- 20 hours ago
Fresh off the June release of The 7-Figure Educator, Thomas breaks down how teachers can turn their classroom expertise into a consulting practice, and start building real wealth.
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00:04Welcome to New Orleans. Welcome to Essence Festival of Culture 2026. It's really great
00:11to have you all here and you made time for this discussion, so thank you. We'll just
00:17jump right in. Dr. Erica, tell me a little, tell us a little bit about yourself and how
00:22you made the transition from teacher to a seven-figure woman, career woman. Yes, so my
00:32background is in education, obviously, so I started my career as a high school math teacher. I don't
00:37know if I have any other math teachers in the building, math educators. Okay, we're all math
00:40people. We're all math people, and my salary at the time was $33,000, and so for me, I absolutely
00:47loved what I did. However, I literally could not afford to continue to teach where I wanted
00:52to do more and impact more and still stay in education, but I was like, I've got to be paid
00:57more, and so I went on to become a principal, making around $70,000, and loved what I did,
01:04served the most beautiful school community, and there were a number of kind of things that
01:08happened from a system standpoint, just kind of shook my world a little bit of merging
01:13schools and displacing staff and sending kids that I was like, you know what? I feel like
01:19this is a sign that's telling me that I need to think about what my next move is, but I
01:25don't know what that thing is, and so I actually just started consulting to try and figure it
01:30out, and then my first contract that I got was for $1,600, and at that time, as a principal,
01:37$1,600 would take me two weeks to make, and I was being paid that for one day of professional
01:43development, so I was like, oh, so if I could do this for a day, I could probably do this
01:48in half a
01:48day, and if I could do $1,600 in half a day, I could probably do it in an hour,
01:52and so literally
01:53that was my origin story of being able to bet on myself while being in a season of uncertainty and
02:00disruption, and that was literally how I started my business. Awesome. Wow. What specific classroom
02:09skill did you take as, you know, from being a teacher into your consulting business? Yes, so I
02:16love this question because I will name for you that one of my pet peeves is when educators say I
02:22do not
02:22know business. That is one of my pet peeves because I don't believe that you can stand in front of
02:30kids
02:30leading a classroom, leading a school, or leading a district and not understand the mechanics of a
02:36business, so I often say that my very first business was not, my very first seven-figure business was
02:42not the one I currently have. It was actually a school, so when I was a principal, I had a
02:47staff of
02:47115. I had five secretaries. I led a middle school of over a thousand kids. My budget was over seven
02:55figures, and so to say that I don't know business when the reality was I had a staff newsletter that
03:01I
03:01sent every single week. I had a parent newsletter that I sent every week. That's marketing,
03:06right? Anytime they say, well, you need to get buy-in from your staff, right? If you're rolling out new
03:11curriculum or if you're making any type of decision, buy-in, that's another word for sales,
03:16right? Where you are persuading someone to make a decision that's in their best interest, right?
03:21So for me, I think that's one of the things that I think it's really, really important, and what I
03:25talk
03:26about in the book of Seven-Figure Educator is that as educators, we are actually designed to run
03:32seven-figure businesses, and for many of us, we are already doing that. We're just doing it for
03:36someone else. Okay. Now, walk us through how someone who's a teacher or an educator
03:43can go from doing that in the classroom every day to landing their first paying client.
03:52Okay. So I love this question. So first off, raise your hand if you're an educator, whether
03:56currently or... Oh, look at her! Okay. Okay. I love this. You are my people. You are my people. So
04:04first off, I want you to envision, because I feel like, I mean, I'm not going to make no assumptions,
04:08but I feel like I'm going to, you know, take a healthy bet here, that you probably have an
04:12experience where you were sitting in some type of training or professional development, and it was whack,
04:17and you were like, I could do this so much better. Am I wrong or am I right? Okay. I'm
04:23saying the head
04:23nods. Okay. So I named that because that's an example of consulting, right? That's a potential
04:28service that you can have in your business. So the first thing that you need to do is you need
04:32to get
04:32clear on what's the problem that you want to solve in your business. And part of what's tricky about
04:37that for us as educators, and I talk about this in the book, I call it 99 problems, but pick
04:42one,
04:42is because we are forced to wear so many hats that we solve so many problems during the day.
04:49In your business, you have to solve one problem. So it's going to take a little bit of experimenting,
04:55right? Don't let that get you hung up and like not do anything. Experiment, but identify what's the
05:00problem you want to solve. Do you want to solve literacy for students in grades pre-K through five,
05:06and you want to work with first-year teachers? Do you want to provide leadership coaching
05:10to first-year principals who are leading secondary schools? So once you have your problem,
05:16then it's a matter of identifying your service. And once you identify your service, I talk about
05:21this in the book, eight service models. So the chapter of set your service, I literally will walk
05:26you through the potential different eight services you could offer in your business. Then I need you to
05:32find 50 people who would be an ideal fit for your service. And the next step is reaching out
05:38and as confident as you can be. And even if you got to borrow someone else's confidence
05:43of being able to share with them, Hey, this is what I do. I believe I can help you. And
05:48I would love
05:48to schedule a 30 minute conversation with you this week to learn more about your school,
05:52your organization, and how I might be able to support. So we walk through that roadmap in the book.
05:58Oh, that's a reason to buy it alone. I'm not a teacher and I want to know.
06:04Listen, and I was really, really, you know, adamant about this with my publisher. This is a business book.
06:11So, and, and it happens to be written by someone who was a teacher and a principal. So when you
06:16read it,
06:17baby, the lesson plan tight. Okay. So we got, I do, we do, you do, where there's a really,
06:21really clear focus of it being practical, of you being able to build your business as you are
06:27reading the book. And so that's why I'm really, really excited for this book to be out in the
06:32world because it is truly a blueprint that you can read and build and run with to be able to
06:37make
06:38money in your business. Okay. What did the seven figure educator teach you about your own story
06:45that surprised you that you didn't realize before you started writing it?
06:50So what did seven figure educator teach me about my own story that surprised me as I was writing? So
06:58I will name that one of the things that I knew, but then I saw the pattern as I was
07:04writing the book
07:04was this idea that disruption always precedes transformation.
07:11And what I mean by that is doing something new, it's hard, right? Like doing any type of change
07:21and for, you know, my education nerds, leadership nerds in the room who understand change management,
07:28right? You know, like creating change is really, really hard. And the first step of creating change
07:33change is you have to create a sense of urgency because to do something different that is
07:39uncomfortable, like your current reality actually has to feel more uncomfortable than the unknown.
07:47So something in your current reality has to be disrupted to make you choose the change that is
07:54a little bit scary, but staying the same is actually scarier, right? And so when I look over my journey
08:00of leaving my job as a principal to go back to school, starting my business, putting myself out
08:07there to talk about my business, even making six figures and finding the courage and confidence to
08:13go after seven and say six isn't enough, it was always a moment of disruption that said,
08:20oh, I can't stay the same. Like, yeah, I could stay at six figures, but then a disruption of,
08:26oh, actually, six figures isn't enough because it's not just about my freedom. It's the freedom
08:31of my family. It's the freedom of my community. I need way more than six figures to be able to
08:36fulfill that level of calling. And so that's, for me, what's one of the messages that became clear for
08:42me. And I named that for you all because there is likely someone sitting in the audience who is
08:46experiencing some level of disruption. You are so uncomfortable right now, and it could be in your
08:51finances. It could be in your relationships. It could be at work and you're focused on the
08:57disruption that I'm inviting you to see it as an invitation to transform. So what is the next
09:03level that is literally standing in front of you that you just have to say yes?
09:11So Dr. Erica, what's one number that in this journey of yours, you encountered that surprised
09:21you, whether it was like a dollar amount or a timeline in order to write the book or, you know,
09:27just in what you've accomplished in your career?
09:30I love this. So one number that has kind of stayed with me. So first off, I'm going to throw
09:35it back to you all really quickly because there's a number that I want you to know. I'm going to
09:39answer
09:40the question here, but I want you all to have a number that is literally etched in your brain.
09:45And that number is the average monthly revenue for a seven-figure business. Does anybody know what
09:51that number is?
09:55And listen, if you got a calculator, you know, you can find it out. Just take one million divided
09:59by 12, but $83,333. Every single person should know that number. $83,333. That is the average
10:12monthly revenue of a seven-figure business. So that is a number that I want every single person,
10:17every single educator to know because that's a milestone for you. And that monthly number is
10:24going to show up before the yearly revenue, right? And to answer your question around what number has
10:29always stayed with me, that number is $33,000. $33,000 is literally now how I hear the world and
10:38see the
10:38world because $33,000 was my salary my first year as a teacher. So my very first goal in business
10:47was to
10:47make $33,000. I just wanted to make that in my business. And the moment I made that in my
10:55business, I'm like, now I want to make $33,000 in a month. And then the moment I made that
11:02in a month,
11:03I was like, now I want to make $33,000 in a day. And the moment I made that, I
11:10said, I want to pay
11:11someone else $33,000. I want to pay someone else $33,000 for a month. I want to pay someone
11:21else
11:21$33,000 for a day. So for me, that number that was once the speed of money for a year
11:29of what I was
11:30receiving, now that is the speed of money in which I pay other people. And so that number for me
11:35continues
11:36to come up over my journey, and I always name to say that, is that the speed of money can
11:42always
11:42move faster. Because what I used to make, I now pay other people. So I always name that. Money can
11:48always move faster. That's powerful. Yes. Is there something that the teachers that are here with us
11:59or, you know, everyone, regardless of profession, can do this week? Like we leave New Orleans, we go
12:05home to our various cities at various homes, you know, we're high off festival. But what is something
12:11that we can do this week or next week to set us up for starting our own business? Yes. So
12:20two things
12:20that you can do this week to set you up to start your own business. First, get the book. So
12:25if you don't
12:25have the book, the book is right over here in the bookstore, seven figure edge. Come on. I see a
12:30bug in the back and I'm going to stay around. I want to sign every single copy. So I will
12:34be around
12:34to sign copies. Absolutely. Oh, we got another one. Yes. I love it. The second thing that you can do,
12:41and it actually just happens to work out. I don't believe in coincidences because my pastor says that
12:46miracles are happening every single day. We just call them a coincidence. So if you take this as a
12:51miracle, I will receive it as well. But actually in a week, I'm hosting my five day seven figure
12:57business school. So I am teaching for five days straight the foundations of a seven figure business.
13:03I will teach you the psychology of a millionaire, how millionaires think. So that way you can think
13:09like them today because your seven figures don't show up and you start thinking like a millionaire.
13:15Your seven figures come as a result of thinking like a millionaire today. I'll teach you how to define
13:20your million dollar problem. So you know what to focus on in your business. I'll teach you how to
13:24package your profitable offers. So you know what you'll be pitching and selling. I'll teach you my
13:29million dollar sales process. So that way, you know how to find someone to pitch, what to say,
13:34and how to move them through your sales process. And then I'll teach you how to mind your million
13:39dollar network because your first six figures are people you already know, which is why you don't
13:44need a website. You don't need a logo. You just need to go find them folks and tell them, Hey,
13:50this is my business. This is what I do. And I would love to support you. And because they already
13:54know
13:54you, they trust you. They're like, girl, drop the link, drop the link. So that business school is
14:00kicking off July 13th. If you just go to seven figured ed business school.com, it's completely free
14:07register and sign up and me and my team would love to have you. Awesome. Everyone get that?
14:15You're okay. If you didn't DM me on Instagram, just DM me the word school. Just search me Erica
14:21Jordan Thomas and DM me the word school and I'll get you the link. Is there anything about this
14:26particular topic or your book that we haven't touched on Dr. Erica that you want to add? And
14:33before you answer that, because there's so many teachers here, I was really shocked that so many
14:38teachers came to this particular. Yes, because I feel like great teachers are worth their weight in
14:44goals. Um, I love mine, my former teachers that really poured into me and my son. So thank you for
14:50the work that you do. I mean that. I don't know why this mic isn't working. Anyway, I'm going to
14:55try to
14:56project more, but please anything that you haven't touched on that you'd like to share, please add it now.
15:01Yes. So one of the questions I think that often comes up for educators, um, it's hard to be in
15:10the system
15:11and not be of the system. Right. And we in this country, educators are so drastically undervalued as a
15:20result of how we're paid. Right. So it's hard to be in the system and not believe that you can
15:28run a seven
15:28figure business, right? It's hard to not internalize this belief that, Oh, I should be able to go out and
15:35ask for certain, certain contracts, six figure contracts. I hear so many times, well, someone,
15:41anybody willing to pay me for my services. Right. And that is a result of, of working in a system
15:46that
15:46undervalues us. Right. And part of what I talk about in the book, and I named this in the first
15:51two
15:51chapters of the book is really being able to shift our mindsets around the fact that we are actually
15:56designed to run seven figure businesses. Raise your hand. If you happen to have a master's degree,
16:05keep your hand up. If you have a doctorate or your doctorate is in progress. Okay. Cause we are some
16:11of
16:12the most educated folks. Right. And I'm sorry. Okay. Listen, okay. We're some of the educators are
16:20some of the most educated folks on this planet, but why are we the most underpaid? Right. And so I
16:25name in the book, I had this, this conversation I was having with a friend and they were like, wow,
16:30you went to Harvard, you got your doctorate from Harvard. What's the acceptance rate like 2%? And I was
16:36like, huh, you're right. And immediately I thought about the fact that roughly 2% of businesses crossed
16:43the seven figure mark. Right. And then I thought about the fact that 2% of educators are black males.
16:53And I thought about the fact that roughly 2% of black women have an advanced degree. So I keep
17:01coming
17:01back to this 2% statistic and realizing anytime that you've walked in a room and you were the only,
17:09you were the 2%. Right. So this question of, is anybody willing to pay me for my business or pay
17:15me for my services? If you are showing up every single day, working for kids and you do things in
17:24your sleep, like helping them read two or three years within a year's time, you are rated blue on your
17:30states, uh, end of course tests, getting fours and fives. You do things that are not normal and you
17:37literally have the DNA to run a seven figure business. So those are the words that I leave
17:41you with is for you to never, ever, ever, ever forget that you are the 2%.
17:52Well, that's our time. Thank you all again so much for being here. The book, Dr. Erica's book,
17:59Seven Figure Educator is for sale. Yes. It's right over here. Right over here. And you can get it
18:05signed here today at the festival. So please do. And thank you again for being here. Thank you all
18:12so much. I'm excited to give hugs and sign books. Thank you all so much.
18:17That was awesome.
18:30Thank you all. I appreciate it.
18:33Thank you all. One, three, two, one. Three, two, one.
18:36Three, two, one.
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