Is education consulting your next right step? At the Responsive classroom, I’ve started a new section of my business called the EquippED Consultants Collective. You can find us on IG @equipped_consultants_co. The mission of this is simply to help and coach those of you who want to move into being an education consultant to start and grow your own business. I know it can feel daunting to go from education to business ownership, but it’s absolutely doable!

Although, like any business, it can take time to build a sustainable business, there are steps you can take right now to get yours going, and then when you are ready to jump into owning a business full-time, you can be ready! Imagine, pursuing your passion, making an impact, having the time freedom you don’t have when you are an educator, and making an income to go along with it! I feel super blessed to have the business I have, and since about every other professional development I do I have someone approach me and ask me how I went from education to consulting, I thought it was finally time to put something together.

So let’s start with first things first – what is an education consultant? An education consultant is contracted by a campus or district to help implement a solution to a specific problem they are facing. The consultant can offer professional development, coaching, programming or curriculum expertise, or support through resources. 

Today, through Instagram and sites like Teacher Pay Teacher, you have a lot of different avenues to sell products direct to the consumer – which means you would be selling your creations directly to other teachers. This is one way to build a business, and that is more of a digital marketing business. Your business success will directly reflect your digital marketing efforts – your social media platforms and your email list. While this is a great side hustle, because you are selling low-ticket items, you have to sell quite a few in order to replace an income, so you will just want to give yourself a longer runway to get your business up and running.

The Equipped Consultants Collective is more of a digital marketing sect because I’m talking directly to you – you are the decision maker on whether or not you want to take the next steps on this journey. Now, I’m not primarily selling low-ticket items, but it’s the same basic principles.

The Responsive Classroom, which is my actual business, contracts with schools and school districts to serve and train teachers. I only go through campuses and districts for these sales, so the marketing is not really digital. In fact, I don’t have an online presence for this business, other than a very inconsistent presence on Linked In. I do have an email list, and I market through it, but my primary marketing is done through face-to-face and word of mouth. Don’t let this scare you. If you have a solution and a desire to work with schools, please don’t let the unknown stop you! I can walk you through several ideas for marketing your consulting business!

I want to talk for just a second about the mindset of starting and growing your business. If you are like me, education is your passion, and maybe you haven’t done anything other than teaching or school administration. Here’s what you need to understand:

1. You can build a business. As Marie Forleo says, “Everything is Figureoutable” – and you just need to have this mindset.
2. There will be a lot of “new”. While you may be an absolute expert at the solution that you are going to give teacher or schools, actually getting it into their hands will be mostly “new” skills to learn. It’s exciting, and challenging, and very fulfilling – so don’t be afraid of the “new”.
3. This will be a full-time job. You don’t have set hours, you get to go to the bathroom whenever you want, you can work from a coffee shop, and you can set your own hours, but if you want to build a business, you will need to be ready to dive in!
4. Circling back to #2, stress will come from deadlines, so give yourself grace to learn, practice and implement. Most things are on YouTube and all things someone else has already done them. You just have to give yourself time and grace to learn them.

So where do you start now?

In business, there is a term called “niching down” – it basically means this – when you try to solve everyone’s problems, you solve no one’s problems – and the reason for this is your messaging – you are not the expert to anyone, so no one knows to hire you. You need to be so clear on your solution and the pain points your solution addresses that when an administrator hears your name, they know that you are the one to hire. So is education consulting your next right step? Walking through these next steps is a great place to start!

So here are your first steps:

1. What problem do you solve? If you had to choose one problem (to start with) that you have a solution for, what would that be? Here’s the kicker with this – your decision-maker may not actually be aware of the problem. I’ll show you what I mean here in a minute. So for example, the problem The Responsive Classroom solves is misalignment and a “one-size-fits-all” approach in Tier 1 Instruction.
2. Your next step is to define your solution. Do you have a particular way to teach, or a framework for classroom management? You want this solution to be easily implementable, easily explainable, and if possible, duplicatable – meaning you teach it to one teacher, and he or she can teach it to another teacher.
3. Determine the pain points of the stakeholders – If a campus has the problem you mentioned above
   1. How do their students feel/act?
   2. How do their teachers feel/act?
   3. How do their administrators feel/act?
   4. How do the families feel/act?

Once you can list out these pain points, you can more easily write your messaging around these pain points. 

As I mentioned above, its important to understand the difference between the problem and pain points – in my case, I know that a lack of responsive teaching and cultural awareness can impact Tier 1 instruction, but not everyone may understand this. What they do understand is that kids are disengaged and frustrated, maybe acting out. Teachers are overwhelmed and burned out because students aren’t learning and behavior is up. Administrators are feeling the pressure of low test scores, burned out teachers and increases in behaviors.

Another way to put it is this – 

Let’s say you want to lose weight.

The actual problem may be a hormone imbalance. If someone is just messaging or advertising a hormone balancing treatment but you don’t know that that’s problem, you probably won’t buy that product. But if they speak to your pain points – “are you eating healthy and exercising but still can’t lose the weight?”- now, you may stop and at least give them the time of day.

So start here! Nail down these three things before you try to move forward. You may be able to solve a lot of problems, and eventually, you can broaden your strokes on that, but for now, choose the problem you want to focus on!

And mark your calendars! I have a free 3-part challenge that will go live on May 21st! This will be a 3-part webinar (don’t worry – there will be bonuses for hopping on live, but if you can’t, there will be a replay). We will walk deeper through these steps, and by the end of the week, you will have a solid outline of a business plan and product or service to jumpstart your business!

And it’s free! You can reserve your spot today by heading to the link in the shownotes or going to theresponsiveclassroom.org and signing up there!

Also, if you are a little on the fence about whether or not education consulting is your next right step, I have a free PDF that helps you reflect on your mindset and if consulting is your next right step, or maybe if there’s a different direction that would be better for you! You can also find that link in the shownotes or on the website – theresponsiveclassroom.org

Thank you again for being here. I hope you found value that you can use and share. We, at The Responsive Classroom, would also love to partner with your campus on your journey to being responsive, equipped educators who equip students. We have a lot of different ways we do this,  so if you’d like to chat about this, shoot an email to jenn@theresponsiveclassroom.org or head to the website and you can get information there. Thank you for loving kids. Until next time!