51 - We Thought Becoming a Consultant Was Risky. Then we Looked at the Data.

For years, I thought becoming a consultant was risky. Actually, that's not quite true. I thought it was irresponsible. I had a stable job, a paycheck, benefits, pension, two kids at home, and every reason to stay exactly where I was. But then I started paying attention, not just to education, but to the broader world of work. And the more I looked at the data, the more I found myself asking a question that completely changed my perspective. What if staying wasn't actually the safest option? What if the world had changed? But the way we think about the career security hadn't. Today we're diving into a conversation that might challenge some assumptions, not because we're here to tell you to quit your job. We're not. And not because we think everyone should become a consultant. We don't. But because every educator deserves to understand how work is changing and why expertise flexibility and optionality may be more valuable than ever before. So if you've ever thought, I'd love to do something with my expertise, but it feels too risky. This is the episode for you. Let's get into it. Welcome back to Unleash Yes. I'm Natalie Vertebaso. And I'm Tom Schimmer. And yes, isn't just a mindset. It's an acronym that stands for your entrepreneurial spirit. This is the space where educators like you come to reimagine what's possible beyond your role in the education system. In this podcast, we help you launch and grow your learning based business so that you can share your expertise as an in-demand K-12 consultant and expand your impact far beyond one classroom or district. Every other week, we dive into mindset shifts and practical strategies that turn your ideas into movements and you're calling into meaningful, liberated work. Because when educators unleash their yes, their unique vision, courage and purpose, they don't just change their own lives. They change education itself. Welcome back, fam. Hi, Esa. Welcome. Yeah, good to be back. Beautiful study day here in Vancouver. We're in the studio. It is. It is Vancouver Summer Baby, bright blue skies. Ready to be on some patios. That's right. It's so good. All right, so let's, I'm looking forward to this episode. But before we get into it, as we do, as we must, let's check in. Let's talk. Here's the question. What's something you used to think was risky that now feels completely normal? My entire life. Oh my gosh. I have to, okay, oh, you know what I'll say. I used to think anyone that had any kind of like a social media following was just a complete scammer. Yeah. Like if you are online talking about something you do and it's like like Tony Robbins, right? Like I'd see him come up and I was like, who is this fake ass scammer? You know what I mean? I was like, what do you, what do you actually even do? Like what do you actually even teach is such a lie. And now we run a very successful. I guess you could say part of what we do under our consultant umbrella is online business because in this unleashed space, we have the educator freedom lab, which has been growing rapidly over the past two years. And we are successful online business owners. And you're just in it and you realize it's a job like any other job that you create for yourself, even though you're your own boss. And that just felt insane for me. That felt like, oh my gosh, these, I think I would just say entrepreneurship in general. Yeah. My, both my parents were public servants is, you know, nursing principal. And we had family members who were entrepreneurs and it was always like, oh, can you believe that kind of lifestyle? Like the chatter about it at home was like how we're responsible. You're just never know where your next, you know, paychecks coming from. And so I grew up like very like demonizing that is like, oh, that you must have like a death wish. And now this feels like the most stable, the most true, the most secure, like I own this. Like I'm not renting a job from someone else. I own this job. Yeah. And that feels wemer stable that I ever could have imagined. What about you? Mine's not even close to as deep as that one. Oh, typical me. No, I mean, the first thing I thought of was I was thinking about activities or things like skiing or or things like that. And the first thing that popped into my head was towing a trailer. Oh, that's fair. Yeah. I would never want to. I mean, that's a never-skeleton. That's right. It's one of those things where I would watch people towing trailers. And then when I got my first tent trailer and finally was towing a trailer, I realized it's not as, is there some risk involved, sure? But it's not as as hard as I thought it was. And now it's completely normal to hook up the trailer and drive the trailer to a campsite. It says you. Yeah. But for me, you know, something that I used to think was risky that now feels completely normal. Yeah. So it's one of those things where, yeah, it's just, you know, This is such a funny thing, though, as we're starting this episode, because we're sitting here and you say that and like, I could never. But what risk is such a funny little thing in our brain? Because we could point at probably 80 things in each of our lives that used to feel risky in our now just second nature and you don't even think about it. It's almost like childbirth. Yeah. What I mean by that is like, when people are going through it, I've never gone through it. But I've heard it's like, oh, it's oh my god, it's so hard. I'm never going to do this again. Why did I do this to myself? And you have your kid and you're on the other side and you're like, oh, I want another kid. Like it's just risk is such a funny thing. It's like when you're in it and you're looking at it, it's the most overwhelming terrifying. Don't do it. And then you move through it and it's like it never happened. Yeah. I mean, it's a, it's a, it's a weird phenomenon. The things that you, again, the stories we tell ourselves about, whether it's being an entrepreneur, working remotely or, you know, leaving, leaving a job or all these things we tell ourselves are, are, you know, getting into a consulting business. All of it feels risky at the time. And then 15 years into being a consultant now, just this feels like my normal life. Like this is just my normal life. Totally. And I think like both of us, most educators define or have defined risk is leaving a salary, leaving benefits, leaving a pension. We call this the golden handcuffs. But here's the problem. The system itself in 2026 is becoming more and more unpredictable than ever before. There's districts restructuring. There's budget reductions. All of those middle level leadership roles like instructional coaches disappearing. So much leadership being eliminated. So much support roles being eliminated. Work loads are increasing more than ever before as a result. And I don't think anyone listening to this podcast would disagree with us that burnout is on an all time high in this field. It just is. So maybe the question really should not be is consulting risky. It's compared to what? Yeah. Yeah. And you get, you know, we kind of talk about both sides of our mouths in a way, right? We say in education, we'll often say it's not about the income. It's about the outcome, right? And yet it's all about the steady paycheck, right? So that is about the income. And at the same time, you go down a career trajectory and somebody says, you know what, you're amazing. We think you would make a great instructional coach. So you move from your teaching job into an instructional coaching role and you feel like you have this trajectory going, right? And then the district has to downsize because there's budget cuts. And you lose that job and you have to go back into the classroom or you, you know, it feels like a career regression. It feels like rejection. And it's all explainable. Budget cuts, budgets are low. Enrollments dwindling. Fine. The funding is not there. But then you feel so unfulfilled in your career. So what is the risk of staying in that position at times when you're just kind of a pawn that they move around the district? Oh, we don't have enough funding for this position. So we're going to move you into that position. Yeah, but I didn't want that job. But we have to find a place for you and all of those things. So, you know, compared to what the risk, the risky, nothing is completely risk-free because there's always a risk of shifting and there's a risk to not shifting. So the comparison is a really important one. So listeners, by the end of this episode, we are hoping that you will understand why the thought of traditional career security is actually changing, what workforce trends are actually revealing, why expertise is becoming more valuable than titles and how consulting fits into the broader workforce shifts and why creating options is different from quitting your job. Natal, you remind me of the hundreds of people that we talk to every year who tell us, I want this, it's my greatest dream, but you know, I have to be careful because that's just a little risky for me. So can you tell us more about when you made this decision to go fully in this direction back in 2011? The risks that were present at the time, how you worked through them, and then I have a follow-up question. Yeah, it's a big one. I mean, I was 20 years into my career. I was, for all intents and purposes, the primary, almost exclusive breadwinner of my family at the time. I had two kids, they were 14, 11 when I resigned for my job. So when I was contemplating the resignation, my kids were between 12 and 14 and they were between seven and nine years old as I was thinking about, no, 11, nine and 11 years old, right? So, don't forget to math publicly, that's the rule. There was not really social media, I couldn't, there was, but it was just like a toy. Twitter was like a toy, Facebook, we were just playing around with it. I had no giant audience. I was building a speaking career for a number of years, but what I did have as I had expertise, I had cultivated, sort of, I'd taken myself to different places to get noticed and get seen at conferences. And I was starting to build some credibility. But again, 15 years later now, there's multiple streams of income through coaching programs and what we do with unleashes and also CAC and the consulting work. I've done international speaking all over the world. I have more freedom. I feel like I'm having a bigger impact than ever. The biggest risk when I look back at that experience, the biggest risk wasn't actually leaving. The biggest risk would have been ignoring where things were already moving. - Okay, I have a follow-up question to that. 'Cause a lot of people, a lot of educators specifically are really concerned about the people in their life that they have responsibility for and they wanna support. But what became possible for your family and for your kids when you took this risk? - Yeah, it was, I mean, almost immediately. So I resigned in February of 2011. I left the job in the summer of 2011. And my first international speaking gig was in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam in 2011. It was August of 2011. And I was able to take my family on that trip. So for 10 days, we spent 10 days in Vietnam. We were in Ho Chi Minh City for the workshop, the weekend workshop. And then we went up to Denang and spent some time at a resort up there. That alone was an immediate impact that had I not left and resigned from my job. I never would have been able to take my kids to Vietnam and for them to see a different part of the world. That turned into opportunities in Shanghai. That turned into opportunities in Myanmar. That turned into so many different opportunities that sort of had come my way as a result of that. Years later, I was able to take my kids to Paris, to Barcelona, because I was working in those places, right? And all of the different opportunities that have come my way in terms of the experiences not just because of the work opportunities, but also because, yeah, when you travel, you do a crew a lot of air miles and it does allow you to travel to different places. And it affords you a kind of a different lifestyle that ultimately became sort of curated over time. So for me, it was so many experiences to give my kids that I never really would have been able to had I not resigned from my job. - I have to add as someone who's coming in as an outside interloper all these years later and looking at your relationship with your kids and who your kids have grown into as adults. One of the greatest gifts you gave your kids by taking that quote unquote risk in 2011 is they are human beings who really don't think with limits. Your daughter is actively pursuing a very successful like clothing design company. She's just going for it. Like I would never have considered doing something like that in my 20s. You know, your son is embarking on a really ambitious education career and immediately wants to write a book. But I don't think they would have even believed that was possible if they hadn't witnessed. And I think we sometimes, this is totally the theme of the episode though, we say, oh, I'm doing it for them. I've got to stay small. I've got to stay put my head down and just do the right thing. But you're also being a role model. And I think you've said to me before, you tell your kids all the time, follow your passions, follow your passions. - I was just going to say that. - You would say that if you never follow your passions. - Exactly. I would tell them, and that's one of the reasons that was the tipping point for me, resigning from my job was I constantly told my kids to figure out what you're good at, follow your passion. Like you'll figure it out. Money will come, you'll just do what you love. And then there's their dad playing it safe. And I felt like such a hypocrite. I just honestly couldn't get over myself. Like I was like, you hypocrite. Like here you are with an opportunity right in front of you. And you're going to play scared, play safe, swing small. And but you're trying to tell your kids to live their life that way. And I thought, what better way to show them than to model it? - Action speak louder than words. - And kind of go for it, right? And so I just have this mindset that they'll figure it out. And like that's their life and whatever career. I have told my daughter, she's chosen two of the hardest things. She was an actor at one point and now she's going in the clothing design. It's like you could not have picked two of the harder career or stick cultivate, but good for you. Like go for it. - I love it, go for it. - And I think that there is a risk because there was a risk when I did it, contemplated not resigning. And the risk was that regret. And I was risking living with regret for the rest of my life. For the second time. So it was something where there's always risk on both sides of a decision, like the F. And I think that so often we, and bringing it back to educators, so often educators think of like, what is the risk of stepping into this consulting space? Even if it were part time, and you're not putting your job, but you're stepping into it, like what am I risking? But you always have to also ask yourself, what are you risking if you don't do it? - Let's ask that right now. And we're gonna do it with data because we are assessment nerds. - Let's do it. - We need some data. But the first data point that we wanna talk about in terms of the risks of staying and of not pursuing anything outside of your job right now is teachers are experiencing significantly more stress than all other professionals right now. And we have data to back this up. So a RAN survey done in 2025 found that 62% of teachers reported frequent, intense job-related stress, which is compared to the 33% of similar working professionals. - Yep. - That's a significant gap, y'all. - That's a lot. - And all you have to do is hop on social media if you don't believe us, you can get some lived experience, truth of that. Teachers also reported worse wellbeing than comparable professionals work roughly, 10 hours roughly beyond contract to time. That's average, meaning there's a lot of people working 80 hours a week, double, just constantly working. And many of us in this field for many years called that stability. Chronic stress is not stability. Chronic stress is a pathway to cancer. Like that's not stable. You're setting yourself up for maybe, like my mom unfortunately, making it to retirement, that the final holy grail of that government pension just to be diagnosed with cancer. Because you just, you just ground your way through the 35 years to get there. So constant exhaustion is not security. And if your career requires sacrificing your health to maintain it, is that actually a low risk? - Yeah, no, that's such a great perspective on this. Because we are hearing more and more about burnout. We're hearing more and more about people feeling overwhelmed. And it may be no individuals fault in terms of why the system is doing this. But something has happened within the education system where people are feeling more stressed and burnt out than ever before. And under the guise of stability, like if you have to, like you said, if you have to grind out your 30 year career just to get to that, just to get to the pension. And if you're not grinding out your career, fantastic. Good for you. - Yeah. - That's great. But if you are like, gritting your teeth and it's like, wow, only 12 and a half years to go. Here we go. Like, but your post retirement, like nothing is promised to you. Nothing is guaranteed. Nothing is going to come your way necessarily. So you don't know if it's worth it to go through that. And what a way to live, right, is to just be grinding it through. So to me, being chronically stressed and exhausted and all of those things, sure there's some of that that always comes with any job, right? You're gonna have a little bit of stress. You know, the only way to not be stressed is to do nothing. And then you'd probably start being stressed 'cause you're doing nothing. And then you'd have more stress. But ultimately, like being exhausted is not, like what kind of a security is it when you're hanging on by a thread? Emotionally, mentally, physically. You're like, that's not stupid. - So you have a job, but what if you don't have a life? What if you don't have a future? - Right. Now, a lot of teachers, like I did early in my career, aspired to sort of move up the ladder. Like I was a teacher. I wanted to get into administration. I wanted to work in central office. I wanted to move in all of those different directions. But the data point that we also wanna add in. So data point number two of this whole sort of risk is that instructional leadership roles are being cut across North America. So these roles are not as available as they used to be. And then people are gonna feel stuck in their career. So here's a few examples. There was a February of 2026 article in Education Week about how budgets are being cut. And teacher leadership roles are often the first to go. Specifically in Toledo, they eliminated 49 mentors and instructional coach positions. That's a lot. So where do those 49 people have to end up? Well, they're gonna have a J-O-B for sure. But is that gonna feel inspiring? And is that gonna be something that they're loving? Vancouver schools proposed major instructional support reductions amid budget deficits over the last 15 years. There's been a lot of rollbacks. Multiple districts across the United States are cutting curriculum, they're cutting coaches, curriculum supports, they're cutting all of these different positions because of funding pressures. So these are the jobs that ambitious educators like myself are aspiring to, right? We wanted that. So the irony is that the expertise is actually needed more than ever because these jobs are getting cut. These roles within education are being disrupted more than ever. So we need expertise in the field. The positions themselves are becoming harder and harder to see. sustain and secure. So this actually creates a great opportunity for consultants. It does. So it's a common misconception that I'm sorry I'm pulling up a text because this actually is reminding me now. I got a text yesterday. I'm not going to say who it was, but it's a former colleague and it just opened with, hey, I'm so, so, so sad. Could you look over my resume and cover letter? My position's been cut and I'm being put back in the classroom. And EA has been hired to cover my role for cheaper. She was formerly an intervention specialist. So like this is literally happening in my phone, but I want to double tap on this idea that people will say, well, it's too risky to go into consulting because budget cuts. Consider this friends. To hire a full-time top of the salary teacher into a specialized role, depending on where you are across North America, but it can be a significant amount of money. Somewhere from 70,000 to $100,000, you know, including benefits, including the pension, including all the things that come along with a full-time employee. If you could hire someone with a ton of expertise that could come in at very specific times and make important moves in that role, this is independent consultant, you could pay $20,000. And of course, that's not an employee. So there's no benefits. There's no pension. And people often say, well, that's why I can't consult. Okay. But say that you've gathered 15 districts for paying you a couple days each and, you know, maybe five days per year. You got 20,000 per district. You're now making, I'm terrible at math. 200. A lot more money than you were before. I think you never do math publicly. I think you always tell me this and I keep doing it. I think your $250,000 year can cover some benefits in a pension package. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a weird thing. Well, but the pension is, you can, other people pay into RSPs. That's what we do. Well, you know, it is a funny thing that you write because not everyone in society, the vast majority of people in society don't work for the government or not public employees. Right. But for some reason, in the public sector of working in like public schools or nurses or anything, there isn't like what would you do without the pension. And yet the vast majority of people in society just say for their retirement through other means, they make investments, they do things. Right. So the pension is kind of a forced savings plan that you don't have to think about, which is great in some respects. But for some people, they can't fathom the idea that you actually could say for your retirement otherwise. Of course. You don't have to have a pension. The big takeaway here is that just the fact that there are budget cuts is not actually a reason why consulting is risky and more work. It's a reason why it will work. Exactly. And because those middle-level roles have gone away, it doesn't mean the need for them has gone away. And that is so critical we want you to really sit with that. You are actually a more effective and a more cost-effective means of filling that need as an independent consultant. So there's more need than ever before, which brings us to data.point three. This is a lot bigger than education folks. The entire workforce has been moving over the past 25 years towards this expertise-based economy and work. And it's something that if you haven't heard of this phrase, it's a well-known phrase outside of education called being fractional. Fractional work. This was, think of it very similar to like the gate economy. It's a part of that. But the idea of fractional work is it's harder than ever before for people to offer full-time salaries, contracts, all of that to an individual. So instead, you want to become really good at what you do so you can work part-time for a bunch of different companies. This is essentially like being an independent consultant. That's all the work really is. And this has been growing rapidly. So times reported that LinkedIn Profiles referencing being a part of fractional leadership has surged dramatically between 2022 and 2024. And it goes on to explain because it is the most expensive position in any single organization in schools and organization. Leadership is the first to get cut. But people want to be compensated for the expertise that puts them into leadership. So it's this tension in the field that is actually resulted in what's called fractional leadership. And Forbes didn't article in 2026 and they said the fractional work is exploding. And the whole article was about why we are going to see the demise of the full-time job in 2026. Like this is happening everywhere. And so if you've just stumbled on consulting and you're like, Tom and I and they're consulting. But it's we're not making this up folks. I was listening to that podcast I loved where I got the idea for checking questions called at the time Brave New Work. They now call it at work with the ready. They are organizational change consulting firm. But the data and the research and the stories they were talking about were implanted in my head as early as 2020. And I think that's why I started seeing more and more that this actually is as risky as I am making it up to be. And when I started meeting more friends in other industries I was like, oh, everyone's working in fractional ways. Like that's just they actually have a term for it that I love. They say it's the atomization of the job that we are gone are the days of the monolithic job description where you have to do 85 things and here's your leadership package and everyone's like, what do you actually do? We all know we all know those exist. They don't work. You can't be an expert in all the things, but you can have expertise in some things. And I want to read this really quick quote that came from the Forbes article because I think it's important to reflect on as to why this is happening. So they say the nature of business challenges has fundamentally changed. Companies no longer need executives who understand decades of organizational history and internal politics. We all want less of that, right? Instead they face discrete high stakes problems that required deep functional expertise, functional meaning like lived experience. I know how to do this. Like in this case, like preparing for a series B fundraising round, launching a product into a new market, executing a turnaround or building out a go-to-market strategy. This is exactly what schools and districts are looking for right now too. You're grading reform leadership lab. We are rolling out a new grading initiative. That's intense. No one's done it before. Who's done it? Tom Schimmer. He's going to become our consultant on how this is happening everywhere. And if you're like, "But I've never seen a consultant because you've been busy in your classroom." No shade. It's busy. You got a lot going on. But just know that it's happening everywhere all around education. This is becoming very, very common. That organizations are increasingly hiring experts on project contract and outcomes based arrangements rather than full-time permanent roles. The irony in this whole situation is that in the education world, consulting is still seen as this kind of weird thing. And yet out there in corporate America, corporate Canada, it's seen as increasingly normal. Like this is the normal way things are moving. And at some point education is going to, if we haven't already, we're going to start to realize that there's just, there is this hanging on to the old school. Like get the job, 30 years, get the pension, get the gold watch off you go. But things change tremendously over time. And we have to recognize that this is where it's all going. So here's data point number four. Expertise is actually becoming more valuable than credentials alone. So historically, we've always attached value to title. If you had a title, you had the value. And increasingly, what we're recognizing is that outcomes are value, not title, but what outcomes have you achieved? That's more equal to value. So, when you think about assessment, the assessment work, the connection to that, where the value for anyone who's a consultant is somebody who's achieved outcomes that they can help replicate in other contexts, as opposed to just having a title. So the questions that education, schools, districts, etc, are asking right now, and they will ask of consultancies, like, can you solve this problem? We are facing this problem. Can you help us solve it? Or can you help us implement this idea? Or can you help improve the results of this? What is your title? Send us your resume. That's not what we want. This is why educators with real results in real schools and real classrooms have such a great opportunity right now. And does you do? You coined such a beautiful one-liner around this tom, where you said, there's a big difference between experience and expertise. You might have a lot of experiences as outlined in your resume. But what have you done in those experiences? What impact did you make? What did you implement? What changed did you beat? What results did you get? Those are two very different conversations. I think in this shift, we're also going to see the end of the resume. I'm proposing-- think of the email we got this morning. Yeah, probably be the end of the resume as we know it. Because somewhere along the way, if you zoom out and think of the concept of a resume, my resume is not going to necessarily be all the jobs I've held. But my resume is going to be all the outcomes I've accomplished or my expertise. So in the strictest sense, I 100% agree that the resume-- here's my CV. That's probably fading if not going to be obsolete very soon. What will replace it is tangible evidence that you have achieved some outcomes, solved problems, helped schools implement things, and that reputational. I haven't sent a resume. in the strictest sense to anyone for decades. And yet somehow they keep hiring me for consulting work. Exactly. All around the world. Same for you, right? Think of the team member we just hired. Yeah. Right? I never saw her resume, not once. The first question I asked on the call was, okay, I know you've done all these things. Tell me about this specific rate in your work. Tell me about this specific result in your work. What did you learn to get that result? How did you get from that earlier result to this result? Yeah. And what did we do immediately after that? I put her into the work. I said, I want to watch you do the work with me because we want help with consulting with people who want to potentially go into this space. And we don't have enough time in our calendar to talk to all. We have 275 unread direct messages on Instagram right now that's not even a flex. That's like, we feel bad. We want to help. So we need more people that are able to talk to people and help them. So I said, all right, consult me. And that's what I did with everyone that interviewed for the position and a lot of them bombed it. Because they don't have experience. They've never, they don't have an expertise. Let me say they've got experience. Experience, yeah. But they've never really done it and gotten into the nitty-gritty and learned how to really move someone and how they've moved themselves throughout their life and helped them find clarity and hope. Anywho, I could go on. No, it's so true. And to me, it's those three layers, right? Because I've often, I've said this before in this podcast, I say it again, I'll repeatedly say it. You can have one year's experience, 35 years in a row or you can have 35 years experience, right? So the progression of this is you have years or you have experience or you have expertise. It's like a rubric. That's the way it progresses, right? You can have 25 years but not have 25 years experience. You can have one year experience, 25 years in a row or you can have 25 years of experience or you can have an expertise. And I think that's the part we go to. Which brings us to data point number five. Creating options is less risky than having one option. Let's unpack. Because this is the whole episode, really, because we're not saying consulting is necessarily just like quit your job. It's starting to create other opportunities for yourself, testing those opportunities, validating them, diversifying is the key word here. That is the truly most sustainable agile person. I think in 2026 is they have options. They're not putting all their eggs in one basket anymore. This whole idea of just show up and be the loyal soldier, give us 35 years and we'll take care of you. It's bullshit people. It's bullshit. You're a number. You're replaceable. You're just half the time they don't even know your name. So why are we giving these organizations in these systems so much loyalty? And as I started to realize this, this is in my career where I heard people being like, oh Natalie's in it for Natalie. Well, you know what Susan? If I'm not in it for myself, then who the fuck else will be? But seriously, right? Like you're ripping the bandaid off the person at the fam? We're crazy. Come on. We're all fam. It's so true. Like that again, is this this performative, altruistic, you know, it's not about me. Natalie's in it for Natalie. Tom works, you know, someone had made a reference to me in the past like Tom Schumer works for Tom Schumer. Yeah. I am the steward of my career. No one else, anybody who tells me they're managing my career for me, I just don't believe them. That's also so bad. Yeah. It's controlling is what it is. It's so bad. A former superintendent of mine, you know, was trying to guide my career. But I know what he was doing. He was trying to keep me from applying for a certain job. Now I chose to go in certain directions and I decided that I agreed with what he was moving me to. But it was just, I knew it was controlling. I knew it was trying to prevent me from, because he had a plan for other people. So you have to guide your own career. And that, that, that, people think that's like throwing shade at somebody. But who else is, that's usually, this is my favorite expression, right? What? Right. Accusations are confessions. Oh, that. He says, Tom Schimmer is working for Tom Schimmer. That's the person. Look in the mirror because that's the person who's projecting something onto you when they say that. And I can go on about that. Successful people support full, full stop. Successful people support. Right. And the most pedestrian overly simplistic thing that people think you and I do is, and it's this fear, mongering model. And again, looking in the mirror of like, oh, you're just getting people to leave education or you're trying to get people to live. That's not what we do at all. And if you spent six seconds learning about what we do, then you would know that that's not what we do because we often say to people, you want to start a side hustle, you want to do something for you and create something for yourself while you're employed. We can help you do that too. What we are helping people create is options because when people don't have options, they feel stuck. And when they feel stuck in their job, they, they don't find the joy. They don't feel happy. And what a miserable way to spend 30 years of your life feeling just absolutely stuck. So here's kind of as we bring this home, here's kind of the big reframe, if you will, right? The old model was get a job, stay in that job and then retire, get the pension, yeah, gold watch off you go into the sunset. The new model is build an expertise, create visibility, right? Develop multiple income pathways so that there's, that is the real stability. That really is real stability. And triangulation, if you will. Yes. And stay adaptable. Be adaptable to what's happening, right? Because the future belongs to people who can leverage their expertise, not just occupy positions or hold titles. That was a good line. Say that again. The future belongs to people who can leverage their expertise, not just people who can occupy positions or hold titles. Hmm. Before we wrap up, we want to leave you with one final thought. The goal of today's episode, as Tom said, was not to convince you to quit your job. And it wasn't to convince you that consulting and going fractional, if you will, is easy. It's not. And it definitely wasn't to tell you that entrepreneurship is the answer to everyone's problems because it's not. The goal was much simpler than that. To challenge the idea that the safest path is always the one that you've been told to follow. Because when we look at what's happening in education, and when we look at what's happening in the broader workforce right now, and when we look at the educators that we work with every single day inside the educator freedom lab, one thing becomes very clear. The people creating the most freedom for themselves aren't necessarily the most brilliant or credentialed or the most famous. And they aren't the ones taking the biggest risks. They're just the ones creating the most options for themselves. Right. And that's really what consulting gave me. It gave me options. Like I had the option to move into it to completely different space. The ability to leverage my expertise in ways I never could have imagined when I was sitting in my office as a vice principal and I was sitting in my office at the district level. It didn't happen overnight. Didn't happen by luck. They would say luck is when preparation meets opportunity. So you call it, call luck whatever you want to. It didn't happen because I had some special advantage. It happened because I was willing to test an idea and see where it could go. And that's exactly what we help educators do today. So if you've been listening to this episode and thinking, hmm, maybe there's something more I could do with my expertise. Or I've been sitting on an idea for years and I just can't stop thinking about it or I know I could help schools and districts. I just don't know how to get started. Then we'd love to have a conversation. This is not a sales pitch, not a high pressure call. It's just honestly a conversation about where you are, where you'd like to go and whether we are the right people to walk you on that journey and help you get there. Right. Our specialty is helping experience K-12 educators leverage their expertise as speakers, consultants, coaches and facilitators and sign their first two to five premium contracts with schools and school districts within months, not years. So if that's something you're serious about exploring, head over and book a call with our team. We'll talk you through your goals, your expertise and whether we think there's a fit. Because the future may belong to people who can leverage their expertise. The question is, will you be one of them? Thanks for spending part of your day with us. We'll see you next time, yes, Club. [BLANK_AUDIO]