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Hello edumagicians, and welcome back to another episode of the edumagic podcast. Today I have with me, Dr. Will. You've been asking for episodes about how I get started in my online business. What are my first steps to getting my side hustle on? Dr. Will is the go-to guru for anything side hustle, living your best life, and making money you deserve when teaching and learning online.
If you don't already subscribe to his podcast, friends, you need to smash that subscribe button wherever you listen to podcasts on the Dr. Will show. He interviews educators, entrepreneurs, and trailblazers in the education field who are making the money they deserve and living their best lives. Dr. Will is a documentarian for the edumatch publishing company. He has a documentary out there called the Edupreneur, which you can find on Vimeo. You can either rent or buy it , and he will tell us more about it later in the show. He's also featured in Forbes magazine.
Dr. Will would you mind sharing with my listeners a little bit about your teaching journey, where you are now, and what your passion and your drive have been to push forward with entrepreneurs and help educators live their best life?
Dr. Will shares:
I'm noticing a lot of thematic phrases and and and what you're sharing. So you talked a little bit about working with gear up and you started to take a different path and you went to graduate school, you tried the art you did the entrepreneur thing. You went to film school, you have all these three passion areas, education, entrepreneur, and film. And I think all of three, all of these three areas really merged into the edupreneur. Could you share a little, a lot, a lot about the entrepreneur and your passion for that project?
Yeah, it was born the idea of a documentary came from Dr. Sarah, the founder, and CEO of edumatch publishing. I had her on my podcast. I was interviewing her about her entrepreneurial journey, and she was dropping these jams. I was excited.
I told her I would love to write a book for you. I would love to be a part of your family. But I wrote the dissertation; I'm kind of done with long-form writing.
She said, What about a documentary and I said, What are you talking about? And it was her suggestion of well. It's her idea. Like, look, you're already doing these interviews with your podcast, you could actually interview people, and we could put together a story, a narrative with that, and that's like, Okay, let me think about that a little more.
So I sat back and said, let's do this thing where they say, Okay, well, let me give you a proposal. Okay, getting ready to fill out this proposal sheet, what will I do? What am I going to do with this?
The first thing that came to mind was one-to-one. How do you go one-to-one in a classroom? Because that's my day job. But I didn't want it and didn't have the same passion for it, right?
You want to find something that, when you don't feel like working on it, you work on it because the material draws you in.
I said I have to tell this story of educators becoming educational consultants, authors, designers, you know, taking the information experience they're already doing and monetizing it to create a side hustle. Let me do this, and I will submit the proposal. And Doc was like, Yo, I liked it. Let's do this.
I just started thinking of my Dream cast: Who would I want to be in this thing?
I didn't know what to expect because this was not a normal education topic. I'm not talking about how you engage students. I'm not talking about how you use leadership to do X, y & z; this is about asking people about what they are doing. To get that money, though, I don't talk about money in the documentary, and I don't even in my podcasts. I
This will be good because I'm not expecting people to share what they are sharing, and there was some other personal stuff that didn't make the documentary, but I was like, hmm. Okay, this is going to be different.
These will be the people you see at conferences, you know, in high profile dresses and suits. You know, smelling like corporate America, you see these people there, but now you're gonna see these people in a light that you have never seen them if you don't know them personally like Eric, right? If you don't know Eric, you see Eric at the conferences in suits, always suited up. But you see him in a hoodie in a documentary right below Okay, here we go get it, casual Eric.
But when it's cool to see these people in ways you haven't seen them, you hear the experiences that I'm talking about in work-life and family balance. The whole idea of how I create a business and what that means in terms of me as an educator and what I'm trying to provide, but also as a business person.
What Have I learned, you know, which you should do? And when those interviews started to unfold, I was excited about it, and that's when we handed it over to doc. I gave her an outline of what I was looking for from the footage. And she went to work, and we just went back and forth.
Eventually, it was done. I was pleased about it because I graduated from film school. I never knew if I would ever do any work in the field because I had gotten another bachelor's degree in child and family studies and then went on to grad school. I just thought, Okay, that was just a life behind me. To be able to do this it was a great experience.
Now I know you have this passion for helping teachers when it comes to their entrepreneurial skills. You have a podcast that is dedicated to it. Why is this an important topic for our teacher candidates that are listening today?
I always tell teachers that no one goes into our profession thinking I'm going to buy a Bugatti. Right doesn't happen.
But we should also not approach our profession and think We're going to be living off Bologna.
What we cannot do is negotiate our salaries, right? We're not going to, but most of us can't. If you attend a traditional public school, your salary is essentially state set by your state and local school board.
So, because of that, if you want and desire to get more income, I would tell everyone, you know, we live off of this thing called money. That's right, you know you need it.
How do you bring in additional income when your salary is set?
It happens when you rely upon your district to be your sole source of income. And if you have in especially when you have children that could put you in a bind, when you don't have income, I'm all about teachers and all the individual.
Try for you to monetize your talents and take what you're doing. Because a lot of us again don't do it for the money. The whole talk of money and doing this for money is off-putting for many of us.
I know my worth. Then you start to really think about, okay, now Where does my value lie? And then you get to that point where someone may approach you and say, You're nice, you know, I love what you're doing. You're, you know, you're great with students. So you're doing this, I see you on Twitter, your blog, and you have this podcast, which you present at our conference.
A lot of us get excited. And you know, it's flattering. And we find then also we find ourselves just presenting and then all this stuff, you're not getting a check, or you become an ambassador for a program. And you know, they'll give you a T-shirt and a thumbs up. But what you're What are you doing, you're presenting at a conference is, and you're doing Twitter chats with these people, and you're doing all of this stuff.
I was the GG leader for Google - Google educator, the group leader. Google has these every state that has one I think some other countries. I never got a check, but Google expected me every month to put on some events. Well, you know, it wouldn't be on Google's cost Google and put up. Most of the mine was free because I would just do an interview and submit the link to Google and tell them he knows there was a whole form to fill out to every month. Yes, who was there? You know, what happened? What did you do? all that sort of thing. And I didn't get a check. But I was doing this work for Google.
I started to sort of re-examine My relationship with companies and relationships with some of the things that I was doing.
So after that came, I called him Eric, I said, Hey, what's going on? And I was blessed to have him be able to kind of walk me through what is this thing looks like. And had information.
I completely shifted my mindset about asking for my money.
Because you, you know, from presenting at conferences and seeing so many of our colleagues on Twitter, and all of this stuff, we do a lot of work for these companies and these conferences for free.
Because if you're doing that for free, what you're doing is you might be building a certain brand or expertise, but you're putting money in their pockets
By the way, all of that time that you are presenting at conferences, you are blogging for them, you're blogging about them, you are participating in twitch chat for them; what are you not doing? You're not investing in yourself. You're not spending time with your children or your spouse or your family, but you're spending that time with someone else doing something for someone else that you do not have that benefit from.
Alright, people, let's reassess what's going on, and are you investing in yourself?
That is such a powerful, passionate why we need to think through, like you said, with your own genius - How can we live the life that we deserve live our best life like you say, with our own talents, gifts in our own, like our own genius in an online space. So what are some ways that we can get up and running? How do we even get started with this?
What do you want to be known for?
What are you known for?
Meaning when you're looking at your passion, your knowledge, base, expertise, and education, what are people coming to you for?
What are you so in love with that you get lost doing? You will tell yourself that I will spend 15 minutes on it. Three hours later, you're still working on it. Because you've lost track of time because you love it so much. S
From that, I would start building out content.
I would do, of course, free content, right? That's when you want to start, you know, giving talks, whether it be presenting at conferences, at local organizations, local schools, on that information, you want to start a podcast, or you want to put together an E-book or worksheets or units.
Because what you're trying to do is build social capital. You need to do that before you try to build your wallet.
People need to know who you are because you have to build that like know and trust.
To get into this game, you must learn the business again.
What can teachers take today and use tomorrow?
Your follower count doesn't matter, but how many people are rockin' with you?
What do you want to provide?
Think through this exercise to understand what you provide, what, and how.
I help ___ + who + do what + how
Be YOU and Be AUTHENTIC!
You want multiple streams of income that provide value! You want to share your genius and the work you are doing in the classroom.
More resources from Dr. Will
Connect with Dr. Will
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