Ever experience that lightbulb moment when a child's fascination becomes the seed for a brand new venture? That's exactly what happened to me, thanks to my toddler’s dinosaur craze, leading to the birth of my new TpT store, The Busy Homeschooler.
Over the course of this podcast, I'm going to take you on a rollercoaster ride through the inception of a whimsical project turned (hopefully) serious business.
We're talking the full gamut of launching a new brand—a juggling act that you can relate to, and I'm laying it all out there, no holds barred.
Ever experience that lightbulb moment when a child's fascination becomes the seed for a brand new venture? That's exactly what happened to me, thanks to my toddler’s dinosaur craze, leading to the birth of my new TpT store, The Busy Homeschooler.
Over the course of this podcast, I'm going to take you on a rollercoaster ride through the inception of a whimsical project turned (hopefully) serious business.
We're talking the full gamut of launching a new brand—a juggling act that you can relate to, and I'm laying it all out there, no holds barred.
And it all starts here!
Speaker 0:
So I started another TPT store and I know a lot of you guys have a lot of questions and, quite frankly, I kind of have a lot of questions for myself too. There have been days where I've wondered, like why the heck did I do this? It's been about a month since I started working on everything and I just posted my first TPT product gosh this past weekend. I say about a month, so it was about three weeks from the time that I started to the time that the products were posted to TPT, and by products I mean one paid product and one free sample of that paid product. I kind of want to just start this episode with why did I start another TPT store? Like, why have something totally separate? Why move into a completely different niche? First of all, I think it's important that you know a little something about me, and that is that whenever I get a little bit overwhelmed with something in my business or in my life or whatever, I'm looking for an outlet Like what am I going to do? Am I going to get more chickens which I did this year as well, Well over double the limit of what I'm supposed to have in the city? But you know what? You don't tell anybody and I won't tell anybody. So am I going to get new chickens? Am I going to start a garden? Am I going to, you know, start a YouTube channel for baking sourdough? Not that one. Yet I'm not there.
Speaker 0:
But in this case it was, you know, start creating pre-K resources for my toddler, and in the moment it made a lot of sense, but I really truly was not thinking things through in terms of whether or not this was actually a good business decision. Turns out, I really think that it was, but we'll see as time goes on. But a lot of times I'll kind of start something on a whim. So for really big, scary things that I don't feel familiar with, like, you know, creating a new course or, you know, opening a membership, some of those things that were a little bit bigger milestones in my business world I would always think about it and then I would tell myself okay, you've got six weeks, finish these projects that you're working on right now, finish what you're doing right now. And if in six weeks you're still thinking about this and pray about it obviously, like you pray about it and if in six weeks you're still thinking about this and this still seems like a good idea, then go ahead and do it. It's kind of like for me, starting a new business venture is sort of like adding things to your cart on Amazon. If you don't watch it, it gets really out of hand really quickly and you've spent way too much money or, in business world, way too much time on something that you didn't need. So what I do on Amazon when I'm shopping is I add it to my cart and I'm like, if I'm still thinking about that product that I wanted to purchase in a few weeks from now or the next time that I come back on Amazon, even shoot. If I'm still thinking about it tomorrow like most of the time I'm not even still thinking that I need it tomorrow then you go ahead and purchase it. So with business decisions, that's usually how I operate, but in this particular case I didn't.
Speaker 0:
My daughter had been asking for. She's like an absolute fan of dinosaur resources, loves dinosaur everything, dinosaur pajamas, dinosaur resources. Loves dinosaur everything. Dinosaur pajamas, dinosaur clothes, dinosaur toys. If it has a dinosaur on it, she's eating it. If they made healthy dino nuggets, she would be eating dino nuggets like that would probably be the only thing she would eat. So she kept asking for all of these things, right, and I had purchased multiple resources on tpt and what I downloaded things that I found from pinterest or etsy or wherever and what I downloaded things that I'd found from Pinterest or Etsy or wherever and what I was finding across the board is that there were so many really incredible resources out there in terms of, like all these crafts that you could do, or maybe like D is for dinosaur, where you're studying the letter D, but there really wasn't anything I was finding that was comprehensive, engaging and like no prep and I'm not saying that it wasn't out there, that it doesn't exist, but I wasn't coming across a lot of that stuff.
Speaker 0:
So I felt like I just kept purchasing, purchasing, purchasing little pieces, rather than having something that was going to last me for several weeks. I would only have to print out once and didn't have to do like a lot of crafts. Right, Because you know, ideal world, I want to do crafts with my toddler, but the truth is I really don't have time between toddler, multiple businesses, newborn to sit down and to cut things out and explain directions to her every day. So I needed schoolwork that was going to be really, really simple so that we could fit it in consistently. So with that need in mind, I was like I'll just create you something.
Speaker 0:
And as I started kind of creating something, I was like you know what? Actually I think I can make something that's pretty good. So of course I have to put this on TPT. So then of course that led to I've already got my name, Lauren Fulton, I've already got that store. So I can't really open another store called Lauren Fulton. That wouldn't make a whole lot of sense and a lot of buyers would be confused, right. So I started thinking about what can I call myself.
Speaker 0:
So I started doing my research on what was already taken, what was available on social media, domain names, all of that kind of stuff, and I came across the busy homeschooler. The domain was open, something close to it on social media was open. The exact social media handle has already been taken, but it's like completely blank, Like nobody's ever done anything with that account. Maybe at some point I'll try to buy it, but right now I'm not really interested in that. But yeah, and there wasn't a name on it for TPT or a blog or anything like that. So I just went with it and purchased the domain, purchased the email, started the Shopify, like started doing everything right away, before the product was ever even created, which I don't really recommend.
Speaker 0:
But I started to do everything right away and kind of that instant gratification that sometimes you get whenever you're a little overwhelmed and you're like, oh, I feel like I accomplished something. Now, did I really accomplish the thing that I needed to be accomplishing in that moment? No, but I felt good about it. So that's kind of how this whole store started was on a whim. I continued with it, because sometimes I'll do something on a whim and then I'll be like that was not very smart of you, Lauren. Maybe you should back off of that. Say, hold on to that domain. I mean, I think I bought the domain for like five years, like not even lying. I was so convinced in that moment that this was going to work.
Speaker 0:
So afterwards I got to thinking about it and started to think about whether or not this really was a good idea, because it's obviously creating preschool resources which, as you guys know, is really saturated. Like I'm in secondary math. There are a lot of other secondary math sellers, but the competition is nothing like pre-K right. So entering that into that world is obviously something new. It's something very different. But there are a couple of things that made me decide like no, I'm sticking to this, I'm definitely going to do this.
Speaker 0:
And number one was just curiosity, Like, can I do this? Can I take the skills that I have and transfer them over into something that's really competitive and will it work? How fast will it work? Viewing it as a little bit of an experiment, Can I do it with me creating just kind of the basic outline of the resource and somebody else doing the majority of the work? A lot of questions that I would kind of like to have answered and just a lot of curiosities there. Another thing was just kind of a creative outlet. I'm having so much fun with this. Like, I'm having so much fun with this. You guys, Pre-K is way more fun than secondary math, but it's also so much cheaper to create resources for pre-K.
Speaker 0:
Now, not in the clip art department. I'm starting to understand why people have said like, oh, I've got like folders all organized in Google Drive of all of my clip art. I'm getting that. Now I'm understanding. It's more fun, it's more playful. It definitely is something that, like you know, you do it for the number one and you've got to do it for the next. You know nine, 10, 20 numbers, right? Same for alphabet. You do it for the letter A and then everything's pretty much laid out, format wise for the rest of the letters. So it's something that's a lot simpler to create in terms of what I'm creating not saying that everything is simpler to create. I feel like there's a whole lot more clip art for it, clip art available for specific resources. Like I didn't realize that there were. There was clip art for, like counting watermelon seeds and, like you can, the clip arts already made. It's like one watermelon seed to watermelon seeds. Like didn't realize that. So it makes it a lot simpler to create some of these resources. But also like but also it's something that a VA can do, so I can create that line, I can tell them what to do, I can send it to them and then they send it back to me when it's done and we kind of go back and forth like that. So a lot of I'm having a lot of fun.
Speaker 0:
So curiosity, creative outlet, and then finally it just monetarily it made sense. So something clicked with me. That little dangerous thing kind of clicked with me about two weeks into this journey. And that was everything that I purchase for a blog post, like children's books to do, children's books about dinosaurs or different crafts, or anything that I'm purchasing for my toddler, Like when I'm purchasing markers or dot markers for my daughter to complete these workbooks that I've created so that I can take pictures of it, put it on the blog, put it on social media, put it on the product listing All of that becomes a tax write-off. So there are a lot of things that I purchase every day for my toddler that now are becoming a part of a business, that become a business write-off, a business expense. So a lot of ink that I purchase that I typically would just use to print out her pages, now because I'm printing them out and using them in product photography and using this to help sell the resource that I created, it's now a write-off.
Speaker 0:
By the way, I'm not an accountant. Okay, I'm not a tax accountant. Please consult with your own tax accountant about that but this is this is something that's clicked for me, that I feel really confident in. So in my mind, I was then able to justify a lot of things, Like, if I'm purchasing books to see if they're good enough to use for affiliate marketing, then I can write those books off. Now, obviously it's still an expense, it's not free, but you know, doing a little girl math here, it kind of feels free to be able to do that. So once that kind of registered for me, I was like, okay, even if I'm able to just take these items that I would love to purchase for my daughter more often, like books or more craft supplies and things like that, and not only am I going to be able to hopefully make money on affiliate sales through those things, but I can use the purchase of those things as a tax write-off because they were used for my business, things as a tax write off because they were used for my business, then this kind of starts to make sense financially for me a little bit more right, the investment that I'm making financially starts to kind of seem like it's going to even out. So yeah, those were the three reasons that I continued. So I started on a whim but I kind of continued this for three different reasons.
Speaker 0:
And another question like why start another TPT store, in terms of like why not put your products in the same TPT store that you already had? For me the answer is really simple, Like I know a lot of people will tell you hey, you can put them in all your products and resources in your same store, just have different custom categories. And that's true For me personally, I felt like this is going to be a slow growing store. This true For me personally. I felt like this is going to be a slow growing store. This is not going to be something that I have 20 hours a week to dedicate to and I can knock out a lot of products really quickly. It's going to be slow growth.
Speaker 0:
So when people come upon my product, find one of my resources, I didn't want them going to my TPT store and being confused as to why, you know, the first 20 pages of bestsellers are all secondary math. When they came there to find pre-K and for them to have to go hunt for in the custom categories and things like that, I also didn't want to take time to like create banners and do it. And honestly, you guys, it's such a different niche that the branding is different too. Like the way that things look in pre K is very different from how they look in secondary math. That was so far outside of the norm that it would stand out like a sore thumb in search, or I would have like a hodgepodge of inconsistent branding with products in my store, and I didn't really want either one of those things.
Speaker 0:
So for me it was like, okay, you know, I'll pay the what $30 fee that they have to open the store, and then I think it's 60 bucks a year $59 a year for a premium seller Like I'll just go ahead and pay that. It's a small investment to just kind of have everything separate. But yeah, I'm having a lot of fun with it. So in the next podcast episode I'll talk a little bit more about some things that I'm doing differently, some ways that I'm approaching this differently. But I wanted to just kind of start this off with, like, why I started another TPT business and answer some of the very basic questions that I'm getting already about why I put everything in a different store and some of my thought processes behind, why I'm going to put most of my effort into this pre-K adventure.