In today’s episode, we are talking about how to be bold in your business. I know that I talk about Pinterest all the time, but behind your Pinterest marketing is a business.
You are using Pinterest to grow your business, and growing a business is hard work. If you don’t put good systems into place, you will experience burnout, discouragement and could ultimately end up quitting altogether.
Being bold and living into your dreams will allow you to grow your business without losing yourself.
We have a special newsletter series that is great for Pinterest beginners. If that’s you, check out our 4-week newsletter series that will help you get your Pinterest marketing up and running.
How to Be Bold in Your Business: Kayse’s Story
Creating an Online Teaching Business
Kayse Morris is a former 8th grade English and Language Arts teacher. One day back in 2013 she randomly decided to start selling her teaching resources online. She made $50 and the rest is history. Now, she helps overwhelmed educators turn into thriving CEO teachers. She calls it the best job ever.
Kayse was born to teach. She left the classroom back in 2017 to focus on selling her resources full-time via the Teachers Pay Teachers platform.
Kayse is from a small town in Georgia and people would always stop her and ask her when she was going to go back to teaching.When she told them she wasn’t, they would always ask her how she was able to leave her teaching gig.
And that’s when she realized she was missing one of her favorite things: teaching. Now she gets to do it on a much larger scale.
Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT)
Kayse does still sell on TPT, as her heart and soul are in helping educators and children. It is more or less a passive revenue stream since she isn’t actively marketing products or focusing on those sales. TPT is the stepping stone that got her to where she is today: owning her own business.
There was some fear involved in moving away from TPT, but Kayse was constantly worried about what would happen if everything came crumbling down. Her business was built on someone else’s platform, so she didn’t truly own it.
Related: Using Pinterest to Market Teachers Pay Teachers Products & How to Use Promoted Pins for Teachers Pay Teachers
Using Pinterest to Launch the Business
Kayse used Pinterest right away to sell her products. Pinterest was the vehicle that launched her business back in 2013.
She uses the same Pinterest business account for her TPT products and her own business. Her ideal audience is the same for both of these businesses — teachers who are interested in Kayse’s products and teachers who are looking to pivot in their business.
She gets clicks to both the teacher products and the entrepreneurial products from Pinterest.
Dealing With Keyboard Warriors
There are so many tough things that happen along the way when you are growing a business. The funny thing is that when we share the tough behind-the-scenes moments, we tend to get so many messages from people thanking us for sharing something that they can relate to.
It’s hard to be vulnerable and not just share the highlight reel. But know this — people want to be able to relate to you. When you are open and honest about both the highs and lows, your audience will respond with an overwhelming amount of support.
There will always be people that love you AND the 1% who don’t love what you are offering. As a people pleaser herself, Kayse says that if you are to stand for something, you just have to be prepared for the people who don’t love it.
Ironically, that 1% is often what sticks in your head the most.
Someone can leave a comment on your posts from behind their computer, forgetting that there is a person on the other side. Kayse calls these people “keyboard warriors.”
She recently received some very negative messages on Instagram because something she shared was taken out of context. At 2:30 in the morning, she ended up getting on her Instagram stories to clear the air (and even shed a few tears during the process).
After this story aired, she received thousands of messages from people thanking her for being honest and being real.
Related: Creating Business Core Values & Overcoming Fear In Your Business
Discovering Her Potential
The most surprising thing for Kayse in owning her businesses has been the transformation that has taken place inside of her.
At the time she began her business, she was a mom of two boys, 12 months and 11 days apart. She was experiencing post-partum depression and was really struggling in her classroom. She was happily married with beautiful children, but her world was all out of sorts.
When she started selling her resources on TPT, it was like her world became “colorful” again. She found happiness inside of her that she didn’t know existed. That happiness over time has turned into passion and excitement. She’s evolved into a brand new person.
Before that time, she wasn’t aware of her potential. Her business successes have helped her to realize that for anything in life, it’s not a question of if she can make it happen but when she will make it happen.
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The Best Resource: Knowledge
The most important resource for Kayse in this growth process is knowledge. Kayse believes strongly that you have to always be learning more and finding a better version of whatever you’re working on.
You can’t listen to the people who are playing small or just sitting in the stands. — Kayse Morris
Kayse created a vision board that helped her know what she really wanted and was going for. The knowledge she gained through reading and taking courses has helped her more than anything else.
Knowledge is power and it is a power that no one can take away from you. The book that changed Kayse’s life is most is The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. She had to read it when she got her Specialist degree. Now, she reads it once a year.
Kayse also loves Free to Focus by Michael Hyatt. It gives great resources and allows you to see what your life could look like if you eliminate the distractions.
Building a Team
Originally, Kayse didn’t have a team. She didn’t have to tell anyone what to do or check in on, she was doing everything herself. But she was extremely overworked. She launched her first course in November of 2018 and her life changed forever.
She knew she needed help, so she hired a coach and asked some girls she knew to help her out a few hours a week. A few weeks ago, she hired them on full-time.
In order to get her business off the ground, Kayse had to hustle, and now she has a team that hustles as hard as she does and allows her to do things that she couldn’t do before. She’s had a list of things she wants to accomplish that she is finally able to get those things done.
Related: How to Build a Successful Team: The Simple Pin Story
Any size team is helpful because you’re not working alone, but it is also extra work to manage a team. The Ideal Team Player and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni are great books for anyone who has a team or is looking to build one.
“What Do You Want For Your Life?”
How do you make the decision daily to be bold bold and show up for your people?
The best advise Kayse has for how to be bold in your business it to discover your purpose. She knows that her purpose is to help teachers. On a daily basis, she figures out how she can serve that purpose without trying to justify who she is or prove that she’s someone she is not.
She shows up as herself every single day and makes the same promise: she will empower teachers and help them to achieve their dreams.
As long as she remembers that, it doesn’t matter if she has a good day or a bad day. Every day becomes the same because she has the same purpose and mission each day.
To be bold means that you can’t give up. There will be waves, with highs and lows. Living your life at the top of the wave and being excited is amazing, but being at the bottom and figuring out how to get back to the top, bigger and better, is also exciting.
To be bold is to remember that there will be good times and bad times and neither one of those defines you. You have to constantly keep moving forward.
How to Be Bold in Your Business When You’re Starting Out
You have to celebrate every single win. You will experience anxiety — it’s totally normal since you are putting yourself out there. Keep affirming yourself. Take your passion and move it into your purpose. Always be your own cheerleader.
What do you want for your life? Believe that you can do anything that you want to accomplish.
Learn More About Kayse
Kayse is going to be launching a membership called The CEO Teacher in November. It’s an extension of her course Transform Your Resources which teaches teachers how to sell their resources online (nearly 1,000 teachers are enrolled through this course).
In The CEO Teacher, Kayse instructs teachers on how to become CEO’s and shows how their business can grow beyond their wildest dreams.
For more encouragement from Kayse, be sure to check out her blog and the Go Getters Podcast.
Time Stamp:
Intro
2:50 – Creating an Online Teaching Business
5:30 – Teachers Pay Teachers (TPT)
6:50 – Using Pinterest to Launch the Business
8:25 – Dealing With Keyboard Warriors
12:02 – Discovering Her Potential
13:35 – The Best Resource: Knowledge
17:13 – Building a Team
19:22 – What Do You Want For Your Life?
23:30 – The CEO Teacher
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