In this episode, Jessica Garthwait shares her journey from the classroom to an amazing role as a Business Development Representative at an EdTech company. We do a deep dive into how she built her skillset, picked a new path, what she likes about her new career, and all of the steps in between.
Listen to the episode in the podcast player below, or find it on Apple Podcast or Spotify.
Her path to landing a role in EdTech
Daphne:
Hi Jessica. Thank you so much for being here today.
Jessica:
Thank you so much for having me.
Daphne:
Before we get into your new role outside the classroom, I’d love to hear a little bit about how long you were a teacher for and what got you in education to begin with.
Jessica:
Okay, so I was a teacher for about almost 12 years. It’s interesting, I played a lot of sports growing up, so I actually started out coaching at the college level and after I had played, and so I wasn’t really sure where I was going to go with that, and I started kind of as actually going down the path of being college coach, but then the whole family aspect and future would be really difficult to juggle. So I ended up going back to school for education and getting my master’s in teaching so that I could also teach and coach. So work with kids on different levels. So yeah, that’s kind of how I ended up getting into teaching initially. Yeah.
Daphne:
And then I know that some of the advice that I’ve given on the podcast before is if you’re planning on leaving, especially if you’ve only been in it for a short while, to try changing grades, try changing schools or districts just because maybe it could be a change in environment that you’re looking for. And I know with your experience in the classroom you did change grades and even schools a few times. Did you find that some of them worked better for you than others, or was it always just still not the perfect fit?
Jessica:
Yeah, so that’s a great point because I totally agree with you recommending that that is the first step. Is it just this one situation or is it more than that? So I did the first time I switched schools, was just because we moved actually, and the commute had become over an hour and it just didn’t make sense. So that was my first time and I started in high school and then I moved to my next job was at a middle school, which I was really happy with for a while. And so I was there for six years, but about year four at the middle school is when I started thinking again, maybe this isn’t what I want to do long term. There’s positives and negatives to any job, but I just started to get that feeling. I didn’t pay too much attention to it, but I started to sort of look a little bit, and again, I had no tools for, you’re a teacher, you’re looking into a different field.
I had no tools, so it didn’t really go anywhere. And then I ended up finding a job, I was in the middle school then at a high school that was right next to where I lived even closer. So I’m like, “You know what? Maybe I want to go back to the high school and that’s what’s going to do it for me.” So I did that and then initially again, I felt like, “Oh, yeah, this is it. I just need to move back into the high school.” And then COVID happened and the years went by and that feeling didn’t go away basically, in that sort of honeymoon phase of each one, and then I would feel it again. So that’s what brought me to, “Okay, I’ve tried that now.” I’ve definitely given that a good effort and also felt like, “Okay, I’m ending on year 12 here.” I just felt like it was now or never that for me to actually make the move if I was going to.
Jessica shares how she explored new career paths
Daphne:
Yeah. So what were your first steps of evaluating different career paths for you?
Jessica:
That’s a really good question. Honestly, I had no idea. So I came across you on Instagram is what happened, and I wasn’t looking at just… I don’t know, it popped up and I’m not even really sure, honestly, I don’t remember. But it stuck out to me and it was really like, these are the things I have been thinking and I’ve had no clue what to do and all of that. So you would post different types of roles. And so I would look into them and be like, “Okay, what out of these do I think is going to actually work for me?”
So it took some time to go through and I have to tell you what I ended up with is not at all what I thought I was going to lean towards. So it’s great that you had different people and then I was listening to the podcast and I could really hear more about it. So it’s kind of a two part, just the initial me seeing the post and thinking through and then going to your podcast and being like, “Okay, well, let me actually listen to some of these people and their experiences and see how I feel about it from there.”
Daphne:
Yeah. And I think that that’s something that’s really common. Obviously, you’re looking, and I think everyone’s first gut reaction is something that seems like the easiest… Nothing’s going to be easy. Easy is a bad word to use, but it’s the thing that seems the most natural. So it’s words that have… If it has the word trainer or education or learning or instruction in it, you’re like, “Oh, maybe I can see myself in that.” It has to have some trigger words that get this emotional response of, “Oh, I’m qualified to do that.” And then I think just digging in and learning about those types of roles helps you understand the corporate environment.
It helps you understand how those roles will actually interact with other roles. And then you’ll start being more and more open and receptive to different job titles because there are people who write at the beginning of their transition. If I said project management, they’re like, “That sounds really boring.” And then six months into their transition they’re like, “That’s the perfect role for me. It sounds so exciting.” And for you, you ended up being a business development representative, which is a sales role, which is one of the types of roles that I think instinctively most teachers are the most apprehensive to actually take these types of roles for a variety of reasons. So how did you land with a BDR role?
Jessica:
And this process took a while too. I just want to mention that I did some research, but then I also went off of it again and was like, “Oh,” I think that was maybe in the fall of this past year. And I was like, “Oh, no, no, whatever.” But I came back to it again because it just wasn’t going away and you’re kind of coming towards the end of the regular year. But yeah, so basically when I first started to think about it, sales was the last on my list, and I think I had done in my past just part-time I had done a little bit of outside sales selling memberships in our local area to the chamber. And though I did enjoy that on some levels, I didn’t think that was something I would want to do. So sales, that was my little experience with sales and I kind of put that out of my mind as any possibility.
My husband is also in sales and I thought, “No way.” But what happens is you think about what you do as a teacher and what you enjoy the most doing as a teacher, what I enjoy the most is talking to people and having an interaction, helping them maybe see the light on something or explain something and help them solve their problems. That’s something that I really enjoy. So I think looking at that and knowing that I don’t necessarily just love making lesson plans and although I don’t mind PowerPoint and things like that, I’m just not passionate about that. So although things like L&D might’ve seemed like a natural move for a teacher, I didn’t feel excited about it. So I thought as I read more about that, I thought that doesn’t fit. And I did think about corporate trainer because I liked the idea of teaching adults and training them and that sort of thing.
And I obviously had a lot of coaching experience, but again, I don’t know, it just seemed like it still kind of was falling into you’re creating webinars, which I’m not saying that I wouldn’t like it, but I don’t think long-term I’d want to stay doing that. I would want to be running the training or the steps to get there weren’t necessarily aligned with what I wanted to do. And so just as I kept staying in and I did want to stay in the education world in some way, and it just kind of brought me into this whole concept of, “Okay, well, why am I so scared of sales? What’s so scary about it?” And you have a couple of podcasts that helped me just so hugely with this to realize, “Well, no, maybe this is something that I will like and I’ll excel at.”
Also being an athlete, being competitive and goal setting and things like that, they go really well with a sales role. So I just started looking into it more and I talked to my husband about sales and other people that I knew, and I just thought to myself, “This could be a great way into a company.” And then maybe similarly, if it’s not something down the road that I want to stay with, there’s other options at that point and I’ve kind of learned a lot about whatever business I’ll be involved in and then I’ll go from there.
Daphne:
Yeah, I love that and I love that you mentioned that part about being an athlete. I am a naturally competitive person. With myself I really like tracking my progress or just checking things off. And there’s one part in sales that I think there’s a certain type of person that becomes very motivated of if I hustle, I earn more and I get not just intrinsic motivation of if I hustle, I help more people, but it’s also the amount of energy and work I put into has a return on investment where with teaching you get so burned out and sad that you’re like, “I can put in 70 hours and get the exact same pay for putting in 40 hours and probably the same amount of recognition almost.”
Jessica:
You’re really hitting the nail on the head there because I do feel a big part of what was missing with teaching for me was I was just at a standstill. The changing of the positions help a little bit with that because you’re like, “Okay, now I’m in something new and I’m going to figure this whole thing out and do this this way.” But knowing that I didn’t want to be an admin, knowing that I did not want to go in that direction just based on what I see them dealing with and that just not being something I’d be happy with you do, you feel kind of stagnant? Yeah. So that makes it difficult. You said it’s like, “Here I am.” No matter the amount of effort you’re putting in, it kind of just stays the same. So it is nice to be in a position where I do have that sort of control that you are getting out what you put into it.
Jessica talks about how she dealt with fear of failure in a new career
Daphne:
And that also is equally terrifying from someone who’s coming from a quote, unquote stable income. I think a lot of the teachers that we work with and get emails from or when there’s the one-on-one coaching sessions that I know our team members do, one of the biggest concerns is I could see me loving actually the sales process. I could see myself wanting to pursue customer success in five years or something like that. This is a great way for me to get my foot in the door. However, I’m looking at the way that this pay is structured and it is not enough money for me as the base salary and they’re telling me what they assume my commission is going to be based on everyone else. But that huge unknown of what if I fail? What if I don’t hit my commission? And then also does that mean I’m going to lose my job immediately? Did you have those same types of concerns and fears?
Jessica:
Oh, for sure. That’s totally natural. And I think for me, yeah, the base salary technically is lower than what I was making as a teacher, but you kind of have to do your research. For me, it’s more about what I am selling. I am very excited about because I am helping people with it, it’s a benefit, it’s going to help students, it’s going to help teachers. So with that in mind and that motivation and all the combination of the competitiveness and everything, you’ll reach your goals that you set. And also, I mean, when you are interviewing, just like anything else, you’re interviewing them too. You get the feel for, “Okay, well this is who my manager’s going to be. These are the people I’m going to be working with.” And that’s just as important for you to have a good feeling about whatever company you’re talking to.
Because for me, my manager is incredibly supportive and I think that if she wasn’t, no, I would feel much different. But I know that the effort I am putting in and all of the work that I am doing, it’s not only do I feel like it’s appreciated, but it’s also it’s getting me somewhere and it’s showing them specifically what I’m doing so they know this is what you’re doing, this is how much activity you’re producing, these are all the calls you’re making, the people you’re talking to, and then they support you because they know you’re putting in your end.
Daphne:
Yeah. And I think that that’s also a really great point of you are passionate about what you’re talking about, you’re not feeling like you’re pushing something. I think the term is product market fit, but it’s something that I as a business owner need to make sure there is before I start to sell it. And some companies have things that are just a product that is just not really going to sell. And I wish I could think of one even as a joke, like off the bat, but I know, and I won’t say names, but I know that in the past I have been put in the position not to sell it, even if it was a free thing. I was like, “Have you tried this free solution,” in my roles outside the classroom where 90% of what I was talking about was something that I was very passionate about.
I can really prove to you how this is something that’s going to help you and I can even show you examples of how it’s going to take time off of your plate. And then there was 10% of the time where I was like, “I’m going to tell you this thing.” And in the back of my head, I know you are going to hate it and everyone at the company knows you’re not going to like this, but it’s part of my job. And I think the people who end up in sales with those types of roles where they’re pushing that 10%, that product that doesn’t really have product market fit, that’s going to be the most frustrating experience, but it still is experience that you can take and then put on your resume and go somewhere else. And unfortunately, you won’t really know until you’re in it for a while. Like, “Oh, they gave me something that no one here is really having an easy time selling.”
Jessica:
Yeah. And I do think that there’s always that possibility in ways, but if you do your research, and especially, I mean, again, I’m talking about EdTech, so I think for teachers is probably a little easier to figure out what might be really useful for students and teachers and what may be more difficult just coming from the teacher perspective, which I use all the time. I was a former teacher, I can relate. But yeah, I think that for me, because this is something that I am passionate about and I think is so useful and could be life-changing for people, it’s very much easier for me to make that phone call, to send that email, to talk to people about how we can help. And from that mindset, it doesn’t feel as much like a sales role. Now, sometimes, sure, I’m not going to have as great of a day or connect with people as much or whatever it is, but for me it’s just like it was with teaching, it has to be better more than it’s not right. It has to be more and bad days than that. And then we’re good.
Daphne:
Do you feel like when you are going in, because I heard you say something about using your teacher’s perspective in this role, do you feel like when you were going into this role, you understood who you would be talking to? And I guess I’m leading with this question, but one misconception that I see a lot of teachers having who do want to go into sales is they think that they need to write to an audience of teachers. They need to know how to sell a product to teachers. And while that can be part of the grassroots, getting people on the campuses to actually be using the products, a lot of times you’re actually in rooms with instructional coaches or district leaders, admin, people who are in charge of the purchasing decisions for the entire school. And that’s where it’s important for you to, from a teacher perspective, understand what their concerns are as well. Will all the teachers adopt it? What about the different grade levels of teachers? Do you think that you came in knowing the differences between who you were actually going to be targeting and talking to?
Jessica:
I think initially my manager explained the people we kind of tend to talk to the most. And I knew that I would be talking to teachers at times and I’d want them to see it and be like, “Oh, this is great,” and want to tell other teachers or to tell their department chair. So in that sense, I knew I talked to teachers, but like you’re saying, it is definitely more of the decision maker that you need to get in touch with. And so as a BDR, you are basically trying to set that appointment and get that going and then you’re going to pass that off to your next in line salesperson.
But being able to understand you’re saying from a perspective of a teacher, explain how it’s beneficial and what’s so great about it, what stands out to you as a teacher, that is no matter who you’re talking to in education is something that they hear. They hear that and they see that as a benefit. So I definitely think that’s helpful, but I also am not someone who is going to be necessarily calling up a superintendent. There are people who are, it depends, but I think that mostly I had the concept going in from my manager. Yes, sometimes teachers, but more so admins so that people who are making that decision.
Daphne:
Yeah, absolutely. And the follow-up that I have to that is I know that you were inside the teacher career coach course, so you had an understanding of this, but I guess this isn’t really a question, it’s more of just an observation, but so many people are looking to get into ed tech. That’s what they’re pinpointing, but they’re also utilizing LinkedIn unprofessionally in a way that they’re venting about their own admin, which is completely valid, but I don’t think that they realize how much that is potentially hurting them in the interviewing or hiring process and how many doors have potentially been shut on them. Because most of the time in an EdTech company, you’re connecting with the district admin, you’re talking to them and needing to have relationships with them. So just having these generic statements on your social media about how terrible one or the other one is does not do you a service.
Jessica:
And I would just like to point out that beyond just LinkedIn, I would take that off of all social media just because I have seen colleagues of mine posting things and it gets back. So to me, I mean, colleagues when I was a teacher, obviously, but maybe also for me that’s just not the way that I vent and I want to honor anyone who does want to vent on social media. But I agree with you, definitely not LinkedIn, but I would go as far to say you really do need to be careful. You never know what platform someone who is hiring or someone you can be working with looks at and how that reflects on you. And you can’t take that away once they’ve seen it.
Daphne:
Yeah. And I think that that’s so hard to see from multiple perspectives because I get the feeling of wanting to vent about toxic employee or employers because they absolutely are out there. But what you have to understand is it’s almost, think about it like you’re going on a date with someone you don’t know anything about them, and then you look and what if this person on their social media just made a blanket statement about how lazy a teacher was like, “Oh, my second grade teacher for my daughter is so lazy and terrible.” You don’t know anything about this person.
And they absolutely could potentially be not a great teacher, but you have an emotional reaction to that actual statement. And I feel like it goes both ways. If you’re talking negatively about the people that you’re trying to work with in the future, it’s not going to do you any services.
Jessica explains her experience applying for roles outside of the classroom
I’d like to talk a little bit about what your strategy was on applying for these types of roles for BDR, beyond just your professional social media and professional LinkedIn profile. How did you start applying to get your foot in the door and ultimately win this role?
Jessica:
Yeah, so like you were saying, I took the course and it’s so funny because it took me a long time to actually buy the course. It’s so ridiculous looking back on it because it’s almost like why are you not investing in yourself and it’s so worth it. And I waited for a little coupon code to be like, “You know what? It’s okay to treat myself. I’m going to do it now.” So when I did, and I think it was right around January or whatever it was, and so I started the course and I just honestly blew through it. I didn’t want to stop. I just kept going. It was something new, I was learning and I just really look forward to it. And it wasn’t something where I felt like I had needed so many extra hours of my day. It was a weekend or it was the night after school, and I just kept kind of going through it.
Anyone can do it at their own pace, but for me it was just helpful so much of what you say in it just to get me in the right frame of mind so that I could focus and understand and plan accordingly. And then I had no clue how to fix my resume. Coming from someone who has had multiple teacher positions and a teacher resume, I had no idea. And I know for a fact looking back too, that years back when I had looked for another job just momentarily, my resume didn’t reflect me at all in that world. It just was me as a teacher. And people don’t understand that language if they’re outside of teaching. So the course gives me the outline I need to get started. And then what I did end up doing is I used Teal to tell me how well I was matching up with a job.
So it was like your template and then telling me whether or not I’d be able to match the ATS scanner so that are there enough keywords in it, am I going to get pulled if it’s just a computer first? So I kind of went through those steps and when I finished your course, I stopped because I stopped before. There’s a whole section you have obviously on the interview process, and I started it, but then I said, “You know what? Let me start to apply for some jobs first and then if I get some hits, I’ll come back and I’m going to work through the interview stuff.” And so I used LinkedIn, I did my best to update LinkedIn as well, the way that you recommended and aligning with the resume. And I started to search for jobs. And it’s overwhelming at first. There’s tons of jobs listed.
You start to think there’s millions of applicants, but then you learn that on LinkedIn, if you click on it and it goes to the person’s site, it just adds a number. So then people are like, “Oh, I can’t apply for that. There’s already thousands.” So you kind of have to get over that initial nervousness about it, I guess. And then I wasn’t trying to limit myself to EdTech, it’s just kind of what I ended up getting drawn to as I was searching. And I looked for initially customer success and sales types of roles. And it was over… I’m going to say it again, it was overwhelming. There were a few people that I used your job board and there was a couple other ones to help me kind of pare it down a little bit. I actually made a post about this on LinkedIn to give other teachers help and tell them about your course and a few other people that were helpful because it’s just overwhelming to do it by yourself. I don’t know where I would’ve been.
Daphne:
Yeah, there’s just so many steps to it. And the worst part is that people hop to a step when they’re not ready to. So they’re translating this resume using potentially a game of telephone of someone else’s resume for something totally different. And they think just even adding corporate verbiage to it is going to help them stand out for all roles. And then it’s like, “Oh, no, you did that for three months before you realized what you were doing that was potentially not helping you stand out.” And then they have to start all over again. That’s where it’s like we put the teacher career coach course together of this is what you should start with. If this is too simple, go to module two. If module one is not something that you need any support with, push to the next one. But at least you have the foundation step-by-step in a row.
Jessica:
I totally agree. The steps were so helpful. Sure, you could skip past something if you were already familiar with it, but it was there if you ever needed to go back like, well, maybe I should revisit that because maybe I thought I knew, but maybe I need to look a little closer. But so I also think that you offer so much free material. So there are times where people might think I’ll just use the podcast and the posts and things, and those are hugely helpful. But for me, if I didn’t have the templates you offered-
Daphne:
Oh, yeah, the classroom to corporate verbiage and everything. Yeah.
Jessica:
Yes. It’s the translating of skills I already have specifically and the numbers of it all that really helped. And so like I said, that stands out to me the most. I do also think though the community is very, very useful, especially for people who do feel like they want to vent. That’s a closed community. That is just people who understand what you’re going through, any of your frustrations, and it’s a perfect place for that sort of venting.
Daphne:
Yes, 100%. Any private communities over something that other people can search and see for those posts about how overwhelmed and burned out you are in the job hunting process, even though you should be able to talk about it, but it just makes people apprehensive to hire you or how much you hate the position you’re leaving because it makes you look unprofessional. And just all these things that, where are we going to talk about this with a group of people who understand it and the private community is great for that. I’d love to hear a little bit about your interview process, and I know we’re probably going to go longer on this episode. I hope that is okay, but I feel like we’re getting so much out of it.
Jessica:
No problem.
Daphne:
So I’d love to talk a little bit about the interview process. Did they ask you specific examples of your sales role? Did they ask you why you were leaving teaching? What types of questions did they ask you?
Jessica:
They asked me basically the questions that you said they would ask me to be honest. And it was a lot of, yes, why are you leaving teaching, specific questions to some of the points on the resume. Maybe could you expand further on a situation where you had to… If a parent or you were dealing with someone who was upset and how you did that and maybe how you handled any kind of objections or reactions in that way, working with colleagues and how you interact with them and if there was any conflict between colleagues, how did you handle it? But to be honest, a lot of them were examples that you gave that how are you going to explain how teaching is going to relate to this role?
Daphne:
So you were able to use the course, the interview module basically to prepare ahead of time.
Jessica:
Right.
Daphne:
That’s fantastic.
Jessica:
I use your interview module and then of course for any specific position, you can always Google some of the just position specific questions, but that’s a little part of your interview, that’s not the whole.
Daphne:
And that’s tricky too because you’re going to find websites that are going to say, “How are you going to talk about your experience in sales?” Where in our course we teach how to really talk about how it translates one skill to the other, but all the websites that you’re going to find are going to say, “Oh, make sure you talk about how big your book of business is.” And you’re like, “If I don’t have a book of business, then how am I going to answer this question?” And that’s where it takes some bouncing between tabs and looking at what they’re going to ask and then looking at what you can say using those resources. I’d love to talk a little bit about what your work-life balance is. I know we were talking a little bit beforehand about some motherhood stuff, and you do have children at home.
Jessica shares what her work-life balance looks like now
Do you feel like you have as much work-life balance as you did with teaching, better work-life balance? What does that look like now?
Jessica:
So the biggest benefits to me, well, I work from home, so I know not everyone is in that situation, but for me, I work from home so I can finally get my kids on the bus, which is so amazing. It meant so much to them. I had no idea how much it meant to them, but it was very exciting for them. So my oldest he’s been taking the bus, but my youngest is going to start kindergarten this fall, so now I get to actually see him get on the bus for the first time. So I’m very excited about that. So it’s great working from home, not dealing with a commute, and then also just scheduling your day. It’s not so rigid. And I was definitely that person who on my first few days I messaged my manager and was like, “So I just go to the bathroom.
That’s okay.” Because it’s just so odd to not have such a regimented schedule. And obviously you can’t just leave the room with students when you need to, or I think one of the questions I had too was, should I take lunch at a specific time? It’s just not like that. It’s very much you’re an adult, you schedule your day, and as long as your tasks get completed, you figure the rest out. So in that way, the work-life balance is much better for me. I was also concerned because I left teaching early, I left before the end of the school year by a month, and I usually do summer school, but there’s still a lot more… Summer school’s pretty short, so I was worried about leaving right before the summer and how that would be. But I can say that it’s been so manageable and I don’t dread going to work.
I don’t want to say. . . I always feel bad saying that about teaching because there are parts of teaching that I loved and I definitely miss my students, but I’m not feeling that anxiety as we’re getting closer to the school year starting, or even on Sunday nights. We came back from a vacation and I was not worried about having to get up for work the next day. I was excited to start getting to work on the tasks that I had. And again, I think part of the whole, not just the competitiveness of sports, but the organization and the goal setting, being able to click off the tasks that I do is such a great feeling. So I don’t know, it’s probably. . .
Daphne:
No, I get that. I get that. Because with teaching, it’s amount of tasks that is never going to satisfy. You’re never going to be able to scratch the itch of finishing it, even if you want to. It’s just someone’s going to add 10 more to your plate every single day before you get to the 30 that were already on your plate for that day. And once you go to a new role, whether it’s sales or learning and development, and they say, “Here’s the three things you need to get done this week.” Most teachers who have found themselves in new roles have reported back and said, they started freaking out and asking, “What happens if I’m done early?” Or they just don’t feel normal, not having an amount of work that they’ll never finish.
Jessica:
Or every minute being accounted for. That’s not a thing, and it’s hard to get used to it first. For sure.
Daphne:
Yeah, 100%. Jessica, I want to end with the question that I ask all of the former teachers, and it is throughout this process, what did you learn about yourself? Because it’s really challenging and probably big mindset shift, it takes a lot of ups and downs to get to where you are today.
Jessica talks about what she learned about herself through the transition process
What did you really learn about yourself during that process?
Jessica:
That’s a great question. From the moment that I started the course to now, I basically have realized I really am a lifelong learner. I was so excited to start getting into all of it and learning all the new things and figuring, “Wow, what I have done, what I have accomplished in my career as a teacher, it relates to so many things and it’s more than I even really thought they could be.” So I feel like I realized I am very capable and that I do want to continue learning and I want to continue challenging myself, and I just don’t want to stay stagnant. And that’s what was missing. So I really have learned for myself what was missing for me.
Daphne:
And investing in yourself is not something that you should wait months or years for, especially if you have found yourself in the position of, “Hey, I know exactly what I want and maybe this person will be able to help me get there quicker.”
Jessica:
100%. 100% agree.
Daphne:
That is a hard one even for anyone, because I think the biggest fear is you are telling yourself, “Can I do it? Can I actually do it?” If I invest in this weight loss app, now I have to prove to myself I can do it, but if I don’t, if I don’t invest in it, then I just say like, “Oh, well, it’s challenging, or I forgot to do it that day.” But the second you put your money where your mouth is, I feel like that’s also a little bit-
Jessica:
Yeah, there’s always that fear of failure and it holds you back. And also you can start to think to yourself, “Well, maybe I’m being selfish. I have a career. We have stability in our family and all these things,” and there’s a million reasons why you shouldn’t, but if you still have that feeling, it’s worth it to at least look into it. Worst thing that could happen is that you’re like, “Okay, I tried it. It was great and everything, but I’m going to stay in teaching.” And I of course could go back to teaching if I decided to, but I think for me, it’s just so great that I took the leap and it’s been such a positive experience for me and just mentally too, just how I feel in general. Yeah. So for me it was 100% worth it.
Daphne:
Well, I’m so happy for you. I’m excited to meet you and just hear your story. This has been just such a pleasure and I appreciate you coming on so much and sharing all of this with the audience.
Jessica:
Thank you so much for having me, and just really, I’m honored because what you do for everyone, it’s just so huge and what you offer is so valuable, and I just appreciate being a part of it.
Daphne:
Okay. Pregnancy hormones, I may be tearing up a little bit. Thank you so much, Jessica.
Jessica:
Oh, thank you. And congratulations again.
Mentioned in the episode:
- 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.)
