The Nathan Barry Show

[00:00:00] Nathan: So you've built something that works. The clients are happy, money's coming in, but it only runs because you're holding the whole thing together. That's where Lily Jones is. She runs educator forever where she trains teachers to become curriculum designers.

[00:00:13] Lily: The first year I went kind of all in on my business was 2021.

[00:00:17] This year we're on track for 700,000.

[00:00:18] Nathan: Where are you hoping to take the business?

[00:00:20] Lily: I would love to scale past a million dollars.

[00:00:23] Nathan: So in this episode, we break down Lily's flywheel and map out what it would take to scale. There's two really important tactics that I think are very, very key for that zero to one.

[00:00:32] The first one is direct outreach, and then the second one that you had is the free classes and saying like, I'm good at this thing. I will teach it to you.

[00:00:38] Lily: I absolutely,

[00:00:40] Nathan: what would have to be true to grow the agency by 50% next year?

[00:00:45] Lily: We need either more projects.

[00:00:47] Nathan: Okay. Or, that makes a lot of sense. What roles can we hire that are revenue generating?

[00:00:52] Lily: I mean, I think somebody who can help me with sales,

[00:00:54] Nathan: I've often found my career, the more you specialize in, the more you niche down, the more opportunities you get. If you focused in sales and you could say, look, our highest paying projects and our most repeat projects are, could that alone close our gap?

[00:01:10] And I think it could.

[00:01:11] Lily: Yeah. I love that. Iu

[00:01:17] Nathan: Lily, welcome to the show.

[00:01:18] Lily: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:01:19] Nathan: So you have a really interesting business in that you have two businesses serving mostly the same audience in a kind of different way. There's a really interesting flywheel that I want you to get up on the board later and sketch out for us. But for anyone who doesn't know you hasn't followed your work, what is it that you do?

[00:01:36] Lily: So I have a business called Educator Forever that has two different sides. So one side is for teachers and, and so that side teaches teachers about ways to advance their career, mostly in curriculum development. But we also have a membership for teachers really showing them how to do things beyond the classroom.

[00:01:51] And then we have another side, which is a curriculum agency. So we work with many of the teachers who've taken our curriculum program to create curriculum for ed tech companies, educational publishers, nonprofits.

[00:02:02] Nathan: Okay. And then are you up for sharing some revenue numbers and diving into Yeah, sure. All that.

[00:02:07] Our listeners love real numbers. I do too. So half the time I listen, it's just be like, okay. And. That business is doing that. Okay. Yeah. Taking notes. It's so awesome.

[00:02:18] Lily: So yeah, the first year I would say I went kind of all in on my business was 2021, and then we made $300,000. It was mostly just me and a few contractors.

[00:02:28] Then 20, 22, $500,000 and I decided, okay, it can't just be me anymore. Right. So then I brought in some employees in 2023. Unfortunately, 2023 was also $500,000, so I was like, wah, wah.

[00:02:40] Nathan: Revenue or profit is a little lower.

[00:02:42] Lily: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I thought bringing in these employees, it definitely made my life easier, but it didn't really help immediately with revenue, which was a sad surprise.

[00:02:50] And then, uh, 2024, last year we got up to 600,000, so we got over that hump, and then this year we're on track for 700,000.

[00:03:00] Nathan: Okay. Amazing. Yeah. Thanks. And then what's the split between the two businesses?

[00:03:05] Lily: A little more than 50 50, I would say 60, 40 ish with the agency side taking out or bringing in a little bit more.

[00:03:11] Nathan: So about, say 300,000 on the, the teacher broker side side.

[00:03:15] Lily: 400,000 on the agency side.

[00:03:17] Nathan: Okay.

[00:03:17] Lily: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:17] Nathan: That sounds good. So where are you hoping to take the business?

[00:03:21] Lily: I would love to scale past a million dollars, uh, in the next year would be great. Okay. Um, I really want to expand our reach, both for teachers and for curriculum projects.

[00:03:32] So taking on bigger projects, reaching more people, and solidifying our methodology around learning.

[00:03:37] Nathan: Yeah. I love it. Now, getting into the space, like what brought you to. To teach curriculum design and to be, you know, educating teachers.

[00:03:47] Lily: Yeah, good question. Um, I was a teacher myself, so I taught kindergarten in first grade, and those are fun ages.

[00:03:53] Nathan: My youngest is, you know, first day of kindergarten, was yesterday having a great time.

[00:03:58] Lily: I wanna hear all about it. Um, yeah. So fun and funny and great and exhausting.

[00:04:03] Nathan: Oh yes. And so the parents are all like, yay, first time

[00:04:06] Lily: kindergarten. Oh, absolutely. I feel that now as a parent. So I had my daughter 13 years ago.

[00:04:12] I was teaching and I was like, I know people do this all the time. I don't understand how I can teach kindergarten all day and then go home to a baby. Right. Like. That's not me. I needed to go home and stare at a white wall. Yeah. And just decompress a little. So I was like, well, what do I do? Right. I, and also, I live in the San Francisco Bay area.

[00:04:29] The cost of childcare was about my teaching salary, so that didn't make sense either. And I had been doing some curriculum projects on the side while teaching and found that it was really a way to be creative and create the learning experiences that I wanted to see, rather than having all these children around all the time.

[00:04:43] And so I decided to leave the classroom when my daughter was born and go off to work for ed tech companies and create curriculum for them. Mm-hmm. I found at many of those places, there weren't any other teachers. So I was expecting to walk into these companies that have education or learning in their name and find other teachers.

[00:04:59] And I found a lot of like awesome tech people, but not teachers. And so I kind of was like, well, that, that's not right. Right? Mm-hmm. Like we need these products that are being used all over the country, all over the world, to be educationally sound. At the same time, I had teacher friends coming to me and being like, Hey, what are you doing?

[00:05:18] You know, you're still working in education, like you're home with your kid. Like how does that work? And so I found myself weekend after weekend, having coffee with friends and then friends of friends and saying the same thing over and over again, being like, yeah, we need you. You know? Like, absolutely.

[00:05:30] These places are looking for teachers, you know? And so I started an online course, which is something that I never thought I would do, I didn't really know about, but I was like, I'm saying the same thing to everyone, right? It needs to be something that I can take myself out of a little bit. So I started out beyond the classroom course almost, you know, eight years ago, probably at this point.

[00:05:51] Okay. Kind of on the side, you know, I was doing all these curriculum things myself, and it grew from there. So I did that and kind of got to know all these other teachers. I was also still doing curriculum projects on the side or as my main job then. And then I started being asked to do bigger curriculum projects.

[00:06:08] So I was like, great, I know teachers, you know, they've taken my program, like here we go. I can do this. And then I realized, oh, they need some key skills in curriculum development. Hmm. My Beyond the classroom course was really just about, Hey, you have options, right? Like, lemme tell you about those options.

[00:06:22] And then I needed something that was more skills-based. And so then I created our Curriculum development foundations program, which is a certification program where teachers can be certified in curriculum development to teach those foundations out of kind of a selfish need at the beginning, wanting to have teachers who could do this work with me.

[00:06:37] And then it's really rum from there.

[00:06:40] Nathan: Yeah. Okay. And so how did you attract the initial audience? Because it's one thing to make a course Yeah. And all of that, but you, you need to bring in potential students.

[00:06:49] Lily: Good question. Um, I started with people I knew. Mm-hmm. So really organically of people who I knew all my tea, all my friends were teachers, their friends were teachers.

[00:06:59] And so that brought them in the door.

[00:07:01] Nathan: Is that like you are messaging them on Facebook, you're sending them texts? Uh, you put them all on email list? Like what? How did you do

[00:07:08] Lily: that? Yeah, I organically started an email list. Mm-hmm. And so I would just reach out to people. Um, and I started leading free classes.

[00:07:15] Mm-hmm. And so I still do a lot of like free webinar style classes or workshops. And so there I would, you know, this was a long time ago, so it was a lot of Facebook groups of like teacher Facebook groups, like, Hey, I'm leaving this free class. Come join me and then sell from there, build my audience from there.

[00:07:30] And then now we do a lot of advertising to get people into those free classes. Um, but it really started organically.

[00:07:37] Nathan: There's two really important tactics mm-hmm. That I think are very, like, very, very key for that zero to one. The first one is direct outreach. Like if you have actually zero people on your email list, you know, or five people or whatever it is, you can grow a lot by sending texts and individual emails and saying, Hey, I'm doing this thing.

[00:07:58] I'm gonna be writing a weekly newsletter about this. Do you wanna sign up? And if it's targeted, you know, if it's someone you know or have a connection with and, uh, on a topic that they're interested in, they're probably like, okay. Sure. Mm-hmm. And then the second one that you had is the free classes and saying like, Hey, I like I'm good at this thing, I will teach it to you.

[00:08:20] Mm-hmm. And, you know, someone's like, well, what's the hook? And it's like, well, I am also doing other things that I will sell to you if you're interested in that. But like. This is like a complete thing.

[00:08:31] Lily: Yes.

[00:08:31] Nathan: So, so whether you're like, oh, I'm gonna teach web design classes or, uh, curriculum development or, you know, Figma design, like any of these things and just say, I'm gonna start doing this.

[00:08:41] Mm-hmm. And it's such a good offer. 'cause then even if you take the, the direct offer of like, Hey, do you wanna sign up for a newsletter? That's one thing, but, and the value's a little unclear, but if you said, Hey, I am teaching a live workshop on how to use AI for this, do you want to come? I was like, all right.

[00:09:01] Mm-hmm. That sounds good. Mm-hmm. And so both of those tactics are really, really helpful for kick-starting an audience, kind of going that like zero to a hundred people. And I've seen people do it all the way up to about a thousand, really just using those two techniques.

[00:09:15] Lily: Absolutely. And I think starting with people, you know, to me felt so much more approachable because I was like, well, I don't know about digital marketing.

[00:09:21] Like I don't know how to build an email list. And so it really was super scrappy at the beginning. And then with teaching the classes, I mean, I still do that now because I think buying an online course or buying an online membership mm-hmm. You wanna get to know the person and you wanna get a taste of it.

[00:09:34] And so that's the best way I found, just to give that taste. Right. And even if now it's not on Zoom, you know, it's on a webinar platform and I can't see everyone, like at least they're in the chat. Right. You know, we're building that relationship. And so I think that through both those tactics and even scaling those tactics, it's really been they focused on relationships.

[00:09:51] Mm-hmm. And showing teachers like they can trust me and that I know what they're going through and that they have valuable skills.

[00:09:57] Nathan: Yeah. And even, you know, starting those, like, you know, as you said, people do these big fancy webinars on fancy platforms, but I've seen people do it on, you know, 18 people in a Zoom room mm-hmm.

[00:10:09] Where you can see everybody. Mm-hmm. And I've seen them do it where it's like, Hey, this is more interactive or. We're gonna have a rule that everybody has to have their camera on. 'cause if we're gonna, we're simulating like a real world classroom, you know, and that, that kind of thing can go great. And then even if you only had seven people, then those seven people are like, great.

[00:10:26] Well I get to ask all the questions that I have. Yes. Yes. So,

[00:10:30] Lily: and it was so helpful starting that way. I mean, I had, I had so many awkward, like one person webinars at the beginning where I was like, I don't know how to do this. There's one person here. But through having that, or even like course calls where there were just a couple random people here, I learned so much, uh, through those two.

[00:10:47] Like it was great for them, but I got to hear from them

[00:10:50] Nathan: mm-hmm.

[00:10:50] Lily: Of what they were struggling with and learned about their stories in a way that now having bigger classes, I don't get to as much. Right. And so I feel like that part is really key for creators too, to have those interactions and hear from people at the very beginning.

[00:11:03] Nathan: You know, I had a moment recently in a workshop that I was teaching to already a small group, but then fewer people were able to to attend. So I think it was. Only like nine people that showed up live. Right. And I taught all the material. People loved it. I actually was a little worried that they didn't like it.

[00:11:19] And you know, 'cause a smaller group is gonna be less interactive just by the numbers. And so I asked like, was this useful? And they were like, oh yeah, this was actually the most useful thing. You know? So I was glad that I asked that question. But then taking, I, I was thinking about how is it an advantage that there's such a small group on this?

[00:11:36] And I was like, okay, so with the eight minutes that we have left, what would you most like to learn next? And I ended up like turning it into an interview and asking them like, okay, and this, and would that be helpful? And. You know, and so you could even go into like, Hey, where are you trying to go in your career?

[00:11:51] Mm-hmm. And then someone says something, they're like, does that resonate? And like five other people are like, yes, absolutely. Like that's what I'm trying to do as well. And you can source all of their own words and information.

[00:12:00] Lily: Mm-hmm. And look for patterns. Yes. I mean, I think that hearing people say the same thing over and over again over the course of like years of doing this has been so interesting.

[00:12:09] Yeah. Because we can all get in our own heads and be like, oh, I thought I was the only one who felt like this. And seeing what's universal has been really helpful for starting my own podcast or writing blogs or Right. Posting on social media, you know, having this bigger sample size.

[00:12:22] Nathan: Yeah. I like it. Was there a pattern that came up that, you know, ended up really shifting the way you think about your business?

[00:12:29] Lily: Um, I mean, I think thinking about all the ways that teachers just feel like they're not enough. You know, having teachers come and talk and interact with them and having them be like, well, I'm just a teacher. You know, hearing that over and over again. And even feeling that myself a little bit when I first started out, like I'm just a teacher.

[00:12:46] I've only ever really worked in schools. And then realizing that their skills are so valuable and that often they can't see it. And that a lot of it's systemic, right? Like teachers are total all over and over again that they're just teachers. And so that shifted a lot for me, hearing this over and over again and putting that message front and center that teachers are education experts.

[00:13:06] Mm-hmm. And so really leaning into that as the thing we need to build is like the confidence and mindset around their skills that they already have. And yes, there are new skills to learn, but they're experts in learning so they can learn those things.

[00:13:19] Nathan: And I love that, that you get the words and the, that sentiment of realizing, oh, I need to put empowerment all the way through this brand.

[00:13:26] Lily: Absolutely. Which is not something I thought I was doing. Right. It came up through this and then it does become almost like a community movement, right? Mm-hmm. Because then there's calls with other teachers being like, oh my gosh, you feel like that too? It must not be me.

[00:13:41] Nathan: Right? Right. Like it must must be something

[00:13:43] Lily: bigger.

[00:13:43] Nathan: Yep.

[00:13:44] Lily: And so that has been really helpful too. More helpful than if it was just me. Right. Like, 'cause they can see it reflected in so many other people.

[00:13:51] Nathan: I like that. Okay. Well, you mentioned flywheels earlier when we were planning and talking through this episode, which is my, probably my favorite word. I think that's fair to say.

[00:14:00] That's a good word. So, uh, if you as a teacher can come in and teach me a flywheel that you have in your business, uh, that would be great. We can do that up on the board.

[00:14:08] Lily: Yes. Sounds great. All right.

[00:14:09] Nathan: Okay. So before we dive into this flywheel, let's just do a quick map of the business because, or maybe a quick graphic of it.

[00:14:15] You've got the two sides of it. And there's some overlap here. So we have the, um, the agency on one side, and then what, what would you call, in one word, what would you call the other side?

[00:14:28] Lily: Teachers.

[00:14:29] Nathan: Teachers, okay. And then since we were talking about revenue, like there is overlap between these two, so we'll shade that in.

[00:14:35] Uh, revenue. We were saying about 400,000 a year over here. And then on the teacher side, about 300,000. I think people will be really curious on some of the price points.

[00:14:47] Lily: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:47] Nathan: So what are the offerings that you have on the, um, the teaching side?

[00:14:52] Lily: So our main offering is our curriculum development foundations program.

[00:14:55] Okay. That's the 6 97. And then we have a backend offer there for our advanced curriculum program, which is about $1,200. And then we have a membership, which is 97 a month. Usually that's people who've taken our programs who wanna stay working with us and get that accountability to actually start working beyond the classroom.

[00:15:16] But sometimes that's front end of people who are like, I don't know if I wanna do curriculum development, maybe I wanna do something else in education.

[00:15:22] Nathan: Okay. That, that sounds good. And then on the agency side, what's kind of that, the range of projects that you're doing?

[00:15:29] Lily: So anywhere from like 10,000 as a small kind of one-off project to 300,000 as a multi-year project.

[00:15:37] Nathan: Okay. That makes, and the multi-year project would be paid out monthly. Monthly. So it's kind of kind of like recurring revenue Yeah. As you complete that project. Okay. Very cool. And so the interaction between these two sides of it I think is really interesting. Well, I'll let you map out the flywheel and uh, then we'll just kind of talk through how these different sides go from there.

[00:15:56] Lily: Awesome. Sounds good. So I would say teachers, the teachers take our curriculum program. Yep. Then the best of the best of those teachers move into our agency. Where we take on curriculum projects. And the cool thing is these projects are buried. So sometimes people are like, Hey, it's a middle school project that's about social studies.

[00:16:16] Cool. We have teachers right from the curriculum program who that's their specialty in terms of subject area. Mm-hmm. And then now they have their specialty in terms of curriculum that we've taught them that we have a wider pool there.

[00:16:28] Nathan: How many teachers have gone through

[00:16:30] Lily: about 5,000.

[00:16:31] Nathan: Okay. Yeah. So you have a big, big pool to pull from.

[00:16:35] Lily: Mm-hmm. And so then I would say the agency projects feed the curriculum program because teachers get to hear about them. So when we're selling the curriculum program, it's like, Hey, we just did this really cool project. Mm-hmm. About social and emotional learning. It was all project based and it was really creative.

[00:16:54] And they get to see, it's not just writing a bunch of assessment questions or Right. Doing something that doesn't feel like really aligned with them. So we're able to show them what's possible. Through talking about the agency, which then brings more people to the curriculum program, which then expands our pool of these highly qualified people who we can work with.

[00:17:12] Nathan: Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think there's a lot of businesses that end up a lot of creative businesses that end up in this kind of environment where they end up training the people and training certifying the people that they need in order to fulfill another side of the business. Yes. Right.

[00:17:29] 'cause a lot of agencies, if they close a deal, they're gonna come in at some level and be like, okay, now we need people to fulfill this. Absolutely. And that becomes really, like, that's the bottleneck of scale in your case. You're like, I got, I got thousands of people Yes. In my pool. Now there's a subset where you're like, these are the ones that have a cream of the crop.

[00:17:49] Absolutely. And so you're, you know, you have a wide pool to pull from. The other thing is that they're, they're not just freelancers. They're freelancers trained in your methodology. So people are getting that very, like clients are getting that very consistent experience. Mm-hmm. I love that. So I guess brainstorming a few other types of businesses that would have this type of thing.

[00:18:12] I think of like Rachel Rogers with her, her program where, you know, she's coaching a lot of clients on how to build their business, scaling the seven figures, and then she also has her certification programs where she's taking the best students in there who say, Hey, I, I wanna be a coach. And so she's training them.

[00:18:31] And so those. It's two different lines of business, but like they can't really exist without the other.

[00:18:37] Lily: Absolutely. Yeah. And I would say, I do think as it is now, these two sides can't exist without each other. Right. Like I started the curriculum program 'cause I needed trained teachers. Yeah. And the teacher program, I mean, I guess it could exist, but it lends legitimacy.

[00:18:53] Like I feel like our programs are so much better 'cause we're working in this field all the time. It's not like, oh, I did this 10 years ago and this is what it was like then it's like, this is what a client's telling me yesterday. Yeah. Let me teach you about it.

[00:19:02] Nathan: That makes sense. Okay. So what I, what I like to do when I'm mapping on a flywheel is really go to more steps so that you can break down and analyze, Hey, where is this working really well and where is it maybe struggling a little bit?

[00:19:16] Mm-hmm. Great. So if we were to do that and write it down, maybe I'll write it out in a few more steps. I think the first thing that is really at its core is attracting teachers as step number one. Okay. So we're attracting teachers there and then. To a portion of those teachers, we're gonna teach them curriculum design.

[00:19:35] I'm gonna write the word teach. Mm-hmm. Many times. Great. All right. So we're tracking teachers teaching curriculum design, and then at, you know, that's where we start to get from one half into the other half, right? Mm-hmm. So from here, we wanna hire trained teachers. And I really emphasize the word trained.

[00:19:54] Yes. Right there.

[00:19:54] Lily: Me too.

[00:19:57] Nathan: That is a key differentiator here.

[00:19:58] Lily: Yes.

[00:19:59] Nathan: From, you know, as an agency, there's probably dozens of agencies that could be hired, maybe a hundred, I don't know. And so having that differentiation I think is really important. Mm-hmm. Like they're trained in our methodology. This is not a random group of contractors that we just.

[00:20:15] Found on Craigslist or wherever else.

[00:20:18] Lily: Absolutely. And I would say the other part of that too is like this community of trained teachers, right? Like we know these people. And so it's less like other agencies might be bringing in people, just like you say, they've never even met, right? They've never even had a Zoom call.

[00:20:30] They're like, okay, write this thing. And we know these people, right? We can trust them. We know that they've been trained. Right? And also they've worked with us before. They know the systems.

[00:20:38] Nathan: Yep. Okay. So from there, since we're on the agency side of the flywheel, now we need to, uh, generate agency projects, right?

[00:20:46] Mm-hmm. Sell agency projects. Yep. All right. And then as we go from there, the last step would be, you know, we've sold the work, we've got the people to do the work. Now let's actually, you know, we've completed it. Let's showcase that. Mm-hmm. Okay. So if we talk through this flywheel, we're attracting teachers that's on this side of the business of we want to, uh, bring the teachers in.

[00:21:11] The agency work that you're doing helps with that a lot, right? Because it's like, oh, this is, I'm learning curriculum design from the people who do all of this. They've trained thousands of teachers. Then the methodology of like actually teaching them curriculum design, then we move over into the agency side of, I'm actually gonna put like, kinda, I don't know where we would, you know, split the, the, um, the flywheel, but as it moves between the two halves of our business mm-hmm.

[00:21:43] Um, it's not exactly there, but you get the idea. Then we're hiring, um, you know, our best trained, most reliable teachers we're selling, um, projects based on, on that. And you could potentially look these, but, um, then we're really gonna showcase those results. And those results will both, and it's gonna help us get more agency clients as well.

[00:22:06] But maybe that's a mini. You know, agreed. A flywheel in there, but it's gonna help us attract more teachers. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Which gives a much bigger pool of teachers to pull from. You were telling me before that some of these curriculum projects are like very niche. Uh, what, what would be an example of that be where you wouldn't want just anyone who's good at curriculum design, you'd want a specialist or someone who had deep expertise.

[00:22:31] Lily: Sure. So we've had somewhere where we're creating supports for multilingual learners. Okay. Right. So it's maybe for a textbook company, they have a math lesson. They need to make it accessible to students who may just be learning English for the first time or at different levels of English proficiency.

[00:22:45] They need someone there who has expertise, right. In teaching multilingual learners. And so being able to have this pool where it's like, if I'm pitching or talking to a organization, they're saying, Hey, we have this project about multilingual learners, or you know, teaching algebra one or whatever it is.

[00:23:01] Right. I'm pretty confident in this. See of 5,000 teachers that I can find someone

[00:23:06] Nathan: for. Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay. When you see this flywheel mapped out, um, any other things that are like observations that you have or I dunno, key things that someone following along would wouldn't, like there's something, some magic happening in one of these steps that they'd want to really know about?

[00:23:23] Lily: Yeah, I mean I would say that there's also like some kind of connection between teaching curriculum design and selling agency projects. Mm-hmm. Like being an authority in curriculum development. Being able to say when I'm pitching agency projects, like I teach a certification program mm-hmm. On curriculum development helps me attract more projects.

[00:23:43] Nathan: Right.

[00:23:43] Lily: And I'm able to talk about it in a way that I wasn't able to when I wasn't teaching it. 'cause I wasn't as clear on like, what makes solid curriculum, what is the research?

[00:23:51] Nathan: Yep. That makes a lot of sense. Alright, so I think this is a really clear map of your business at a high level in what we can do in 20 minutes, you know?

[00:23:59] Um, well let's talk about where you want to go. What's the goal for the business? Uh, or you mentioned a million in revenue. So when, when do you wanna hit that million?

[00:24:08] Lily: Ideally next year. Okay. 2026. I

[00:24:11] Nathan: throw this up here. We'll go goal. I love it. So that'd be increasing revenue by 300,000. So that's a jump you've been increasing by a hundred thousand

[00:24:20] Lily: Yep.

[00:24:21] Nathan: Each of the last three years.

[00:24:22] Lily: Yeah. About,

[00:24:23] Nathan: um, and so that's a jump from there, but at the same time, it's not, uh, such a huge leap that it's like super farfetched.

[00:24:32] Lily: Sure. Absolutely.

[00:24:33] Nathan: One thing I love about that is, you know, you're setting a stretch goal doesn't feel inevitable by any means, but you're not setting like a, and then we're going to be at 5 million or something like that.

[00:24:44] Like we can actually make a short-term path for this. Mm-hmm. Um, I think that makes a lot of sense. Okay. So at 1 million, if we were to look at these two sides, what do you think the breakdown. Just gut feeling.

[00:24:58] Lily: I mean, I'm inclined to say maybe 600,000 agency. Okay. 400,000 teachers. Yep. And I think that the split in my mind will always be at least slightly higher agency, but as we grow revenue, I imagine that the gap will get bigger.

[00:25:16] Mm-hmm. Because there's a limit to how much teachers are able to spend.

[00:25:20] Nathan: Yeah, that sounds good. I like that, having that mapped out of the split there. So then we end up in this question of what would have to be true to grow the agency by 50% next year? It's only by $200,000, but still that's 50% growth in a year on meaningful numbers already.

[00:25:37] Sometimes people are like, oh, I grew a hundred percent year over year. I'm like, yeah, you grew from 10 K to 20 k. Sure. Like remarkable achievement, like I'm very proud of you. But also like maybe don't use percentages for that. Yeah, yeah, sure. Whereas here you're like,

[00:25:48] Lily: yes, these

[00:25:49] Nathan: are, these are meaningful numbers.

[00:25:52] Lily: Um, I mean, I think very simply we would need bigger or higher paying or agency projects by bigger, I guess I mean more. Yeah. Right. We need either more projects

[00:26:02] Nathan: Okay.

[00:26:03] Lily: Or the same number or fewer of higher paying mm-hmm. Agency projects. Yep.

[00:26:07] Nathan: So we're going more projects

[00:26:09] Lily: and or higher paying. And I feel pretty confident in terms of the delivery on this pro, on these projects that we'd be able to do that without too much of a problem because we have so many teachers because we have the curriculum program.

[00:26:21] Mm-hmm. So that's less of a concern to me, I guess I feel like I'd have to figure out the kind of management of the projects, but that also feels lower level than figuring out how to get more projects or higher paying projects.

[00:26:31] Nathan: Right. Do you have, so we put down 10,000 to $300,000 as the range of projects.

[00:26:38] Uh, if we were like average project size or maybe median project size since that 300 K project might kinda An outlier

[00:26:47] Lily: Yeah. Might

[00:26:47] Nathan: be an an outlier. You know, if you remove the outlier, what would the average project size be now?

[00:26:53] Lily: 40,000 I would say. Okay. And that would just for context, be an example of like, somebody wants to create a curriculum for their micro school organization.

[00:27:02] Yeah. And it's like, maybe gonna take six months and we're gonna create it and then it's gonna be done. Right. Maybe they'll come back for something else in the future, but it's like around a certain topic or subject. It's pretty finite and contained.

[00:27:13] Nathan: Is there a way that more of these could be recurring projects and this could turn into recurring revenue?

[00:27:20] Lily: I think so. And they have naturally, without a real system. Right. A funeral being like, Hey, you created this, it worked well, you wanna do it again, six months. Um, so yes, I think absolutely. And that's been some of our best projects are places where we're more like their curriculum partner. Right. Whenever they're creating content, they're coming to us.

[00:27:36] Mm-hmm. And so I think that's ideal. Like we have one ed tech company, we started from the very beginning. We created all their content. When they want a new initiative and they wanna add TK curriculum, they come to us. Mm-hmm. And so, absolutely.

[00:27:48] Nathan: Okay. And so that has me add another one. So more projects, higher paying projects, but I think also recurring or repeat projects.

[00:27:57] Lily: Yes, absolutely.

[00:27:58] Nathan: And 'cause that's something that we can emphasize, which we say repeat because it's probably, um, more on the repeat side than the truly recurring agree. Like, someone's not gonna be paying you, like getting on a subscription for curriculum development. No. Agree. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Do you have a sense right now of how many of your projects, like what percentage or repeat projects?

[00:28:24] Lily: I would say a little less than 50%.

[00:28:25] Nathan: Okay. That's pretty high though.

[00:28:26] Lily: Yeah, maybe like 35%.

[00:28:29] Nathan: So what's interesting about that is it tells me that if you put work into sell to the right people, they're gonna generally keep coming back. Mm-hmm. We're already at 35%. Yes. Repeat projects.

[00:28:39] Lily: Yes. Absolutely.

[00:28:41] Nathan: So that's, that's pretty promising.

[00:28:43] Um, is there anything, you know, we're talking about scaling the, the teacher side, and so that'd be that, that going to 400,000 in revenue. Is there anything that comes up there of like, uh, a key opportunity that you see?

[00:28:59] Lily: I think more visibility.

[00:29:02] Nathan: Yeah. You know, getting in front

[00:29:03] Lily: of more top of funnel. Yeah. Top of funnel.

[00:29:04] Absolutely. Right now we're pretty reliant on ads for teachers, which are less and less successful. Um, and so really creating content for teachers that resonates with them. Like, we have a podcast. Okay. You know, that's a way that a lot of people just come in the door, right? They start listening to our podcast, they see what's possible.

[00:29:19] They learn about our programs, they take our programs,

[00:29:22] Nathan: right.

[00:29:22] Lily: And so I think like doing YouTube, you know, creating more content, writing more emails, building those relationships with teachers, yeah. Um, I think is really the way in the door.

[00:29:33] Nathan: Okay. What I heard there is a bunch of different things.

[00:29:36] Lily: That's true.

[00:29:36] Nathan: And. This is probably, it's the problem in so many creative businesses where there's endless opportunity of what you could do. Absolutely. And very constrained time. And then everyone's like, we'll just hire more of a team. And then that, you see that profit margin decline and Yes. All, and the other thing that so many creators run into is they take on the revenue generating side of the business and they hire a team for the work they don't wanna do.

[00:30:01] So it, it ends up being all of the, uh, operations or all of that. And then if the revenue generating side ever decreases, then you're in this position where you're like, wait, I'm making all the money.

[00:30:12] Lily: Yes.

[00:30:12] Nathan: And you know, they're fulfilling the work and it's just hard.

[00:30:16] Lily: Yes. I have been there. Absolutely.

[00:30:18] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:30:19] And so thinking about like, okay, what, you know, as like what roles can we hire that are revenue generating, is there anything in this that you think of? Like, okay, who, yeah. A role that would be revenue generating that you bring in?

[00:30:31] Lily: I mean, I think somebody who could help me with sales. Okay. Right. Um. It's easier for me to think about this in terms of the agency.

[00:30:38] Mm-hmm. 'cause that means building relationships, that means applying for request for proposals, you know, that means that, um, actually putting in the applications and things like that. And so I think somebody could help with sales on the agency side. I definitely think somebody could help with sales on the teacher side, but that's more complicated to me because it's not a super high ticket thing.

[00:30:56] Right. We're not having sales calls, like I'm doing a webinar and people are buying direct from there, from email marketing. Right. Your price point's

[00:31:00] Nathan: the 700 to 1200. Yeah.

[00:31:02] Lily: So that feels a little bit like, someone's like,

[00:31:04] Nathan: Hey, can you pay me a hundred percent commission? Because that's exactly, exactly

[00:31:07] Lily: like not sustainable.

[00:31:08] Right. Um, so that feels a little bit harder for me of like, well, how do I get help on the teacher side? Mm-hmm. Um, but agency seems clear cut.

[00:31:17] Nathan: What's interesting to me is all three of the, the options that we outlined on the agent's side, right. To increase. We need more projects. Well sales, we need higher paying projects.

[00:31:28] Sounds like sales and repeat projects. Some that's like sales and you know, your customer experience. Sure. All of that. So we're like two and a half out of three of our things. Point back to sales. Yeah, absolutely. When you emphasize sales here, who would that be? To

[00:31:45] Lily: ed tech companies, educational publishers as it is now.

[00:31:49] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:31:49] Lily: I've thought about marketing directly to schools, but that would be more for the curriculum program or if we created our own curriculum that we could sell directly to schools. But right now we're kind of creating curriculum for places that then they go sell to schools. Right, right.

[00:32:05] Nathan: Yeah. And that feels like a big leap to go to selling to schools directly like that.

[00:32:11] That's a whole new Absolutely. Skill to learn and all of that. Yep. That makes sense. Uh, is there enough work in the. If we're going 600,000, the market's big enough, right?

[00:32:21] Lily: I think so. And also sometimes we do things beyond K 12, so like adult learners learning doesn't happen just in schools, right? Mm-hmm.

[00:32:27] And so sometimes we do do agency projects that are for adults, which opens up whole different, you know, training programs.

[00:32:33] Nathan: Right. I'm wondering if it's actually not, there's enough work. I'm wondering if there's too much.

[00:32:38] Lily: Maybe. So I'm gonna

[00:32:38] Nathan: throw something out there. Yeah. And see if it resonates. Feel free to be like, no, it's not a problem at all.

[00:32:43] Something that I've often found in my career is the more you specialize and the more you niche down, the more opportunities you get. Mm-hmm. And so saying, we do curriculum development. Mm-hmm. And you even went and said, not just for K Tochu, we could do it for adult lender too. Let do this. Yeah. And, and then I bet if we brainstorm, we get like, we could do it forever.

[00:33:01] Everybody. Absolutely. It goes forever. And you have a pool of 5,000 teachers and so you're like, not only could we do it, we could do it very, very well. Mm-hmm. And you'd be totally accurate in that. But if I think as a sales person, that might be challenging. I think a less experienced salesperson might go, oh, that's great.

[00:33:17] I can sell to anybody. And a more experienced person will be like, Ooh, that's, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's not good. Mm-hmm. So what I'm wondering is if in all the projects, maybe if we emphasize like the higher paying projects and the repeat projects, is there a niche or a focus area or something like that maybe that they all have in common or 80% of them have in common?

[00:33:37] Lily: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would say like our actual expertise is probably K through eight curriculum development. So, and even niching down more like K five or pre-K to five, right? Like multiple subjects. And along with that, like really engaging hands-on integrated projects. So I think that is kind of something that not everyone can do, right?

[00:34:03] Think about how these standards that we're supposed to teach in schools connect to. A bigger purpose of like, what? Right. How does that work in my life? Why do we teach fractions? How do I use fractions? You know? Yeah. Um, so bringing in that real world connection, bringing in a bigger purpose that kids know why they're learning the thing.

[00:34:20] Like, let's not have kids ask, when am I gonna learn that or use this? Right. Um, and then having it be fun, you know? Mm-hmm. Like having it be, I think learning is fun. Right. So getting kids really into it.

[00:34:33] Nathan: So, and then if you were to take this, uh, this grouping of curriculum that you're making, what type of organization have you had the most success?

[00:34:43] Mm-hmm. Um, developing that curriculum for,

[00:34:46] Lily: I'd say probably ed tech companies because there is more inclination to be a little more innovative. You know, sometimes the publishers, like, there are so many requirements, right? It is little. They're like, we've been doing this the same way 40

[00:34:59] Nathan: years. Like absolutely.

[00:35:00] You're not gonna be the one to convince you don't wanna

[00:35:02] Lily: rock the boat too much. But like, you know, ed tech companies are open to trying new things. Um, and they're not always core curriculum, right? So it's not always like ELA math. Okay. It could be social and emotional learning, it could be career and technical education.

[00:35:14] Mm-hmm. Like all these little pockets.

[00:35:16] Nathan: Yeah. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. So basically what I'm getting at is if you focused in sales and you could say, look, our highest paying projects and our most repeat projects are, or ed tech companies, developing pre-K to fifth grade curriculum, like that actually gives you.

[00:35:37] A list of organizations and a fairly targeted pitch that your, you know, your sales can go after.

[00:35:44] Lily: Yeah.

[00:35:44] Nathan: And really targeted on that.

[00:35:46] Lily: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:47] Nathan: And then we're not trying to reach everybody.

[00:35:48] Lily: No. I mean, absolutely. That feels good.

[00:35:51] Nathan: Okay. I like that. Well, let's talk about sales as well. I always, I'm always trying to be careful when talking through, you know, business model evolutions that we're not reinventing the wheel.

[00:36:02] Hmm. And so what would it look like, I guess, is there already people or organizations doing sales into these groups?

[00:36:12] Lily: There are definitely organizations doing sales into schools. Okay. So, so I would say often ed tech companies hire sales teams who sell their products into schools. I don't know if there are people who are selling services into EdTech.

[00:36:24] 'cause usually it's like a direct hire or like a project. Right, right.

[00:36:28] Nathan: Okay. That's interesting. Yeah. I think you're right. 'cause in schools absolutely right, there's. It's a huge industry. Absolutely. They like no shortage of students, no shortage of schools and school districts. And so you could, if you're going after schools, maybe we'll talk about that in a little bit.

[00:36:44] Mm-hmm. There's a lot of sales professionals that you could hire who are like, I do this all day, every day. Absolutely. I have a very established network. Mm-hmm. Um, and going from there, but EdTech is interesting that you might not have mm-hmm. As many options. Have you ever done direct sales yourself?

[00:37:00] Lily: No.

[00:37:00] Nathan: Okay. Do you have any interest in doing that? Or is that more like,

[00:37:03] Lily: not really. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I would rather have somebody who feels like that's their expertise.

[00:37:08] Nathan: Yeah. All right. Two things I like about that. One is you're saying like, you're very clear on this is what I like. Mm-hmm. And you're like, I got out of a, a day-to-day role that it wasn't a good fit for me.

[00:37:19] Yeah. And I built this whole business, so I'm not really interested in No. Going into another role. Yes. And then the other thing is it keeps you at the right altitude in the business. Mm-hmm. Where you're saying like, no, no, no, we're not gonna scale with me doing. All of the sales like that. Absolutely. That might be a great idea at a hundred k in revenue or 250 K in revenue, but we're aiming for a million and it takes real system.

[00:37:39] Lily: Mm-hmm. Yep. Absolutely. So I think that's good. Absolutely.

[00:37:42] Nathan: If you were to go about hiring someone to do sales into ed tech, any thoughts on

[00:37:48] Lily: Yeah, I think my major hesitation is that I've always hired from our community, which has been pros and cons. Right? Right. I love the people we've worked with, but, um, you know, hiring teachers, I do believe that, like, that's important for an education company.

[00:38:01] But I think when it comes to sales, I imagine that the skillset I'm looking for is exactly like you said, somebody who's sold to schools before. They may have not been a teacher, and I need to recognize that that's okay. Right.

[00:38:13] Nathan: Do you think that, I, I think that's probably true, but do you think the 5,000 people in your community might know

[00:38:20] Lily: I do

[00:38:20] Nathan: the right people?

[00:38:21] Lily: Yeah, I do. And a lot of those people have gone on and worked in ed tech educational publishing, not just in curriculum roles. Right. They may have even moved into a role, and That's

[00:38:29] Nathan: right. This is one of those things where what I would do is we coming here on the sales, I would send, I'm gonna draw an email right here, an envelope.

[00:38:41] Nice. Um, I would send an email to this group and say, Hey, we've found on the curriculum development side that we're having the best, thus in doing pre-Ks to fifth grade curriculum development for EdTech companies. Mm-hmm. So, I have two questions for you. One, do you know, do you have any connections

[00:39:01] Lily: Yeah.

[00:39:01] Nathan: To those organizations? And someone would be like, oh yeah, I actually work for one right now. Yes. You know, you helped me learn curriculum design, and then I got a job at one of those and I just, I've been meaning to tell you about it and I didn't bring it up Right. Or whatever. It's. Um, so first do you know people like that?

[00:39:18] You know, either you or someone in your network or all of that, and they could help us close those deals. And then two, we're looking to hire someone to lead our sales team mm-hmm. For that, you know, do you know anyone?

[00:39:31] Lily: Yeah. I love that idea.

[00:39:32] Nathan: And then that's going, you know, a hit or fly and let me know, it's super casual.

[00:39:36] Mm-hmm. And then you can go through and process those. Use AI to help you.

[00:39:40] Lily: Yeah.

[00:39:41] Nathan: Like, okay, what, you know, we got 150 replies, like what are the, the top 20? Mm-hmm. Which are the ones I should look at?

[00:39:49] Lily: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:49] Nathan: To filter that out and then that could give you a head start on that sales role.

[00:39:54] Lily: Yeah, that sounds great.

[00:39:55] I mean, I feel like that feels aligned to things I've done before, but in a different way, right? Mm-hmm. Of being, like, starting with our community. Maybe they're not the actual people I'm hiring, but they can start to put out feelers, connect us as possible.

[00:40:08] Nathan: That sounds good. And then there's a good chance that you'll have to go out to traditional job boards.

[00:40:12] Sure. Recruiting. Mm-hmm. All of that. That like recruiting, even as I was saying, like sales is not the role of you as the CEO of this business. Mm-hmm. Recruiting absolutely is. Sure. Yeah. Right. Because that's building that team, uh, that matters so much. All right. So if we were to execute on this, we would then have, well, I guess let's check our numbers.

[00:40:34] If you're bringing in, do you think the 400,000 of agency work is pretty consistent? Like your existing networks and repeat projects is likely to bring in 400,000 next year?

[00:40:46] Lily: I think so.

[00:40:46] Nathan: Okay. But then it's not just, it's not starting from zero. It's like, Hey, how do we,

[00:40:50] Lily: yeah. How do we get 200 extra thousand?

[00:40:52] Yeah.

[00:40:53] Nathan: Do you think one sales rep could bring in two oh thousand? I think so. '

[00:40:56] Lily: cause if you think about that as like maybe it's four $50,000 projects that feels doable over the 'cause. We've increased our

[00:41:02] Nathan: average from 40 K on average to 50 K by focusing on Yeah,

[00:41:05] Lily: absolutely. So like one a quarter, right?

[00:41:09] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:41:09] I mean, that, that feels pretty easy. Mm-hmm. I mean, I'm not doing their job, so it's easy for us to say it's easy, it's great. Of course they can't, uh, but you know, it's good to kind of gut check those things. Like okay, could that alone close our gap?

[00:41:23] Lily: Mm-hmm.

[00:41:24] Nathan: And I think it could,

[00:41:25] Lily: how about factoring in their salary?

[00:41:27] Nathan: Yeah. So that, you know, that's gonna be a hit to the margins. Mm-hmm. Right. And so, uh, it's gonna be really important that this is a very commission heavy role. Sure. Yes. 'cause otherwise you could end up in a position and, you know, if you're going, here's their salary and all of that. Right. You salary and commission.

[00:41:46] Or they can end up a position where they're like, well, I'm really gonna spend the first three months of the role, uh, understanding the business. Sure. Building a relationship. And then spend the next three months building the relationships. And then, so really we can expect the first sale, maybe like Q4.

[00:42:02] Yeah. And you're like, no, thank you. No. And so that's why making it very commission heavy I think is important. Another thing that I've only done once, um, but I've heard people building sales teams, like I'm not an expert in building sales teams, and I've heard people do, is hire two people at the same time, especially in sales.

[00:42:22] I've heard of this being done in social media content as well. Mm-hmm. Uh, where when you hire two people at once, you've got a few scenarios. If neither of them work out, that's entirely on you. That's fair. Right. Like Uhhuh Sure. Somewhere in the hiring, the training, the goals. Yeah. Clarity, all of that. Like it, it broke down.

[00:42:43] And you as the hiring manager, screw Sure. That's fair. Yeah. More likely one will work out well and one will not. And you can benchmark against each other. Mm-hmm. And you can start to see, oh. Okay. So we were average in our training and onboarding and all that. And someone who's exceptional said, no big deal.

[00:43:01] I'll take that and I'll rise above it.

[00:43:03] Lily: Mm-hmm. And

[00:43:03] Nathan: someone else like bubble below.

[00:43:04] Lily: Yeah. Smart.

[00:43:05] Nathan: And if they both work out amazingly well, then you're like, great, I've gotta staff up. I've gotta figure out other problems. But if you hire only one, you don't have a control group in your sphere. Yeah, sure.

[00:43:17] Absolutely. And so you're like, are we bad? Are they bad? Is the market like, I, I don't know why this didn't work.

[00:43:22] Lily: Uhhuh, that's smart. And if it's commission or highly commission based, then it's less risk.

[00:43:27] Nathan: Yeah, exactly. And so I might look at doing a, maybe you're a $2,000 a month base, so there's like, Hey, here's a basic amount.

[00:43:36] Mm-hmm. Or you, I've seen also seen a tapering where it's like, Hey, we're paying you 5,000 a month for the first two months because we're paying you to get onboarded and do all this, this. That's smart.

[00:43:47] Lily: Yeah. Cool.

[00:43:47] Nathan: Mm-hmm. Um, and you're, you're taking a risk, uh, but then it's going to, uh, a commission and you'll have to model out all the numbers.

[00:43:54] Sure. Everything from there. But I would recommend, um, we're gonna go times two. I would recommend hiring two.

[00:44:02] Lily: Right.

[00:44:03] Nathan: Because also if we go back, you know, we talk about bottlenecks. You don't have a bottleneck around curriculum production.

[00:44:12] Lily: No. I mean, that's the easy part to me, right? Like we've created this flywheel that creates the people we need for these projects.

[00:44:19] Yeah. We just need more projects.

[00:44:20] Nathan: Yeah. And so in that case, you know, if both of them work out great, then you're like, all right, well, turns out I need to hire a product man or project manager to help coordinate all of this work. And, but otherwise we're gonna Yeah. Be scaling up much faster. Which

[00:44:35] Lily: I think also goes back to like the attracting teachers, right?

[00:44:37] Yeah. If then we're hiring so many more teachers for all these projects, right? Then more teachers wanna take our programs and get into our ecosystem. So I think that helps everything. Yeah.

[00:44:46] Nathan: The other thing that I really like about this we, that we kind of touched on earlier. This is a revenue generating role.

[00:44:52] Mm-hmm. And so many creators do not hire revenue generating roles. And I'm like, oh man. Yes. And so you just think about, like, you hear the stories of our creator who's like, I ran this indie business. It was just me and a freelancer and we had 80% margins and it was good. And I decided to scale. And now I have a six person team and I feel stressed and overwhelmed.

[00:45:15] And you know, profits are half of what they were before. And you look at that six person team and it's like all six of them are on the cost center side, and it's still just you as the creator on the revenue generating side. Yeah. And it's like, well, no wonder you feel stressed and burned out like you're shouldering the entire future of the business.

[00:45:35] Lily: Absolutely. Absolutely. One thing we haven't talked about too, with sales too, we do have. Um, not huge amount, but we do sell sponsored posts in our newsletter. Okay. And sometimes we do sponsored workshops. And so that also, I wonder, could be something that these salespeople experiment with. It couldn't, it doesn't have to be just selling curriculum projects.

[00:45:55] It also can be selling access to our group of teachers.

[00:45:59] Nathan: How much, uh, revenue does that bring in right now?

[00:46:02] Lily: 20,000 a year or something. Okay. Not a huge amount, but some. And if

[00:46:05] Nathan: it was going really well, how much revenue would it bring in

[00:46:07] Lily: a hundred thousand maybe. Okay. I mean, so we have 60,000 teachers on our email list, and so selling spots in the newsletter has been successful.

[00:46:15] And lately I've been doing more sponsored workshops, so mm-hmm. You know, if a organization wants to pitch something to teachers, then they can do a workshop. To me that feels less salesy.

[00:46:23] Nathan: Right. Yep, that makes sense. Okay. If that solves a particular problem in the business mm-hmm. Like maybe that revenue unlocks a key hire that you wouldn't be able to make otherwise, then I think it's a great idea.

[00:46:34] Mm-hmm. If it's just incremental revenue Sure. Yeah. Then I wouldn't do it. And the reason is because that salesperson is now split and they're going to

[00:46:45] Lily: Yeah. Good call. Good call. So I

[00:46:47] Nathan: would just be very, as you think about scales, I'd just be very cautious about like, oh, here's some more money that we could pick up.

[00:46:55] Lily: Yeah.

[00:46:55] Nathan: An example of that is Kit has a very large audience, like our core, I think our email list is like five or 600,000 people. And what we email every week is about 300,000 for our newsletter. Mm-hmm. And so people are always saying, like, friends who run other software companies, people in the community, all that, they're like, Hey, can we get in front of the audience?

[00:47:13] Sure. We'll pay you an affiliate commission. We'll do all of this. And I've made a rule where it says, if it is not our monthly recurring revenue mm-hmm. From our customers, I do not care about it. Yeah. Smart people will say, but this will make an extra $25,000. And it's like, I don't care. Mm-hmm. Because it's too much of a distraction.

[00:47:29] And so I'd be really thoughtful about that.

[00:47:32] Lily: Yeah, that's good advice.

[00:47:34] Nathan: Now, not to say you shouldn't do it, but 'cause it might be, you know. On this side of the business for the teacher side, you're jumping from 300 to 400 K. You know, we're talking 30% growth. Like

[00:47:45] Lily: Sure. Or it could be, I mean, again, I hear you on this thing, laser focused, but it could also be a down sell for some of these things.

[00:47:52] Like if we're reaching out to an ed tech company, they don't have any curriculum projects right now, but do you wanna get in front of our list? Right.

[00:47:59] Nathan: Yeah. And so if it, if it fits well within existing workflows, then that's totally, totally worth doing. Cool. But it might be that you had somebody else work on that or, sure.

[00:48:10] Okay. Um, muddy. Keep those, those goals clear. All right. Let's turn our attention to 2027. So I feel like we have a clear plan for 2026. Yeah. Uh, done. Still gotta be the work, but you know, at least there's clarity for it. With 2027, what would be a good revenue goal for that? Assuming we've hit the 1 million, where do you wanna go in 2027?

[00:48:33] Lily: I mean, I feel like with these sales people in place. I feel like we could go to like 1.5. Okay. In 2027.

[00:48:42] Nathan: I like that. Is that pretty similar where you think more growth is gonna come on the agency side?

[00:48:48] Lily: I do, but I do see in our conversation the path forward to more teachers. Right. Like if we're having more projects, I do think that attracts more teachers mm-hmm.

[00:48:59] To take our programs. Uh, um, but yeah, I would say I would still expect it to be maybe like 70 30 agency said.

[00:49:07] Nathan: Yeah. That makes sense. And then on more teachers, is it reaching teachers one by one or is it bulk licenses and, and selling many seats at a time?

[00:49:20] Lily: I mean, I think if we want the path to increase the teacher side, it's bulk.

[00:49:24] Right. Okay. Like it's selling directly to a school and saying, Hey, you can have 50 teachers take our curriculum program for this amount. Um, and getting more per sale.

[00:49:34] Nathan: Right. Okay. Selling to schools is not something that you've done before. But what's interesting is that if you got good at that skill, I say you, your organization got good at that skill.

[00:49:46] Yes. People, these wonderful salespeople, then that would benefit both sides. Right? Because you would do curriculum development directly for schools, right? Mm-hmm.

[00:49:57] Lily: Yes. I mean, you

[00:49:57] Nathan: are doing it now. It is just not the bulk of what you're doing.

[00:50:00] Lily: Yes. I think that this feels like, and maybe this is a 2027 goal mm-hmm.

[00:50:05] Of moving into schools because it feels like not only I could sell more programs to more teachers, but also have a direct path to selling a curriculum that we actually create and own.

[00:50:16] Nathan: Oh, that's interesting.

[00:50:17] Lily: And so right now we create curriculum for other people. Okay. And then they go out and sell it.

[00:50:20] But if we're already moving into schools, this is also a goal that I have, which would require more upfront, right? Hiring people to create this curriculum that then we sell. But thinking about it in terms of 20, 27 feels easier.

[00:50:33] Nathan: All right. So selling the schools. You brought up an interesting point that there are three things really that you could sell to schools.

[00:50:42] Mm-hmm. If you were, if that was a core competency of your business, you could sell three different things. Uh, why don't you say what those are and I will list them out.

[00:50:49] Lily: Curriculum programs like, so for teachers? Yeah. And then I think it's mostly a curriculum that we create that we would sell to them. I think those are actually the two things, because curriculum that we create for other pe I mean, rarely does a school, occasionally a school has a curriculum they wanna create for their population of students.

[00:51:07] Mm-hmm. They hire an an agency or curriculum developers directly, but I would say that's more rigor.

[00:51:11] Nathan: What percentage of your current curriculum development work is for schools

[00:51:15] Lily: directly to schools? Very little. I mean, I could think 10%, 20 less five. Oh, okay. Yeah.

[00:51:20] Nathan: Okay. So it's really those, those two things.

[00:51:23] And then if you got curriculum development work for four schools, that'd just be a bonus?

[00:51:28] Lily: Absolutely. Yep. Okay. Yep. But I would focus on those two. If I were gonna focus on selling to schools.

[00:51:33] Nathan: Yeah. So this is the, um, the seats.

[00:51:37] Lily: Mm-hmm.

[00:51:39] Nathan: For the training. Yep. And then your own curriculum. So your own curriculum is something that you don't have now, but you have all of the parts.

[00:51:48] Lily: Absolutely. Yes. You're like,

[00:51:49] Nathan: we, we do this all day, every day. Yes. This is not a stretch.

[00:51:52] Lily: Yes. And in, when I think about things in really big picture mm-hmm. This feels like the smartest move.

[00:51:58] Nathan: Right.

[00:51:58] Lily: Because it's something that we own that then we can sell over and over again. Mm-hmm. And we have the people to create it, and if we have the people to sell it too mm-hmm.

[00:52:07] Then it feels like all the pieces are in place. It just feels like figuring out a focus for that curriculum. Yeah. And then building out the time and resources to devote to creating it.

[00:52:17] Nathan: What would it cost you to create that curriculum? Uh, we're talking a $50,000 investment.

[00:52:22] Lily: I mean, probably I've, yeah, I mean, I would say I could start small, which would be a $50,000.

[00:52:26] Right. Like. Start with something finite. Maybe it's only kindergarten, maybe it's, you know, some specific subject area, whatever it is as a test run. So yeah, maybe even 30,000. I could create something kind of scrappy and write out.

[00:52:39] Nathan: One thing that I was hoping for in this is that we could build the skills and the team to sell into schools while still selling our agency services, because then we're only changing one variable.

[00:52:54] Mm-hmm. It's like we're really good at agency work. Mm-hmm. So now let's get good at building a sales team to sell the agency work. Okay. Now let's build a sales team that is slightly different at selling the schools. Mm-hmm. Of the same work. And again, we, you know, we just, we made one step away. Mm. Mm-hmm.

[00:53:11] And then we can make another step of like, now that we're good at selling the schools, we can solve our curriculum, our seats. It sounds like that's not quite the reality because we're not doing curriculum development for schools.

[00:53:23] Lily: Yeah, exactly. This, these. I mean, this one feels like one step away. Right.

[00:53:27] Okay. Because it's the same curriculum program Yeah. To the same people. Just schools are buying it.

[00:53:33] Nathan: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:53:33] Lily: This one feels two steps away. Right, right. Yeah. Because it's our own curriculum is a new product and a new market.

[00:53:38] Nathan: So that, that's a good point. Your bridge into it mm-hmm. Is like, look, I'm not selling the agency side into the schools.

[00:53:44] Mm-hmm. But I got good at building a sales team to sell the agency side. Yes. And I'm already very successful at selling to schools in mass. Mm-hmm. Or sorry, to teachers in mass. Mm-hmm. Um, but now let me get good at selling.

[00:53:57] Lily: Exactly. Okay. So

[00:53:57] Nathan: we, we picked up a couple of skills

[00:54:00] Lily: mm-hmm.

[00:54:00] Nathan: Or we will have along the way of sales in different forms.

[00:54:05] Hmm. One thing that I really encourage you to do is to find someone who can be kind of a sales mentor. Mm-hmm. Um, it's not me. I haven't built sales teams in that way. Like it's not something that I'm, um, particularly great at. But, um, you know who, who you can just talk to about. Hey, here's, here's what I'm struggling with.

[00:54:25] And they're like, you know, or here's, I'm gonna design my commission program. And they're like, love where your head's at. Here's the four ways it's gonna burn you. Sure. You know, in year two, yes, please tell me yes. And so it might be, um, a course starting with a course that you take or the articles that you read.

[00:54:42] Um, and then the other thing that, uh, can be helpful in recruiting, favorite recruiting technique is to reach out to people that I would love to have, do the sales for me. And, but they're maybe if they're like too far along mm-hmm. You know, then I will email them and say, Hey, do you know I'm trying to hire for this role?

[00:55:02] Do you know anyone?

[00:55:03] Lily: Yeah. Great.

[00:55:04] Nathan: And then half the time they'll say, no, I don't, but I'll think about it and let you know. Probably a, I don't know, a quarter of the time or something like that. They say, yeah, here's a couple names that you might wanna talk to. And then a quarter of the time they say, actually, I'm kind of looking for a new role.

[00:55:20] Yes. Great. And this sounds ing. But you never run into this of like offending them. They're like, no, I'm a director of sales at this big company. I'm not working for your little company. Mm-hmm. You like let them serve often, but if you have a lot of those conversations, then you might find someone and you interview like, Hey, how would you build a sales team for selling into schools?

[00:55:39] You might find that person who you can then follow with and be like, Hey, could I pay you for a monthly call on this? Mm-hmm. Or, you know, would you be an advisor to me on

[00:55:50] Lily: Yeah, that sounds great. Yeah. 'cause I really don't know Yeah. How to build a sales team. I'm like, somebody please teach me.

[00:55:56] Nathan: Okay. So we want a sales advisor or sales mentor.

[00:55:59] Lily: Mm-hmm.

[00:56:00] Nathan: I've seen a lot of agencies really be attracted at selling their own products. Mm-hmm. Because, you know, maybe you go from 40% margins in your agency business to 90% margins in your product business. Mm-hmm. And, and and so there's a lot of money spent upfront. Yes. And a lot of distraction where you're not doing client work.

[00:56:20] It's not just the investment, it's the opportunity cost. And so I've seen them chase it so much. This happens a lot in like the web development space where at one point I felt like every web development agency was trying to build a, a SaaS company.

[00:56:35] Lily: Sure.

[00:56:36] Nathan: And very few of them succeeded even though they're like, wait, we build software all day every day.

[00:56:41] We have all the expertise in this. And so I'd be hesitant to push that too much. Mm-hmm. Yep. Um, or to like permanently carve off resources for it. Yep. What might be interesting is if you find yourself with a gap in agency work to say, Hey, we're gonna do this one project, we're gonna do the, we've heard a lot about this need in kindergarten specifically, or mm-hmm.

[00:57:03] Whatever. And then we're going to test that and here's how this experiment is then going to be something, emphasize more. Mm-hmm.

[00:57:10] Lily: And what do you think about that experiment, right? As being actually something that could bring teachers in? Like I could imagine. Doing some podcasts, doing some videos about creating this new curriculum.

[00:57:22] Mm-hmm. Kind of building it to in public. Right? Yep. And then having people watch that to, and not having it carve out a ton amount, ton of time. Right. But seeing how it goes from there and also making it visible to,

[00:57:33] Nathan: well, what's interesting about that is some of the projects you might not be able to share every detail.

[00:57:38] Oh yeah.

[00:57:39] Lily: It's hard to even share a sample. Right. And you're

[00:57:42] Nathan: like, can we at least say that we developed the curriculum for you? Yeah. Yes. No, half the time we can. Right. But your own, you could say, Hey, we're gonna do a six week series on the podcast, on YouTube, whatever, where we walk you through developing actual curriculum end to end.

[00:57:58] Yes. And the cool thing about that is, yeah, it would attract more teachers who are like, oh, your methods are actually good. It would attract more agency, uh, clients. 'cause they're like, okay, your methods are good. And then it would, you know, there'd be some number of people. Whether it's 1% or 10% who see that and go, oh, I need to buy that from my classroom.

[00:58:19] Lily: Mm-hmm.

[00:58:20] Nathan: Yes. And so it could hit, hit all of those

[00:58:22] Lily: Yeah. And slowly increases some demand for it. Right. Like it gets into the consciousness that this thing's being created.

[00:58:29] Nathan: Yeah.

[00:58:29] Lily: And so when it's ready to sell, then people at least know about

[00:58:33] Nathan: it. Right. Because you do have an email list of 60,000 people.

[00:58:36] Mm-hmm. And so, yeah, I really like that. I mean, everyone who follows my stuff knows that I love the build and public idea. Yeah. So long as there's overlap, some people are like, oh, I'm going to, um, build a, I don't know, a pool construction company, and I'm gonna build in public and talk about the entire thing on the internet.

[00:58:57] And you're like your client. Like, there's no overlapping here.

[00:59:00] Lily: Sure. In your case,

[00:59:01] Nathan: we just found three ways of overlap.

[00:59:03] Lily: Yes. Yes. And it feels like a good way to just carve it out. Like again, being I hear you and I agree that this is not our focus right now, the R curriculum. But if we could shift a little bit of the content we create at the top of the funnel to attract teachers to be actually creating the beginning stages of this,

[00:59:21] Nathan: right.

[00:59:21] Lily: That feels like it's a good way to work it in with some accountability and not too much time or resources.

[00:59:26] Nathan: Yep. I like that. Okay. So one of the thing is, I'm kind of zooming out and looking at all of this. Well, we're, we're scattered around in different areas. We have a bit of a roadmap, right? So we're saying, all right, in 2026, we're hitting a million in revenue, getting good at hiring and training salespeople is the new skill, right?

[00:59:46] Something that I talk about, I have an essay called The Latter is Wealth and the core idea that making money is a skill. They have a combination of many skills. And so if you want to move up to these other ladders, you're going to have to learn new skills along the way. And so hiring and leading sales teams really feels like, uh, that skill.

[01:00:06] Yes. And so I, I would really. Focus the rest of this year on, on that aspect of it. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then scaling that through 2026 and then 2027, you're saying, all right, and maybe you accomplish all of this much sooner. So actually maybe instead of thinking about it in terms of years, it's thinking about it in terms of like what has to be true to unlock this next thing.

[01:00:33] Hmm. I get to move on and start to think about selling our curriculum programs into schools. Mm-hmm. Once I have two sales reps who are each bringing in 150,000 in revenue.

[01:00:44] Lily: Yes. Yeah. I

[01:00:45] Nathan: made up those numbers, but Sure.

[01:00:46] Lily: But I think that's basically it. Right. And then even

[01:00:48] Nathan: like I would write those down on a sticky and put them next to your monitor and you're like, that is the

[01:00:53] Lily: focus.

[01:00:53] Yes. And my focus is getting clear on how to find and train these people.

[01:00:59] Nathan: Right,

[01:01:00] Lily: right. And how to monitor their progress and support them and do all the things. Then it's like spinning plates, right? Like they've got that down. Now I go to learn a little bit about selling to schools, right? Or whatever it might be next,

[01:01:12] Nathan: or, yeah.

[01:01:13] And you do it through the conversations that you have. So you might set a leading goal, right? You know, you're trying to find a sales mentor and salespeople. So you might say like, all right, I'm gonna have 10 calls, right? With mm-hmm. Potential people. Cool. You know, because then you're like, well, did I do my 10 calls?

[01:01:30] Yeah. Um, and just show up, right? Uh, and going from there, and then you, as we start going to 20, 27 or whenever you hit this goal, and it's like, all right, now we're selling into, into schools and our programs is something that we're already very, very good at. We're not selling a new product. We already know we have, we've taken 5,000 teachers through this curriculum.

[01:01:53] The other thing is people, a lot of content creators think about, uh, selling through content or direct sales as two totally different things. They don't realize the, or they think about, I have all this brand power, so let me sell in mass. Mm-hmm. Why would I ever bother with direct sales? Right? Yeah, sure.

[01:02:12] Because I can sell one to many. They don't realize how much that reputation helps in direct sales. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Is a massively,

[01:02:21] Lily: absolutely. I mean, I feel like I've seen that on a very smaller scale of even just selling our agency projects and being able to say like, Hey, we have 60,000 teachers in our community.

[01:02:28] We've helped 5,000 through curriculum program. Like having that helps us to land these one-off projects. Yes.

[01:02:35] Nathan: I love that. Okay. And then somewhere in 2027, maybe even a little later, we, we've started to get good at selling into schools. And then that's when we're saying, Hey, we're gonna do, we're gonna build in public our own curriculum.

[01:02:48] Mm-hmm. And we're gonna start to take that sales into school muscle. You know, we've leveled up, yeah, yeah. Sales, sales into schools. Mm-hmm. Now sales of our own curriculum into schools. And I think you've mapped out a like. We haven't even talked about revenue scaling from there. Right. Yeah. But I think you'd go well beyond 1.59.

[01:03:07] Lily: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that feels great. I mean, it feels great because it knows where it tells me where to focus. Mm-hmm. Too, right? Like, I, I just wanna create curriculum all the time. Right. So I'm like, can't I just do this? But it's gonna be unlocked, right? Yes. It's focus here first and then this is almost like the reward that someday.

[01:03:22] Yes. And that's

[01:03:23] Nathan: where, you know, you're pretty little asterisk there and it's like, we can absolutely do that. And it looks like we have to first do a, first do this. Yeah. Absolutely. You have to earn it. Yes. Yes. But it will be there. Mm-hmm. Well, that sounds good. Uh, let's sit down and just kind of recap Cool.

[01:03:37] What we talked about. So what were some of your biggest takeaways or actions of what you, what you wanna do next?

[01:03:43] Lily: Uh, I think my biggest takeaway is knowing where to focus. Um, focusing on sales, but not being the salesperson myself. Yes. That's so, which, which feels good because I was like, oh, if I'm focusing on sales, that means I have to be doing more sales, but it doesn't.

[01:03:56] And so that was a big takeaway for me. And then it was really helpful thinking about, I mean my head was just in now in 2026. And so then it was helpful thinking about 20, 27 and beyond mm-hmm. Of how all these things that I'm interested in doing can fit in, but not all at once.

[01:04:13] Nathan: Right.

[01:04:14] Lily: And then I would say lastly, the idea of like gradually going up to these steps of like, okay, we're doing this now, what would it look to do it on a bigger scale?

[01:04:23] Then what would it look like to sell it to schools? And then what would it look like to build our own curriculum to sell to schools and not going too many steps at once. Right.

[01:04:31] Nathan: You know, something that's helpful. Like for me, building a sales team, uh, before I'd done it, felt like a really big step. Mm-hmm.

[01:04:38] And a really hard skill to learn. And something that I've had people do in the past is go back a couple of years and map the skills they've learned at different inflection points in their business. So it's not like, oh no, I have to learn this huge new skill. It's. Oh, I've been sequentially learning these skills and stacking them on, on top of each other, one after another.

[01:04:57] And I can see the unlocks they've built. And this is just the next skill. Yes. Yes. And so if you actually map that out of, you know, if you have maybe a single page, you know, your Google sheet or whatever that has the revenue graphs and the profit and all of that, and then skills learned by year. Mm-hmm. Um, then you'll show your own personal growth in that.

[01:05:16] Lily: Yeah.

[01:05:16] Nathan: And it'll just be really encouraging this like, oh yeah, I can take on anything.

[01:05:20] Lily: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And having the learning focus too, where it's like there's the doing right, and then there's the learning. And so having that focus of like, okay, I am gonna be explicitly learning this new skill, right.

[01:05:32] For this next year or however long it takes to get to this point. Mm-hmm. And then it's gonna move on to the next thing that helps. Because otherwise I'm like, I kind of wanna learn about all of the things. Right? Like, let me try this. How about this thing? And that's not very helpful.

[01:05:45] Nathan: Yeah. Another thing that I would do is.

[01:05:47] Go out in like the creator communities and the business communities that you're a part of and say, and just deliberately say, I am trying to learn the skill of building a sales team.

[01:05:55] Lily: Mm-hmm.

[01:05:56] Nathan: Who can I talk to?

[01:05:57] Lily: Yeah, great.

[01:05:57] Nathan: And you know, put that if you have a WhatsApp group of a bunch of creators or you know, you're at an event like Craft and Commerce, like that's the kind of thing that you put out there.

[01:06:04] And people say like, oh, that you're trying, I think that's so easy. You know? Yes. Because it comes naturally to them or they it before, but then they'll happily, you know, help you build that.

[01:06:13] Lily: Absolutely. Yeah. Why reinvent the wheel?

[01:06:16] Nathan: Yes. Okay. So how are you feeling when you came in and, and what are you feeling now?

[01:06:20] I.

[01:06:21] Lily: When I came in, I mean, I felt confused, I'd say about where to focus and having a lot of ideas, like having ideas is not hard for me.

[01:06:31] Nathan: That's not the bottom line.

[01:06:33] Lily: Um, but I just felt like I don't know where to focus. Right. And now I feel clear on the focus, but I also feel. Glad that I didn't have to give up any of my key ideas.

[01:06:43] Yeah, right. Like it's not like, oh, don't do that at all. It's just maybe do it in 2027. Right. Or maybe do it once we build this muscle of selling to schools. So that feels exciting to me and I like this idea of like unlocking where I can put my focus next or what this next skill is to learn.

[01:06:57] Nathan: That sounds good.

[01:06:58] Well, I'm really excited to see how all this shapes up over the next year and a half, two years or so. Uh, if anyone wants to follow you, everything that you're doing, follow your journey, where should they go?

[01:07:07] Lily: Then can go to educator forever.com or educator forever, agency.com and on Instagram, we're at Educator Forever.

[01:07:13] Nathan: Sounds good. Thanks so much for coming on.

[01:07:14] Lily: Thank you so much for having me.

[01:07:16] Nathan: If you enjoyed this episode, go to YouTube and search the Nathan Berry Show. Then hit subscribe and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also just who else do you think we should have on the show.

[01:07:30] Thank you so much for listening.