E3. Unlock Your Earning Potential: 3 Reasons Teachers Deserve to Earn Beyond a District Pay Scale

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Hey there, teachers.

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Welcome to Teacher Business Buzz.

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Today we're talking true or false.

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Teachers deserve to earn beyond a district pay scale.

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Well, if you're new here, let me introduce myself.

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I'm Tiffany Webster and I am co founder of TeacherBusiness.com along with my husb, Dwayne.

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We have three amazing boys and I'm a former Disney princess turned K12 teacher and administrator for 25 years.

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And now I'm an entrepreneur and a top 10 charter school podcast host.

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But I'm really here at Teacher Business Buzz to help teachers like you turn your amazing talent into an online business.

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So we absolutely believe that teachers deserve to earn beyond a pay scale.

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That's why we are here.

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But we believe the best way for teachers to do that is to do two things.

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Number one, stay in the classroom.

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You've already invested a ton into becoming a teacher and establishing your teaching career, and that's not something you want to walk away from quickly.

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So we love to see teachers stay in the classroom and earn beyond that district pay scale by starting their own online membership business.

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So that's what we talk about here at Teacher Business Best.

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How in the world do you start an online membership as a teacher while you are still in the classroom?

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So every day we try to provide you some great business tips and strategies so that you can do just that.

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So let's talk about earning beyond a pay scale for a moment.

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Now, teachers, we are conditioned to believe that our worth is limited to that pay scale, or we tie our worth to the pay scale.

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So when we think about earning more, we really only think about in terms of that pay scale because that's what's available to us.

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And when we are looking at moving over from one column to the next, we absolutely feel deserving of that move.

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We probably get to move over one column because we've put in extra years or we've taken extra classes or earned professional development credit, or maybe even go back to school for a master's degree.

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So it feels really deserving to go from one column to the next.

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That doesn't feel weird or awkward at all.

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But I have noticed that when teachers go into starting their own business, sometimes they start to feel a little bit unworthy of earning their worth.

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It feels weird to charge somebody for their services or feels weird to charge somebody for a product that they offer.

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And that's just because it's new and you're not as familiar with your role yet.

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And so it feels really uncomfortable.

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And that imposter syndrome can start to sink in Suddenly you know, you were so confident about feeling that you deserve to move over when it was on a pay scale, but asking someone to pay to join your membership, that can feel a little bit awkward.

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So here on Daily Teacher Business Buzz, we're going to talk about how to work through those feelings of imposter syndrome so that you can feel confident about creating a business and about charging your worth.

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So today I'm going to give you three ways or three reasons that you deserve to earn beyond a pay scale so that you can go into creating a business with the mindset that you are worthy and that you deserve to earn more beyond pay scale by starting your own business.

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All right, let's take a look at these three reasons.

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Number one is that teachers have specialized knowledge.

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This is so true.

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You don't just have a lot of general knowledge.

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You have spent a lot of time going to school, getting a job, and honing your crafts that you can be really specialized in One area that might be elementary, that might be middle school, that might be high school.

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It might be a specific career and technical pathway.

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Whatever it is that you had your teaching credential in and that you have concentrated your career in is your specialized knowledge.

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And having that specialized knowledge is really, really valuable.

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So that's the first reason why you deserve to earn beyond a pay scale is because you have specialized knowledge that's really valuable.

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Number two is you have teaching skills.

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Okay, not everybody has teaching skills.

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And this might be something that you overlook because it comes naturally to you as a teacher, but not everyone is naturally a teacher.

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So your teaching skills are a really valuable asset.

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As a teacher.

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You know how to look at the big picture of a skill that you want someone to learn and then how to break it into incremental parts and teach them one step at a time to ultimately get to the results that they are looking for.

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That is a huge advantage and extremely valuable.

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So the fact that you are able to teach someone in little steps how to achieve a specific result is a very valuable skill.

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The other thing that teachers do naturally is personalize and differentiate.

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So when you are working with people and you're trying to teach them something, you also know how to personalize it to their situation or to their interests or to their likes.

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And that personalization is really valuable.

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You also know how to differentiate.

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Do you need to speed it up?

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Do you need to slow it down?

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Oh, are we missing a step here?

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Do you need to supplement it with something else in order to help them be successful?

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All those are your, like, secret Sauce and the special tools that make you very valuable as someone who is starting a new business.

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All right, let's take a look at number three.

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And that is that you can make a difference in someone's life.

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You can make someone else's life better or different as a result of teaching them a certain skill set.

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And that's huge.

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I mean, just for a second, imagine what it would feel like if you were a teacher in a classroom who was a really great teacher, but you were just really struggling with maybe some classroom management.

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Right?

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I've seen this happen, and sometimes it just happens.

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Like on an off year, you just might have a group of kids that are a little bit more challenging.

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And as a teacher, if you are really struggling with something like classroom management, and someone else who's really proficient in that area comes in and says, hey, I can really help you out here is, you know, the way that I organize my classroom.

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Here are some routines that I do.

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Here's the way that I give when they're doing well or when they need to reset, and you apply those same systems and those same methods, and then all of a sudden, you start to see results.

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That just makes everything so much better in your world as a teacher.

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Because now you've taken this classroom that was chaotic, brought it to a place of calm, so that you can do what it is that you do best, which is teach and reach students and impact students.

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So just because that classroom management came easily to that other teacher, it didn't come easily to you at this point in time, and them teaching you how they implement their systems and methods, well, they made a huge difference in your life.

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So never underestimate what you can teach someone that will make a massive difference in their life.

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Even if it's something that's really, really simple for you, you can make a difference in someone else's life, and that's very valuable.

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So when you put all of these things together, the specialized knowledge, the teaching skills, the making of a difference, well, that is what we call a winner, winner, chicken dinner.

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And yes, you can absolutely put a price on it.

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So I hope that gives you a little bit of a confidence boost that some of the things that you already have as a teacher, your special specialized knowledge, your teaching skills, and your ability to make someone else's life better or different, it really does show you how valuable your skills are.

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All right, with that in mind, we hope that you will continue to come back to the buzz every day so that we can have more of these business conversations about turning your teacher Superpower into a profitable online business.

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That will help us reach more teachers and letting them know what's possible and how to turn their teacher Superpower into a profitable online business as well.

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All right, we'll see you back here on the bus tomorrow.

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See you then.