Many teachers promote helping their students with "confidence." And while this isn't a bad thing of course, we recommend looking at it in a different way. 

Confidence isn't really quantifiable. Selling an emotional result can be a difficult business proposition. It makes it challenging for the client to know when they've achieve the result, attribute that to your service, and for you to re-sell them. 

But it's actually more challenging for another reason:

Choosing a niche isn’t like going shopping and picking one of the shelf.

Rather, it’s really part of your journey.

A fusion.

And that’s what Maggie Rogers did when she impressed the entire world with her niche of one.

One of the most common questions we receive from teachers is “Do I REALLY need a niche?”

Our answer is quite simple: if you want to have a business and not just a hobby, yes.

In this newsletter, we dive into why.

Hint: it’s not for its own sake.

Dr. LePera says our bodies enter what’s called a “sympathetic freeze state.”

This is kind of like hibernation, where we are not able to push through. Our bodies don’t allow us to keep going because of the perceived threat, so we stay in procrastination mode.

For you, you may have had goals that you’ve put off or delayed for this reason.

Putting things off until the next quarter, the next semester, or next year? Your body might be in the sympathetic freeze state.

The newsletter has definitely made a comeback. And with the algorithm changes we’ve seen recently to the main social media platforms (not for the better), owning your audience has become more vital.

A newsletter is a great way to do this.

And it’s not simply about collecting emails. It’s about many supplemental benefits as well.

Here are the 5 best ways to utilize one.

Let’s first say this: imposter syndrome is a crutch, not an excuse. There are a lot of people that use it as a reason to stay complacent and not move forward. The reality is that everyone experiences imposter syndrome.

Everyone.

Successful people move forward anyway. Unsuccessful people complain about how bad their imposter syndrome is.

For Beyoncé, her imposter syndrome was nearly crippling. So used the character invention tactic that thousands have used to overcome imposter syndrome.

The majority of people follow the 1% mindset of having incremental progress each day. This makes them feel good. It isn’t a bad thing, of course, but it comes with a consequence: we tend to lose sight of the end goal.

If we have the mindset of “if I get better each day, I’ll reach my goal eventually,” what is eventually?

5 years? 10 years? 50 years?

What if 50 years go by and you look back and you still didn’t reach your goal? How would you feel?

This is the exact mistake of incremental progress when what we’re really doing is giving ourselves an excuse not to take a risk.

We view Dogme as part of the process, not as the end results in itself. Which means it’s a tool in the teaching toolbox to be used when appropriate.

One way this works really well is within a curated, personalized student experience. This is a fancy way of saying a course.

Once you have your self-directed steps for your niche to follow, let the Dogme tool shine in the live sessions with your students.

Before we dive in, if you have a negative reaction to the word “niche,” that’s perfectly normal.

It’s used at nauseam and is rarely explained or extrapolated on.

Many teachers ask questions based in skepticism that all mean similar things:

• if I niche down, won’t I lose clients?

• if I niche down, won’t it be more difficult to find clients?

Logical questions, to be sure. And the answer is “no.” This is short-term thinking that derails the long-term plan.

So, let’s get into the five advantages of niching down.

Many teachers secretly want to charge more. And while you shouldn’t be reluctant to raise your rates, just because you want more money doesn’t mean you deserve it.

This is the hard truth: you don’t deserve to charge more just because you exist.

But at the same time, charging more is essential to sustaining a healthy business. Inflation and other factors make this a guarantee.

So, here’s the question for you: what are you willing to do to deserve to charge more?

An online course can be whatever you want it to be.

The word “course” gets thrown around a lot. Like everything, we tend to attach our own preconceptions to that term.

We define a term based on our own experiences. This is to be human. But in the online education space, this can also hold us back.

Don’t let the definition hold you back.

Let’s address a few misconceptions first.

#1: Audience curation isn’t a numbers game.

#2: Your content should filter in and filter out.

Your task this week is to:

A. do something interesting, and then create a series of posts about it.

B. reflect on the interesting things you already do, and then create a series of posts about it.

Let’s address a few misconceptions first.

#1: Audience curation isn’t a numbers game.

#2: Your content should filter in and filter out.

Your task this week is to:

A. do something interesting, and then create a series of posts about it.

B. reflect on the interesting things you already do, and then create a series of posts about it.

“Every winner and every loser have the same goals” - Atomic Habits

That’s why setting goals is a waste of time.

But here’s the thing: your goals don’t make you unique. Rather, it’s the things that you do that make you unique.

Why does James Clear argue that every winner and every loser have the same goals? Because they do. What separates them is how they go about achieving them.

What’s your philosophy of teaching?

It’s a question we as teachers get asked quite frequently. It appears on job applications, in PD sessions, and we certainly ask ourselves from time to time. 

But how often do you sit and write it down?

When we first started we asked one of our mentors how often we should send a newsletter.

They responded by asking “how often do you want to make money?”

This is facetious of course. But only to an extent.

A newsletter is a great way to interact with your audience and the people who value your work. And each one you send increases the chances of finding someone who’s ready to take their skills to the next level.

We had the opportunity to co-present with James Liu of Bowei Strategy this week on the transition from being a teacher to being a teacherpreneur.

Whether you’re moving out of a traditional classroom, moving online for the first time, or getting fresh into teaching, the webinar covers some key strategies to get started.

Teacherpreneurship provides ample opportunities but also poses some challenges. Overcoming these or avoiding them altogether can help expedite the path.

Audience curation may be the most difficult and also most important aspect of having your own business. Without an audience, we don’t have anyone to sell to, right?

So how do we build one from scratch? Let’s dive in.

Let’s get a misconception out of the way right off the bat: this isn’t a numbers game.

Flow theory was originally championed by Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow experiences have the following characteristics:

1. they have concrete goals and manageable rules.

2. they make it possible to adjust opportunities for action to our capacities

3. they provide clear information about how well we are doing

4. they screen out distractions and make concentration possible

We're so wired to see results and returns quickly. We desperately want others to validate our ideas. Imposter syndrome, insecurity, and dopamine drips drive this.

But if we seek immediate gratification, we don’t give ourselves to flesh out the really good and scalable ideas underneath.