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

I've been a teacher since 2014, when I started training in schools, and since 2022, I've been transitioning from education to entrepreneurship. 

Online, it's easy to see everyone talk about the success of their business and quitting their old industry. But I'm here to normalise doing it slowly, one step at a time, and to validate that finding a complementary balance between your old venture and new can be the way to make it work for you - even if that means getting to a stage where you're delivering a business session in the middle of a school day! 

I'm no less of an entrepreneur or a business owner because I'm still in teaching. And it turns out, zero-hours contracts aren't as bad as the reputation they get when they work for you and give both parties what they need!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

This week. I want to talk about the experience that I've had recently, so you may have seen posts going out that talk about the time when I was doing a presentation whilst in the middle of a school teaching day. I'm not being funny. It was a bit of a weird one, although very much prepared for it. 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.

Speaker 1: 1:49

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.

Speaker 1: 2:39

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.

Speaker 1: 3:35

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.

Speaker 1: 4:30

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.

Speaker 1: 5:30

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.

Speaker 1: 6:09

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.

Speaker 1: 6:57

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.

Speaker 1: 7:53

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.

Speaker 1: 8:16

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.

Speaker 1: 9:21

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.

Speaker 1: 11:05

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.

Speaker 1: 11:47

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.

Speaker 1: 12:45

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.

Speaker 1: 13:54

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.

Speaker 1: 14:35

But most of us start out at zero, zero Understanding.

Speaker 1: 14:39

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.

Speaker 1: 14:56

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