What do you actually do? | Life After Teaching™

Since I started working from home, I get one question more than others: “What do you actually do?” In Geek speak… I’m an independent contractor who spends most of her day writing copy and building funnels. 😍😍 But if you, like me until a year ago, wouldn’t consider yourself a geek, here’s the non-geek version:

I work from home (or anywhere with internet access, really)
I choose who I work for and when I work (as long as I can get everything done)
Y’know websites that say things like “Just enter your email address and we’ll send your free copy of xyz”. Yeah, that’s the start of a funnel! I build those. 🙂 Most of the time, I build funnels for my friend, Caitlin (You can read her story here). She runs a blog and course about proofreading and getting paid for it (great for folks that love finding errors!). I love working for her for a lot of reasons but one is that what I write and how I create the funnel helps people learn to do something that gives them more freedom. And really, what is living without freedom?
I do a number of small things – like troubleshooting some tech.
One of the other main parts of my day is writing copy. Copywriting (not to be confused with copyright) is writing copy. That means I write the text that you see on websites.

So to recap I mostly…

Create funnels
Write the text for the websites, emails, and funnels we use

It’s a TON of fun. I love that the website stuff I do is a lot more technical while the writing is much more creative. It is the best of both worlds. I had no idea I would love these skills — in fact, in high school I enjoyed writing but someone told me I wasn’t good at it and so I stopped writing. And I thought I was too dumb to figure out “website stuff.” Most of what I’m doing now, I learned in the past 8 or so months. I was thrown into it and the only option was to learn, so that’s what I did. Here’s what I’ve learned from that experience:

You are capable of learning much more than you think.
When you focus on how you can solve a problem rather than “What if I can’t figure it out?” or “It’s too hard,” it’s much easier to learn.
Try new things — you never know what you’ll end up loving!

Have more questions about what I do? Fill out the form below to send me a message!

Brittany Long says

November 29, 2019 at 1:04 am

Hey Karen! You knooooow I love that you want to use your talents to help vets and pet owners!

A few thoughts that came up as I was reading what you wrote. First, I wonder if you’re really committed to leaving teaching or if you’re committed to the story that you can’t leave teaching. I know that might sound crazy, because you’re probably thinking “of COURSE I want to leave!” but I’m hearing a lot of reasons why you can’t leave teaching or you can’t make or find the time. At the end of the day, whether or not you’ll be able to leave because you’re making more than teaching is if you make time to build your business. It sounds simple, but I know it probably doesn’t feel simple. You might be feeling resistance or even frustration while you read that, but remember that I’ve been where you are and I know what it takes. If you’re feeling resistance or frustration, I’d suggest to sit in a bit and explore why you might be feeling that way if that’s how you’re feeling

Second, I’d suggest determining what’s most important to you. If it’s to stay in teaching, then I’d say keep doing what you’re doing. However, if you’re committed to leaving teaching, then you have to shift from “I don’t have time for this” to “How can I make time for this?” The way I did it was to cut my teaching hours. Your teaching hours — your required, contracted, paid-for hours are from 7-4 pm (or whatever those hours are for you) and that’s it. That means you could theoretically have nearly 6 hours (I subtracted an hour for dinner) if you worked from 5 pm – 11 pm. Can you imagine how you could grow your business in 6 hours a day? There could be some really massive growth – and massive income – if you were willing to commit to that. Does that mean that it might take longer to get grading done? Or that you might need to restructure how you do some things so you are spending more of your classroom day managing the things you would otherwise take home. Those are some of the first steps I took – I changed to a standards based grading. Not only did I like it because it required me to take less work home, I also liked it because it better showed what the kids actually knew instead of some arbitrary assignments that didn’t show their mastery. I also reused lessons from previous years, spent my lunch break grading and entering grades, and came in early so I had some quieter time to work before other people came in. I also stopped going to the teacher’s lounge and I didn’t spend lunch with teachers that just wanted to complain about how they hated their job but couldn’t do anything else. And then from there I worked on my business every evening. Some days I worked from 6 or so until 11 or midnight and other days I worked until 2 am. It’s not ideal, for sure… but I’m so glad I did it. I wouldn’t change that for anything because it’s what afforded me the freedom. It helped me build up my business and build up my skills so that by the end of the year, I could leave teaching and was making the same amount as I was from teaching.

Personally, I don’t suggest credit. I was in student loan debt for so long and there’s no way I want to get credit again. I felt like I had to be able to provide on my own without relying on any outside line of credit before leaving teaching.

For the internet question, I’d suggest looking into a device that lets you use internet wherever you are, or take time off during specific times when you know your internet will be low.

It sounds like you have the skills to do what you want to do, but maybe you’re lacking the mindset and the commitment to do it. And my guess is that it’s not because you don’t want it enough… my guess is that you’re scared. Maybe even thinking some of the thoughts I thought — “What if I can’t do it?” “What if I spend all this time on this business and nothing comes of it or I can’t replace my income?”

Does that help? What other questions do you have? I’m cheering you on!

Comments

Karen says

October 30, 2019 at 11:34 pm

I’ve studied up on copywrite work for years… wanted to make a jump for this job change. I took training classes and everything. I love the idea of relating the positives of business to business through white pages, interviews, etc. I’d like to focus on medical realm… not just for people… but veterinarian as well (have had a lot of experience with pets- particularly aging pets, in addition to a lot of dealings with medical professionals). I had a doctor ask me to do his monthly newsletters based on his topics of choice and his approved websites for researching. I would have loved that. But my teaching job had me busy most nights until 10-11 PM. (think… 7AM-11PM). I couldn’t commit to a monthly newsletter because of my primary job requirements. I’d love to do newsletters and more for various medical professionals and veterinarians. But it’s so hard to give up the regular paycheck without having copywrite clients already waiting in the wings. I need my income to keep the roof over our heads. How did YOU take that jump? Did you use credit for the in-between stage? Summers are crazy as we end up traveling to see our children… it’s hard to know I have solid internet connection for workability. Suggestions?

- Brittany Long says
  
  November 29, 2019 at 1:04 am
  
  Hey Karen! You knooooow I love that you want to use your talents to help vets and pet owners!
  
  A few thoughts that came up as I was reading what you wrote. First, I wonder if you’re really committed to leaving teaching or if you’re committed to the story that you can’t leave teaching. I know that might sound crazy, because you’re probably thinking “of COURSE I want to leave!” but I’m hearing a lot of reasons why you can’t leave teaching or you can’t make or find the time. At the end of the day, whether or not you’ll be able to leave because you’re making more than teaching is if you make time to build your business. It sounds simple, but I know it probably doesn’t feel simple. You might be feeling resistance or even frustration while you read that, but remember that I’ve been where you are and I know what it takes. If you’re feeling resistance or frustration, I’d suggest to sit in a bit and explore why you might be feeling that way if that’s how you’re feeling
  
  Second, I’d suggest determining what’s most important to you. If it’s to stay in teaching, then I’d say keep doing what you’re doing. However, if you’re committed to leaving teaching, then you have to shift from “I don’t have time for this” to “How can I make time for this?” The way I did it was to cut my teaching hours. Your teaching hours — your required, contracted, paid-for hours are from 7-4 pm (or whatever those hours are for you) and that’s it. That means you could theoretically have nearly 6 hours (I subtracted an hour for dinner) if you worked from 5 pm – 11 pm. Can you imagine how you could grow your business in 6 hours a day? There could be some really massive growth – and massive income – if you were willing to commit to that. Does that mean that it might take longer to get grading done? Or that you might need to restructure how you do some things so you are spending more of your classroom day managing the things you would otherwise take home. Those are some of the first steps I took – I changed to a standards based grading. Not only did I like it because it required me to take less work home, I also liked it because it better showed what the kids actually knew instead of some arbitrary assignments that didn’t show their mastery. I also reused lessons from previous years, spent my lunch break grading and entering grades, and came in early so I had some quieter time to work before other people came in. I also stopped going to the teacher’s lounge and I didn’t spend lunch with teachers that just wanted to complain about how they hated their job but couldn’t do anything else. And then from there I worked on my business every evening. Some days I worked from 6 or so until 11 or midnight and other days I worked until 2 am. It’s not ideal, for sure… but I’m so glad I did it. I wouldn’t change that for anything because it’s what afforded me the freedom. It helped me build up my business and build up my skills so that by the end of the year, I could leave teaching and was making the same amount as I was from teaching.
  
  Personally, I don’t suggest credit. I was in student loan debt for so long and there’s no way I want to get credit again. I felt like I had to be able to provide on my own without relying on any outside line of credit before leaving teaching.
  
  For the internet question, I’d suggest looking into a device that lets you use internet wherever you are, or take time off during specific times when you know your internet will be low.
  
  It sounds like you have the skills to do what you want to do, but maybe you’re lacking the mindset and the commitment to do it. And my guess is that it’s not because you don’t want it enough… my guess is that you’re scared. Maybe even thinking some of the thoughts I thought — “What if I can’t do it?” “What if I spend all this time on this business and nothing comes of it or I can’t replace my income?”
  
  Does that help? What other questions do you have? I’m cheering you on!

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