Molly Wheatley is sharing her win-win teacher business story today. Molly is still in the classroom and running, not just one teacher business but two. And how does she make that work? She makes it work through systems. She has gone on a hiring help journey having to slow down to speed up to get systems in place so that she can build a sustainable and profitable business that will serve her long term.
Connect with today’s guest:
https://www.mollywheatley.com/
https://www.instagram.com/mollyawheatley
Molly Wheatley is a 5th grade teacher and teacher business coach who helps educators turn their expertise into profitable side hustles with Teachers Pay Teachers and tutoring. Through her signature programs—including From Zero to Cha-Ching and Tutorpreneur Academy® — she guides teachers in building sustainable, year-round income. On her YouTube channel and social media, Molly shares actionable strategies to help educators grow their businesses without burnout.
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Read the transcript:
[00:00:00] Janice: Joining us today for a guest conversation is Molly. Molly Wheatley is a fifth grade teacher and teacher business coach who helps educators turn their expertise into profitable side hustles with teachers pay teachers and tutoring. Through her signature programs including from Zero to Cha-Ching and Tutorpreneur Academy.
[00:00:20] she guides teachers in building sustainable year-round income. On her YouTube channel and social media molly shares actionable strategies to help educators grow their businesses without burnout.
[00:00:33] Today’s conversation will really hit the spot if you are a TPT seller who’s also in the classroom. Molly is still in the classroom and running, not just one teacher business but two. And how does she make that work? She makes it work through systems. She has gone on a hiring help journey having to slow down to speed up to get systems in place so that she can build a sustainable and profitable business that will serve her long term.
[00:01:01]
[00:01:28] Janice: Hey Molly, thanks for coming on the podcast today.
[00:01:31] Molly: Hey Janice, thanks so much for having me.
[00:01:33] Janice: I am so excited for you to share your win-win teacher story because this time of year is just so hard, especially as a classroom teacher. This is such a low energy time of year, and we have some big decisions on our desk as we kind of turn the page into summer.
[00:01:49] So you are the perfect person to chat to today. Can you tell us about how you got started with your teacher business in the first place?
[00:01:56] Molly: Absolutely. Like any teacher, I felt like I wasn’t making enough money, even though I’d done the hard work of rolling up my sleeves and getting multiple master’s degrees, and it just felt like I couldn’t do the little extra things that I always wanted to do without the stress. And funny enough, I even taught step aerobics at one point when I was a new teacher, and that was like $10 an hour. And I thought, there’s gotta be something more than that. And so a little bit of burnout and wanting more really fueled that fire for me. In 2019, I decided, okay, I need to do something else in addition to teaching.
[00:02:32] Janice: So many of us sampled many other side hustles before we did one aligned to teaching. I think there’s a point where you’re like, no, at the end of a teaching day, I wanna do something totally different. And so step aerobics makes sense, and then you’re like, oh, I don’t know
[00:02:47] maybe I can work smarter, not harder, and realign some of the things I’ve already done. So there’s no right or wrong there, but it’s pretty common for us to have explored the full menu.
[00:02:58] Molly: Exactly.
[00:02:59] Janice: So what was your first step when you started your teacher business?
[00:03:03] Molly: Well, like I mentioned, the burnout really started bad in my fifth year, which is pretty typical. I’m on year 11 now, so I’ve made it through that. But what happened to get it rolling was a former student reached out to me about tutoring and it got my wheels turning and I thought, Hmm, maybe I could not only take this kid on, but what if I could do a couple more. And one turned into five and that turned into an extra thousand dollars a week, which is substantial for teachers. And then fast forward, a couple years later, COVID hit and my business really blew up because people you know, as a mom, like your kids weren’t getting. They weren’t getting what they needed and I was teaching online, but you can’t, it just wasn’t the same. And so I was able to tutor in a capacity that I couldn’t normally do during a regular school year ’cause it just was different and it blew up and I had more clients that I could even know what to do with.
[00:03:58] So that’s kind of how it snowballed from there.
[00:04:01] Janice: Covid was such an interesting season for tutoring because families usually are really, really busy and kids have activities but during Covid everyone was wide open.
[00:04:11] It was pretty tough for kids to keep them engaged and enriched all 24 hours of the day during that time period. So it makes sense that tutoring saw a boom. And so tutoring led to some other things in your business, what naturally layer caked on next?
[00:04:26] Molly: So I was creating resources for tutoring clients because there was things that I just couldn’t find or, skills that I needed to brush up on myself. So I just found myself creating extra resources. I already did that in my own classroom, and so I started selling them on teachers pay teachers as well, and that has been huge for my business because I’m able to marry those two things, tutoring and TPT. I don’t know a lot of teacher side hustles that go so well together, but they just really do. And for me it’s been a great process of just incorporating things I already did in the classroom into a business that makes pretty good money.
[00:05:03] Janice: Yeah, and you just give them a facelift so they make sense on the product listing page for the people who are looking for them. And then you probably start to align them a little bit so your store makes sense, but you’re definitely not starting from scratch.
[00:05:15] Molly: Right. Yeah.
[00:05:17] Janice: That works out really well. And so you had tutoring resources that could go on TPT.
[00:05:22] You had classroom resources that could go on TPT, and that’s like two businesses right there.
[00:05:29] Molly: Yeah. Yeah, it is. At times it’s been, it’s felt like a lot, but when you put systems in place, which you have been pivotal for that with me, then I have a system and a process, and it’s so streamlined now that I have a way of solving that issue and it doesn’t feel stressful anymore.
[00:05:46] Janice: That’s what we love to hear because it can be a lot and it can be too much, which is okay too, then we have to make decisions. But it’s so interesting how one student getting curious and asking a question and shooting their shot can grow into multiple businesses for you. That’s a win-win if I’ve ever heard one.
[00:06:02] Molly: Yes.
[00:06:03] Janice: So your business is humming along, you are still in the classroom, you said 11 years?
[00:06:08] Molly: Yes, this is my 11th year. I’m, I know I’m going into my 12th too,
[00:06:12] Janice: I love it. 11, 12 years in the classroom, two businesses that you’re spinning on plates. Was there ever a time where business did not feel like everyone was winning? Like students, customers, and you as the boss?
[00:06:27] Molly: Absolutely. I kind of alluded to it. It’s before I had the systems. The big change I think was just the Asana system you put into place for my business. Because I had team members that were working with me. And when I say that, I don’t want people to think like a full-time person, just, a virtual assistant, a YouTube editor, those kind of people working a handful of hours every week.
[00:06:49] But they were working in all different places and so we were trying to communicate, texting, DMing, email and it just like, it felt like we didn’t have an office where we were all working together. And once I heard about you through another teacher business owner and you transformed her business, I was like, I have to get on your list.
[00:07:10] And there was a wait list for it because you’re amazing. And once I did, it was like, okay, everybody’s working in the same spot. I can pass things to somebody on their virtual desk and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you have to work with Janice because she’ll show you that. And that was the pivotal moment in my business of just getting a system.
[00:07:29] Janice: That’s so funny because that’s a lot of how my business works is through the word of mouth machine where someone will say, I don’t know what you did for Molly, but I want, it’s like you’re ordering a number seven in the drive through. I’ll just have one of whatever it was you did for Molly. I saw it. I want whatever just happened there, which is totally fine.
[00:07:46] I’m happy to do it. I love that you described it as an office. I’ve never heard it described of that, but it’s so true that when we work in an online business, that’s what we wish we had. Just a conference table where we could all sit down and have a conversation, a desk that we could lay out papers at and look at something together.
[00:08:03] We’re so used to in our classroom, being able to fire up the smart board and project something and have everyone look at it and yeah, you do sometimes just wish you could have a common area where only business is taking place and that’s what your Asana workspace can be for you is an office. And so I think when you have just one team member,
[00:08:21] you’re like, oh, I don’t care if they text me, I don’t care if they Marco Polo me, I don’t care if they email. It’s just one person. I can probably keep track of it all. But I think when you mentioned multiple team members, that’s when the bells and the alarms went off for me, it’s usually right after we go from one team member or freelancer to two,
[00:08:40] that they probably had different preferences. One is an email person and one is a Slack person, and now all of a sudden you’re running in circles all day and that’s not actually helping.
[00:08:52] Molly: No,
[00:08:53] it feels like chaos.
[00:08:54] Janice: You didn’t do anything wrong, but like, what if we could make it feel better?
[00:08:58] Molly: right? Yeah, completely.
[00:09:00] Janice: And so I’m glad that you reached out and got some help in your business. That’s the totally normal progression that people take. They run out of time, so they hire someone to help, but they don’t have systems in place, so then it gets a little messy, and then they have to take a little step back and sort it out.
[00:09:16] Molly: Yeah, I was just helping a coaching client right before this with the exact same thing and just organizing a system for her because she has all these ideas that are literal post-it notes everywhere.
[00:09:27] Um, and she’s fabulous, but she’s like any of us, we forget things. We need them in one centralized place.
[00:09:33] And so that’s what Asana did for me.
[00:09:35] Janice: And literal post-it notes are so fascinating because if your best ideas are trapped on a Post-It note or a notebook or the notes app on your phone, literally no one can help you.
[00:09:46] Molly: Right.
[00:09:47] Janice: can’t pass that idea to someone. It can’t be on someone else’s radar. And they can’t jump in and help you. A lot of times our very best ideas are the ones that are buried the deepest.
[00:09:57] Molly: Right. It becomes too nebulous and we need an organizational system.
[00:10:01] Janice: I love when people are brain dumping straight into Asana, like kind of in the parking lot that we made them. Because sometimes I will see someone type in a great idea and like my mind’s already on chapter three, I’m like, oh, that would work so well with this, and we could do that, and you can start to gather the bits and pieces to move that into motion before they’re even ready.
[00:10:18] But if they write it on a post-it note and it just dies on their desk, it’s so sad ’cause then nobody can help them with it and it might never see the light of day. And I definitely have post-it notes that I’ve put on my wall and then they stop being sticky and then they float down on the floor, you know?
[00:10:34] Molly: Yep. Everywhere.
[00:10:35] Janice: But it’s totally normal. At least they got the idea out of their head. But yeah, if we could get their post-it notes moved into a digital system, we love to see it.
[00:10:44] Molly: Yep.
[00:10:45] Janice: So what does it feel like now that all of your team members have this free virtual office? How is that saving you time in your day as someone running so many different things?
[00:10:55] Molly: It saves me time because I know where to look for a message from my virtual assistant, and I get a notification and you have it set up so that you know, weekends, I don’t have to be bothered with it if I don’t want to, and it saves me time from checking email because we all know that we do that too often and it’s
[00:11:11] just not a great use of our time. It saves me time when I’m working on a project because it’s all in one place. When I’m working on a new TPT product, for example, I have a template created, and so I know that I need this, this, and this, and I’ve got hyperlinks to everything. And so it’s one screen open instead of 100 tabs open on my computer.
[00:11:29] Janice: Those hyperlinks are so great too because they save us time when we’re still the one doing the process. Sometimes we get things ready so that we’re gonna hire them out, but it’s not time to hire it out. So in the meantime, at least I’ve made that task faster for my self
[00:11:43] Molly: And if you ever do hire out, let’s say, after you’ve created that for yourself, then you have that standard operating procedure ready to go for a team member that you could just onboard so easily.
[00:11:54] Um, or if you’re offboarding someone, then you can take it back over for a while.
[00:11:59] Janice: And it just becomes a task of sharing access. You don’t have to reinvent the entire process. You’re just adding their face to the top of the task or removing their access when they leave, and then you’re like, thank you past me. I am so glad I did that.
[00:12:12] Molly: Yes, exactly.
[00:12:14] Janice: I love that you mentioned email because I think we all have our own things we’re guilty of in our email inboxes.
[00:12:20] I definitely spend less time in my email inbox now that I know all the important business is taking place in Asana.
[00:12:28] There’s obviously still things rotting in my email inbox, but I don’t have to get to those later in the day because I know that messages from team members who I might be the bottleneck for, they’re in Asana. That’s where the highest priority stuff is, and it gives me a place to focus without all the distractions from marketing noise and other people’s agenda items that are probably chilling in my email inbox.
[00:12:53] Molly: Exactly. Email is just, how many do you get a day? It’s just insane. And so if, I love that you’ve taught me that when you’re sitting down to work, you pull up Asana first. You do not pull up your email first.
[00:13:05] Janice: I’m not an inbox zero person in my email inbox. But I’m an inbox zero person in Asana, right? So it feels nice that like this is a place I can achieve inbox zero. I can read my inbox bottom to top, make sure everything is prioritized and on someone’s desk and everyone got a comment back.
[00:13:22] And that makes me feel good when I have to pivot and go do something else.
[00:13:26] Molly: Me too.
[00:13:28] Janice: Does your Asana calendar help you keep track of how much of your day and your week you can kind of allot to each part of your business?
[00:13:38] Molly: Yes, because we’ve talked about that in great length as well not only when you help me set that up because you really got inside my business and just like could double as me. I think if I needed you to, like, if you needed a moonlight for me, I feel like you could do it with ease and that’s because you took the time to get to know it.
[00:13:54] So yeah, the calendar’s pivotal. We have all of, um, launches mapped out all the workshops that I’m doing and I know for the summer, you know, I’m gonna be working from home, not doing summer school because I
[00:14:05] don’t need to, don’t want to, don’t need to.
[00:14:07] Janice: Because you have choices.
[00:14:08] Molly: I have choices. That’s right. And so I know what I’m going to be working on because of that Asana calendar.
[00:14:13] I don’t need to scratch my head and think, well, what am I gonna do June 1st through the seventh? No, I know what I’m gonna do.
[00:14:18] Janice: Yeah. And it’s so crippling to walk in the office on June 1st with a million ideas and post-its and things that you could be doing. That’s the first way to make you run and shut your laptop and bounce for the day.
[00:14:30] Molly: Oh yeah. And I used to feel that way, so I understand if somebody listening feels that way,
[00:14:34] Janice: and I think that many TPTers can relate. You have more ideas than we’ll ever be able to take action on but we just have to lean into the data and be like, okay, but what’s working really well? And I think when you’re a classroom teacher, you get even savvier with your time. Some people work on the weekends, some people work after school, some people work before school.
[00:14:53] Where do you find your most valuable pockets for your business during the school year?
[00:14:58] Molly: Before school. I’m a weird morning person. I get up really early and my brain is just sharper in the morning.
[00:15:05] Um, so even in the summer, I’m gonna get the bulk of it done before noon and then I can clock out and do that with ease because I know that I had a plan and it’s not just post-it notes flying all over my office.
[00:15:17] Janice: Well, yeah, and it’s not, I can clock up for summer when I finished every single idea that’s on my office wall, like that’s never gonna happen. It’s like, these are the two most important things that I’d like to get done. I’m gonna do them when my brain is the sharpest so that they don’t take any longer than they need to.
[00:15:33] And then I’m gonna go enjoy my summer.
[00:15:35] Molly: Yeah, that’s exactly what I do. So
[00:15:38] you nailed it.
[00:15:39] Janice: And I think that one of your strengths as a business owner is that you do a really good job not running away from the data, but we really look at the data and sometimes it tells us what we want and sometimes it tells us what we don’t wanna hear. Um, but you always look at it on a frequent, regular basis anyway
[00:15:53] and I think that when you’re following the breadcrumbs clues from your customers, then you always come out ahead.
[00:16:00] Molly: I never knew what that meant in the initial stages of my business, you know, that follow the data and
[00:16:04] you’ve really helped me with that. Um, Janice does all of my data mining for my TPT store. And so every month I make marketing decisions based on the breadcrumbs that you have found
[00:16:14] and, it works. And the same goes with a launching a workshop or a course. If something’s selling really well, you have a breadcrumb. If it’s not, you have one too. So that’s
[00:16:23] been pivotal for me.
[00:16:24] Janice: We get to leave so many notes for future Molly so that the next April and the next March and the next February when you sit down, you’re not starting with zero. Because we don’t, we don’t have the brain capacity to be starting from zero ever. It’s so silly. We have so many clues that we could be working off of and you do such a good job between now and the next time that that product is predicted to be a big seller, you will roll up your sleeves and give it a facelift and make sure it has its best chance at converting. And then we release a little bit about the ones that aren’t in that top 20%. We can’t get to all of them.
[00:17:01] That’s okay.
[00:17:02] Molly: Right.
[00:17:04] Janice: What are you really excited about this summer as a teacher business owner?
[00:17:09] Molly: I am really excited about all of the workshops that you helped me plan out. We figured out a workshop model just works so well for my business and we have ’em all planned out, so I’m looking forward to just recreating the ones I know that are good sellers and then creating a couple new things that are going to get tested out based on data. So that’s what I’m looking forward to, is just having some time to really focus on those tasks.
[00:17:35] Janice: You are the pro at taking a signature product line and something that people are already loving and supporting them at a higher level using a workshop. What we do together is look at your 12 month calendar and try to figure out when do people need this to make sure that you go into launch mode at the right time, when that workshop can be the most impactful.
[00:17:55] Molly: Yes, and just taking something that’s doing well on TPT and repurposing it into something else, and you’re right, like having it all planned out ahead of time with you has been a game changer.
[00:18:05] Janice: Yeah, I have really enjoyed seeing your business get more specific over the years. In like every April, this is what my audience asks me for, and every January, this is what my audience naturally wants. And I think that probably helps with the focus a little bit because you always have like multiple accounts and multiple businesses and so many different people vying for your attention.
[00:18:27] It’s not a bad thing. Um, but I think that following the data is the only way we’re gonna keep your head on straight so that you can serve everyone at the time of year that they need you the most.
[00:18:37] Molly: Yes. I wouldn’t recommend having more than one account just focus on one thing, but if you are where I am, then I totally get it.
[00:18:43] Janice: No, but I understand why you’ve split up your accounts the way you are, and there is crossover. I don’t know if there’s a right or a wrong way to do that, but just like when you got started, you are one person who they knew as a teacher in the classroom who also could tutor, who also could put resources online.
[00:19:00] So some of us are just multi-passionate entrepreneurs and whether we zip that into one account or many accounts. I don’t think there’s any wrong way to do it.
[00:19:09] Molly: Right.
[00:19:10] Janice: Well, I am really excited for people to hear about a positive way to be multi-passionate and have multiple things going on in terms of diversification
[00:19:21] have there been any things that you’ve tried out and then just decided that you’re not going to continue doing them?
[00:19:29] Molly: I’m not very passionate about doing a lot of Zoom calls with people. Although I am extroverted at work , and I can do that all day , I have a limit to it actually.
[00:19:38] So I found a way to do coaching with people through Voxer, so that is definitely something that has helped because I’m sure if you’re a teacher and you’re listening and you can relate to that, you have a battery life to your on-ness. And so that’s something I’ve definitely learned.
[00:19:54] Janice: I can absolutely relate to that. I come from a background in the performing arts and I’ve just spent hundreds of hours on stage being on under the spotlight, and I’m just at a season of life where, oh my goodness, I just wanna be off camera for a little bit.
[00:20:08] Molly: That’s definitely me. I don’t know why it’s so exhausting. It just is.
[00:20:12] Janice: I think that we always have those decisions.
[00:20:14] It’s like, could you do more in person this? Uh, maybe could I do more face to camera that, uh, I guess. But we get to pick and choose how we spend our time, and as long as we’re being mindful to make sure it’s getting us in the right direction, then I think it’s always a win.
[00:20:29] Molly: Yep, I agree.
[00:20:31] Janice: If people want to connect with you, to hear more about tutoring, to see what you’re up to, to learn more about what you’re up to in your TPT business, where are the best places for people to find you?
[00:20:42] Molly: So Instagram number one, because you can send dms and just to have a real conversation with me.
[00:20:47] So, um, my handle over there, I’m sure you’ll link it,
[00:20:50] but there’s an a between my first and last name, so it’s just Molly a wheatley. DM me, tell me that you listen to this.
[00:20:56] I would love to hear from you and hear about your business. Um, I’m on TikTok too. I love TikTok, but we never know the status of TikTok and the DMing over there is a lot more cumbersome.
[00:21:06] so and then YouTube, I have hundreds of videos at this point, and my channel is Molly Wheatley. So check it out there
[00:21:13] if you’re interested in growing a tutoring business or you wanna learn more about ways to create a workshop and add onto your TPT store. I have lots of videos.
[00:21:21] Janice: Yeah, I think your YouTube channel is such a good visual representation of how you marry those two together, because there’s some people right now that might be listening that have a teachers pay teacher store. And they’ve never thought of taking all the resources that they’ve already created and used them with students.
[00:21:37] It’s not all or nothing. We don’t have to be in the classroom five days a week. There are so many ways that you can still have that touchpoint with students and probably use resources that you already have on your computer too.
[00:21:49] Molly: Absolutely, and you can test them out with a tutoring client and see where you maybe need to fix something, and then you can make content for that. I mean, it’s such a win-win.
[00:21:59] Janice: Absolutely. And you work with a lot of other tutors. Are most of the tutors that you work with in the classroom still full-time or do they have a variety of scenarios?
[00:22:09] Molly: A variety of scenarios. I think the number one person is usually looking for a way out of the classroom, which is interesting because I’m still in the classroom. But, I’ve had many students that that was their goal. Um, but people like me too, that just want extra money and they don’t really know how to get started.
[00:22:27] Janice: I think the path out of the classroom can be really scary because you think you have to go from zero to this dollar amount that you’re making. But I think tutoring is an example of something that allows you to build a little bit of a runway. And I think that you still, being in the classroom shows people what a
[00:22:43] sustainable tutoring income might look like while you’re still in the classroom, and it makes that first step towards their ultimate goal of possibly leaving a little less scary.
[00:22:53] Molly: Right. Could you do it for a year and save all that money, you know, and then leave the classroom? There’s so many options with tutoring and it pays you right away versus TPT, it might sit for a while
[00:23:02] and not make a sale. Tutoring, I can get paid today if I wanted to.
[00:23:06] Janice: And my last two years in the classroom, I actually found that because I was doing a little bit of teaching on the side and I was getting paid weekly, I had that like positive feedback, dopamine loop, that was just enough to shake things up that I was able to stay in the classroom just a little bit longer.
[00:23:23] Molly: Oh wow. That’s a really good perspective. I’m sure a lot of people need to hear that right now.
[00:23:27] Janice: Molly, it was so good to have a coffee chat for me. I know you’re super busy. I really appreciate you spending this time tonight.
[00:23:33] Molly: Oh, I loved every minute of it, so thanks for having me.
[00:23:35]
Here is a playlist of other win-win teacher business stories that I think you’ll enjoy:
