In this episode, I share my journey into the world of Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT). I started selling educational resources in 2011. In the process of making thousands of dollars on TpT... I discovered clues to my true Super-Power.

Takeaways:

• Identifying your unique strengths can lead to the discovery of your teaching superpower.
• Pay attention to what you're naturally good at; it may reveal potential business ideas.
• Mastery in a particular skill can be a good indicator of your strengths as a teacher.
• Recognizing patterns in your success can help you leverage them in your career.
• Become the go-to person for specific tasks; it indicates your natural abilities and strengths.
• Explore how synthesizing and organizing information can become valuable assets in your teaching career.

P.S. If you enjoyed today's episode, I'd love for you to leave a review and share this podcast with a Teacher friend! Together, we can show Teachers what's possible.

Stay in the Loop → subscribe to email & text messages

Watch the Show → TeacherBusinessBuzz.com

Join the Movement → TeacherBusiness.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• TeacherBusiness.com
• TPT

Hey, teachers.

Welcome to Teacher Business Buzz, the only daily business show just for teachers.

I want to ask you, are you missing out on clues to your superpower?

This week we are uncovering all the different ways that you might find clues to your superpower, AKA your specialized skillset or knowledge that you could teach other people and turn into a profitable online business.

Today is part two of our series.

If we haven't met before, I'm Tiffany Webster.

I am the co founder of TeacherBusiness.com along with my husband Dwayne.

And I am a K12 teacher and administrator for the last 25 years and a top 10 charter school podcaster.

And today, what I'm talking about is my TPT story.

That's what everyone was starting to do back then.

So as I created some resources for my classroom, I started selling them on tpt.

I didn't have a huge plan about it, and some way, somehow, over the course of time, I have managed to make thousands of dollars selling things on tpt.

But I'll tell you, I was really great at creating entire units, right?

I was just making things in my class and then putting them on tpt, but they weren't really part of a big cohesive unit.

I also discovered that I wasn't great at originating designs.

I didn't have a lot of really great ideas.

It was hard for me to picture what a product should look like and how it should be laid out and how it should be organized.

But what I did find out is that I was great at decomposing the designs of other people.

And by that I meant, like, I could take a look at what they were doing and I'd be like, oh, okay, I see this has a border around it.

It has a font.

Then these bullets are on top.

Then this clip art is on top of the border, but it's under the text, right?

So I was able to start really decomposing what it was that I was looking at.

And I also found that I was really good at Googling, right?

Googling how to.

It was like, just when I would learn to do one thing, someone else would do something like add in a drop shadow.

And I'd be like, oh my gosh, how did they do that?

So then I'd be on my Google, like, how do you add a drop shadow to something?

And I would figure out, and I was working back in PowerPoint back then.

And so I would just search all of these things.

The good thing about that is I realized I was good at teaching myself.

I could really look at the way that something was done, google it, watch a little tutorial, and replicate it.

So that became a pretty good skill to have, being able to teach myself how to do some of this tech.

And then I also found that I was really great at taking the inspiration of other people and then making it my own.

So I may not have had the idea to add a drop shadow to something, but once I saw it was possible and learned how to do it, then I could add that to my own designs and get the same look and the same effect.

So that's what I really figured out that I was good at.

Now, what is the point of me telling you all of these things?

It's because sometimes we don't recognize that those little steps that we go through can really be the clues to what our teacher superpower is and eventually what we might be able to turn into a business.

I certainly didn't back then.

I thought that I really was just going to be creating a couple resources, put them on tpt, and that's really all I was thinking about at the time.

So as I kept doing it over time and I began to see the things that I was good at, I realized that I had a knack for synthesizing information and organizing it and making it look cute.

And that kind of became my thing.

In fact, the products that I probably sold most on TPT have to do with taking information and making it look cute.

I might take a scope in sequence for entire year or breaking it down by the month, adding that border, adding some clip art, making it look cute, and those are the types of products that would sell.

But the results of me figuring that out and honing that skill over time is that I began to see that I would be much better off focusing on being a TPT consumer and a student of the design instead of a TPT seller.

So that changed the course of my direction.

So although I have made thousands of dollars on tpt, I really focused more on being that consumer of the products and the student of the design so that I could continue to hone my craft, which is digital design.

And as a result of that, I am now a digital designer.

I'm a website designer, I'm an expert in canva, and I'm an online course creator.

So I discovered that my superpower really was about having this eye for design and being able to look at something and decompose it into its parts.

That way I could look at somebody else's design, get that inspiration, but find a way to make it my own and now build my own brand based on the things that I love.

And so that was a really great skill, skill set to have.

And I wouldn't have normally looked at that as a superpower, but because I saw the value in it and kept practicing it and found a way to make it my own, that's really what helped me to see that developing that eye for design and that eye for decomposing things was really a strength.

And now I can use that strength in my business.

So that's what I want to leave you with today is ways that you can look at the success that you're having as not just, oh, accidentally things that are good that you're good at, but ways that you could really start to say, okay, that might be my teacher superpower and something that I might be able to turn into a business.

So here are three ways that you might find some success.

Number one, the clue is to look for what you're good at.

Just look for what you're good at.

I discovered that I was good at synthesizing and organizing information and making it look cute.

I didn't expect that to be a major skill.

I didn't know I'd be able to build a business off of doing something like that.

But I knew it was something I was good at, so I just kept my eye on that.

Like, how is this going to show up later in my life?

How could I use this in my business at some point?

And now I use this strength all of the time.

Look for things that make you gravitate towards mastery.

I love that feeling of being pulled towards mastery when you just get in the zone and you're not even trying, but you just keep doing it over and over again because you're trying to get better, you're trying to get faster, you're trying to put together a method or a system.

So look at the things that you keep trying to master.

That's a good clue that could be one of your teacher superpowers and maybe a really good business idea.

And then the third is that you get results either for yourself or other people.

When you're able to get results for yourself over and over again, that's a really great clue that this is becoming one of your strengths.

I found that as I kept decomposing things and learning how to do these different skills and then apply it and be able to have Success with creating my own digital designs.

With that new skillset, I started to realize that pattern.

Okay, I can get these results.

I can go through the process of decomposing, googling how to do something, teaching myself, applying it to my designs, and getting the results that I was after.

And then I could do it for other people as well.

So if they wanted me to create something for them based on a design that they saw, I could do it as well.

So that became a really good clue.

Like, this might be something I'm good at.

So another bonus about this is when you become the go to, right?

So if you become the go to person where they're like, oh, give it to Kim.

She'll put it all together.

She is great at organizing field trips, right?

You become the go to for that.

That was kind of me, everyone.

I'll just give it to Tiffany.

She'll make it look good, right?

People who knew that they could just give me a sloppy copy of whatever information that they wanted and I'd be able to synthesize that information, organize it, and make it look cute.

Who knew that was a big strength.

But it is.

And so sometimes you can't overlook those little things.

So if you are the go to for something, pay attention to what that is.

All right, let's recap.

Number one, you want to look for clues about the things that you are just good at.

Once you learn how to do something and you're good at it, pay attention.

Number two, that you gravitate towards mastery.

Number three, that you get your results for yourself or others.

And number four, it's a bonus.

But if you become the go to for something, that's a very good sign.

That's your teacher's superpower and something that you could turn into an online business.

All right, I hope that content helped you out today.

As always, we would love for you to subscribe to the buzz.

Never miss an episode.

We'll send you just a quick little text and email reminder, a direct link to the show, along with some other exclusive goodies.

You can join us every day, Monday through Friday.

And of course, we always love providing teachers with free and valuable business content here on teacher business buds.

And if you have a teacher friend who you think would also benefit from this content, we would love if you would share teacher business buzz.

Help us let other teachers know what's possible.

All right, thanks for tuning in today and we'll see you on the next one.