Diversifying Your Income with Lauren Fulton | 128
If you’ve been a business owner for a while, you know how much your income can fluctuate. I recently sat down with Lauren Fulton from The Rebranded Teacher podcast to talk about diversifying your income. Lauren knows from personal experience just how unstable owning a business can be.
Lauren’s Story: Why You Need a Second Stream of Income
In case you don’t know Lauren, she is a full-time teacher, author, business coach, and stay-at-home momma. She is passionate about helping other teacher authors grow their businesses in purposeful and sustainable ways.
In 2020, when COVID hit and many schools went digital, Lauren went from making more than her previous teacher salary to worrying about how her family would pay the bills. “I was pregnant and freaking out,” she said. She was the primary earner in her home, and it was a scary moment. But it led her down the path of adding second streams of income and securing her family's financial future.
Now, Lauren shares what she’s learned about diversifying your income. So, I asked her the question you might be wondering, where do you start?
Step One: Decide What You’re Going to Sell
Seems really obvious, but there are a ton of ways you can diversify your income. When you’re ready to add in a second stream of income, Lauren suggests weighing your options and picking something you're passionate about.
Some of the less obvious income streams are selling physical products. Maybe you turn a TPT resource into a physical book that can be sold on Amazon. You could also begin affiliate marketing or create add-ons for your products, like a webinar or training video.
You don’t need to immediately start with creating courage or a membership. You can start small when adding that second stream of income.
Step Two: Grow Your Audience
Instead of being at the mercy of an algorithm, work on growing your email list and getting in front of new audiences. Email marketing can become your primary place for expanding your income and getting those cash injections if things get tight.
You also have to think about what people are currently on your list. Just because you have math teachers on your list doesn’t mean they are the type of teachers interested in a math course. This could be a totally different type of teacher. Therefore, you need to be consistently growing and generating more leads.
Step Three: Define Your Goals
When adding on a second stream of income, you want to come at it with a plan. If you simply jump in, you might find yourself overwhelmed and burnt out.
Create a realistic goal and a reasonable timeline to accomplish that goal. You don’t need to go from one income stream to five in a year - that’s insanity. Instead, grow slowly and steadily.
If you want to learn more from Lauren, you can check out her podcast, The Rebranded Teacher, and the conference she is co-hosting, called The Teacher Seller’s Summit.
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo, Jenzaia
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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.
Today I have an exciting interview for you. I am chatting with Lauren Fulton. She is a full-time teacher, author, business coach, and stay-at-home mama. She's passionate about helping other teacher authors grow their business in purposeful and sustainable ways.
And she supports teacher authors by providing step-by-step guidance through her podcast, The Rebranded Teacher, her membership, the Rebranded Teacher Academy and the Teacher Seller Summit, which is happening next week. I'm super excited about it! So welcome, Lauren. Do you wanna start by telling everyone a little bit more about who you are, how you help people, and how you got into it?
Lauren:
Yeah. Okay, so I'll just start with kind of like where my teacher business started, which was with Teachers Pay Teachers. As I know, it is the same for so many people who probably listen to your podcast. I started my Teachers Pay Teachers store back in 2016, and then started taking it really seriously in 2017 after I joined Shelley Reese's Focus Success course. And then in 2019, I left the classroom. I started out earning my teaching salary, so I left the classroom and started doing T P T full-time.
And then at the end of 2019, I started kind of just putting together like a few YouTube videos. And by a few, I mean like I think I did a total of four for teacher authors, like beginning teacher authors, kind of like some little tips. And I started a Facebook group for T P T sellers and then I got pregnant and I didn't wanna do anything. Like I did not wanna do a darn thing!
So I didn't touch it for a very long time. And then 2020 happened, you know, the pandemic. Major changes started to happen in my business because I had no digital products, which kind of leads into what we're gonna be talking about today. I had no digital resources. My income went from out earning my teaching salary to making a third of what my teaching salary had been.
Just so quick. It was devastating as it was for a lot of people. So I focused on having a baby and getting my store back to where it needed to be, like pumping out some digital products, which happened fairly quickly, getting it back up to where it needed to be. One morning I woke up and my husband told me, babe, do you know you have like 400 people in your Facebook group for T P T sellers? And I was like, no.
Went in there and I was mortified because people had been asking questions and like not getting any answers, like nothing had been happening. People had been joining this whole time. At that point, it had been close to a year since I had done anything with it cuz I had had the baby and all this stuff. And so I was like, I've gotta do something. Like these people are actually interested. They wanna grow their store. And so I kind of picked that back up at the end of 2020 and early 2021. And from there, the rest is history. Helping T P T or business owners grow their business has been one of my primary focuses since.
So I've launched some courses, I have a membership for T P T sellers, like helping them grow and diversify their business. So yeah, that's what I do full-time. I would say that's a full-time job. And then everything else that I do is another full-time job! Like I do a little bit too much. But yeah, that's my primary focus is helping other teacher business owners grow their business.
Jenzaia:
And one of the ways you do that is talking about diversifying income streams. Just what you were kind of leading into there when the pandemic hit and your income crashed.
Lauren:
Yeah, absolutely. You know, my business was only T P T. That's really all that it was. So yeah, I was pregnant and freaking out. Of course you have all of those hormones and like that anxiety that kind of comes along with that. And I was the primary breadwinner for my family or primary income source for my family. And so when that dropped out, I was like, oh my goodness, what are we going to do? It was really scary.
And so as soon as I got my store back to where I needed it to be and kind of got it back to where it was, my focus was getting it diversified, because I cannot have a kid and be wondering how I'm gonna pay the bills if something happens like this again.
I'm an Enneagram six. If anybody who's listening is familiar with the Enneagram, I'm extremely motivated by fear, like that is my primary motivator, which is good and bad. In this case, it served me well, so I started diversifying my income streams and I'm so, so glad that I did.
I now have four income streams that are just mine for my business, and then I have another four income streams with a business partner, so a total of eight that bring in a significant amount of revenue for me and for my family, and that has created so much peace and stability for me. So like when T P T is coming out with these algorithm changes, even though I was initially affected negatively by those algorithm changes, I didn't freak out about it because that's not what feeds my family anymore, or it's not the only thing that feeds my family anymore.
And so it's created a lot more security for me. I want other people to be able to experience that where they know like it's not, oh my goodness, what's the future of T P T? Should I even still be investing in this? Or what do I do? Like helping people get to that point where they're not worried. Does that make sense?
Jenzaia:
Absolutely. I've been on T P T since 2013, so there's been other moments, but it feels like since 2020, it's just been up and down and up and down and up and down. Like when one thing, “ends”, the next begins. Whether it's the algorithm or those ads that they brought out, or recent acquisition. So I think that diversifying your income has become almost a necessity. There's just no way to tell what's going to happen next.
And if there is anyone listening who doesn't have a T P T store, I think it's relevant for any business. Diversifying your income allows you to feel that security with or without a T P T business. You can rely on different pieces instead of just, well, all my money comes from this place, and then we're outta luck if that something happened.
So can you speak to like getting started with diversifying, because you currently have eight income streams, but I don't imagine that it was just like snapping your fingers and all of a sudden you have all these extras.
Lauren:
No, it definitely did not start that way. But I think that the biggest thing is having your own audience. Owning your audience. Facebook ads are a significant part of that, and play a significant role in that. But having your own email list or even s m s subscribers, just having the ability to contact your people at any point in time and sell them on any new product that you have, and that is extremely important.
Jenzaia:
Pause there.
Email does have an algorithm and so do text messages, but they have something in common there that's very different from social media. Like their algorithm is chronological order for both text messages and email. And that is very different from social media. That plays into, well, did they look at this person recently and how interested could they be? I don't foresee text message or email algorithms changing from chronological order anytime soon. I think it will be the standard for a long time because of just how important these direct type communications are.
Lauren:
And if that does happen, I would think that it would be at the recipient's discretion. Like the recipient would be able to choose how their algorithm or how the information showed up to them.
Jenzaia:
Yeah. But for sure, for longevity purposes, like you were saying before, like it's a much better long-term way to collect an audience, to collect leads or to grow and expand your audience than a social media platform for sure. Because we know that those are changing all the time and it's never been in our favor the same way that email marketing has, and email marketing has just stayed so consistent.
Lauren:
I do see s m s being something that eventually, like there will be so many filters and things like that designed to help people, you know, cut back on some of the SMS marketing because it's exploding so much. But I still see that being a major marketing tool just because everybody opens all of their text messages - with the exception of like a few extremely type B people who let it have like 170 unread messages.
So yeah, that's the very first important aspect. Having an email list or growing your audience and owning your audience. So when I first started diversifying my income streams, I started with marketing to t p t sellers. Like, that was my audience that I was trying to reach. And so, of course the existing email audience that I had was not gonna work for that.
So it was starting over, starting from scratch. But it doesn't have to be that way. It can be a very similar audience. I could have started with perhaps creating a course for math teachers, helping them teach virtually. Although, I definitely wouldn't have had an area of expertise in that because I never taught virtually, but I could have started with a course for math teachers.
But for the most part, I think you're gonna find, and in fact, Lindsay Bowden was on my podcast a few weeks ago. She helps people create courses. And she was talking about this like even if you're reaching out into a niche that you think is the same as yours, if you're selling a completely different product, chances are you're trying to reach a different customer.
And so even if you think, oh, this would be something that math teachers would want. It may not be the same math teachers as the people who are currently on your list. Like a math teacher who would purchase a course is not necessarily the same as a math teacher who wants to purchase a dollar resource from your store to use in her classroom. So just working on growing your audience is the very first step to diversifying income.
Jenzaia:
Yeah, I agree with that and I can't remember where I heard it, but the idea of if you have a hundred people or a thousand people on your list, and it doesn't matter what you sell, 1% of those people will say yes. If you have a thousand people, then that's 10 people are gonna say yes. But if you have 10,000 people, then that's a hundred people who are saying yes.
And so continually growing your list, and I don't mean just like filling it with garbage people, if you will, right? It needs to be quality leads that are engaging, but having that bigger list gives you security in your business that you can turn around and say, this is where we're going, or this is what we're doing in the case that something were to happen, which is just like you said, peace of mind that you don't need to worry about where your groceries are coming from or if you're gonna be able to pay the bills.
Lauren:
Yeah, it's extremely important. And so once you've got that list grown, like once you've started focusing on growing that audience, then you have people that you can sell anything to. And I think that was what was so powerful. I was listening to Amy Porterfield and she was talking about how impactful her email list was for her.
And I was listening to this at a point in time when I was like, surely people don't actually open their emails anymore. Like, this is like outdated business advice and like, nobody opens an email anymore. I didn't get it. You know, I probably had maybe 800 people on my email list for my T p T business. Which was another thing - my business was relying so much on T P T driving traffic for me versus me driving my own traffic. Which of course is another way if you want to create a business that is unstable, that's a really good way to do it, rely on somebody else for driving traffic.
But she was saying, I can send out an email tomorrow if I need income and something major happens to me personally and I need money, I can send out an email tomorrow and I will have that money. And I was really skeptical. Like I just didn't really see that and I thought, well, that's good for her.
And then after I got to the point where I had grown my email list and I saw that happen where literally I was like, you know what? I foresee this additional expense coming up inside of my business. So I opened up coaching call slots inside of my business and I was like, I'm just gonna open up some coaching call slots and we're just gonna see what happens and boom, that business expense was paid for.
And I was like, Amy Porterfield was right. And I felt like even though I had been selling things to my audience for so long, I had never just on a whim decided, you know what? I need money for something that I wanna pay for. Let me see if I can do this. And immediately the thing was paid for. And in that moment I was just like, yeah this makes me feel so much more secure and that if I need it, it's going to be there. It's almost like tapping into somebody else's bank account. I mean, I guess that's literally what it is, but that's what it felt like.
Jenzaia:
Yeah. And when clients come to me and they want to sell things and I tell them like, we're gonna spend the majority of your budget or not even we're going to, I recommend you spend the majority of your ads spend budget on list building. Sometimes it takes a little bit of a mindset reset to understand, but it's exactly what you're saying.
You're building the relationships, you're nurturing the people, you're creating the ecosystem in your business that people know you and trust you. And so when you do have something to offer, people are ready to buy. Whereas if you're just pushing out sales ads and sales ads and sales ads, you're not building those same relationships and nurturing people, and there's just so much power in an email list.
Also, like what you said about relying on the search engine, like T P T search is just really unstable, so having that second way to drive people to your products helps you take back control. I think that's another piece that we should chat about.
Lauren:
Yeah, absolutely. Because I'll sell products that are for math teachers outside of T p t. I'll sell them on my own website. Now, I don't have my Shopify store up yet, so this is like a duplicate of my T p T store. These are products that are seasonal, like I'm only offering for a limited time.
I'll sell them on my website. And being able to drive that traffic where I wanna drive it is just really powerful. And again, it creates that additional security of knowing even if T P T goes kaput, or they start to make business decisions that I do not agree with, then I can drive traffic to another marketplace. Or I can drive traffic to my own website. It gives me options, which is I think why every teacher business owner ever entered into the teacher business or the T P T business space. We wanted options for our family.
Jenzaia:
That's such a great point. Because you're right. Having the business gives you hopefully the freedom and flexibility to start making choices for yourself versus the choices that might be thrust upon you otherwise.
So after you've started expanding your audience and you put the work into growing your audience, what would you say is the next step towards diversifying your income?
Lauren:
Well, probably do this before you start building the audience. Choose what you wanna sell to them! So that probably would've been step one. So, you know, we covered step two now. Step one would be like, figure out what you wanna sell to them. So I think you have so many choices, and this is one of the things that I'm gonna be talking about at Teacher Seller Summit, is the different ways that you can expand and diversify some of the less obvious wins that I think that we don't even really think about and that I've never even personally tapped into.
But the thought in my brain is to like, just take products that I have and figure out a way to roll them into like a workbook. And sell it on Amazon. Like one of those print on demand type books where homeschool parents can purchase it. Just turn it into a workbook. Take what you have and figure out if you can turn it into something that you can sell or take something that you enjoy and see if you can turn that into something that you can sell.
Ideally it would be a combination of both. Something that you have and something that you enjoy. In a perfect world, it would be both. I'm not a creative person, so this would not be me, but like if you say you have a math audience and you start creating math t-shirts and you're selling those via Amazon, print on demand, like this is something that literally costs you no money to start. Like you're not gonna have to invest anything. There's no upfront cost for that. And so you can market those to your existing audience because you know they like t-shirts.
And I tested this a little bit. Last Cyber Monday sale, I created an Amazon affiliate account and I put together a catalog and I found other people's math teacher shirts that they had for print on demand and I put 'em in there as affiliate links and they were selling. So I know that that would work, you know, if I were creative enough to come up with things like my own math designs or whatever. But there are little things that you can do that you can to start diversifying your income stream right away. You don't have to immediately start with, oh, I'm gonna create a course, or I'm gonna create a membership, or I'm going to list all of my resources on another marketplace, or I'm gonna start marketing to Etsy, or I'm gonna expand out and try to collect leads that are homeschool parents and tap into another market.
You don't have to start with really big things. You can start with really small things that can help bring in additional revenue for you and for your business. But yeah, like just finding things that you enjoy and finding things that you have an interest in that would also appeal to your audience, I think is the best way to start.
So if you can find something to tap into the current audience that you have and expand with them, then that's ideal because then you don't have to start from scratch like building a whole new brand for yourself, which is, you know, a major undertaking.
Jenzaia:
The other one that you said before was coaching calls, which are another very easy, low investment. You don't really typically have to invest any money into getting started with coaching calls, and you can offer those to math teachers who are still in the classroom or to fellow business owners or whatever, wherever you might wanna go. Coaching calls is something that you can absolutely offer to pretty much anyone and can be a really good way to start that diversification of your income.
Lauren:
Absolutely. Or even tutoring. You know, like online tutoring is a really big one. We have at Teacher Seller Summit, Katie Geddes, she runs a whole out school business. I didn't know this, but you can hire people to teach underneath you. So like they work for your school. It's like a whole business. So you can work yourself out of the job and just set other people up to teach your classes.
And so she's gonna be talking about that at Teacher Seller Summit. There are so many ways to make money online. I think we think like, oh, well I don't wanna sit down and commit myself to tutoring because I'm a business owner. I don't think anybody thinks that there's a job that's too small for us. Do you know what I mean? But like, at the same time, there is that kind of mindset of feeling like maybe you would be going backwards because you're working towards passive income, but that can still be passive.
Creating an online tutoring business can still be passive. Or perhaps you're tapping into that teacher market and like you said, you're giving coaching calls for how to teach something specific, like maybe it's classroom management, behavior management, getting organized, things like that, that your community would be interested in
And you can give those coaching calls or workshops to them too. And I think that going off of what you just said, that it might not be your end goal. You might not want a tutor or do these coaching calls forever, but it gives you that extra security and that extra income to fund potentially whatever you do want.
Jenzaia:
When I was first switching, cuz I also have a T P T store. I transitioned from there into Facebook ads strategy. When I first started my Facebook ad strategy, my T p T store was funding this side of my business. Whatever money I made in T P T, then I could get another software or I could do little pieces.
And so I didn't necessarily want to be on T P T anymore, but it was funding. The growth of this business and now my T P T earnings, they just are there. Like they no longer are what funded my business, but if it hadn't been for them, then this business would've taken a significantly longer time to grow and happen.
And so I think it's worth it to do those less passive, more active. The what you don't necessarily wanna do long-term to get to the long-term goal.
Lauren:
So I'm doing that in two different business streams right now.
I'm my business number one with coaching calls. I have a weekly coaching program that's in addition to RTA. So RTA members can sign up for profit boosting, like a three-month profit boosting program or a three month email growth program, and we do weekly coaching meetings, like small group coaching. Obviously dedicating every Saturday morning and every Monday evening for like the next two years, it's not a part of my business plan, but right now that's like additional income and revenue that I can use to pay people to do things that are going to help me have passive income.
And then another thing that I'm doing is we…my business partner and I, Brooklyn McCarley, who is co-hosting the conference with me…I don't do very much without her anymore because she's incredible. She and I have a membership for our math teachers and currently the way that it's structured is we give them new products every month. Like that's what they get. Like every month they get this drop of new products that aren't available anywhere else. And like our long-term goal is not to be sitting down every month and creating 15 new products.
That's definitely not a part of our goal because that's not passive income. It's extremely active. However, what we're doing with that money is we're taking that money that we're getting paid from those teachers and we're using it to hire people to create those resources. So that at the end of the one year mark - which we're coming up on here pretty soon, thank God - we have a different type of membership that has a library of resources that they can access. And so we've essentially, the membership has paid to build that library that will be more passive.
So you're not taking a step backwards when you're creating active revenue, a lot of times that's just allowing you to get to having the passive income that you want. And if you look at it that way, then it doesn't feel like you're taking a step backwards. It feels like you're making that next big logical leap in your business towards having diversified passive income, which is really what we all want.
Jenzaia:
Okay, so we know what we're doing. We know that we need to build an audience. Any other further tips after that?
Lauren:
Yeah, so once you've built your audience, then I would say start on one thing at a time. This goes for me too. Like I said before, fear is like my primary motivator. So when I'm motivated, I am extremely motivated.
So I went from one income stream in 2020 to here we are now, two years later. Eight income streams, and that's obviously a really big leap to take. That's a lot of diversifying in the space of two years, and my health has suffered as a result of that.
I don't recommend it. I mean, it's been fun. I've loved every second of it, but then at the same time I struggle with anxiety and things like that. Those things happen, like anxiety, heart palpitations, like you start to see the effects on your body when you drive yourself to that point. So I would say like, for sure if you're like me and you're like, oh yes, I'm also motivated by fear.
I'm scared to death right now. Like, I wanna diversify my income. Take a step back. Pause and write yourself out a timeline. You know, tell yourself like, okay, yeah, like I wanna create a course, or I wanna create a membership, or I wanna be on YouTube and have income coming in from YouTube, or I wanna have whatever.
Make a list of the things that all appeal to you that you think would be really great ways to diversify your income streams, and then give yourself a timeline for it. Set reasonable goals so that you're not trying to fit everything in all at once. And it's going to allow you to grow at a pace that's much more reasonable.
It's gonna be much more healthy for you. But I think too, like you're gonna avoid some of the mistakes that I made that led to so much stress where you're trying to fit everything in and you don't even have time to process the growth that you've experienced. Or, you know, look around you and go, okay, I need to restructure my business to accommodate the growth.
And then you're not having to try to wear 5 million hats at once and be more stressed out than you were before your income stream was diversified. You know what I mean?
Jenzaia:
Oh for sure, like take it one step at a time. Create a growth plan for yourself so that it's manageable.
I love the idea of a growth plan because I feel like if you have it written down and you know, a YouTube channel is in the plan for, let's say Q1 of next year, 2024. So you have like six months before this thing is coming into play. So you can say, okay, it's in six months. Every time something for YouTube comes up in your brain, that's for January. Not now. And so you could always have a list of like, for YouTube I need these things, or whatever. And just so it gets outta your brain. You can say like, YouTube is q1. I just can put that on the back burner because I know it's coming.
You can release the things that aren't currently in the plan. Super, super important. Also, have you slowed down? Are you taking care of your health now?
Lauren:
Oh, I'm taking care of my health!
And I was up until 3:30 in the morning.
Well, TPT threw out this additional sale that is not normally a part of their plan. And I was like, you know, I've got these things that I always do. Like I always make a catalog. And I had like all of these new resources that were finished. So I was up packaging them.
But I have really tried to slow down. So naps are now like a part of my almost daily routine. I take a nap if I'm tired. The work will be there when I wake up. I've also started focusing on things that I enjoy outside of work. So like, you know, we got chickens this year, like we're doing the backyard homestead kinda thing. So being outside and getting my hands in the dirt has made a massive improvement in my day-to-day life.
I have slowed down a little bit.
It's like you get to the point where you see the success, you see the possibilities, and I think that's the bigger thing is you see the possibilities and it's really hard to get out of grind mode for me. So I'm trying to slowly kind of make that shift. My business partner…I don't really plan on starting any new business ventures unless I'm doing them with her, which does really help. Whenever I'm working with her, we both have the same goal of by the end of this year, actually take time off and rest. I think you just get like so many ideas in your head and you're just like, oh, but I wanna do that one. Like I wanna do this one too. And so it's a work in progress.
Jenzaia:
Well I'm glad. You have to take care of yourself because if you don't, then your body will, right? And you don't want your body to slam you down, like, no, you're done. So you're starting to take care of yourself before it kind of hits that point.
Okay. We've mentioned the summit a couple of times. I'm presenting! Talk a little bit more about the summit.
Lauren:
Oh my gosh, it's so good.
Even people who are not teacher sellers, I'm like, yeah, I've got this conference coming up and it's gonna be amazing. We've got all these incredible speakers. So obviously you are presenting on different ways to use Facebook ads to grow your business. Do you wanna tell a little bit about that?
Jenzaia:
So we're gonna chat about the three different types of ads that you can run. We're gonna talk about list building, visibility, and then sales ads and how they come together, how they will help create a more sustainable business growth for you.
Lauren:
Yeah, and I'm so excited about that because I've taken your course and it was so good, and I'm really excited for people to hear and learn more about Facebook ads because it's a game changer.
So yeah. So we have Farrah Henley, she's one of our keynote speakers, and she's gonna be talking about making the shift to c e o in your business, becoming the c e o of your own of your business. And then the other keynote is myself, which is one of the perks of starting your own conference is that you can make yourself the keynote, even though not everybody knows who you are.
And I'm gonna be talking about diversifying income streams, cuz like I said, I've got eight of them: courses, memberships, events, conferences, things like that. So ways to diversify your income stream, but how to get started and practical steps that you can take to get there. And then we have so many incredible experts.
So the goal of the conference was to help teacher business owners have a business that sells on T P T, but has the ability to pivot and do anything that they wanna do. So it's not just a T P T focused business. That said, we do have T P T experts, like Kristen Doyle is gonna be talking about seo.
We've got Erin Water, she's gonna be talking about creating graphics and thumbnails, like covers and thumbnails and things like that for your resources. We have Becca Davis, she's gonna be talking about optimizing your product listings. We have, I feel like I'm forgetting some people, but there are like, there are over 40 people and topics like selling on Shopify, like getting your Shopify store set up.
Lindsay Bowden is talking about creating your own online course and like getting it done in three months, like creating and launching an online course in three months. We have Martina Kahil, who's gonna be talking about launching a membership or creating a membership. She has an extremely successful six figure membership for E L A R teachers. And so I'm really excited for people to hear from her.
It's insane. We have people talking about growing your email list. I actually have, there's an R t A member who started growing her email list with the collaborative events inside of R T A as part of a challenge that we were doing as a group. And she has been so successful with it that now she's teaching other people how to do that, and I'm really excited for that session.
You name it, we've got somebody coming for it. Melody Munch is talking about being an influencer from Mrs. Munch's Munchkins. Susan Jones is talking about marketing on YouTube. So many incredible sessions. And in addition to that, what makes it different from other business conferences is we wanted this to feel like you were in person like as much as possible. We looked at what are all of the benefits to an in-person conference and how can we make this happen on a virtual level? So we are having live q and a panels, so we're having panels of presenters come on and answer questions about diversifying your income stream, about being a freelancer, about marketing on social media, or email marketing where you can show up live and just ask any question that you want.
We also have virtual hangouts, so we're gonna actually hang on Zoom and give different questions. Let's go around, maybe share how you feel about this topic, or let's have this conversation, like facilitating conversations so that people can actually talk and chat with other sellers and share ideas. Which is extremely powerful. And then we have coworking sessions. So one of the things at the T P T conference was that people would literally just like to go sit in the lobby and like to sit next to each other and work. I was like, we need that on a virtual level. We need for people to be able to go sit in a lobby on their laptop like virtually, and work with other T P T sellers in the room, have their little chat box going.
The platform itself that we're using to host the conference has forums, it has private messaging, so you can have public and private conversations with other sellers directly on the form and directly where all of the things are happening. We have a private podcast so you can listen to the sessions on the go. That was Sarah Whitaker's idea. I mean, no shocker there, right. She actually emailed me and was like, have you thought about doing a private podcast for this? And I was like, no, but we are absolutely gonna do that. So yeah, all props to her.
Jenzaia:
You just got me so pumped up about it, like I'm dancing. I'm so excited about it.
Lauren:
You know, it's the week before the T P T conference, and we were like, should we do this? We wanted to make sure there's plenty of time for people, for presenters and everybody to get ready and to prepare for it. But we were like, It's gonna be so much better than the T P T virtual conference that we're not even worried about it.
Although I'm sure the T P T virtual conference is gonna be good. So if you've already purchased a ticket for that, I don't want you to have like buyer's regret. But yeah, we're really excited about it.
Jenzaia:
Yeah, it sounds like so much fun. Thank you so much for joining me. If people want to find you, what's the best way?
Lauren:
The best way to find me is the Rebranded Teacher podcast. It's anywhere podcasts are. You can also find me on YouTube under Lauren Fulton, like just type Lauren Fulton. And if you wanna connect with me inside of my membership for teacher business owners, it's therebrandedteacher.com.
Jenzaia:
Awesome! Thank you again for coming on.
Lauren:
Thanks so much for having me! I'm so excited for your session at Teacher Seller Summit, and I'm so glad that you had me here today.
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