Karen always knew that she was meant to teach. As a teacher, she noticed that a child’s love for learning started to die at 5 years old. This inspired her to pursue a career in learning about learning and the brain.
“When you know, you know"
Karen’s decision to leave the classroom came from her belief that she could make a bigger difference outside the public education system, than in it. Karen then started a business as a professional speaker to be able to work with parents and teachers.
Making key investments for your business
Karen made an important investment and employed a top marketing guru, Brad Sugars, who coached her in how to run a business. Once Karen learned how to market her business, her profits went from $60,000 to $300,000 in a year.
A key point she learned was the client is the expert in a business and there is so much you can learn from your clients. Track your business growth and understand what exactly is attracting clients/customers.
Karen is great at modeling successful techniques and applying them into the education field. She noticed that free seminars were working for the marketing field so she started to give free seminars herself for the education field.
She helps parents to let go and allow a child to go on their own journey, allowing the process of life to unfold. Some strategies she recommends are knowing what we can and cannot control and removing fear-based coaching.
Build yourself as an expert in your field
Share important ideas on social media, send out newsletters, create a blog, and come up with resources for others to buy. It hasn’t always been a straight success for Karen’s business. She talks about her failures in her past such as books not sold or empty seminars. However, she learned from her failures and now first finds value in a concept, advertises it to confirm this value, and launches it.
It’s all about putting yourself out there, taking advantage of opportunities, and taking risks. Karen has connected with amazing educators by mutual connections, meeting people at her speaking events around the world, and takes a chance by reaching out to people she doesn’t know or may say “no”.
Karen makes sure to spend time with herself, husband, children, and business (in that order). She works a lot but loves what she does, so each day is full of balance and gratitude! The harder you work, the luckier you get!
Sean McCormick 0:01 This week on Earn More Tutoring, Karen Tui Boyes and I talk about her journey from teacher to education entrepreneur, how her life changed in an instant, and she had to make her business work. And the daily habits she credits with giving her the energy to write books, host conferences, and continue to make a major impact on the education world. Karen Tui Boyes 0:21 And so I've never coached many, many people who are in the education field with the speaking field who are running their own business. And the reason I made it work was I had to, in particularly when I see woman starting a business, they often have the husband or the money behind them, so they don't have to drive as hard. But I had to drive. And I have all these financial commitments and I had to make it work. Sean McCormick 0:51 This is Earn More Tutoring, the ultimate crowdsource education entrepreneurship show. Today, Karen Tui Boyes, founder of Spectrum Education, which among many things, host the annual Teachers Matter Summit is my guest. Welcome, Karen. Karen Tui Boyes 1:06 Hi, I'm excited to talk to you today. Sean. Sean McCormick 1:09 I am excited to chat with you as well. So Karen, I always like to start with this question. Tell us about what you do. Karen Tui Boyes 1:16 And I'm laughing because it's like, how long have you got? I've been doing what I do for 27 years. And so I do a lot of things. And let me go right back. I was born knowing that my purpose on this planet was to teach. And so I had two loves as a child teaching, and Olivia Newton, John Nashawn, you'll be too young to know who she is. Sean McCormick 1:40 But agrees I'm there with you. I'm there. Okay. All right. Karen Tui Boyes 1:43 All right. So she, I wanted to be a singer, I wanted to be up on the stage I wanted, we lay the pants. So I, I was able to combine both those I left school to become a teacher. And very quickly though, I realized that I'd been taught what to teach and not how to teach. And I also realized really quickly that well, as a teacher. Children didn't, I didn't know how they learned didn't understand the brain. And also something that really broke my heart was I saw children coming into school at six years old. And I'm sorry, five years old, and the the light in their eyes, that excitement, that love of learning start to die about six years old, and broke my heart. I mean, how are we killing the very thing we want to get children to do to love learning. And so I left teaching 27 years ago to pursue a career in learning about learning, learning about the brain. And so I work with teachers and 34 different countries. Now, I work with parents, I work with students where the study smart brand teeth, teaching them how to study and pass exams. And so yeah, there's a lot of different things we do. But that's in a nutshell what I do. Yeah, so Sean McCormick 2:58 I know you're doing big things. I mean, I know I'm very excited for this teacher, teachers matter summit that's coming up, where you've got incredible speakers, incredible visionaries in education that are going to be sharing their expertise. But I want to take it back to sounds like when you were in the classroom. Now, I don't know if it was a public school or private school. But tell us about how did you make that decision? And what caused you to leave? You know, the typical classroom and kind of leap? And how did you make that decision? And what did you leap into? Karen Tui Boyes 3:33 I think, I think when you know, you know, so a lot of people say to me, gosh, that was so brave, gosh, you've got courage. I don't think bravery and courage was had anything to do with it. I just knew I needed to leave, because I could make a bigger difference outside the education system than I could in it. So I was in the public education system. Although I live in New Zealand, in paradise. So we don't really have we have a private education system. But really, the quality of education in public and private is exactly the same. So and basically, the only difference is parents pay for one and don't pay for the other. But yes, I was it was just the right thing to do. I just so there was no fear. There was no worry. I just left now the people who were worried or my parents when I rang them and said, I'm 26 years old, I'm going to start my own business. And I like what we've just put your you know, through university and college and you know, you've just got all this teaching diplomas and degrees, what are you doing and they were worried, but I knew it was the right thing to do. So I stepped straight out of teaching to start a business as a speaker to be able to help others to learn and be able to work with teachers and parents initially. Sean McCormick 4:59 Yeah, That's always the hardest part. But it sounds like you knew exactly what you wanted...
Check out the full interview below!
Want to hear more?
Head to your favorite podcast listening platform and get inspired by entrepreneurs and educators who have experienced it all!
Comments