This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Agricultural teacher earns $200,000 selling lesson plans. Welcome back friends. Welcome back to Side Hustle School. Chris Guillebeau, your host here. Got a great story for you today after creating course materials for a forgotten group of educators.
This agricultural teacher now earns a significant income from a growing business. This reminds me a bit of a story from our first year. It was also featured in the Side Hustle book, Meredith Floyd Preston, a Waldorf teacher who designs curriculum for other teachers. And in both these stories, you can ask the question, how did they identify the need? And ultimately both these individuals had the need themselves.
Teachers have to spend a lot of time preparing typically. And in the Waldorf system, there's even more of a burden on teachers because they're not supposed to teach from the textbook. Today's story has a similar arc in the sense that this agricultural teacher realized that there was a gap in the marketplace with a whole group of educators who didn't have a lot of resources. And so Alicia, the person you're gonna hear about here, she was determined to provide those resources, ended up making a big difference in their lives and also making a good amount of money for herself. So without further ado, let's give a quick shout out to our sponsor and then hear about this agricultural teacher who has made real money selling lesson plans.
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Alicia Tomlinson had just become a parent. She and her husband Brian were thrilled at the arrival of their first born. But Alicia quickly realized that her long work days as an agricultural education teacher just wouldn't work, at least not for a while. She decided she wasn't going to come back for the next school year and instead would focus on being a full-time mom. This at the time seemed like a much needed break.
But the break was over before it began. As soon as her fellow teachers found out she was leaving the school system, they began asking her about making course materials. Alicia wasn't sure about taking on the extra work but agreed to at least show her friends the materials she had on hand. And they were impressed. They couldn't stop talking about how much time they'd save if they had access to all these resources.
Alicia was stunned. She knew that there were very few resources for Ag Ed teachers, but had no idea that her personal materials would be so helpful to peers. She wondered what she could do if she really devoted time and effort into creating a product intended to be sold. After all, she was already well-versed in all kinds of agricultural subjects, from forestry to vet science, to meat science, to parliamentary procedure. Yes, all of that falls under agriculture.
Plus she knew what teachers wanted since she was one. As she continued to learn about what the side hustle would take to produce, she realized how few materials were necessary to start making products. She already owned a computer. She'd recently been gifted a printer. Really all she needed was a pouch laminator.
That cost $500, not a small amount of money, but it was the only thing she had to buy. So not bad for overall startup costs. With her business tools assembled, Alicia began to create her first products. And she started with two, two products that almost every kind of Ag Ed teacher could use. The first was a review game, all about the Future Farmers of America, FFA.
She decided to price that game at $50. The second product was a series of icebreakers for teachers to use at the beginning of the school year to help the students get to know one another. She knew that teachers could figure that out themselves, but that wasn't the point. The point was that they would no longer have to, which Alicia knew would be helpful. A few months later, there was a Future Farmers of America summer camp only an hour away from her home.
It was the perfect opportunity to debut. She'd been there before. She knew that educators would have plenty of downtime as they waited for students to finish their workshops. Plus the school year was only a few weeks away. So her products would be ideal for those first weeks of class.
Alicia remembered how crazy the beginning of the year was and had a feeling her easy to use products would be appealing. When she got there, she quickly found her friends and presented all that she had made over the last few months. It was in the dining hall of the FFA camp that Alicia made her first sale. She relished in the validation of her fellow teachers that evening. But by the next day, she knew she had to get back to work.
Her customers were already asking when she'd have more resources ready. And of course it took a while to create them. So she began doing that, making other class materials, eventually expanded into study cards for something called career development events. That was the product that really put her business, which is now called one less thing on the market. Teachers were telling one another all about Alicia's work and the word traveled quickly in the tight knit group.
She also started speaking at conferences and getting a ton of exposure. That year she made $35,000, her first side hustling year. And she just kept going. One less thing has now grown to become more than just a side hustle. She produces lesson plans in addition to the other products and altogether it pulls in about $200,000 a year, giving both Alicia and her husband the opportunity to work on it full time.
They can support their now family of five with the hustle Alicia happened to give a chance to just a few years ago. She still can't believe she gets to do what she does as a job. She loves being able to attend every event her kids have and be able to eat lunch with her husband every day. She'll keep putting out her ag-ad resources until the cows come home. So this project serves a very specific group of people.
That's why it works so well. Some people think maybe marketing to a small group of people is limiting, but actually this is why it's successful. One less thing had very little competition. It came up at the top of searches when people were looking for agricultural education materials. Plus Alicia could rely on people learning about her products by word of mouth since the community was so small and everybody was known.
So I think that was a big reason why it took off. We first worked on this story several years ago. I went to take a look. Is One Less Thing still up and running? Yes, it is.
Onelessthing.net, you can check it out for yourself. They've got lots of curriculum, collections. I'm looking here products by type, laminated ID cards, skill builders, study guides, posters, videos, review activities, and then also a bunch of free stuff as well. So you can check it out for yourself and get to know a little bit more about Alicia's business before you purchase. Of course, you may not be an agricultural education teacher, but the point is there's something you can do too.
There's something you can do for your own side hustle. I would love to know what it is, but mostly, I mean, I would love to know what it is, but mostly I hope you do something about it. That would make me even happier. Remember, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better. I hope you hear these stories.
Take action on your own ideas. Do something for yourself. Make the world a better place. All those good things. And of course, continue to listen.
Always completely free. New episodes out every day. My name's Chris Guillebeau. This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the "Onward Project."
