Wouldn’t you like to have a business that generates revenue while you sleep? What about when you’re taking a nap in the middle of the day? That sounds pretty great to me!

Seemi Abdullah has structured her business to allow her to do just that, so she is joining me to break down how.

Seemi and I get into how she has structured her business and the journey she has been on to get to where she is now, how she leverages revenue share deals, how the pandemic changed her business, why she hired an OBM first, and a whole lot more.

Seemi Abdullah is the founder of TrilliumMontessori.org. She has over 20 years of experience in Montessori as a teacher and school administrator and owner and now works with other Montessori experts to provide professional development and curriculum resources to Montessori professionals around the world.

Regardless if you are in the teaching space or not, I want you to listen closely to this episode because there are a lot of great takeaways throughout.

In this episode you’ll learn: 

• Mindset shifts that take place throughout entrepreneurship
• What to consider when deciding who to hire and when
• The benefit of hiring an OBM first
• How to figure out what to get off of your plate
• Why it’s so important to have clean systems before you hand them over
• Tips for streamlining your “busy season”

I want to reiterate that Seemi has intentionally set up her business so she can take naps. That is awesome! Money still comes in while she’s sleeping – even in the middle of the day! This can be true for you too.

I hope you enjoyed hearing the progression of Seemi’s business as well as what is ahead for her. I want you to remember an important lesson from this episode: you cannot be creative and grow your business if you are too caught up in the day-to-day tasks in your business. This is something that Seemi learned throughout her journey and it is something that I want you to think about.

Links & Resources:

• The Art of Online Business website
• DM me on Instagram
• Visit my YouTube channel
• The Art of Online Business clips on YouTube
• Full episodes of The Art of Online Business Podcast on YouTube
• The Art of Online Business Podcast website
• Check out my Accelerator coaching program

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I use and love and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.

Seemi Abdullah’s Links:

• https://www.trilliummontessori.org
• https://www.facebook.com/Seemi-Trillium-Montessori
• https://www.instagram.com/trilliummontessori

Please support the podcast by giving an honest Rating/Review for the show on iTunes!

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The Missing Piece to Exponential Growth (It’s Not What You Think)

5 Observations On Facebook/IG Ads That Can Improve Your Results

The Evolution of a Multi-Million Dollar Offer

I came across the term OBM online business manager, and that’s when a light bulb went off. It’s like, Oh my goodness, I could hire somebody who can manage all of it and they can be the person who hires people for me and figures out where the holes are and then manages those people. As I was looking at the things that needed to be done, it was pretty clear that just one assistant wasn’t going to cover it. And as I was looking at all of the things that I was working on and thinking about what it would take to transfer that over to one person, I knew clearly that I did not have the bandwidth to do the research on how to hire somebody, how to manage somebody in this realm, and just do all of the project management on top or training somebody.

All right. What’s up, my friend? Welcome to today’s episode of The Art of Online Business podcast. Rick, I’m already here. And yes, my voice does sound pretty froggy today. I’m sick yet again. But yes, we’re moving forward here. You’re going to be okay. Now, today is a classic. Today is a best of episode that I shared back in November of 2021. So just a year ago. And what I want to do here over the next several episodes is start to mix in the top downloaded episodes from 2022. And this is number two, it is with Simi Abdullah, and Simi is a former accelerator member of our coaching program. And this was so well received because people are like, Wait, I can create my business like that. I can create my business around a schedule that I want to create in my life and see me as she wants to take naps and go for walks and spend time just doing things on her own and for herself and et cetera, etc.. And she’s created her business around that. And she breaks down today exactly how she has done that. And so without further ado, let’s get into this classic episode here in the podcast with Simi Abdulla. See Me. Welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

And great. Thanks so much for having me.

Rick Absolutely. I’m really excited. As I explained to you and frankly to all my guests, I have a blank document. I take I take my notes inside of notion and I have a blank document in front of me with your name on it, with nothing else, nothing else on it. This is like you and I sit down for coffee and we’re going have an amazing, amazing chat. Really excited about today because I wanted to have you on your you’re in our accelerator coaching program and you’re at a really interesting point in your business. I remember you saying something is probably we’re we’re towards the end ish of September 2021 and I remember it was probably about a month ago you said something along the lines of I’m good, things are really good. I am in a good place. I’m you know, I don’t think you use the word board, but it kind of felt that and I don’t mean that in a negative way. And so I really wanted to introduce you to my audience here and have you chat through sort of the progression of your business and how you got to where you are right now in your business and also what’s ahead, because I know that you’ve got some interesting things coming up, too. So before we dive into all that, let’s have you introduce yourself, who you are, what you do, and kind of how you got to where you are today in your business.

Sure. So my name is Sami Abdulla and I have a website called Trillium Montessori dot org and it is a resource for Montessori teachers and we provide professional development and curriculum resources. And it actually started off as a blog and a funny story about that is I actually used to own a preschool and I got into blogging.

Because I didn’t know that.

Yeah, no, that’s so I got my training in Rotisserie a long time ago, and then in 2009 I opened a preschool and I had to jump into figuring out how to market and getting people in the door. And as I got into that, I learned a little bit about SEO and realized, Oh, I need to have some content on my website that other people will want to link to. So I started a little blog and then as you know, you go start Googling for, well, how do you market businesses? There’s a lot of information online about online businesses and oh my gosh, this looks really interesting. I want to learn more about this. And so that kind of became a side hustle while I was running my school, creating some online resources, like downloadable resources for teachers, pay teachers because, hey, that’s the thing you could do.

And so wait one year, what year was this?

So the school started in 2009 and to a January 2013 is when I started the blog. And then that spring I sold my first downloadable product.

So eight years ago.

Yeah. So I’ve been done at a while. Yeah. Yeah. And also my online thing is not my first business. So I think this is one of the things that would be great for us to talk about is like the journey, the mindset journey of the entrepreneur. Because you said, you know, I’m bored and I’m in a good place. It’s because I have like a lot of years behind me.

Right? You’re not you’re not new to this. So you sold your first resource on teachers, pay teachers. And for those of you who don’t know what teachers pay teachers is is it’s a it’s a marketplace. It’s a huge marketplace in the teaching space where teacher entrepreneurs like see me create resources like lesson plans. And bundles and all this other stuff that teachers can go to and purchase really inexpensively and then use right inside their classroom. Sometimes like that day, they’ll go in that morning and say, I need a lesson for whatever for today, and they’ll go purchase one and then they can use that lesson in their classroom. And so. So you sold your first resource eight years ago. And what was was there like a light bulb that went off? You’re like, holy cow, this is really cool. Or was it like, Oh, yeah, I can do this?

It was a mix of both. I had. I was very excited to sell it. I was more excited about actually creating it and enjoying the creative process of, you know, up leveling the card materials that we had in the classroom. So that was fun. And then in I think the fall of that year, I created a few more resources and they sold really well. And then I thought, My goodness, this is going to cover my health insurance. So this is going to cover, you know, something, my assistant staff. And so it was a creative outlet on one side, and then it was a very welcome revenue, extra revenue source. And then over the years as running the school. Well, you know, I mean, there’s lots of interesting aspects to running a school. And I got to the point where the online business was making much more money with way less overhead. And there was a few other factors that led me to decide that just was not it was much more in alignment with my long term goals for me to close the school and just focus on the online business.

So at what point did you close the school?

So I closed in 2018. Okay, Yeah. And then I actually still had the lease for another year beyond that. So that was an extra.

So. So you paid, you paid the lease without without even running the business.

Right. And it’s actually complicated. It was, it was a I paid I paid rent for another year. And in order to buy out the remainder of the lease, I still had to pay another year’s rent. So it was a lot. But the point is that the online business was like the ROI for the online business was so much more than what the school was doing.

So at what point so was it actually 2018 that you were like, I’m all in on selling resources and your website and all that stuff in selling on TPT and so forth.

So that’s not the term I would use. I wouldn’t say I’m all in on that. I would say I want a slower life and the online business allows me to have that slower life.

Gotcha. Okay. And so at that point, was it just you? Who was it? Was it were you a one person show?

So the school I had some staff had four teachers working for me and they left. But this online business was just me and it was just me until April of 2021.

Or solopreneur until wait until this. I didn’t I don’t think I knew that until this year.

Yeah. Yeah. We we I don’t think we talked about the snowball thing that led me to signing up for you. Yeah, for the accelerator.

So let’s talk, let’s chat about that, because I know that when you, when you join accelerator or when you applied, you were, you were you felt like you were the bottleneck in the business you were looking to for for systems and to build out the team, etc.. What was going on before that? What got you to that point?

So I’m very grateful for how well received the Trillium Resources have been and all of the Montessori experts who I work with whose workshops that I sell, and during the pandemic, you know, we met a need, so we grew our audience quite a lot. So there was a lot more volume of sales. And related to that is a lot more volume of customer service. And so that was starting to take up a lot of my time. And January something happened. So I host my courses on Teachable, and Teachable started to automatically collect charge and collect sales tax, and that’s fantastic. I love that, except for the fact that a lot of my buyers are tax exempt. So I had to create a system, a parallel system for them to be able to purchase the courses and, you know, juggling customer service plus creating a new system. For this, I started to just feel like, well, this is not how I envisioned spending my days. This is a lot of, you know, like assistant level work. That’s just repetition. And so I decided, okay, it’s time. So around February or so, I said to my friends, you know, 2021 is going to be the year that I get ready to hire people. And by the end I will have hired some people. But then as I started doing some research into what I might need and I came across the term OBM online business manager, and that’s when a light bulb went off.

It’s like, Oh my goodness, I could hire somebody who can. Who can do who can manage all of it, and they can be the person who hires people for me and figures out where the holes are and then manages those people. As I was looking at the things that needed to be done, it was pretty clear that just one assistant wasn’t going to cover it. And as I was looking at all of the the things that I was working on and thinking about what it would take to transfer that over to one person, I knew clearly that I did not have the bandwidth to do the research on how to hire somebody, how to manage somebody in this realm, and just do all of the project management on top of training somebody. So so I figured that that an aim or integrator would be my first hire. They would be the one that I would work with, and then they would it would be their responsibility to take it from there and build out the rest of the team and make sure everybody was getting the information that they needed.

So that was going to be your first hire, not like an assistant or anything like that. You went right to that upper level, quote unquote person and you’re like, you know what? They can fill the gaps. They can figure out where the gaps. I love it.

Once I had that realization, I knew that I needed to be around other business owners who were making those kinds of decisions and had already had a large team because I was I was pretty sure I would chicken out and just kind of instead of fortifying the business with new staff, I was very tempted to scale back the business to a point that I could manage by myself. So this was actually the main driving force for me to sign up for accelerators, like I can either move forward or move back. And if I need if I’m going to move forward, I need to be around people who are who think that having a team and making these decisions is just normal.

Talk about the the chickening out part. So what was that mindset challenge that you were having? I don’t even want to call it a challenge. It’s basically an opportunity. You’re making the decision there because and I really want to dive into this because this is very, very common where and I got to that point more than once over the years where you reach a point in the business and you’re like, do I want to go through? What’s going on in the business right now in order to to sort of reach the next level, if you will, in our journey within the business as the growth as as the CEO of our business. And we we we sort of hit that point and it gets harder. We’re like, oh, I don’t know if I want to go through all that. It’s a whole lot easier to kind of take a step back and and and almost like it’s not I don’t want to say start over again, but go back to when it was really easy. Right. So what was going on in your mind at that point where you’re like, Oh, I feel like I’ll chicken out if I if I don’t take this action? What were you afraid of?

So it was actually an internal to like, do some life goal introspection on what is it that I want out of my life and how does this business fit into that? And financially speaking, there is a space within the business for me to scale back quite a lot and still make the revenue that I want to make in order to live the lifestyle that I want to live. And I’ll just say that because I’ve been a preschool teacher my whole life, I had a certain budget that I can live in, and it’s I can live a very easy life with the low revenue. Yeah. But but I also realized that my business had created a platform for other Montessori people to earn an income as well, which was very gratifying to me. And I love that piece of it. And so it felt like it would be a shame to not use that. Platform. And so if I were to scale back then, I would have to basically get rid of that platform. But if I invested some time and effort right now, then on the other side, I could end up with this machine basically that would serve a lot of people, a lot of teachers, you know, not just with the products that we offer, but really the monetary experts who can make money off of those workshops. And then also it would give it would have a functioning machine where if I was feeling creative and wanted to come up with a new project, the systems would already exist for me to be able to implement those, because if I had scaled back, I knew in a couple of years I would want to do something else and it would be building again from scratch and I didn’t want to do so.

Did you think that you were, if you went the route of hiring somebody, were you afraid of like failing at it or making a bad decision or what? What was that about?

I think my hesitation comes from the past experience of having been a school leader where one of the things that all school leaders struggle with the most is continuity of staff. You know, we can have our stable lead teachers, but our assistants, you know, they come and go and then people get sick and you must have a substitute like you have to. You can’t just like, oh, they’re sick today. We’re waiting until the next day to do this. Like, No, you need to have a body in the room. Yeah. And so many times that would just fall on me, like at the last minute. Oh, I have to go cover this thing. And I really did not have the, you know, the interest or just the energy to to be the substitute for things. So it’s like if I just had simple, easy automated systems that don’t rely on somebody else having to be there, I feel a lot more secure.

Gotcha. So. So there was that fear. If I hire this person and then they take over all of this stuff and they’re running with it, and then for whatever reason, they have to be out, or if they leave or what have you, that you felt like you were going to be, you were going to have to be the one to jump in and take over.

Yeah. I was worried that I would have to be the person who understood and knew all of the systems and be familiar enough with them that if that I would have to fill in the gaps.

And that was not something that you wanted to to do. Now, what did you want to spend your time doing?

Well, mostly I wanted to nap.

I love the honesty. Okay, cool.

Yes. I don’t actually spend a lot of hours on the business, but it’s on my mind all the time. And I have a lot of ideas for tweaking things and improving them. And I enjoy looking at the details of things and just improving stuff. And I’m an information junkie, so I’m listening to podcasts all the time and and reading blogs and keeping up with business Facebook groups. And so you get excited about some of the other ideas that people are trying and you want to try them as well. So I think I want it to be I wanted to spend more time on enjoying the creative parts of the business. So there’s the business creativity and then also the Montessori creativity. I really haven’t had the time to to create Montessori content for my audience. Personally, for a while, I’ve just been sort of repurposing things for a long time.

Yeah, and I and you all this is a really, really important point that Simi brings up here. We cannot be creative. We cannot allow our creative juices to flow, if you will, if we are caught up in the minutia of the day to day stuff in our business. And if we’re if we’re just checking boxes going down our to do list, like, yep, did that did that. And it’s it’s things that we’re doing in the business that we really frankly shouldn’t be spending our time on that is zapping your creative energy. I know that I experience that a lot more than I care to admit where, you know, just try something, you know, And this is this is kind of what Sammy’s talking about here. Take a day off. Take a day off from the business and try to remove yourself both physically and mentally from the business and see what happens to your brain. I would almost guarantee you that you’re going to come up with ideas. You’re going to be thinking of things. You’re like, Oh, that’s a good idea. I should do that. And then obviously keep a notebook or whatever, jot down your phone, just capture the ideas. But we need that space in order to be creative, to come up with those new ideas. And so see me in addition to napping, which I love, you wanted that freedom to be able to do those sorts of things. And if you came up with like, Oh, I want to create this resource, then you could either create yourself or you could have somebody do it for you. Before we start to move along there, I do want to take a step back and because you keep mentioning other Montessori teachers who they’re making money as well. Take us through what your business model is in addition to the TPT resources.

So the TPT resources are a very small percentage of my revenue. The majority of it comes from online professional development, which is really in the form of just prerecorded videos. And I it’s kind of like a marketplace really is what I have created. And so people I find Montessori experts to collaborate with and they create content and then I market it on my website and then people sign up and we do I do all of the customer service in-house and then that stuff and then the workshop creators receive a percentage of all the sales that arrive.

So you’ve created this marketplace, if you will, that you get great traffic to. And it’s brilliant because you’ve created a revenue share deal with. You say, Hey, I have a platform for your exact audience. Do you want to come over here and create, use your expertise will host it over here. We’ll promote it. We’ll do all the all the customer service and stuff, and you get a percentage of the sales.

Yeah, exactly.

Was that always the goal that you were thinking for your for your business?

No. The the thing I love so much about my business is that it has evolved and unfolded. And I think one of the reasons it’s been successful, at least to my standards, is that I have not been attached to any of the goals. And so you have like that beginner’s mindset of, Ooh, let’s see how this goes and let’s jump in and experiment. And so then you don’t have the fear of failure with it because you’re not attached. And then if it works out fantastic, if it doesn’t work out, it’s like, Oh, let’s try something else. And so, yeah, no, my only goals have been I want to enjoy the process, I want to slow life and I want to make enough money to reach my retirement goals.

So I want to talk about this. Actually, let’s come back to that because I want to talk about the slow life. You mentioned that a few times. Like what is the lifestyle that you’re really looking for that you’ve created for yourself? So you bring the team in to your business, number one, where. Where did you find them?

So I actually discovered that there is an OBM directory. So online. So. So then I, I filtered through there and I looked at a bunch of people and. And stalked them online for a little while and looked at their location, their testimonials, all of that stuff, you know, just look through it. And then I, I landed upon this one person and her website said all the right things to me. And then the clincher was, as I was going around on Facebook and other places, her ads followed me around. So I’m like, okay, she she knows what she’s doing.

She knows enough to do retargeting.

Yeah. Yes. And the messaging is on point, though. The graphics are on point. Like, even if she didn’t do this stuff herself, she was able to find people to do it and she was able to approve them. Then like, okay, this is a good sign. And then we set up a call to chat and we had a we clicked personally. And so so I said, Sign me up. Let’s go.

Just after one conversation.

Yeah.

I love. I mean, did you do did you do any kind of like test project or anything like that?

No, it was very simple. We just did like a 90 day trial and said, that’s that’s get going. Because like I said, I didn’t was not in the brain space to be researching how to hire people for this kind of thing. Like yeah and and one of her products, by the way, that she also sells on her site is solo to CEO hiring processes. So like I, I felt like I had enough information to get the sense that she knew what she was doing and then now she could demonstrate it to me over 90 days.

So obviously, this was not a full time person that you were looking for. You were looking for a contractor. How many hours or did you know how many hours a week that you were looking for? Or was it like, this is what I want to get off my plate? I have no idea how long this is going to take each week.

That that’s pretty much it. So we talked and I explained this is kind of what I’m looking for. And so she suggested a retainer of 10 hours a week.

Okay. And then so 10 hours a week. First 90 days is a trial. How did you decide? Because one thing that we do when people join accelerator is to have everybody do a time audit. I want to know exactly how people are spending their time. I don’t remember if you did that or not see me. This is one of those exercises that’s a total pain in the butt to do. However, it’s the information that you can glean from it is gold because you’re like, Holy cow, I spent 90 minutes today on that. I should not have been spending my time on that, especially when I’d rather be napping. Right. So so how did you figure out, okay, I want to get these things off of my plate first and give them to an online business manager.

Well, I had a lot of clarity that I needed to get my customer service off my plate because that’s where all of my time was going. And yeah, so the sticking point for me had been that I needed a customer service person and the person who was doing that really needed to be able to understand all aspects of the business because in order to problem solve the kinds of questions we would get. So they needed to know how all of my courses were set up, all the details about all of the courses and the principals and certificates and school orders and all of these things, a lot of detail. And so I even to make that happen in order to give somebody access to the back ends of these systems, I had to like tease them apart from the ownership of the system, right? So there was a whole tech iceberg there that had to be dealt with as well. So yeah, and like, even like just the emails, I had only ever planned to be a solopreneur. So all of my emails, all of my support emails went to a fake inbox that just came to my regular inbox. So then I had to create an actual support inbox and migrate all of the archives over there so that they could research the history of the customer and so on. So how did I delegate this? So with the integrator her, her job was to find a customer success person who would, who had the skills to be able to do this kind of stuff and to start creating sops for all of the processes. So while she was hunting for the right candidate, I was starting to make loom videos of the processes and how to problem solve the kinds of questions we were getting. So she presented me with a few candidates and she had a great process. She reached out and then they had to submit like a video as part of their application.

Yeah.

And we. We found a fantastic person. I was blown away by the video application of this. This gal really admitted, Oh, my goodness. Oh my goodness. 20 minutes. And she and it was like it was I was rapt. I was like watching the whole thing. It wasn’t even a boring 20 minute wait.

They way they create a 20 minute video for you.

Yeah.

Describing I don’t think I would ever watch a 20 minute video.

I probably did, but I watched it because I was like, She’s got graphic skills, she’s got presentation skills. She can articulate things. She she has a history here. I mean, like, oh my goodness. And she even, you know, paid attention to the details, like in when she made a presentation, she hunted specifically for Montessori images in there, you know. So I’m like, yes, thank you.

Isn’t that interesting? That and then unfortunate to write that somebody applying for a role on a team in a business, that this is what they’re this is what they do that it’s like, holy cow. This person actually took the effort made the effort to do this and make it relevant to the job that they’re applying for. I mean, we’re laughing about it, but it really is sad because so many people don’t even do things like that. So this person with all of this kind of creativity and energy and skill that they’re showing you in the video, this was your customer service person that you’re hiring for.

Yes. So we ended up so customer service is really the the level below my integrator. So it’s kind of like an OEM below the integrator. So she does a lot of tech stuff and a whole lot of things.

Okay. And then how many hours a week was this person working or did you hire did you hire them for.

So, yeah, the goal was 10 hours a week. But it we jumped right into a big annual sale soon after she was hired and while she was in training. And I think she’d worked full time hours that week. But generally now we’re looking at about 15 ish hours a week, 10 to 15.

Gotcha. And then were the team wasn’t. But was this did this person have an education background at all? Because a lot of teacher entrepreneurs like to bring in very smartly current or former teachers because they understand the space and it’s easier for them to get up to speed more quickly. Was that the case for you?

I did not hire an education person for this role. I needed somebody with more tech tech savviness and the customer service piece of it. But a subsequent hire was somebody who is a montessori person so that our customer service person could lean on the Montessori person for Montessori specific questions.

Gotcha. So I want to get to that in one second. You’ve hired a team. The team has hired a customer service person who’s doing a lot more technical stuff and everything like that. How much time has this freed up for you at this point? I know that you were spending a lot of time creating SOPs and so forth so that the team could take those and begin to document and systematize and use them for new hires coming on. How much time has this freed up for you at this point, bringing on two new people to the team.

At least a couple of hours a day. So for me, so I have eight years of the business in my head. And so a lot of things I could do super efficiently that other people will take a little while to get a handle on. So for me, before I handed over the inbox things, you know, the volume had gotten really high. And at that point I think I was averaging about 2 hours a day. And I think with the volume as it has been and what if I was doing it by myself, it would be about two and a half to 3 hours a day at this point.

Of customer service.

And all the some a lot of the back end stuff that they’re doing.

Yeah. Wow. And so how are you now at I mean, not now, but at that time, do you remember how you were spending that time? So you just had you just got you were given back 2 to 3 hours a day, which is a lot. Are you napping at this point? Like what? How are you using this newfound time?

My goal for these two quarters, second quarter and third quarter this year, has been to clean up the systems. So it has sort of been forced into it. But I also love doing this part. If you’re handing things over, it’s helpful to have clean systems to do that, and it’s an interest of mine as well, streamlining and logistics and all of that. So I’ve really been using that time to look at the systems more carefully and tidy and clean up and improve them. And the goal is by the end of this month, really for that to be completely off my plate.

Give us an example of one. Like when you say I want to clean up the systems, sort of do an audit, look at what I need to clean up. What’s what’s an example of one system that you may have looked at and said, you know what, I can improve that or that that really could use? You know, being more efficient.

So there’s like a ripple effect or a domino effect. So when I’m trying to create a video on how to set up a new course, then you look at, well, what are the graphics that we need to to create for this? Well, where are we storing the graphics? Is there a standardized way of restoring the graphics and a way that they’re stored in Canva? So we have these standardized sizes that we use, you know, so and then when you connect them with Zapier, what are all these are the three apps that we have to create for it. And is there a standardized way to do that? And how are they to convert? Kit are the rules. Oh, now we have way too many rules. We need to clean up the rules. You know, it’s just like, oh, gotcha.

Gotcha. And so the is not doing that. You’re doing that.

They’re not setting it up because I like setting it up. And the other thing is that if my systems had been created for my brain and my all the loose ends that I kept in my brain because I was not ever planning to have somebody else take it over. So somebody else coming in to clean it up. Very high percentage probability that they would break things because they don’t know what all things are connected to.

Gotcha. Okay. So you’re handling that and you said you’re enjoying you enjoy this sort of thing. So you’re like, yeah, I’ve been spending the last couple of months doing this and the team. Would you say at this point that you’re sort of addicted to hiring because you’ve seen the result?

Yes. Lists of things like, Oh, this is something that I can hand off to somebody. This is something I can hand off to somebody else. And this is a skill set we would need for this. But I’ve also been looking at my financial goals and how I want to allocate my my money. So I’m going to hold off on hiring somebody else right now.

So. So what does your team look like? Now you’ve got your beam. You have the person right below her handles, customer service, the tech back end. Do you have curriculum writers, resource creators? What does that look like now?

So the main people who are my contractors are bicolor the integrator. And then below her is the junior team, the customer service person. And then she has an assistant who handles the kinds of requests we get that are mostly copy and paste, but they can’t be like autoresponder. They have to be, you know, pasted. Gotcha. So that her assistant does that. And then we have a montessori person who is doing a lot of the social media and doing my newsletters and answering sort of the Montessori questions that come in via email. And then she’s also going to be writing our course descriptions and product descriptions and stuff like that. So those are the four main people who work regularly. And then in addition to that, I have somebody who helps create some of the curriculum materials, the downloads, the printables, and then all of the workshops and courses. Those are collaborations. So they there they have a percentage revenue.

Sure.

Yeah.

And you’re the one who’s responsible for creating those relationships and reaching out to people and so forth.

Yeah, I have a one. I have one person who I collaborate with very closely on some large projects, and she does she does a lot of the outreach for the networking with the experts and stuff.

It’s so smart how you have created this business and you’re such an interesting. I love working with people like yourself because you’re the way that you look at your business is so, so smart. And it’s it’s like little pieces here and there to help you uncover that creates massive leverage for you where you didn’t commit to accelerator, for example, like, I need all of this stuff. It was just sort of like you had it all there. It was just sort of talking through things, kind of like we’re doing right now and figuring out where is it that you want to go. And I want to talk about your the lifestyle goal that you have because we are building our business around our life, not the other way around. And so it was just sort of looking at those little pieces of what you’d already created and like, okay, where can we create some leverage for you here or there in order to get to that goal that you’re looking for? So what is that lifestyle goal that you want when you wake up in the morning? You kind of want to You mentioned that you want to ease into the day. What is a what is the day look like for for me?

So I am very happy to report that I have started living that ideal day kind of on on the way to almost perfection.

Okay.

So it is a very leisurely morning. You know, I wake up and I saunter over to my table where I turn on my computer and get some work hours in and then have lunch on the porch and then get a couple more hours of work in. And then I go take a walk by the river. And I realize that that walk is a very important part of the day for me, because as I’m moving and processing the information from the day thoughts and ideas that I had planning for the future, whatever, whatever thoughts have arisen to just process the work day. And then I realized that I can if I come back home, I will probably start working again. So instead of coming back home, I go and do something completely different. So just shop or eat or something. And and I should point out, I don’t have a house full of like, you know, partner kids, pets or anything that I have to take care of. So I have the luxury of my time is completely mine. So, yeah, I do a few hours of that and then evening is leisurely, like night is leisurely, you know, winding down, journaling TV, whatever.

Whatever you want to do.

Podcasts, take, talk, whatever before bed.

And.

What’s Yeah, go to.

Sleep. What time do you finish? What time do you stop and to go on that walk in the afternoon.

So at this point I try to stop by about five so I can walk while it’s still daylight. And then once the time changes starts happening, I’ll have to adjust and see am I going to start my day with a walk? Probably not, but yeah, but yeah, but I’m so. My slow season with work is really September through March, April and which is great because I can I’m hoping to be able to stop work by about two and then take my walk then.

Yeah. And you’re in North Carolina, so you do get the cold and stuff like that in the in the wintertime. And so you’re at a point right now as we record this, it’s the middle or the end ish of September. So you are in that slower season for yourself. In the business, but in the next month or so, you’re already planning, you’re already starting to plan for the busy season for 2022.

Yeah. And this time this summer. This past summer, I created very clear details about how I run all of my summer promotions. So hopefully I’m no longer going to have a busy season.

Yeah, because. Because it worked. You are really successful. So it’s like, Well, why completely reinvent the wheel next year? Yeah, you might tweak a few things here and there, depending on what’s going on, what have you. But it’s like, hey, I, we, I did the work, created this. It worked really well. Let’s not reinvent the wheel for next year. So many people often think like, Oh, I can’t do that again because I’ve already done that. And it’s like, no, as long as it worked, look at doing it again. Rinse and repeat.

100%. I am the queen of repurposing.

I feel like we could we could chat about this for a long time. But I want to thank you for coming on and sharing your journey, because I think that this is something whether somebody is in the teaching space or not, there’s so much to be gleaned from how you’ve created your business to set up the lifestyle that you want to live, financial goals, etc. that makes you happy. And I experience you whenever I chat with you. As somebody who’s very happy, as somebody who’s very calm and just a really, really good energy. And from what I see is you bring that to everything that you’re doing in the business, other people and accelerator as well when you’re helping people. And so I love that about you. So thank you again for coming on to share your story. Where can people connect with you? What are all the places that you’d like to connect with people.

If you’re interested in Montessori, the website is Trillium Montessori dot org and you can find me an Instagram actually Montessori, Facebook, everywhere. You can just find find me as truly Montessori. And I wanted to say thank you to you, Rick, for the opportunity obviously to be on the podcast, but I also really value the community of Created in Accelerator and I find everybody there very inspiring and driven and vulnerable, and it’s a very comfortable place to be vulnerable and to bring your questions and your concerns and your celebrations and joy. And it’s been a very great experience.

So thank you for that. Thank you for saying that. So Trillium is tr i ll I um.

Yes.

Trillium Montessori. I’ll link everything up in the show notes for the episode here today, but see me. Thank you so much again. I really appreciate.

It. Thanks.

All right. Thanks for listening today, my friend. Hey, if you know somebody who would get some benefit by listening to this episode today, please share this episode. If you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, there’s a three little dots next to the episode name and you’ll find in that dropdown menu they’re an easy way to share the episode. If you’re listening, say like on Spotify, you’ll see the share button right there. As you’re listening to the episode. The more people that get to hear this podcast, the more people that we get to help with the podcast. Likewise, if you’ve not yet left a rating and review for the show over on Apple Podcasts, it is still super helpful. I read all the reviews. Thank you in advance for doing that. It literally takes like 10 seconds to leave a quick rating and a quick one liner review of the show. Again, thanks so much in advance for doing that and thank you as always for listening to the podcast here today. Appreciate you, my friend. Until next time, be well and I’ll talk to you soon.