(I Haven't Made It Yet) Yes, I'm Still in Teaching and Building a Business - Ep 9

Well done me for making sure that it did not go wrong . In general , this is one of the few times where there has been a crossover of school and business . In most circumstances , if there's something that I want to attend , that's for business .

Whether it's sales , training , a conference , I book the day off and I'm on a zero hours contract with school , so I have every entitlement to do that .

Though , in the interest of consistency and being reliable , I can't do that too much , because I do have two fixed days agreed and we are hitting a point where I need those days off more ish than I can show up consistently , or we're getting to that kind of tipping point .

So , looking at the viability of it , I'm actually going down to one day from May , but on this occasion this was an opportunity to present for 30 minutes online on Zoom , and it therefore didn't make too much sense to take the entire day off for this to be a free talking opportunity as well . So it wasn't paid , so there's no swing .

That way had to weigh it all up and in this instance , it also didn't affect any of the teaching . There was no cover lessons . It didn't mean there was any additional work . It happened to be that I had two lessons where I wasn't allocated anything at that point in time and it could be created around .

So I delivered a session in one of the side rooms and I had a little picture on LinkedIn . Instagram is all over the place and I'm telling stories about this because , especially when you see the noise on and I'm going to say it I think LinkedIn is the worst place for this .

You see people talk about how they quit their job and they start a business and how wonderful it is three to five to 10 years later and how much success they're having .

And when you're first starting out , you're like , oh my God , I need to quit my job because these people will just like , quit their jobs and start their business , and the reality is that some of them may have done that . Some of them may have been in the position financially to just suck it all off , go straight in and be like I'm building my business .

And maybe they had their experience in the first year and broke even , but they had their savings to get them by , or maybe they did make some profit . What I found is that my methodology was to quit , to give me some space to work out what I wanted to do and how I was going to create this new life . That was very much what I wanted to do .

I was like I know I don't want to be fixed , I don't know what I want it to look like , but I know I don't want a fully fixed time table all the time . So just quit my job . And then was like ha , how are we going to make money ? I didn't even worry about this . Really I didn't worry about it at all .

It became a thought in December , bearing in mind that I was going to be breaking up from the holidays mid December and would get my last paycheck at the end of December .

Yeah , it only became a kind of thought in my head of I should probably , at this stage , think about what is going to keep me alive , because , as much as I have faith in the business , what if not ? And actually I do need to pay my bills .

Bear in mind I'd handed my notice in September , so I had plenty of time to work this out , and I had kept an eye on teaching jobs , not with the intention of going into teaching , because that would be a silly move given that I was coming straight out of it and I didn't want to walk straight back into it but I'd kept an eye on opportunities that had come

up . So there was a school nearby that advertised for a cover supply teacher and it was totally flexible , but it was paying the normal teacher rate and I was like , okay , this is interesting . Normally you go through a supply agency and you have like a day rate with them , but these guys were employing you direct and offering decent pay scales .

So I was like , oh , I can take this one . This is a bit like when I used to be a sound dep , which is kind of like dep duty . I don't actually know what it sounds like , but I think that's what it is , because you go in when someone's ill or sick and you cover the lowest track there is . It could be sound number two if there's any two people .

It could be sound number four if there's four . So I was like , oh , this works , like you've just got to be on the books of a few people . So I applied for that and I spoke to my current school at times like , hey , these guys are doing this , what can you do that ?

Similar , and admittedly they didn't do the pay as well , and I would argue that , union wise , there was a bit of an issue there , but it didn't come to that very often because I think I did a handful of days , like three or four , and that was it .

And then , in applying for the new school position with the supplies teaching my old old school , when I was asking for a reference , I said , oh , could you do that for us as well , please ? So I studied on the books of three schools and that is what I navigated with for the next few years .

I predominantly ended up with one because of the demand they had for work . The pay they gave was the best of them all , being out of London and even the travel didn't make much difference there , and eventually we came to sort of two fixed days a week with the flexibility of the fact it was zero hours .

So suddenly this industry that I'd left I was working back in and other people could say well , why did you just not go down to part time ? And that had been an option . People had floated it . In fact , the school had asked me when I was leaving . I knew that I needed to cut ties . It's been like a breakup man .

It's like , no , we're not gonna just have a casual relationship , because this is too blurry , it doesn't really set boundaries . I need to leave , I need to go . It needs to be a clean break and whilst I did supply literally on the first day that I was meant to be off I think it was with them the idea of part time barely might .

I'd been a quise streamer and ahead of year , it was gonna be incredibly difficult to not be involved , to not be seen in that way , to not feel pressure to step up and really fulfill the old role that I did , but just on like a two day basis , Even though it wouldn't be my remit . But you know people would default to you .

They'd wanna talk to you about the year group , like I needed the clean break and I needed the space as well to work out what I wanted .

So , yes , I was on the books of three schools and I found that whoo , working four days was too much and I know that that's a privileged position to anyone that still works five or six days , whether that's in their business or their old job . Oh yeah , all right for some . And yeah , it is all right for some , don't get me wrong . I took a pay hit .

I still do . I still am . I exist in this lower income that I experienced in teaching . I was on nearly 50K in teaching and I think I can't . I need to check all of my sort of self-assessment records . I would say it's around like 2025 , because you obviously offset expenses too , and on track for something similar .

Although the business has done better this year , I've also outlaid more . So it's like come see , come start swings around about at this stage . So income generation is on the up , but actual take home remains roughly the same cut . But teaching has kept me alive for this entire time .

Without it , I wouldn't have my house , I wouldn't have got by a week on week , I wouldn't have petrol in the car . I mean I could have really pushed in on tutoring . Maybe that's the other thing that I have that supports my income . Just because I'm still doing that doesn't mean I'm not taking my business seriously .

I've had to learn boundaries , such as four day weeks , don't work . I don't get much time in the business and two day weeks , arguably , are pain in the butt still because they're also consecutive days . So Tuesday , wednesday at the moment and you know what Tuesday's not so bad . You start Monday off , you have a day off .

The reality is is that when it comes to Wednesday , I'm like , oh no , wait , like I need to get on with the business stuff and I can't be dealing with another day in school and I have to wait up and be like , well , it is paying your bills .

You know you do need it , but admittedly it has been a pain when it's come to wanting to crack on with the business . But then I've just had to be more disciplined in the time that I've had the three other working days of a normal week , plus doing some work at the weekends .

That doesn't bother me because I have the flexibility to make it work around me , and that's a hard balance when you're thinking like I need to pay the bills .

And when I was doing it flexibly , I would have weeks where I'd have no days in school because no one had the work , versus then the next week where they'd want me every single day and I'd be like I can't do every day .

This does not work and this kind of unpredictability quite of when I'm going to be in , because sometimes you get caught on the day , sometimes you get a day or two's advance , so it makes planning time blocking very difficult if you don't have the fixed element , which is what I eventually had , but still had the honored flexibility .

Now , all of this talking about this is to raise the point that it's very normal , or it is a normal condition and circumstance , to be working in your old job , in whatever capacity , whether it's , you know , phasing yourself out four days , three days , two days , or going complete cut off and then revisiting the industry , but taking on a different position and a

different approach totally normal when you're building a business , especially if you have no business background and no business connections . Otherwise , the past few years , yes , I've pivoted , pivoted maybe even started a new business , we could say , but I have been upskilling in , I would say , every area of business .

The whole thing has required a complete learning curve and , okay , maybe it's like the equivalent of being at university , except it reminds me more of my teacher training year , where you're on the job learning at the time . I have had to learn terms , start understanding marketing , understand principles behind sales and get comfortable with that .

And I feel like I'm at this stage . I'm starting to really work on that sales skill . That's kind of just keep practicing and applying and experiencing so you get more experience literally . And now it's kind of moving more into business mindset where we are back at the habit phase , the discipline and also , more importantly , the motivation to keep going .

I think Parkruns are helping me with that , as previously mentioned on this podcast . You can go back and listen to the one about how podcast is helping me in my podcast , how Parkrun is helping me in my business , and that's where I think I'm really at . I actually have plenty of skills now . I can't say I'm a master at them all .

I think we've plenty more experiences , plenty more time to work on that , but I have all the things that I need now . There should be no excuse other than iteration , improving , trial and error , working stuff out specific to the business .

But I have the knowledge and some of the level of skill to make this work and to really prioritise what needs prioritising , to go in with a strategy that works and to start building up these multiple income streams and seeing how it works .

But as things currently stand , I'm still on two days as I record this , but the time this gets released , probably I should be down to one day and I fully anticipate that one day , one day I will be down to zero days . How soon that is . September is the year .

End of the year is like the second day , but if not , it's not the end of the world and even though I'll go down to zero , it might even be that I do go down to zero in September out of interest of the fact that I just can't commit because I don't know what day these things are going to be on now .

But in my head , every week I go what day would you like me ? Wednesday , thursday , friday ? You know you give the options around what you're available for , and so I don't work one fixed day , but I won't work one flexible day .

In my head , that's how I distribute the time out to again keep cash flow coming in and keep that as an option based on the fact that we're not in a secure position with the business just yet . Things are growing , things are going the right direction , networking is paying off , thank you , but there's not that stability yet .

I've got to still work on that and I've got eight , nine months of the year left to Work that out , to look at systems , to try some more stuff out . Eight , nine months is so much time .

It's also Not that much time to still stay in teaching and it's very , very normal to still stay in your previous industry in some capacity , whether it's just a different job but more flexible , or work from home .

So it cuts your travel time down or going down to part time to be able to sustain the life you currently live and the commitments that you have , whilst giving you some time to focus on your business . Other people have Been working a full-time job and work on the business . In fact I was doing that when I first started , first of eight , nine months .

It was just the fact that I went . I need more time for the visit . I want more time for the business that I went . Screw this . Let's get out of here , work it out again and build it up from the ground upwards again . But that doesn't make me any less of a business owner .

My predominant Title , if I want to call it , is , you know , founder . I don't know what point you shift that to CEO when you're the only one in it . Anyway . I'm the CEO , the CMO , the CFO , don't know . Don't know when that flicks over to you , establishing that probably once you've got a team . But that's where I'm at and it's , I don't think , unusual .

I want to make sure that we're not thinking that the only way to have a business is to suck everything off unless you have the funding already secured that you know it's going to cover a year or two years and you're going to be okay and that's different . But most of us start out at zero , zero Understanding .

We need to get sales and have cash flow coming in to fund what's going on , but not really Really having that set up and not having that system worked out and it being a bit feasting famine and maybe , like myself , you sometimes have to wait two months for a sale . It's , it's understanding that the growth is slow .

There's a lot to outlay at the start and there is a lot to learn . So don't Burn bridges with your old industry . See if there's a way to adapt it that works for you , and Don't feel downhearted or disheartened if you are still in your old industry and not fully in your business even a couple of years down there , because look what you have Got .

I think about the fact that I have the opportunity to go to the Eurovision last year in Liverpool because I was on a flexible contract . Had I been in teaching I couldn't have done it , and had I fully been in business I probably wouldn't be making money that would cover such an event .

So you have to look at what you do get , even in the transition , even when you're not quite there yet , even when you haven't made it yet . I