consider our safety a priority, I don’t need to give my life to them.
Elizabeth: Thank you for sharing that. That sounds very stressful and also incredibly relevant, uh, you know, with what’s going on. With a lot of places in schools right now. So I’m glad that
Stephanie: it’s more relatable than it should be, which is really awful.
Elizabeth: yes, that is, that is terrifying. Well, and I’m glad that you’re out and you’re safe and to transition, you, you know, you went into marketing content creation. I was looking at your portfolio earlier. So tell us a little bit now that we know kind of your why, how, how did you pick marketing and then we’ll go from there.
Stephanie: Sure. Yeah. Uh, I’ve never done just one thing, you know, growing up, I went to school and then I was at the skating rink for five, six hours after school and then in college I got into theater. So I’ve always done. school and something and that something over the past like decade or so became podcast content creation and working with like digital media.
And so that really helped in my transition. But marketing in general, I felt pulled to Because I feel I l like if I can get a room of 30 high school juniors to buy into John Steinbeck when like, Even I might get some enemies for this, but I don’t like John Steinbeck. If I can sell that to them, I, I can sell cyber security or industrial tools.
I don’t care what it is. Like I can sell it. And so marketing felt really like a comfortable space for me because I knew I had all of the soft skills to be able to make something relatable and relevant to whoever it needed to be. I know how to define my audience. I know exactly who’s sitting in front of me, who needs to listen. And I know how to make it presentable in a way that they will engage with it. And that’s at its core, all marketing is. So that’s why I really felt pulled to marketing. And then obviously with my podcast experience, I got in through that avenue.
Elizabeth: That’s such a good point about. Basically marketing to students all day long, something inherently teachers do, you know, and they have those soft skills. So speaking, speaking of the skills, how did you obtain some of those hard skills, like the podcast editing, um, and, and that? Was it something you tinkered with and just figured out or from an early age were you interested in that?
Stephanie: That’s something that from an early age I was interested in. I got Adobe Audition for like my 15th birthday, so I could cut all my skating music, um, on a, like a CD. I got like the actual software when they used to do that. So it’s something that I had always been interested in, but I had gotten away from it for a while.
And I think that. For folks listening who are like, Oh no, I haven’t been cutting things since birth. Number of times in a single day that I Google, how do you in Adobe, whatever I’m working in, I mean, the time. I’m always learning new tools, even though I’ve been doing this for so many years, there are still things, they’re always updating the software, they’re always coming out with new, new features or new things to do.
So just Google it and if you’re interested in getting into any type of content creation, whether it’s a video or audio editing. In any way, just start Googling, watch some YouTube videos, and play around with it, and you’ll be surprised at how quickly you learn to develop these skills. It’s not something that you have to spend years on. Obviously, when you do spend the years, the, the, uh, efficiency and quality and time it takes dramatically changed. But it’s something that everyone can get into if you’re interested,
Elizabeth: That’s great. And it sounds like you’re very resourceful and if people are resourceful, there are ways to obtain this information and learn it with practice. Yes.
Stephanie: sure.
Elizabeth: now you’re senior brand marketing manager. Tell us a little bit about that transition. Did you go straight from teaching into that or how did you, what was the job market like in the interview process when you were making that transition?
Stephanie: It was tough. It was really hard. I think everyone knows that because I didn’t feel like I was quote unquote qualified to do anything else. The only experience I had was teaching. I even discounted all of this content creation that I had been doing for years because I didn’t have a degree in marketing or I didn’t have a degree in something else.
I had an English and secondary education undergraduate degree and an early modern English literature degree. Master’s degree. Like, what am I going to do with that? That’s not teaching. so I, I mean, I applied to everything, anything with content in the name, anything with writing in the name, anything, instructional design, anything to get me out of the classroom, because I already not signed my contract.
I did not have a backup plan. And the landscape was very different. The day I decided to not sign my contract to two months later when the school year actually ended, and then I had full energy to start applying to things. It was tough emotionally. I did end up doing a UX UI certification course.
If a spireship is something I knew existed, I would have spent my entire summer doing those courses. It’s so nice as a teacher to have. learning tools and skill development tools. And, um, Refine Labs has a new marketing course through Aspireship. And it’s something that if you’re interested in marketing, absolutely recommend doing, because it gives you those tangible skills in a way that even like traditional university marketing courses don’t cater to like what’s happening right now. And so a lot of these Aspireship courses. is. Are super relevant to the very changing landscape. Like the landscape is changing every single day. And yeah, I would have, I mean, given anything to, if I had found teacher career coach, if I had found a spireship in this transition, it would have made things so much easier, but I was just flying by the seat of my pants.
I was just sending out I almost said auditions, uh, sending out applications everywhere, um, until I finally found something that was a perfect fit for me. And I was a perfect fit for them. I got zero interviews. Until this one and it was the job that I ended up having and getting and having till now.
Wow.
yeah, not getting discouraged is
Elizabeth: Mm hmm. Mm
Stephanie: but all it takes is one.
Elizabeth: hmm. And what was the interview process like for this? position.
Stephanie: It was pretty traditional from what I had experienced. Um, just that it was, you know, Instead of in person, any interviews I’ve done for schools felt very similar. Um, there were more rounds with this. I think I went through three formal interviews and then an interview that was just a job offer. but I met with different folks in different departments of the company. I, they asked me to give a couple pieces of a couple of things that I would change in the content within the company were I to start a couple of things that I said, I noticed like that they implemented immediately. Like I had said, Oh, I would do this, this, and this. And the next week when I was listening to their podcasts, I was like, Ooh.
Elizabeth: Wow.
Stephanie: So I felt pretty good through the whole process. It was just talking to folks about my experience in a super traditional interview format way. I didn’t have to do any like full projects or anything.
Elizabeth: Thank you for sharing that. And I was going to ask you and you already elaborated on it on the different certificates that you were looking at. And you mentioned RefineLabs and Aspireship. Could you break it down because it’s, you know, B2B marketing course for those who are new to marketing, what, what does B2B marketing even mean?
Stephanie: So B2B marketing is business to business. It’s not straight to a customer. It’s not looking at a sign or an ad on Instagram to me. To buy it. So you have to refine your thinking a little bit when you’re working in B2B because yes, of course you’re still selling to people. It’s still people who are running the businesses, but there are so many more barriers to decision making when you’re marketing to other businesses versus just straight to the customer.
Elizabeth: That makes sense. And then with your role in brand marketing, when I think of brand, you know, I think logos, colors, tell us a little bit about exactly what you do as senior brand marketing manager.
Stephanie: Yeah, it’s actually it’s not just it’s not really that at all. Um, it’s more about building brand trust and ourselves as leaders in the field that we’re in. And so a lot of it is based on content, we produce podcasts, we, know, focus on our LinkedIn content, we’re doing YouTube videos, we’re doing, we’re building our brand in a way that, you know, Provides education for folks that is engaging and entertaining so that when people need a marketing agency, they think, Oh, I listened to a podcast the other day, or, Oh, I saw this video.
Um, and I learned something from it. Maybe I’ll pass them along to leadership. So you’re building that trust of brand recognition, uh, in whatever space that you’re in and getting your, getting your voice and getting your leaders out there.
Elizabeth: That makes sense. And thank you for sharing that. Would you be able to kind of break down, um, when teachers and job seekers are looking for marketing jobs, They’ll see different things, you know, like demand gen, um, product marketing. Can you kind of break it down, um, some of the different types of marketing and what they are?
Stephanie: yeah. Um, There are, I think the hard part here is that Every company has a different expectation of what their employees will do in those different roles. So, have people who are more, uh, data focused. So, if you’re really interested in research and collecting data and then refining audiences to target your marketing to, That might be something that’s interesting to you.
If you’re more, if you really loved building slide decks for your students and making those materials engaging and accessible, you might be more interested in content marketing. It just depends on what companies are looking for. I, I know it’s hard. When you’re looking through those LinkedIn descriptions and they all feel the same, but they’re really like Organizations will give clear details in those job descriptions of what they’re really looking for.
So I would just say to like scroll down those skills and or scroll down I guess the expectation rather than skills because they’re always gonna ask for more than Anyone has, and you should apply to things even if you don’t feel like you fit all of those skills, because you probably are discounting a lot of the things that you did in the classroom and not recognizing that they are transferable in a way that. You could do, you might just not have on paper.
Elizabeth: hmm.
Stephanie: so yeah, really looking at like what, cause it, these roles mean something different in every company and it’s frustrating, but it kind of is, uh, the landscape
Elizabeth: That, that is such a good point. We were talking about that the other day, is it really varies company to company, person to person. It can be different. So important to look at the job description. And also to not sell yourself short as well.
Stephanie: for sure.
Elizabeth: And in terms of the content creation, you’re talking about, you know, making podcasts and what you’re doing with your company.
How do you decide? What content to make? How do you know your audience is looking for that? How does, what does that look like?
Stephanie: It’s a lot of research in the same way I did in the classroom, you know, when I was looking for a new book to teach because I changed my curriculum most years. Um, I didn’t really teach out of a textbook, which was super nice for me to not have to, it takes a lot of work to know what your students are going to respond to. To have a responsible on, uh, the pieces that you’re giving them and to know what’s missing from those pieces and content is exactly the same. So, I do a lot of watching other B2B marketing agency YouTube channels or listening to podcasts and trying to identify what’s missing. in those spaces. And I’m also looking at our employees and the skills that they have and the really unique things that they have to say. So how can I leverage this talent in a way that fills a space in the market? So, you know, we’re doing, we’re going to be launching a more inspirational podcast series coming up soon, and that’s It’s hopefully going to get folks who are new to marketing or looking to be a marketer to show them that there might be some non traditional paths.
There might be some, some different journeys that people take, but here’s how these folks really made a difference in their space. And that’s something that I don’t hear a lot of. I hear a lot of tactical and educational, which is really exciting, you want to balance with something a little bit new and different.
Elizabeth: That makes sense. And also neat to hear, you know, a large part of it is that research and looking and listening and seeing what’s, what’s missing, what’s there.
Stephanie: It’s a lot of research.
Elizabeth: And then in terms of this job, um, what are some of the challenges involved with it?
Stephanie: All, all of the things that are good are also challenges. Education doesn’t change. You have to be the change that you want to see
in education and you can only really do it in your classroom or your department if you’re lucky. I was constantly trying to improve
and grow and make things different for my kids. And that’s. Always a challenge and it’s exactly the same in the marketing space because there’s always something new and different. But the landscape changes faster.
Elizabeth: Mm
Stephanie: So education
the landscape doesn’t expect to change. It doesn’t want change. It’s never going to change. In marketing, everything is changing all the time.
And so that’s tough to keep up with. Uh, and it’s tough to, it’s been tough to learn a whole new set of skills and a whole new set of terms and acronyms and all of those things that come with being in a corporate space. But it’s also exciting because where I was exhausted by wanting to change education and it not wanting to change. I am equally exhausted, but invigorated. In the change that, that the marketing space wants to, wants to be.
Elizabeth: That’s awesome. what does it look like a day in the life? So do you work remotely? What happens when you wake up? Kind of walk us through a day in the life of a brand marketing manager. Mm
Stephanie: Yeah. Um, days are pretty nice. I have a few meetings during the week. I have a few recording sessions, so it just kind of depends day to day. It’s a very deadline based job because a podcast has to come out on Monday, on Wednesday, on Friday, on Sunday, we have to make sure that, you know, we have daily. LinkedIn posts or YouTube shorts, all of those things happen on a daily schedule. So I like to take time in the morning to kind of get that posting done for the day. Um, and then usually I’ll do some planning. A lot of the time I’m writing recording outlines. So trying to gear up for the next recording, or if we have a live session, making sure that registration is pushed out to as many folks as possible. But it’s a lot of flexible time and a lot of time that I get to decide if I’m really feeling excited about an outline I’m writing, I can just do that. You know, I don’t have to wait for the block in my calendar to
Elizabeth: hmm.
Stephanie: I can do that. I can just switch to that task. If I have inspiration for a LinkedIn post, I can just get that done and scheduled.
So it’s pretty flexible day to day.
Elizabeth: So in your role as marketing manager, are there opportunities to grow?
What does that look like with the trajectory?
Stephanie: Yeah, which is again very different from, so that’s a thing that’s super different from education. There are very clear growth paths for me. So I have all of my expectations and a review actually matters, which is new and fun. Yeah, I used to get so upset if I didn’t get all fours on my teacher review and I would come home like really mad about it. And my husband would say, what is it? Change. Change. Like if you had gotten that extra four, what would that mean?
Elizabeth: Right,
Stephanie: nothing, it means
Elizabeth: right. Yeah.
Stephanie: paths for me so I can look at the expectations and then there are two or three more roles above where I’m at right now that I can grow into and that is so nice to see exactly what I need to do.
And it’s additional research. It’s additional skill training. It’s additional things, um, to grow my knowledge of marketing in general and move into those more data focused, um, areas. And so I know. what I need to do to move up. And that’s really comforting for someone who likes goalposts, right? Like I really like to have, to know exactly what I need to do as a teacher.
We set them all the time, but we don’t really get them. And so that’s been really nice for me.
Elizabeth: That is so nice. And that’s true. I mean, when you, when we have those teacher observations, if you get all fours, what does it mean? Do you get a salary increase? A bonus? No.
Stephanie: No,
Elizabeth: it’s like, yeah. And now you have clear Objectives, you know, if you want to take this path or this path, how do I upscale and how do I get there?
That’s nice to know that there’s like opportunity for growth. You know, you keep learning, keep growing in this career. And I noticed as well, you had a portfolio. So is that something you would recommend? Does a person transitioning into marketing need some sort of visual or project to be able to kind of move forward?
Would that help?
Stephanie: I think it always helps to show what you’re capable of outside the classroom and you know full transparency. I haven’t even looked at that since I got this job. So it’s definitely outdated, but I was throwing spaghetti at the wall when I was in my job search. I was looking for anything and it could be writing, it could be content, it could be marketing, it could be, like I said, instructional design. And so I wanted to put the portfolio together because I didn’t have experience in any of those places besides doing them for other things for, for personal projects or in the classroom. And so I put the portfolio together to kind of show a bunch of different things I could do. Hey, you want me to do a little writing?
Here’s a little writing. Um, and I could point people
Elizabeth: Mm hmm.
Stephanie: those pieces of evidence on the job that I was applying for. I would recommend it because I think it’s a really nice, um, confidence boost when you look at all you’ve done on a website. And I just built it with a free Uh, Weebly website, I think, and just kind of put it all on one page to show what I can do.
Elizabeth: Mm hmm,
Stephanie: and that made me feel nice. Like it made me feel like I can do things outside the classroom. And that was when I was in the search, because a lot of times I didn’t feel like there was anything for me outside of a classroom.
Elizabeth: hmm. Having it all there visually, and you’ve done all that.
Stephanie: done
Elizabeth: Yeah.
Stephanie: I can scroll the things I’ve done on really bad days.
I would just be like, I have a portfolio. Look at me.
Elizabeth: And are there things teachers who are still in the classroom now, they’re teaching, are there any projects or ways they can translate their skills if they are looking to get into marketing? How did you kind of show that translation on your resume as well?
Stephanie: Looking at totally rewriting your resume and, uh, my, I had some resources who helped me kind of reframe. But things like, instead of just saying that you graded papers, you can talk about the way that you analyzed skill development and, uh, measured this, that, the other thing. When you want to take all of the language that you’re seeing on these jobs, you know, you have to.
the skill, you just don’t have that, you know, proof. And so you want to show the proof on your resume.
Elizabeth: Mm hmm.
Stephanie: when we grade, we discount. Grading an essay, you know, I had put worth of experience and understanding trends and understanding skill and understanding the person behind the paper into that grade. That’s not just, I don’t just look at it and put a grade, like it’s not a magic thing that happens. It’s a skill I developed and that takes into consideration all of the other, uh, environmental impacts on, that scale and on, on grading itself. And so being able to word the things that you have on your resume in a way that. It caters to the job you’re looking for is super important. And it’s really hard because you feel silly doing it. You feel silly writing 15 words when you could have just said graded essays, but it’s so important to showing and getting through those AI keyword checkers, especially important to make sure that your resume fits what a corporate resume would look like and not a teaching resume.
Elizabeth: Mm hmm. I love how you broke it down as well, you know, when talking about grading papers, if you put that on a resume, nobody’s really understanding. And just how you mentioned, it’s so much more than that. It’s the relationships, it’s analyzing, it’s, you know, so how can you show that impact from the skill you learned and how does it translate?
Stephanie: Right, because nobody in, uh, no one looking for a marketer is going to care if you graded essays. That means nothing
Elizabeth: hmm.
Stephanie: them. But if you phrase it in a way that is relatable to that role, they’ll start to recognize it a little bit more, uh, clearly.
Elizabeth: That makes sense. And there’s a good section on that in the Teacher Career Coach course talking about different ways to translate your resumes for different jobs. And I know as well, you you run a theater company, right? And we’d love to hear a little bit about that and also how it relates to your work life balance.
Now that you’re out of the classroom, kind of what does that look like, too?
Stephanie: Yeah, it’s something that has been really important to me for a long time. And it was a way to, engage outside of the classroom to give myself something that, uh, didn’t feel so stressful all the time. And not that running a theater company is not stressful because it can be, but I needed a release in. Having fun and not being so like held to hundreds of years long expectations in the American education system. I needed somewhere that I could, could play and reinvent things. And now it’s a really good creative outlet and an education outlet because we’re bringing a lot of folks in. It’s a Shakespeare company. And we’re bringing a lot of folks in who’ve never engaged with Shakespeare before. And so for me, it kind of engages that education brain where we can run workshops and we can do classes and we can work with students in a way that is fulfilling for me especially since I left the classroom and lost a lot of that,
Elizabeth: Mm hmm. Mm
Stephanie: like life,
Elizabeth: hmm.
Stephanie: impact.
Elizabeth: That’s so cool. And I, it’s, it’s neat, too, how you shared. It went from like being. a release to now, you know, more of a creative outlet to continue working with those. And I love that it’s Shakespeare. How fun!
Stephanie: It is, it’s really fun.
Elizabeth: And so, we’ve loved having you today, learning from you today, and we like to kind of wrap up these conversations with asking you, what did you learn about yourself during this career transition process?
Stephanie: I mean, the biggest thing is that I learned that I’m. Not like just a teacher. I was really afraid that my whole identity, because I had let it, I had let my whole identity become teaching. I was a teacher and I always would be a teacher. And my life is to be a teacher. Um, I was so scared to leave the classroom because I didn’t know if I would know who I was anymore. I didn’t know if, I wasn’t teaching. That I would matter or that I was important in any way. And that’s just, it’s not true. Like, you can make an impact outside of the classroom and so many people who are looking for other opportunities have given so much of their lives and their themselves to you.
Future generations of kids and getting nothing back and we don’t do it to get anything back But it is fulfilling in a way that we can see these kids grow up and and learn and change and grow And that’s so Cool, and it’s such an important job, but it doesn’t have to be You don’t have to say you shouldn’t have to sacrifice yourself and your health and your sanity for it.
And so I learned a lot about who I could be and how I could use those skills that I had developed in that career. Um, how I could find other pursuits that fulfilled some of those education moments and how I could breathe a little bit and still feel like I matter.
Elizabeth: Thank you so much for sharing that. I think this conversation will really resonate with a lot of our community, a lot of teachers, and especially, thank you for sharing about marketing as well and your career journey and story. We appreciate your time and I can’t wait for everyone to listen.
Stephanie: Thank you so much for having me.
