It’s December. There’s a lot going on. End of the year stuff for school, holiday shopping, travel plans, the list goes on. But this is also a great time to do a few checkups on my Teacher Seller business, as well as in my personal life.
Doing these 5 things will help you close the year with clarity, confidence, and a plan for growing your TpT business in the year ahead.
1) Update My “In Case I Die” Letter
I have a wife and three children. And if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, I need to know that my family is taken care of. Where’s our money? How will they pay the bills? What should they do with my teacher business?
Your list will likely look different. For example, if my wife died, there are a lot of things I need to know about taking care of our children that I’m just not aware of (or as aware as I should be).
My list includes the following information:
- How to pay all of our bills, including the website, account numbers, and login information
- How to get my life insurance, and what to do with it
- Where all our money is. Not just the bank and investments, but my Stripe and PayPal accounts. I also include information about where different money comes from (like TeachersPayTeachers) and how to keep that money flowing.
- Instructions on how to keep my side income coming in. What subscriptions I have. Who to ask for help, or which people to hire to take over certain elements of the business. What to keep and what to close.
Think through the things that you do that your family members can’t do without you or are unaware of, and make a list. Make sure your significant other knows where to find it
2) Analyze and Set TpT Goals
What were your goals last year for your TpT business?
Hopefully, you wrote them down. Get them out and see how you did.
If you hit your goal, great! Congratulations. What helped you reach your goal?
If you didn’t hit it, why not? What was the cause?
Now let’s set this year’s goals. Be sure to not just set a goal but to go several layers back on your goal so that you can set actionable goals for you how will reach your goal.
For example, if my goal is grow my income by 20%. That’s a great goal. What am I going to do to hit it? Advertise? Grow my email list? Create 20% more products?
If I say I will increase income 20% by increasing my email list by 20%, how will I do that? Keep going in this direction until you have actionable steps you can hit to obtain your goal.
Watch this great video to learn more:
3) Analyze my TpT Products for the year.
Look through your products to see what’s performing well and what isn’t.
More than that, see if you can find something that’s performing well, but doesn’t have a lot of traffic. Or something that has a lot of traffic, but isn’t converting well.
Also, see if you can find products that sell better at certain times of the year, so that you can promote those products.
Here’s a video that will show you how to do this inside of ChatGPT, so it’s super quick, and super helpful.
4) Clean Up and Simplify My TpT Systems
At the end of the year, I like to step back and look at how my business actually runs, not just how much money it makes.
As TpT sellers, we’re doing a lot:
- Creating products
- Marketing
- Answering questions
- Running email lists
- Managing files, previews, bundles, and promotions
If you don’t have systems in place, your business starts to feel heavier every year.
This is the time of year when I ask myself:
- What feels harder than it should?
- What am I constantly trying to remember?
- What tasks could run without me touching them every time?
For me, TpT systems fall into three main buckets:
1. Standard processes
These are simple checklists for things I do over and over again—like creating a product, updating previews, or launching something new. Writing these down reduces mental load and saves time.
2. Automatic processes
These are things I set up once and let run—like product intro pages that point to related resources, bundles that upsell automatically, or email sequences that guide people to the right products.
3. Data analysis systems
This is when I intentionally sit down and look at what’s working and what isn’t, so I’m not guessing. Even one scheduled data check can completely change how you focus your time.
I don’t try to fix everything at once. Each December, I choose one system to build or improve, knowing that small improvements here compound over time.
If systems feel overwhelming to you, you’re not alone—and you don’t need to overcomplicate it.
Want to Go Deeper on TpT Systems?
A friend of mine, Jamie, did an excellent training that breaks TpT systems down in a really practical, teacher-friendly way.
In her video, she walks through:
- The three systems every TpT business needs
- Simple examples of each (no tech overwhelm)
- How to start with just one checklist, one funnel, and one data review
If you’re looking for clarity on where to start—or how to make your business feel lighter going into the new year—I highly recommend watching it.
Watch the video here:
5) Income and Investments Spreadsheet
I keep a spreadsheet that I update every month on where my income comes from.
My side business has multiple streams. Besides Teachers Pay Teachers, I have an online course, I have Google Adsense, Amazon Affiliates, Merch, my book, and courses that I affiliate for.
Every month I record how much income I generated from each source for the entire year.
I also have a spreadsheet for my investments. I update this a few times per year, but I especially update it every December. On this spreadsheet, I also run a calculation to see the percentage growth of each investment. This way, I can see what’s performing well and what isn’t.
For example, I have investments in several stocks, as well as ETFs and index funds. I want to see how they’re doing for me. I also have multiple accounts: my wife’s IRA, my IRA, a 403B, my children’s Education Savings Accounts, as well as their 529s, plus my individual brokerage account, and a few more. I want to know how each investment is performing, and I want to see how they’ve done year over year.
This way, I can see if anything is misaligned and needs adjusting.
This last year, I noticed a certain investment account only made 6% this year. But the market was up 15%. That would cost me a lot of money over multiple years, so I adjusted this investment to keep it performing at its best.