Teachers, IT coaches, and principals can get excited and present at a conference, and then it happens: side jobs for teachers come calling. People start asking them to speak. They get opportunities. But how do you handle this?
Today’s guest, Dr. Will Deyamport (we call him “Dr. Will”), the author of The Edupreneur, talks about building an education business the right way. From disclosures to avoiding conflicts of interest (there are some things you can’t do) to owning your own IP, Dr. Will’s advice is solid and timeless.
In short: If you’re going to have anything on the “side” it is vital to keep your focus in the classroom or on your school. For me, I worked hard to schedule all social media so I wouldn’t touch my phone during the day. My students had to be the focus. Dr. Will gives advice to set up your business structure, talk to a CPA, disclose who pays you, avoid conflicts with your district, and to only create content on equipment you own.
Dr. Will almost lost his job in a budget crunch. Here’s what he built so that would never be his only option again.
Here’s where the facts in this episode come from, with the time stamp so you can hear each one. Checked October 16, 2026.
This transcript was generated using AI and has been reviewed by humans for accuracy. Minor errors or artifacts may remain but I worked my best to find any issues with the transcript as I reviewed the show. – Vicki
Vicki Davis (00:00): Has another school ever asked you to come train their teachers? And that great lesson you made on your school laptop. Do you know who owns it? Our guest today found out his job might be cut in a budget crunch. That’s the day he decided his school district couldn’t be his only paycheck. And if an ed tech company has ever paid you in T-shirts and stickers, wait until you hear what he says about that. With this advice from Dr. Will for Fab Idea Friday, episode 1010.
Vicki Davis (00:34): Side Jobs for Teachers or a Calling?
Announcer (00:37): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.
Vicki Davis (00:41): I am so excited today to have Dr. Will Deyamport with us today. On Twitter, he is I Am Dr. Will. You have a book out called The Edupreneur, the blueprint to jumpstart and scale your education business. You have been helping edupreneurs for quite some time. What is your passion for helping us educators create education businesses?
What should teachers do if their job might be cut in a budget crunch?
Dr. Will Deyamport (01:07): About having ownership. Over their lives, their careers, and their finances. Normally, when you become a teacher, you don’t think of, I could be fired, right? You don’t put yourself in the same situation as other people who get these layoffs, but it can happen. Several years ago, I was in a situation where there was a former tech director. I was in the tech department at the time, and myself and other instructional technologists were planning our summer boot camps that we had with teachers,
Dr. Will Deyamport (01:39): and we were communicating in Slack and I was like, hey, I got to do something with this teacher. When I’m done, I’m heading over your way. And our supervisor at the time was like, I need to talk to y’all. I was like, what? Because normally that doesn’t happen. And so he got to us and said, hey, there’s some budget situations. You may not have your job. And yeah. And before then I had envisioned me staying in this district till retirement. And I’m not saying that it won’t happen, but I never thought that this would happen to me.
Dr. Will Deyamport (02:13): I’m just saying that once that happened, it made me sort of re-examine my place, and think about, well, yes, I want to be here, but I also need to prepare myself so that the school district isn’t my sole place of income.
Is a teacher side hustle just a job, or can it be a calling?
Vicki Davis (02:27): Well, my dad, who was a farmer, always advised me. He said, Vicki, if you work for yourself, you always have a job. Even when I was in the tech business and traveling, I have always had, people call them a side hustle now. I don’t like to call them that because it’s like a calling for me.
What should I do when another school asks me to train their teachers?
Dr. Will Deyamport (02:43): In the book, I talk about how to build your education business. You want to look at what you’re currently doing. With any educator who is thinking, I want to do this for real, be intentional about it. You are going to conferences, you’re speaking, you’re presenting, And then one day, someone walks up to you and says, hey, would you come to my school district when you do this? And you’re like, yeah. And so you do it. And you’re caught off guard because you haven’t planned for this.
Dr. Will Deyamport (03:16): You don’t know how this goes. And you do it and you get that first check like I did. And I was like, oh, now I’m going to have a great time working with these teachers, but I like the size of this check. If I’m going to move forward, I need to be intentional. So that’s when you start to check out your secretary of state, and figure out what type of corporate structures you’re going to create. But you also, in doing that, you want to consult a CPA because there are tax
Dr. Will Deyamport (03:46): implications based upon whatever corporate structure you choose. Then you want to come up with SOPs, you know, standard operating procedures. Getting a check is cool, but that shouldn’t be your greatest motivation. It should be taking your why for why you became an educator and looking how can you expand that outside of the walls of your classroom.
Vicki Davis (04:06): So what are educators telling you now?
Dr. Will Deyamport (04:08): When I first started this thing, I had a couple of people come at me a couple of times. One dude in Vox was like, hey. And I was like, hey, don’t come at me like that.
Vicki Davis (04:15): What was his criticism?
Dr. Will Deyamport (04:17): He was saying how you always talk about money. Would… You do anything for money.
Vicki Davis (04:24): Dear, like, well, I’m not going to go on Survivor. How about you?
Should teachers present for ed tech companies for free?
Dr. Will Deyamport (04:27): Right. A lot of other stuff I wouldn’t do either. But my thing with him was, I’m not in these streets to do this for free. What I mean by that is you start to go to these conferences. It’s easy to get connected with a lot of these edtech companies. And these edtech companies will have these ambassador programs and all these things. You get a badge, a certificate or whatever, some stickers. And you’re like, hey, you know, but you’re not getting the check,
Dr. Will Deyamport (04:54): but they want you to present at the conference. All you’re doing is just bolstering their brand. And that was one of the things that I started to push back on and talk about and say, listen, if they’re going to take your IP, if they’re going to take your work, they’re going to take your experiences, they’re going to take your gems that you’re actually using as a practitioner in your classroom. They need to compensate you with a check and not give you a T-shirt.
Why should teachers be paid when they promote an ed tech product?
Vicki Davis (05:17): But here’s the deal. The ed tech company that they’re making you the ambassador for and you’re sharing and you’re giving them all of this marketing because word of mouth marketing is the way of marketing. It’s the only way that works. When you’re providing them a benefit, we know that teachers already don’t make enough. And if you’re doing that extra work, you deserve to be compensated. I mean, I don’t have any apology for that, you know?
Dr. Will Deyamport (05:41): Hey, neither do I. And that’s why I told him, I said, hey, slow your roll. Because I told him that it’s just not in me to just give this away for free. And I can understand again, because I felt the same way. In the beginning, they come out to you, they reach out to you. They can feel flattering. But once they start asking for you to do these things, and it took me a while to go, hey, I need a little money for you to be asking me to be giving you these things.
Dr. Will Deyamport (06:08): Especially you’re not only taking up my time, you are taking up, again, my IP.
Vicki Davis (06:12): Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Will Deyamport (06:12): And that’s where… The pushback came because I even went to an ISTE. There were people talking about, why are these people talking about their consultants? So they’re doing this and all that. And I was like, hey, what’s going on here? And I had to jump in and say, you know, why do you expect someone to get out there and to just give you a lesson plan for free or to speak for free or to do this for free? Because you don’t show up to your own job for free.
Dr. Will Deyamport (06:43): So why should I do these other things for free. And that’s where you ask me, is it changing? Yes, because I see more people now saying, let me write a book or let me consult, let me coach, let me create a mastermind. They’re starting to understand that there is benefit in ownership.
How can teachers work with ed tech companies and still tell the truth?
Vicki Davis (07:01): Well, through the years as these companies have hired me, whether, I mean, Canva, I did work for them in their first month or so developing lesson plans or Edpuzzle in their early days or lots of different companies that have been along my own journey. The content that I have taken the time to create, as well as when I create content for a company, I’m also giving them feedback because I kind of have a rule that I’m only going to tell the truth. And sometimes there’s been a company that they wanted me to do work for them
Vicki Davis (07:29): and they just weren’t there yet. And I said, listen, here’s all my feedback. I’m not going to blog publicly about your product until these are the things you fix and we can just move on. It makes them better. It makes me better. I’m continually asking questions. How does this relate to the real classroom? So I feel like when you have a good relationship, this is not just you’re paying me and you’re telling me what to say. This is like a relationship that’s mutually beneficial when ed tech companies
Vicki Davis (07:56): really understand how to partner with classroom teachers and your district will allow it because aren’t there some districts that don’t allow it?
Is it a conflict of interest for a teacher to be paid by an ed tech company?
Dr. Will Deyamport (08:04): Yes, because it’ll be a conflict of interest. And especially if you are in a position where you influence whether or not a school district purchases the product. Yes. So I have never done anything with an ed tech company where I was given compensation for a product that we use. Now, I have done Schoology training and consulting for an outside entity and where I was like, hey, I need you to give me a Schoology shell so I can go in and create this course and create these activities
Dr. Will Deyamport (08:43): to use during my training. But I make sure that I’m not in here working with someone who’s working with my school district because I can’t get caught up in something where it can even seem remotely inappropriate.
Do conference presenters have to disclose who paid for their trip?
Vicki Davis (08:57): Absolutely. I’m sure you go into that in your book in terms of conflict of interest, in terms of disclosure. For example, ISTE is doing a much better job, I think, of requiring disclosures of, hey, does somebody pay for your airfare? Did somebody pay for this? Did somebody pay for that? Sometimes I’ve been to panels and then I find out that the whole panel was sent there by these companies. It’s when you find out kind of after the fact that you’re kind of like,
Vicki Davis (09:20): okay, nobody likes to feel taken advantage of or snowed, you know, just doesn’t feel right. So can you speak to the educator driving in their car, listening to us talk, going, OK, I do have things to share, but can anybody do this? Like a lot of educators I know feel like they don’t have a business background. How does this work?
Can a teacher with no business background start an education business?
Dr. Will Deyamport (09:39): Definitely. My book starts out with asking yourself, are you ready to make this happen? And I even talk about how I stumbled into doing this. And then the book goes into business formation. It breaks down all of the different corporate structures that you create. The advantages and disadvantages goes into creating a lean canvas business, plan where it’s a one sheet pager on how you sort of set up what your business is going to look like without you having to create a traditional standard business
Dr. Will Deyamport (10:11): plan, which can be pages and pages and pages. I talk about insurance because a lot of people don’t even think about business insurance. Also going to niching down content marketing as you are creating this podcast. I have a podcast that you use this content to be thought of as a content leader, so that you can start to build know, like, and trust factor to people out there, especially decision makers who can bring you in, whether it be a conference or school district.
Dr. Will Deyamport (10:38): You want to create content that shows your expertise and your authority to. What your niche is going to be, how you create your signature offer. Right. So, again, you’re not Walmart. So you can’t just get out there and say, well, hey, I’m doing all of this. No one is paying you for information because they got Google for that. They are paying you to solve a specific problem. So you are the cheat code to that problem.
Who owns the lesson plans teachers create on a school laptop?
Dr. Will Deyamport (11:02): I talk about IP and ownership. So even with teachers that you need to understand who’s listening to this. Anything that you create on your district laptop, they own it. So that lesson plan, that activity, that poster, that anchor chart, whatever, they own it. I encourage all teachers, I’m not in your pockets, I’m not in your wallet, don’t know your money situation, but go ahead and buy yourself a laptop or an iPad, et cetera, where you can create,
Dr. Will Deyamport (11:31): things that you actually own and that your district cannot claim any ownership to. There’s like a sample, you create a contract and then what goes into that contract. The book goes in depth. I have what I call contributing authors, people that I have interviewed specifically for this project. And I have firsthand accounts to kind of break up sort of the information I’m giving so that you can hear from someone else. Anything you do, you want to make sure that you actually own it. And.
Dr. Will Deyamport (12:03): That means owning the equipment that you are creating that on. And so do not use your school issued devices equipment to do so and make sure that you make those critical investments in yourself. So if you need to get a business coach, do so. Make sure you get a CPA because you really need to understand what is a true business deduction and a business expense and not get caught off during tax season. Because I can tell you from personal experience that when the checks come in,
Dr. Will Deyamport (12:37): they look good, but nothing was taken out. So when you go up to do your taxes, Uncle Sam’s going to get their money, making sure that you have the right deductions to make sure that your business is operating.
Vicki Davis (12:47): Thank you, Dr. Will.
Announcer (12:49): Thank you for tuning in to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast. Join us here every weekday and subscribe to the Classroom Matters newsletter. See you later, educator.
As seen on Forbes.com, Schoology Exchange, District Administration, EdSurge, iNACOL, and TechEdge magazine, Will Deyamport, III, Ed.D. is a District Instructional Technologist for a K12 school district. Dr. Will, as he is better known as, specializes in assisting educators in going digital. In this role, he delivers in-person and virtual training, coaching, and designs and delivers online professional development courses and live webinars for teachers in grades K-12.
Additionally, Dr. Will is a podcaster, writer, documentary filmmaker, and educational consultant.
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