Before Your Summit: Paid Ads & Marketing Strategy to Maximize Your Virtual Summit · Jenzaia

200 | The Balancing Act: Back to Teaching & Running My Business

·28 min·1 clip

Her business had to cover three months of income after maternity leave ended in Canada.

1. Before Your Summit: Paid Ads & Marketing Strategy to Maximize Your Virtual Summit Episode 200 focuses on Shanzaya’s return to teaching while running her business. 2. Shanzaya is the host and a teacher-turned-ad strategist, and her own schedule changes are the reason she is talking about this shift. 3. The episode asks what a business is for when life changes, and Shanzaya argues it should work for the owner. 4. She says her TPT store started in 2013 while she was living in Taiwan and posting resources she was already making. 5. She describes the early years as a “post and coast” era that paid for audiobooks, bridesmaids’ dresses, groceries, and mortgage payments. 6. After her son was born, she says a friend told her to “get some time back,” and she turned nap time into business time. 7. She explains that her daughter was born in late May, and she planned to stay home through a 12-month maternity leave plus June, July, and August. 8. She says the business had to cover income for those three months because her family needed both incomes and maternity pay would have ended. 9. She credits the pandemic and her school board’s flexible leave rules for extending her time at home to over three years. 10. She says a traumatic situation at school in November 2023 pulled her back into full-time work for a period that felt “wild.” 11. She names two live conferences, eight ongoing clients, and full-time teaching as the load that made that season unsustainable. 12. She says her business later scaled so she could increase teaching hours while still keeping some client work. 13. Her first major challenge is consistency, because after a full school day and evening parenting from 4pm to 8pm, she often has no brain power left. 14. She says she used to work one teaching day a week and could give 100% to business on other days, but that rhythm changed. 15. Her second challenge is financial: she says she previously had a six-figure business for multiple years, but she has not had a $10k month in over a year. 16. She says profit margins are up because expenses were cut so low that the main costs are paying herself and taxes. 17. Her third challenge is client fit, because she switched to Pacific time and some people still do not like her availability. 18. She says she added a signature line about flexible work hours and keeps notifications off except for intentional email check-ins. 19. The episode sounds conversational, reflective, and practical, with repeated “mushy” brain jokes and a structured walk-through of cons, pros, and solutions. 20. Teachers, parents, and service providers juggling two jobs will probably relate most; listeners wanting a strict marketing tutorial may skip it.

As heard by us

A blunt look at making a business fit the life around it.

The episode follows Shanzaya as she works out what it means to keep a business going when full time is no longer the only option. It has to fit around a classroom schedule, a body that is not built for mornings, and the plain fact that life does not pause for work.

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Why you'd press play

If you need a reality check on scaling back without quitting.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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