Five Takeaways on the Teacher to Teacherpreneur Transition

Oct 15

Written By Andrew Woodbury

Tips from our webinar with James Liu from Bowei Strategy

Read time: 6 minutes

Here’s our TTT for this week on how to grow your online teaching business.

What is TTT? A Tip, Takeaway, and Task. On Thursday.

Enjoy!

Tip: Overcome Obstacles One at a Time

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.

If you weren’t able to attend live, watch the recording here.

Takeaway: 5 Takeaways from the Session

Let’s dive into the five main takeaways from the session.

1. Why niche teaching is important

The word “niche” can be overused, but it simply refers to the type of person you help.

Having a niche makes your and your student's lives easier. Specifically, a niche allows you to:

Get more students
Charge a higher rate
Have more targeted marketing - you know who you are looking for and those people are looking for you, too

2. The differences between a general and niche teacher

Being what’s called a “generalist” is quite common in online teaching. It makes sense since many of us transitioned from a traditional classroom to working with students 1-1 online.

However, in the online space, there are quite a few important differences between a general teacher and a niche teacher, including:

A “generalist” works with any student on anything
A “niche” teacher works with a specific profile of person who has similar challenges
A niche allows you to get better results for your students since you work with those same challenges over and over.

3. Don’t teach just to teach. Rather, help solve problems

Very few learners want to learn English for English’s sake. Instead, they want to be able to do something they currently struggle with.

With this in mind, a small yet helpful mindset shift is to not teach the language but to help solve problems.

James mentioned some great techniques to accomplice this, including:

Don’t teach students where they are; help them get to where they want to be
Most people don’t want to learn English just to learn English; they want to do something with it
They want to become something they are not currently, and that’s where you come in
Instead of focusing on English itself, focus on the result (eg: being a better communicator)

4. Know where to tap

When you know how to solve your niche’s problem, we call this “knowing where to tap.” And this is what clients pay for. Rather than charging for your time, you charge for your knowledge of how to solve the problem.

Leo told the story of an older man fixing a boat’s motor that wouldn’t start.

The invoice he sent?

$2 for 1 minute of his time.

$9,998 for knowing where to tap.

In the language industry, we’re firm believers that you methodology is your differentiator. This is how you help your niche transform from the person they currently are to the person they want to become. And with responsive pedagogy, it’s transferable to different students within your niche.

We discussed two types of responsive pedagogy:

Task-based language teaching
Dogme ELT
Learning by doing by John Dewey

5. Develop an asset for your business

Selling our time is great to get a proof of concept in a new niche, but ultimately isn’t sustainable over our careers. Our businesses really do need a type of asset.

This is the service that you sell that comprises some of your time and other components that do not. It allows you to help more students and work less at the same time.

A great option is to have your own course that serves your niche. A course can be wide-ranging in what it entails - look out for our A-Z of course design series coming up soon.

Task: Get Started

At the end of the webinar, we talked about how some of the biggest obstacles exist between the ears. With that in mind, small steps are essential. As cliche as it is, doing your 1% per day is the mindset that compounds success over time.

James and us here at LYE know that you’re capable of doing what you want to do. So your task this week is to do one thing - that 1% - that moves you in that direction.

What is that one thing?

It could be to talk to one prospective client.

It could be to write or re-write your niche statement.

It could be to update your LinkedIn profile and connect with new people.

Whatever it is, our advice is just to go ahead and do it. And make adjustments later.

If you want a little bit of help with that, James and us here at LYE can help with that, too.

21-day Challenge:

James has a 21-day challenge for Teachepreneurs looking to get started. Over 21 days, you’ll get daily support from him to get students online immediately at the rate you want.

35% off next month.

Click here to check it out.

TBLT Made Easy

New to task-based learning and using it in your classroom? Try it out and lower your planning time right away.

$9.99/month and cancel at any time.

Start here.

Free Guides for Teacherpreneurs

We have some free guides to help teacherpreneurs get started and gain momentum.

Check them out here.

We hope this helps.

See you again next week.

Leo, Andrew, and Mike