Are you familiar with toad venom? 🐸 Here's how it can help you grow your business. The freelance teaching space lacks innovation. There are many, many talented, creative people in it, but so many are simply doing the same thing that exists inside a language school. We need to be different. Not: ❌ increase your confidence ❌ improve your grammar ❌ learn more vocabulary Better:Toad venom. 🐸 @Leonardo Gomes, @Michael Landry and I talked about it on our recent Teacher Talking Time podcast episode. Watch the excerpt below and let me know what you think 😎 My main takeaways are: → the more specific the niche, the more demand there is → don't create solutions to problems people don't care about → stop creating and listen to what people need, not necessarily what they want 👉 The full episode is out on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0AFuUuSMRA9SGVhWqvUDsL?si=a25dad370c4a4227 The video version will be released on our YouTube channel in early September. How can you use the concept of toad venom to carve out your own little corner of the internet?

Help is coming ... What happens when 6 experts gather together to tackle the same problem – low earnings in ELT? Find out on Tuesday, February 27. Comment on this post and I'll make sure you get the info on Tuesday. Otherwise, stay tuned .... Hint: this is going to be very cool - especially if you know Nicola or her work at all.

For those who weren't able to attend our webinar today, here's the recording. We're very grateful to Ken Lackman for his time and sharing his knowledge. Download Ken's resources mentioned in the talk here. A few questions to keep the discussion going: - do you use lexical chunks? - have you tried using the universal approach Ken mentioned? - how do you think you could apply this to a course?

We're always looking to add resources and do more workshops on areas that would help you best. Cast your vote below for the ONE thing that would help you get to your next short-term business goal. If you feel comfortable, add your "why" in the comments below. That is: why did you choose your answer? We'll hopefully be adding more resources here based on these answers. Happy Friday all! 😎

Ready? Step 1: Gain 100 true fans of your work. Step 2: Throw up a landing page. Step 3: Point those 100 people to it. Step 4: Have courage and ask them to buy it. That's it. If people buy it, you have a good idea. If no one does, it's not quite there yet. That's where iteration comes in. Many people think this needs to be more complicated than it is. Don't waste time perfecting something. Get a Beta version, ask people to buy, and go .And if you're wondering "but where do I find the 100 true fans?" 5.16 billion people use the internet. You only need 100.