Hey TPT sellers ready to seek growth in your business, you’re in the right place. Welcome to the savvy teacher seller. I’m Kristen Doyle. And I’m here to give you no fluff tools and strategies that will really make an impact on your sale. Let’s get started y’all.
Today, we’re talking about some things that top TPT sellers do differently. And it all starts with your mindset. So there’s a one way that most TPT sellers are very different than other entrepreneurs. And it’s the fact that most of us didn’t really set out to start a business, I bet your stories a lot like mine. I was an avid TPT shopper until one summer, when I was searching for something that I just couldn’t find, since I’ve always been pretty creative and tech savvy and decided to just create it. And then I uploaded it to TPT on a whim, thinking maybe other teachers might want this too.
And from there, there were just more and more products and more and more sales until all of a sudden it hit me that I was running a business. I don’t know about you. But there were exactly zero business classes in my education degree. So I knew that I had a lot to learn. What I didn’t realize was how many mindset shifts I would need to make in order to become a successful TPT Seller. And to be perfectly transparent, I am still making mindset shifts and still working through mindset things today, I think it is probably something we’ll just always be working on. I’ve learned some of these things through wins, some through failures, and some through coaches I’ve worked with. And I know that I’m not the only one who struggles with mindset at times.
So today, I want to share those things I’ve learned with you. Here are seven key mindset shifts you can make to be more successful as a TPT seller. And as a business owner in general. The first one is transitioning from that teacher mindset to the mindset of a business owner. Now there are some similarities between teaching a class full of kids and running a business that can really help us as business owners, we are pretty amazing at managing our time and our resources. Because we have learned how to do that over our teaching careers, we’ve had no choice. There are some other things that are very different.
As a teacher, our whole focus is on imparting knowledge and nurturing our students and helping them to be the best that they can. And a lot of times that results in us give, give, giving way more than we necessarily are required to by our jobs. On the flip side, as a business owner, it is really important to balance the value that we’re providing with staying profitable in our business, and making strategic decisions based on the return we’re going to get off of the time or the money that we invest. So those are some shifts that we need to make as we’re moving into a business owner mindset.
Some ways that you can kind of facilitate making that transition in your mindset are to just start kind of seeing yourself as a business owner, think of yourself as an entrepreneur, start talking about it that way. If your friends who are not TPT sellers, don’t know that you run a business online, then you’re not talking about it enough. Hopefully, you are talking about yourself, like a business owner, you are letting people know what you do. And you’re treating this like a business. It’s also really important to set goals for your business every year or every quarter.
And just spend some time learning some basic business principles. You can listen to lots of really great business podcasts, I’ll link a couple that I like in the show notes. But thinking outside the TPT box and just learning about business in general. Another mindset shift that’s really important to make and this goes right back to shifting from teacher mindset to business mindset, in some ways, is adopting a mindset of abundance instead of scarcity.
Now, if you haven’t heard of these two phrases, abundance mindset kind of takes the position that there is more than enough of everything in the world to go around. There is enough money, there are enough buyers for our products. There is enough everything to go around, versus a scarcity mindset, which I think we probably all have adopted as teachers. And that’s that mindset where we feel like there’s never enough and we’re always having to stretch the budget and stretch the crayons to make them last to the end of the year and save those little scraps of paper in case we need to cut something out. That’s that scarcity mindset. And I think a lot of us were forced into that as teachers.
But when we are outside of the teaching world, the rest of the world is just not like that. So adopting this abundance mindset, where instead of just always waiting for the other shoe to drop and waiting for this business to fall apart, knowing that, as an online entrepreneur, we can always adapt, we can shift our focus, we can create a new product, come up with a new product line, or if it becomes necessary in the event of some total catastrophe on TPT, we could even come up with a whole new business.
One thing that I remind myself when I am starting to shift into that scarcity mindset, and I’m getting nervous about things is that I have created two, some people might even say three entire businesses out of my brain. And if this all falls apart, at some point, I can do this again, this is something that we can continue to reinvent, and recreate so that it’s a sustainable business for us, no matter what else happens.
Some other really important things for maintaining a mindset of abundance, would be to think about those things that you are grateful for, spend some time in gratitude every day, and write down some positive affirmations for yourself that you can kind of repeat. one of the ones that I have is what I just shared that I have created three successful businesses and I can do this again, if I have to. So write down some of those types of affirmations that you can repeat to yourself when you’re struggling with your mindset in terms of abundance versus scarcity.
Another big one is that top sellers avoid the comparison game. See when we compare ourselves to other sellers. First of all, we are usually making an incomplete comparison or an inaccurate one. We’ve all heard the phrase you can’t compare your beginning to someone else’s middle or end of their story. We never know where other sellers are, where they started, how much work they’ve done to grow, what size team they have. So comparing ourselves to other people tend to leave us feeling inadequate or maybe stuck. And it really is so important that we just focus in on our own personal growth as sellers.
Things like setting and tracking your own personal goals, celebrating your wins, even when they’re really small time and again, I see sellers who say I’m only up 10% this year. And maybe their goal was to be up 30 or 40%. And while yes, it would be super exciting to have met a big, big goal, when we are up 10%, you’re still up. So just shifting your mindset and celebrating those achievements, even if they’re not quite as big as you wanted them to be, can really help you to avoid that comparison game and to focus on what you’re doing to grow your own store.
Another thing that top sellers do is they are willing to make changes to their products to their strategies, especially when they get feedback. And when they know design trends and things have changed. The countless sellers that I’ve coached in the past have said something to me, like, I know this product looks outdated, and I really need to update it. But this is the style I like. And when you are able to identify that probably the visuals, the design of your product is the reason it’s not selling it is so important to be willing to make those changes. Don’t just try to imitate what everyone else is doing. But look at what trends are kind of overall and adapt your resources so that they fit.
Right now in that arena, we’re seeing lots more whitespace than we used to in the past. We’ve all said goodbye, I hoped to our polka dot backgrounds and Chevron’s. But even other backgrounds that have kind of come up since then, are starting to fade away in favor of more whitespace. And we’re also seeing a move toward cleaner, more modern looking designs. So find some ways to incorporate that into your resources that stays true to your brand.
The other kind of side of that coin is embracing negative feedback or failures. And seeing them as a learning opportunity. I know we all hate to hear something negative about a product that we have created and just poured our hearts into or maybe a product launch didn’t go as well as we wanted it to. But it’s been said before that in business, everything is either a win or a learning opportunity. And when we embrace that negative feedback or that failed launch as a learning opportunity. We do things like look for the feedback we can use, look for what might be true and that feedback that we can use to improve our product. Focus on those lessons that we’ve learned from that failed launch. rather than the fact that it failed. Maybe you’ve learned that this isn’t the right month to launch, or that your audience isn’t actually on Instagram as much as you thought they were, and you need to focus your marketing somewhere else. All of these are a part of the process of growing and adapting our businesses. So embrace these things that we might see as negative, and start to see them as learning opportunities.
One of the things I tell myself pretty frequently is that in business, I don’t ever fail, I either win, or I learn. And sometimes what I learned is what not to do. And that’s okay too, because we have to learn what not to do somehow. Next up, another mindset shift of successful sellers is to think about things in the long term, not just short term, and plan for that sustained success. And it’s always so tempting to jump on something that we think might give us some instant sales. But it’s always important to plan long term, and to think about the long term implications of those short term things that we do.
Now, I’m not saying that we should never jump on to current trends. Sometimes, those trends that pop up, we know they’re gonna be short lived, but they might really give us a big boost in sales. And maybe we need that right now. And that’s fine. But if all we ever do is stick to those trends, and try to continue creating what’s trending right this second, those trends fade away. And that keeps you in a constant cycle of creating new things. And those old things you’ve created, aren’t selling anymore. It’s so much better to be creating things that either will continue to sell long term or as trends change, you can come in and make small shifts and adjustments to the product so that it keeps selling instead of having to start over every time a new trend pops up.
Another topic in this area is constantly running sales, or undercutting your pricing. That can be a way to give us a nice little sales boost. And I say this as someone who just participated in a hashtag sale this month. But I always try to limit the number of those kinds of promotions that I do, because constant sales is going to lead to buyers who aren’t willing to pay the regular prices. So keep in mind that you want to adopt that long term mindset, thinking about what’s going to be good for your business in the long term, setting some boundaries around those short term promos that you do so that your business stays healthy, and sustainable, long term.
Alright, our last mindset shift is acknowledging that you don’t know it all. Especially if we’ve been in business for a long time, it’s easy to start thinking that we already kind of have all the answers, and that there’s not much left to learn or the way that we’re doing it is the best way. And as teachers I know, we all know the value of having that lifelong learner mindset. So as teacher sellers, let’s bring that into our business as well. Keep in mind that no matter where you are in your business, we all have things to learn. I know there are areas that I am really great, and there are areas that I struggle and I still need to learn. So when it comes to those areas, you know, you need to learn more about keep your eyes open for podcasts, for courses, for mastermind groups, where you can start learning about those things that you need some help with. And if you’re interested in any of those ongoing learning opportunities that I offer, you can find all of them on my website on my everything page at Kristendoyle.co/everything.
Well, there you have it friends, those are seven big mindset shifts that can help you level up your TPT business. As your action step for this episode, I would encourage you to choose one of those mindset shifts to focus on over the next month or so and see what kind of impact it makes on your mindset, on the way you feel about your business, and even on your sales. Before you go, if you’re enjoying the show, please take a moment to follow and rate it on your favorite podcast app. It helps other savvy TPT sellers like you find me and I appreciate it more than you know. Talk to you soon.
I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If you did, please share it with another teacher seller who would also find it helpful. For more resources on Growing Your TPT business. Head to Kristendoyle.co/TPT. Talk to you soon.
