YOU'VE GOT TO BE WILLING TO DIY IT AT FIRST
When first beginning a new business venture there are no guarantees it’s going to work out, not for a want of trying or persistence, but sometimes it’s just not the one – and that’s OK! It’s important to test drive ideas out before getting fully invested anyway.
So how can you tell if your business is scalable of not, especially if you’re just starting out your growth beyond TpT?
The key is by saving capital.
It makes no sense to throw tonnes of money at something before you know its potential and before you start making revenue from it.
Or maybe you don’t have tonnes of money to throw at a business idea yet! Either way, doing it DIY style will help you in starting to scale.
I recently designed my own eCommerce store on my site from scratch and did it all DIY style. It’s a good thing too as you never know how long it is going to take before you see a return on the amount you spent to get it off the ground! At least when you DIY it, everything you make is profit from the get go!
EXCHANGING TIME FOR MONEY IS ALWAYS GOING TO BE LIMITING.
So let’s look into more of what makes a business scalable.
The reason TpT works so well for you, is because you are able to continue making money on a resource you created long after you made it.
If you are exchanging time for money, there may be a limit to the scalability of your business.
There is only so much time in a day, and unless you’re able to charge crazy amounts for your time, there is a limit to how much you can earn from your time. Plus you’re going to have to work really hard to keep up the pace to keep money coming in.
Exchanging your time for money is always going to limit the scalability of your business.
SIGNS YOUR TEACHERPRENEUR BUSINESS IDEA IS SCALABLE
1. You offer products or services continue to serve without your input
When thinking about your new business, consider what you can offer your audience that can continue to provide value long after you have spent time creating it. That could be in the form of products, such as those you offer on TpT, but could also extend to courses, trainings, e-books, subscriptions and any other services you can think of!
Eventually your plan could be to hire people to start taking jobs over from you, but bear in mind this takes greater capital and eats into your profits. Therefore it makes sense to start small and DIY a lot of things yourself first to save money and develop systems that work before hiring out.
2. There is potential to extend your market to a wider audience
We’ve established that keeping your niche tight is a great way to start off, but when considering scaling up your business in the future, consider whether there is the possibility to extend to a wider audience down the road.
For example, if you’re audience are first year teachers, you could later extend to new teachers with less than 5 years experience. You could further extend to primary or secondary teachers thus expanding your market and ability to scale in reaching a greater audience.
3. The competition is light – you’re in a blue ocean
We talked about the blue ocean concept in this article. Any business where competition is light has a great chance of scaling up, providing there is a need for what you are offering. The reason it has become so difficult to scale up your TpT business is because it has become a red ocean, full of competition with thousands of people offering what you are offering.
If your new business idea has less competition, the chances of you being able to scale up are much greater. So be brave and dare to lose sight of the shore.
4. You’re able to increase prices without losing business to a competitor
In the words of the one and only Mr Buffett… “The single most important decision in evaluating business is pricing power. If you’ve got the power to raise prices without losing business to a competitor, you’ve got a very good business. And if you have to have a prayer session before raising the price by 10%, then you’ve got a terrible business.”
Yowza! I know sometimes us teacherpreneurs can be hard on ourselves when it comes to pricing, especially on TpT. We know our audience are hard up teachers and so we try to keep things affordable, but there is something to be said for knowing your worth too. If you can raise prices for what you’re offering and not have sales impacted because what you’re offering is so useful, then your business is certainly scalable!
5. Your customer retention is high
It’s like what we said back in how to find your niche, once you find “your people”, “your tribe” they are more likely to remain loyal to you and keep coming back for more, providing you keep solving their problems! I mean, look at Apple or Amazon for example! They keep providing you with the product or service that improves your life, and you keep coming back for more. Repeat custom = scalable business.
MISTAKES TO AVOID WHEN TRYING TO SCALE YOUR BUSINESS
I hope that has given you some insight into helping you question whether your teacherpreneur business idea beyond TpT, is scalable and has opportunities for growth.
If it doesn’t at this stage, don’t give up. Have some brainstorming sessions and consider how you can adapt your ideas to ensure it can fit this criteria!
Sometimes we can be our own enemies when it comes to our business. Download this free PDF which highlights 3 mistakes most people make that prevent them from scaling their business and action points to help you overcome them:
