Building a Sustainable Business with Multiple Streams of Income with Jillian Fernandez | 122
If you are a teacher business owner, you might think there is only one way you can make money outside of your teaching job: selling resources. However, building a sustainable business means having multiple streams of income, so you are never reliant on one revenue stream. On episode 122 of the podcast, I talked with Jillian Fernandez about sustainable business ideas, and how to diversify your income.
Jillian is a former teacher turned full-time mom and business owner who helps teacher sellers create a profitable and sustainable income for their teacher businesses. She started her TPT store in 2012, not thinking it could ever be a thriving business. Now, she helps teachers market and grow their side hustle (or even go full-time).
Why Should You Have Multiple Streams Of Income?
A big part of having a sustainable business is not relying on one form of income (AKA don’t put all your eggs in one basket). Things happen, and you want to be prepared to shift or pivot at any point.
For example, algorithms change or demand for a certain offer may decrease. A lot of teacher sellers experienced this stress recently when TPT changed their algorithm. It caused a lot of sellers to see a decrease in their revenue, so many teachers turned to alternative marketplaces and their own ecommerce stores as a way to diversify.
What Are Ways You Can Diversify?
One of Jillian’s passions is helping teacher sellers create a sustainable business, so naturally, she had a lot of sustainable business ideas! Most teacher sellers think of Etsy, TPT, Boom Learning, and other marketing platforms are the way to diversify.
However, you can diversify even more by creating a range of offers. For example, starting a program or course where you give educators information about a topic you’re knowledgeable on. You can also open a membership where you deliver monthly products, like centers or writing prompts, that only members get access to.
An underrated sustainable business idea in the teacher business space is affiliate marketing. You can promote teacher outfits, books, teaching tools, and even be an affiliate for edtech platforms.
What Are Some Ways You Can Market Your Teaching Resources?
Of course, for many teacher sellers, selling digital products on marketplaces like TPT is the starting point! I asked Jillian what she recommended teacher business owners do to market their resources.
First, she recommends that you optimize your posting on TPT. A lot of teachers will find resources by simply searching on TPT, so make sure you optimize for SEO, include previews, and have an attractive thumbnail.
Then, get your resources out there with TikTok and Instagram. You can also use Pinterest to push your products to a wider audience. (If you want to learn more about Pinterest marketing, listen to Episode 53 with Emilee Vales Or Episode 40 with Chelsea Hall)
Then, start building an email list and showcasing your products there. Lastly, begin looking for opportunities to collaborate. This can help you get in front of new audiences and reach new people.
Tips For Creating A Sustainable Business
I asked Jillian to give us two tips for pursuing those sustainable business ideas. She recommends identifying your strengths and areas of expertise, so you can lean into the things you enjoy and have a unique perspective on.
She also recommended being strategic about how you show up. You don’t need to do all the things, and you definitely don’t want to slap together your marketing plan.
If you are a teacher seller looking to get started with digital products, check out Jillian’s free training. She’ll walk you through creating a high-quality resource from scratch. You’ll start by creating a PDF resource, and then move to creating a self-checking activity.
Don’t Forget To SUBSCRIBE
&
REVIEW the podcast!
Thanks for listening to this week’s Saturday Strategy Session! If you found this podcast helpful for your teacherpreneur journey, then head over to iTunes, so you can subscribe and leave a review. Each and every review means the world to me and helps me continue to create valuable content while also reaching more fellow ambitious teacher business owners just like you!
Episode Transcript:
Hey there - I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Grow - a podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money. With weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you, my goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.
Jenzaia: This week I have an exciting interview with Jillian Fernandez. For those of you who don't know Jillian, she's a former teacher, turned full-time mom and Teacherpreneur on a mission to help teachers create a profitable and sustainable income selling their teacher resources or services. Jillian is a business expert. Instagram obsessed toddler mom, time-saving hacker and taco lover, which we have that in common. And I have been working with Jillian for a while. I love your program, so I'm really excited. We'll probably talk a little bit about that, but before we get into it, can you just tell us a little bit more about who you are, what you do, and your story?
Jillian: Yeah, so I have been kind of like a business teacherpreneur since 2012, I actually started my T P T store and just like everybody else, I just kind of put stuff up there and let it sit. Didn't really put too much thought into it. I didn't know that T P T could be a business. I don't think anybody really knew the impact that T P T could have back then.
So it was kind of like, just spare cash. If you got a dollar, great. So fast forward a few years later, you know, people started getting on Instagram. I actually had a teacher friend who worked in my school, and I don't know if you know The Square Inch Kate, but she worked in my building and she was very successful on Teachers Pay Teachers. So she's like, you need to actually put upward into this. So I was like, okay. So she convinced me to start my teacher Instagram. I think that was like 2014-15. And that was when the Teacher-gram blew up. You know, lots of teachers were on there. Everybody was so supportive. It was like really tight-knit community of people.
And I completely fell in love and I started actually taking my business seriously, and that's where my passion kind of grew from. And then people started asking me questions like, how are you gaining success and what are you doing on Instagram that's making your store successful and you successful? And all of that. So yeah, that's kind of how my business started and then I started coaching people on Instagram. So that was really fun.
And then my Instagram got hacked. So that was pretty devastating for me because, you know, it was my livelihood and my whole business was kind of centered around helping people drive traffic from Instagram to their TPT stores. And my Instagram was hacked and deleted, so I had to start from scratch, which, you know, happens in business sometimes you get curve balls thrown your way. Just like you know right now with the T P T algorithm and things like that where everything's so crazy, you don't know what's gonna happen next. But you have to learn to pivot and roll with the punches and figure out what works. So thank goodness I had a really close community of people and teachers in my Thriving Teacher Academy course who were able to help me kind of get back to not exactly where I was before, but you know, with all the support and love that that community brought was pretty incredible.
Jenzaia: And from the outside I just wanna say, like I said, I found you just before it got hacked. I think we connected through Teacher Hustle University potentially. But anyway, so I found you just before, and I remember thinking like, all of these people are like putting these posts of “my sweet friend Jillian got hacked.” There was so much outpour and from the outside I was like, this is somebody who clearly cares about her people, has built these really strong relationships. And it was one of the things that made me be like, I'll go follow her new account because she doesn't know who I am. But like, I want to continue to be part of this kind of community. So from the outside, that was how I saw it.
I know something that you talk a lot about is creating multiple streams of income, and what are some of the benefits and reasons why as a teacher business owner, you would want to have those multiple streams of incomes in your business?
Jillian: Well, in business, it's really important to not put all of your eggs in one basket, number one, because you know, as we talked about before, things happen and times change. Things shift. And it's important to just diversify your income. It also helps you build a stable financial future because you're not relying on just solely one source of income. So if you're still a teacher, you have your income from your classroom, but you may also have an income from, you know, selling your resources on teachers pay teachers, or having an Etsy store, or my big passion right now as teachers creating their own courses.
So if you can do something where you can make an income that's going to help you with your future and retirement and all of that stuff, just having a sustainable income with ways you can make it outside of teaching. Or even just outside of one specific type of business, is really going to help you make a greater impact on education and your community and teachers and students all around the world. That's the biggest thing for me.
Jenzaia: And you totally answered my next question of like, what are some of those ways that you can diversify your income? So like digital products, courses. Are there any others that come to mind, like right off?
Jillian: So in terms of digital resources, obviously there's a ton of different resources you can create specifically just on Teachers Pay Teachers, and there are other marketplaces that are similar to Teachers Pay Teachers. A lot of teachers have found success with Boom Learning. I love Teachers Pay Teachers personally the best. But things have been crazy. And you know, there has been a new acquisition recently. So we don't really know what direction that's going in.
So being able to have just your digital resources kind of in different places. Those are multiple streams just in and of itself with creating your digital resources. But yeah, you could also have a course, which I think is really great for diversifying your income, because if you have a special skill as a teacher that you can share with the world and other teachers. It's really great to package that up and put it into a course. So some of the people that I've helped with creating courses, they've done courses on classroom management or creating centers for their students, creating different things for differentiation for their students. There's so many different things that you can do, especially if you are passionate about it and you have something that's unique about the way you present it to your students and have found success.
A course is a great way to get your information out there to more teachers who are struggling with those things. I mean, you could also create a membership of some sort where you package up different resources for... Let's say you are a math teacher and you're really great at creating centers that are unique to your students. You could have a monthly membership where you give teachers all the centers that they need every single month. So there's a lot of different things.
Jenzaia: Those memberships are really popular right now.
Jillian: They are, and they're really successful because it helps teachers kind of just have everything packaged up because we're so limited on time. Right? And if you could have something kind of given to you where you don't have to think about it and it's relevant, high quality, great resources that you can use in your classroom, I think that's really, really helpful. I've also seen a lot of teachers recently coming out with eBooks, which is something that you don't really think about.
One of my personal favorites that isn't talked about enough is affiliate marketing. So that's another thing that you can do to kind of get more income and diversify as well.
Jenzaia: So I've never talked about affiliate marketing at all on this podcast. So can you talk to us about what it is, how you can do it, and some of the benefits specifically of affiliate marketing, because I think that's something that's actually really accessible to all teacher business owners, no matter what level of your business you're at.
Jillian: So basically affiliate marketing is, you're not promoting your own particular resource. You're promoting other people's or other brands and getting a commission off of that. So one of the easy ways that I use affiliate marketing is I have an affiliate link for using Canva, which I think almost every teacher uses Canva now, right? So I have an affiliate link for you to get like, I think it's a free 30 day pro membership. And then from there, if you decide to go in with the pro membership and you've used my link, I get a commission off of that. Another one that I use particularly often is Kajabi, which is my course platform. There are so many brands out there that offer affiliate marketing. I know Screencast-O-Matic, which is an editing software that I use, has affiliate marketing, but you can probably go in and just search the website for any brand and see if they have an affiliate program, and you can find those.
It's such great marketing for them. Like it's such easy marketing for the company of like, if I genuinely love this program that I'm using and I'm talking about it naturally then it's so much easier than them spending money and they still do, like, let's be honest, Kajabi is still spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on marketing, but saves them money by being able to like, get a referral from someone who's loving, using the platform already.
So if there's something that you use in your regular business or your life and you can talk about it, that's a way to use affiliate marketing effectively, and it's a really easy way to kind of just use affiliate marketing. I know a lot of teachers also do like the Like to Know it, which is I think a clothing kind of affiliate marketing where you try on clothes or wear clothes and then you link to this, Like to Know it on Instagram and then you get a commission if people purchase the clothing from your links. So that's one that's really popular. I'm not a fashionista, so I don't do a lot of clothing stuff, but there are a lot of teachers who find success with their daily outfits. You know, they do like OOTDs outfit of the day and they make a commission off of just sharing what they're wearing every day.
So that one's really fun. Or like Amazon has affiliate programs where you can go to an Amazon storefront and purchase things that maybe you just use in your classroom. One of my favorites is if you have a course that you've taken before and you loved the course, talk to the person who created the course, because I'm sure that they have an affiliate program as well. And then if you had success in the course platform or the coach, whatever it is that you've used. And you can talk about that naturally because you loved it. Then you can make commission off of that as well.
And you're doing something good for that person who sent it to you. So if you use that link and nothing changes for Amazon, something changes for that small, typically smaller creator, business owner, solopreneur mom, whatever, whoever it is that's putting that link out there, you're changing their life. And so that kind of changed my opinion about it when I really had that realization of, this has nothing to do with the big major corporation.
And sometimes it does change what you're paying, like not on Amazon, but sometimes like Kajabi. I'm sure that there's free trials without someone's affiliate link, but like the affiliate link does give you that discount. And I used Dubsado. And my affiliate link, I think it gives the person like, 10% off or 15% off their first month, or if they buy the whole year, like there's a discount.
So my affiliate link actually does give you a benefit that if you just went to Dubsado to sign up, you wouldn't necessarily get. Like I remember doing FlowDesk, and this doesn't sound significant, but I'm using this as an example because they had this thing where you could try it out and get put into their grandfathered pricing. So I think it was, maybe I'm gonna say this wrong, but let's just pretend like it was $25 for the year so you could get grandfathered into that price and then every time someone used your link, you made $19 on it. So I remember getting all of these referrals and getting $19 every time. I'm like, I didn't even do anything.
So it can be a significant amount of money and I know like Kijabi I think is a couple hundred dollars if someone decides to go with your plan. So you can make a pretty good chunk of change kind of passively. Sometimes it's not so passive because you do have to talk about it.
Even if you keep like a link in your bio for something and someone happens to go into the link in your bio and you have a link there where someone can save some money, and use your link. It's a win-win. That's why I really like affiliate marketing.
The other one that I found more and more is if you're presenting in a conference or a summit, there's a V I P upgrade. The really great thing about those is that there's a hype event coming. And so you can do kind of like a mini launch within your own community for that person's event. And you will often get, I've seen it anywhere from like 20 to 75% of that V I P upgrade. It's a really great way to practice launching because there's less pressure. It's not your own event. Often they'll send you graphics and email copy and social media copy, so you're not having to create all these things. You're really just using someone else's. And so you can use somebody else's program and sometimes it's easier to talk about somebody else's program. I feel like when you talk about your own stuff, you kind of feel like you're cocky, right? Or you get that feeling of ickiness almost, which you shouldn't because if you believe in your stuff, you shouldn't feel that way. But I feel like if you're talking about somebody else's stuff and you love it, it's so much easier.
Jenzaia: I love that. I really love that because that's so true. My thought was almost like a journal prompt. When you are launching your own thing and you’re like, how would someone else talk about this? Or how would someone else promote this for me? How can I kind of embody their confidence for my own thing?
Because it's true. You do have this level of confidence in someone else's thing that you love, that you might not have in your own program. And you might truly love your program and believe in it wholeheartedly but…I don't know why, maybe it was instilled in me growing up, but I feel like anytime you talk about yourself, you can't say you're beautiful.
You can't say you were really good at this because people perceive you as being cocky. And I always envy all those people who are so confident and can get out there and just talk about themselves all the time and say like, you know, I'm a bad boss B-I-T-C-H, but it's like hard sometimes to do that for yourself. But yeah, I'm getting over that slowly. Obviously as you get older, you get over those kinds of feelings where you don't want to be judged or you don't care about people judging you.
Jillian: I feel like my kids have really helped me with that, because we're on video. I just got my hair cut. I came home. My kids are like, mom, it's terrible. Like they're two and three. And I was like, no, I love this haircut. I think I look great. You guys stop it. And I mean, two and three year olds have no idea of anything. They just say things. And I cut like probably six to 12 inches off, so in their world it's like, well, mom has long hair. This isn't the same person. It's not so much that they don't like it. It's more like, it's just so different. But if you have kids, they can be really great confidence boosters. The ability to stand up in your own self.
Jenzaia: So my thought from there was I was perfect, leading into what are some ways that you can market your own teaching resources and services? Maybe from that perspective, like you're not super comfortable doing it yet, but then also once you gain more confidence in yourself.
Jillian: So I think one of the great things that I love about Teachers Pay Teachers is that if you have really good knowledge of search engine optimization, and you have really good covers and thumbnails and all of that, you can kind of get away with for a while, just having your stuff on Teachers Pay Teachers, because it's its own online marketplace and it's a search engine, so teachers are going to Teachers Pay Teachers and they're searching for solutions to their problems. So if you can provide them with those solutions just on that marketplace, there's not a whole lot of extra marketing at first that you would necessarily need to do. Obviously, marketing and doing all those things are going to help you make more money, but the fact that teachers pay teachers is its own online marketplace. Being able to learn more about search engine optimization and all of that can really make that work.
But using social media platforms, my favorite obviously is Instagram. I'm loving TikTok as well, because I think short form video content is a great way to get your face out there and get your resources out there. And TikTok is kind of like where you get all of the cold leads because more people are being exposed to your content on TikTok. Because it pushes it out to people who have kind of never seen your content before. And then Instagram for me is like that nurturing platform where you have your community of people and they've seen your content before, so you can kind of nurture them and help them grow even more or give them the information that they need based on them following you and wanting to see your content. So those are like my two favorites. I know that teachers do really well with Pinterest. I for some reason just don't. I cannot wrap my head around Pinterest, but I do have a guru in my course. I don't know if you know Emily Vales, but she's in my course and she is like the Pinterest Guru for our course. She has like a little workshop in there on how to use it properly and all of that.
Jenzaia: Emily's actually done an interview on Market Scale Grow before. So if anyone's interested in hearing, it was actually a really cool episode. We compared Facebook ads and promoting through Facebook and Instagram versus Pinterest and promoting pins. Because she has a bit of insight on both of them. So we did a little bit of a comparison game.
Jillian: Building an email list I think is really important and marketing through your email list, because these are people that you're nurturing and that you know want to be there for you and have stuff for them particularly. So if you can target them in different segments and all of that based on what they want from you, then that's really helpful. Another way is collaborating with other educators, because if you can market yourself to their audiences and vice versa, it's a win-win. You know, I'm all about collaboration. It's not a competition. There's enough people in this world for everyone to win. And to get resources from all different types of people and different types of content. So collaboration is really beneficial.
And of course Facebook marketing, which is your specialty. Which is really helpful as well. So those are kind of like the main ways that I feel are helpful for promoting yourself and your services.
Jenzaia: I love how you started with just using TPT as your base. Because I've talked about this in a couple of episodes over the last year, probably more than a couple, but to not like overload yourself to do all of these things at once. And it's so nice how much TPT has built in with the name recognition, the search engine in the platform itself, so that you can learn those different pieces that go into it. And then once you feel like you have that you can start to branch out and you don't need all of the things because TPT has a lot of it to start with for you. And then as you get more comfortable, all of those different pieces have different places in your business.
Like you said, Instagram is more for nurturing and building a community. TikTok is more for cold leads, and I've heard that a lot recently. Not converting a lot of people on TikTok. Just meeting people. But if there are these impulse buyers and they see your content and want to get in it right away, then that's great for that. But I think we talked about this on the episode that we did together where we took an omnipresence. And I think it's great that you can repurpose content in so many different ways. Having stuff on your Instagram that can actually be repurposed for TikTok and vice versa. And Pinterest has a lot of video stuff too, with their ideas, and with the idea pins that they have. So you can repurpose content from Instagram or TikTok to Pinterest. And you said it so well when you talked about an omnipresence and kind of being everywhere. But you can do it without feeling overwhelmed. Which I think is really important because all the different social media platforms can get very overwhelming if you are trying to do everything and be everywhere and talk to everyone. But I think that it's really important to remember what the end goal is and even if that end goal changes a hundred thousand times, what are you working towards? Because all of these little baby steps that you take are getting you closer to that goal.
Jillian: I think that it makes it a little bit easier when you remember what your purpose is and remember what your bigger goal is. And remembering that you don't have to do everything. You can start with TPT, get your stability there, and then move on to different things that you like.
Not everybody likes being on camera. So that Instagram, TikTok, those types of things, may not be your cup of tea. I do have a bunch of different videos on my Instagram that show you how you can kind of create a video without showing your face. So if you do want to still create short form video content, but you don't necessarily want to be the face behind your brand, you can do that as well. And then I think that's one of the great things about Facebook marketing that you do as well, because you don't necessarily have to be showing up on camera all the time. You can kind of like let it sit and let it do its magic the way you do and it works in the background.
Jenzaia: So, just as we're wrapping up, what would you say is like one or two tips for really creating that profitable and sustainable business as a side hustle, like if you're still in the classroom?
Jillian: I think identifying your specific, unique strengths and areas of expertise is the most important kind of first step for you. And then being kind of strategic in how you're going to show up. So you wanna stay up to date on trends and best practices in your field and all of that. But you do want to continuously assess and address your strategies as needed so that strategy and being intentional is really important when it comes to kind of like starting out and figuring out what you want to do.
So figure out your own unique strengths. Be strategic and intentional. And you'll be good to go. And don't be afraid to ask for help. I think that's important too. Like, you know, I needed help with Facebook marketing, so I reached out to you because it was so above my head. And I think asking for help and knowing that you're not going to be good at everything is okay. And there are people out there that are good, that can help you with the things that you're lacking in.
I have free training on how to create a specific type of resource for your Teachers Pay Teachers store, where I walk you through how to create a high quality resource from scratch. So I will take you through how to create it in PowerPoint. And it's multipurpose, so you start off with like a PDF that you can sell, but then it converts into a self-checking activity as well, which I think is amazing because teachers like to do different things in their classrooms. Some teachers really like principals. Some teachers love the fact that they can use self-checking activities. So it encompasses kind of showing how to do all of that in one training and how to create high quality resources that are in demand.
Jenzaia: I love seeing the behind the scenes of it when I got to work on your business. I highly recommend that if you're looking for an easy to use template to get you started or to spice things up a little bit, I highly recommend this training. Do you want to let everyone know where they can find you?
Jillian: Of course. So you can find me on Instagram or TikTok. You can also, if you are interested in joining a community of teachers who are all on a mission to build their business and their brand, I have a Facebook group. And if you want to check out my podcast, you can do that as well. It's Thriving Teacher Talk.
Jenzaia: Thank you so much for being on the podcast, Jillian.
Jillian: Thank you so much for having me!
Thank you for listening to this episode of Market Scale Grow. I'm so thankful that you've taken some time out of your busy schedule to make me part of your journey. If you love this podcast, don't forget to share it with your friends. And then head to your favorite podcast app to subscribe so that you won't miss next week's episode or any of the upcoming ones. And if you loved it, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcast so that other people can find this podcast and we can impact teachers and teacher business owners around the world!