032 - Pit Pony Katie Stone - Classroom to Virtual Assistant Agency Owner

Today, we sit down with Katie Stone, a former primary school teacher who left the classroom after facing work-related stress and the pressures of an informal support plan. Katie opens up about the emotional toll of teaching, the challenges of leaving, and how she found a new path that gave her both freedom and fulfilment.

Now the owner of a successful virtual assistant agency, Katie shares how she turned her organisational skills, multitasking abilities, and work ethic - honed in teaching - into a thriving business supporting education professionals. From dealing with rejection sensitivity to embracing entrepreneurship, this is a powerful  story about resilience, reinvention, and reclaiming control over your career and life.

We also discuss the controversial role of "support plans" in education, their impact on teachers, and why so many educators are forced to exit instead of being truly supported.

🎙️ Listen now and discover how Katie built a career on her own terms—one that allows her to attend school nativities, travel the world, and support her family while doing work she loves.

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Edited with finesse by our Podcast Super Producer, Mike Roberts of Making Digital Real

Transcript

0:02

We want to thank the sponsors of this episode who are Pure Coaching Academy. They offer a powerful live online accredited training course, including eight hours of real coaching for the duration of your course. They are committed to coaching excellence, so concentrate on not only making you a great coach, but building you a great business as well. Hello and welcome to the Pip Pony podcast with myself Sharon Corley and me Sarah Dunwood in which we talk to teachers from all walks of life who exited the classroom from what they thought was a job for life and thrived on the other side of teaching. Coming up in this episode... When that plan started falling into place and they started asking me to do things like oh don't do informal planning anymore, now here's a template that we want you to fill out every day and stuff like that. Whether my rejection sensitivity put me into panic overdrive and therefore everything went into this awful spiral that looking back I was never going to get out of. Hello and welcome to another episode of our Pip Pony podcast. We've got a great guest today, we've got Katie Stone. Now Katie was solidly against going into teaching for 10 years, she resisted. She told me that she remembered a teacher recruitment event at university and there was a visceral response, I am not doing teaching and she did pub management, worked in call centres but it was a step mum who worked for the department for education in teacher recruitment who nudged her into the wonderful world of education and Katie started via the TA route, the teaching assistant route which is very common for teachers in many ways how they enter into the profession. Having done the role of TA realised she loved being in the mixer with kids and applied for a PGCE at Man Met. From 2010 to 2017 Katie worked as a teacher. She exited with work-related stress after seven years under the threat of a support plan. It's going to be really interesting to capture what Katie did so to speak and what happened to Katie. So welcome Katie Stone and can you tell us what it is you're doing today? Thanks Sharon, yeah I'm now the owner of a virtual assistant agency. Oh fantastic, now what normally happens Katie is we get straight into the conversation about the last couple of years of teaching but what I think is important for our listeners to realise is that when we have guests on our podcast I do a pre-record meeting with them. We have a chat, we talk through what's happened, relive and go back periods of years of their life that in some respects have been put in boxes and locked away. Katie we met a while ago and we talked about what happened. How's that impacted you that conversation because I think it's important to start with that before we go back. How's the last couple of weeks been since our conversation? It's been tricky honestly. I am an amazing compartmentaliser, I am incredibly good at doing that sort of stuff and while I was aware that when I left teaching there was probably an element of like PTSD left behind, like it's been 2017 was the last time that I was in the classroom and I thought it was okay but yeah the last couple of weeks there have been a lot of dinging bells with triggers and sort of anxiety, feelings of extreme anxiety and worry and stuff like that so yeah it definitely made me realise that it hasn't gone away and I'm not sure that it ever will. I hope it will, like better you know. Yeah but can I just, I think that's important in the framing that our Pit Pony guests come on and they're talking about vulnerable periods in their life so thank you for that because your journey like all the other guests we have acts as inspiration and information and education for our listeners so thanks for that and with that in mind I'm going to take you right back to that period. Talk us through the end, how did you exit the classroom, what was going on in your world? So I was pregnant for the second time and working in a school that was a good 50 minutes to an hour away from where I lived so there was a long commute as many people will remember with the second pregnancy like it's never as easy as the first, it's never as easy, like my hips fell apart immediately as soon as the hormones went through and I had to have newspaper in the car to swivel in and out because I couldn't open my legs far enough so it was it was hard anyway and I think as I went through like that was August and then through September and October whether I was not as self-aware as I should have been or whatever but things started to slide by November I was feeling extremely pressured within school on what looking back I guess was an informal support plan but was never really called that December I remember going to see the doctor just as we came off and he said try keep going see how you do but come back and see me in January if it gets no better once you're back and yeah January was the time when I went to see the doctor having suffered a panic attack in the car and he signed me off sick that night. It's a weird one this Katie You said it was like an informal support plan I didn't really understand it support plan support in the world of teaching is it's like an oxymoron almost isn't it it just has such an impact on teachers. Sarah it's dead interesting isn't it in our in our work in in our head office we're all ex-teachers same with our franchisees we have to be really careful about using the word support in that word because it doesn't mean support what how can you be on an informal support plan and not know you're on a support just dig into that a bit for us will you I think I was working in a mixed year one and two classroom which is hard work as it is and it's even if I did go back to teaching I would never have a mixed year one and year two because they've got different needs so I was trying to make those different needs match those needs of you know being able to play learn through play all of that stuff the EYFS mixed with SATS in year two and the leadership I think what I do believe they were trying to be supportive and I think they felt that progress wasn't as much as it should have been I think that they felt that my planning wasn't wasn't reflected in what was happening in the books and I'm I'm saying I think at the beginning of all of this because whether I have compartmentalized it away so far that I can't remember these conversations or whether it wasn't explained well enough to me at the time all I really knew was that at some point in maybe the October or the November it was requested that I have weekly meetings with senior leadership where they sat and went through my planning and went through the books at the same time and try to match them together and that was always done at a lunch time so I would be sat on those tiny little key stage one chairs that is what I do have a memory of is sitting on tiny key stage one chairs at six months pregnant and trying to explain my planning and my and what the books look like to the head teacher very viscerally remember saying to her I am not a bad teacher I don't understand what's going on and I think that was the day I think that was in January and I think that was the day I had the panic attack on the way home pretty sure okay so I'm going to bring Sarah in now Sarah support plans okay going back over what Katie's just said surely clarity is needed when it comes to this what's been your experience of support plans particularly when you were a senior leader what's the point of them how have we got it so wrong oh that's a loaded question can I can I just cycle back before I go to that the the very idea of cross-referencing planning documents with what's in children's books I can see the point of it to a point but a plan is exactly that it's a plan and way way back part of the Ofsted framework and sorry to invoke them was very much that plans should not be fixed you should be live in the classroom you should adapt to what's going on with the children's needs and so a plan might go out the window in the first five minutes of lesson because it's a plan it's not an absolute it's not a process I am absolutely going to follow during this lesson so that for me that's listeners can't see my facial reactions but that was why my face did what it did because that to me is nonsense support plans I understand why they're there there is a capability process there is in any profession and there has to be because you cannot have a profession any profession where 100% of the people 100% of the time are doing exactly what they what they should be doing in order to fulfill their job role there are people who the role whether it's teaching or whatever is not right for them or they're not right for it and or they're not doing what they should be doing I understand that capability needs to be there and the the informal element is there in principle to avoid the need to go to the formal element it's there to support to get somebody on track it's the contractual obligation to give somebody a chance to put it right that's what it is but somewhere along the way instead of people using the language of informal capability and capability somebody's changed informal capability and support plans have become the language and in some places I think they are support plans they're written with the teacher they are what do we need to do what can we do to support you what will help but more and more what's happening based on our conversations with people and experiences that we have is that they're imposed they are not discussed they are done purely from the side of the school not the teacher and therefore they are not a support plan because a support plan should underpin what the teacher needs and for me for everything that is in a support plan and and I've written about this on the group and and other people have said it as well okay if somebody says that you're going on a support plan then what are they doing where's that written in the the the support plan are they going to come in and model the things that they're saying that you're not doing it's that sort of thing it's so one-sided it's punitive it's not support in in my experience Katie and I don't know if you've both found this school's idea of a support plan actually when you strip it back is we're going to monitor you more we're going to we're going to check your books we're going to come into your lessons not a support plan as in would it help if you worked from home one afternoon a week would it help if we put more TAs in the classroom with you would it help if we decreased your class size it always seems to be that the workload is increased and the monitoring and pressure is increased and that's then deemed supportive did you find that that's the route but more than anything bloody hell love if you're on a support plan you need to understand why you started every sentence with I think they were unhappy I think so there's clearly no clarity conversation going on there no and I think I said before didn't I think I think I do believe that they were trying to be supportive because I was going through other things at that time and I wasn't self-aware like I'd said that I was pregnant obviously the thing that I didn't say was that I had in between having my first and falling pregnant with Rosie had lost a child so I was incredibly anxious I spent I remember spending mornings like getting in at half six seven o'clock in the morning to school and sitting there with my on my belly like waiting for a kick and having to run off to and because we live so rurally the hospitals are so far away like if I had to run off to the hospital to just go and get a quick peace of mind scan I was out for the full day so there was stuff going on and I I believe that I did need help and I believe that she wanted to be supportive I wonder whether looking back she was trying to be supportive she was trying to not make me panic but by doing that she wasn't clear enough about what the issue was and therefore it all got muddled I also wonder whether as teachers we feel under so much pressure all the time I talked to you about this just before we came on the recording about those sort of teacher triggers that ding-a-ling that rejection sensitivity that we all experience that whether I when that plan started falling into place and they started asking me to do things like oh don't do informal planning anymore now here's a template that we want you to fill out every day and stuff like that whether my rejection sensitivity put me into panic overdrive and therefore everything went into this awful spiral that looking back I was never going to get out of you know can I ask a question was there ever a plan given was there ever a document was it ever formalized semi-formalized was it written down what they were going to do I do remember being in their teacher's office and her working on a computer while we were speaking so yes possibly but was that ever given to you if you not remember I don't I wouldn't be able to say truthfully that I remember and that for me probably and I'm making big leaps and I might be wrong would suggest that you didn't because if you had have got it you'd have known about it I am aware of people who've had their plans given to them when they've read them they've gone this is this is nuts I've I I don't understand why this why this has happened and I think for me as well that the further context of a the pregnancy and be the loss that you had protections under law and actually for them to be imposing more work load on you more monitoring given the circumstances regardless of of the perception that she was trying to be supportive her actions were the complete antithesis of being supportive she was piling more stress onto you but I think just just listening to both ends of the spectrum there the one thing Katie is saying is she genuinely believed the intent of the head teacher and not to be punitive but that was a failing on the leadership skills and probably training of head teachers there are some head teachers who I genuinely believe weaponize support plans for females over 40 you know we talk about that you know I speak to them on the phone Sharon I've just had great feedback from the last observation my results have been brilliant Ofsted came in last year and now I'm being told my books aren't up to scratch so it really is a vulnerable position to be in when you want to weaponize this concept of support but it sounds to me as though you had a head teacher with the best of intentions but hadn't had the right training and the leadership skills in order to effectively do what she wanted to do would that be would that be fair? I think it would and I think when we put it into the wider context of what senior leaders are experiencing in education at the moment the pressure that they're under to produce these results I can I can well imagine that she could see a teacher in a tiny school with less than 100 children where every result counts for large amounts of percentage points I can well imagine that she would have panicked at what she saw as somebody who was in a downward spiral who was going to be going off on maternity leave in April anyway and who therefore wouldn't be around for the SATs and while I believe in principle she believed that SATs were not the important thing that results were not the important thing like this school was very holistic it was values-led it was beautiful it was such a good school but she still has that pressure from the top there's still that unrelenting pressure of Ofsted might be turning up soon like we haven't had Ofsted for three years would you another one let's have every staff meeting on a Monday be about the Ofsted let all of that stuff still comes into play and I don't know how much of that was her fault. Brief interlude dear listener a couple of questions are you a tutor or even a pit pony considering tutoring and do you fancy getting in the room with myself and Sarah Dunwood learning about the wonderful world of tuition then why not join us at the National Tutors Conference hosted by Conexus Tuition on the 29th of July 2025 it's at Chesford Grange Kenilworth links to the tickets are in the show notes below and we will both see you on the other side. You're in this bubble of confusion you think you're on a support plan it's informal you don't know but what you do know is there's more monitoring you've had this this image of yourself being on these small chairs and so it's not a great place to be in at that point how's it impacting you emotionally what kind of you've talked about these triggers you've talked about what you've gone through when you've relived it what did it look like at home for you? At home I have Archie who at that point was three three and a half maybe he just started going to see a childminder his dad was doing most of the care because I was at school every single day because it was a long commute I would get up at half past five and wouldn't see him and just jump in the car after I'd had my break most days I would be home at seven after he'd gone to bed maybe twice a week but he would barely look up actually and that obviously had an impact on me like I can I can remember flashes of you know being at home on the weekend and actually toddling up to my desk which was in the living room because we have no other space to put it and say mummy come play and me like literally pushing him literally pushing him away and saying no baby mummy's got to mummy's got to play so even on those precious times that I did have time to spend with my child I was prioritising school I felt like I had to prioritise the school work because I felt under pressure I was also experiencing a lot of like I say rejection sensitivity is a big thing in my world like because I always assume if somebody tells me that something's not done the way that they wanted it to be done or the way they envisioned it I immediately go well that's me I'm a terrible person it's clearly my point like that's my fault and so there was a lot of that going on as well. Sarah, rejection sensitivity it's something that's we're aware of in our world we recognise it within ourselves what's your take on rejection sensitivity what's your understanding of what Katie's talking about it's very common in terms of neurodiversity really common but I think it's also common when there has been trauma of some sort and I think we underplay the traumatic impact that some of the things that individuals and as a group we collectively experience but it comes from nowhere when it happens it can be it can be the interpreted tone in an email it can be the the slightest hint of something particularly in written communication a text an email whatever either I experience it and I'm like you Katie I've done so much work on myself so much work on myself and 90% of the time I'm fine but I can take a five word text and and read every catastrophic outcome into that that probably is not intended by the person that's there because it's because it's in me and it comes from nowhere it's overwhelming and it's all consuming um and thumbs up on a Facebook message do you get it for a thumbs up on a Facebook message you're like oh god they hate me a thumbs up that just yeah yeah absolutely and and it's and it is and even actually sometimes things like that where it's at a distance where it's where it is something that's a that's a something on Facebook or something on social media or something that you you you feel or is that passive-aggressive are they having a go at me what what is that about what it it causes an overthink when that other person probably isn't isn't giving it another thought so it's a it is a very real thing and it's and it's and I think it's more common and probably people certainly people in the group don't necessarily realize that that is what is happening when they have a response to something do you know it's really interesting because I'm I'm in touch now with a lot of teachers who have now exited the classroom and are doing their own thing whether that's further employment somewhere else whether it's you know entrepreneurship whatever it might be and I've had a few little dings over the last couple of week couple of weeks and I've got my little crew who I go and talk to who are all ex-teachers and who are all doing something similar to me so I dropped into our little whatsapp group I was like oh guys I'm having these little dings is it just me and they were they were all one person wrote into the whatsapp chat teaching has ruined us because they all had those same things and they all said the same thing to me which is that's a teacher thing like it's because we were teachers that's dinging you and I think it leads to something then that that it leads us to almost very childlike behavior and the kind of I've got a picture of Cartman from South Park in my head and I'm not gonna say what but that kind of well I'm just gonna walk away from it I'm just gonna I'm just gonna throw everything in the air and and and I can't do this and and um or what's the point and I and I think then and I hate the word resilience because it's been overused in teaching but that that thing about actually in a different circumstance in a different life I'd walk through that now I need to find a way of walking around that or walking away from it and I and I think the the psychology of understanding how you react to something that isn't necessarily somebody rejecting you or criticizing you but you receive it as such it requires a lot of work it really does I'm definitely not there yet like I'm at a place now where I can see those things happening and I can recognize them but I'm still feeling a huge emotional response to them and it is it is very very hard I won't lie so that brilliant you you've touched on so many things here but let's let's get back to this you're sat in this informal support plan you go off with work-related stress how do you exit how do you actually come to the decision and go I can't do this anymore walk us through the mechanics and the operational aspect of your leaving the classroom how did you leave I was lucky because I was on maternity leave for a large portion of the time that I was away the January I had the panic attack while I was driving home from school and the doctor signed me off there and then I had one visit I think maybe six weeks later with the occupational therapist who took one look at me and said you're not going back until after you've had this baby and that was that then there was a year of maternity leave which I had taken without the added benefits that I was due because at that point clearly I was I was worried that I wouldn't be going back and I didn't want to have a financial burden on me to repay so I think I got to maybe just before Christmas obviously due to go back in the April and at that point I got in touch with the head teacher and said I want to give you as much notice as humanly possible I know I'm definitely not coming back you can now recruit for somebody to fill my position in April as it happened they recruited the person who was covering my maternity leave so the class got continuity and that was great in terms of the practical aspects of it at that point Toby was still a teaching assistant he'd been a teacher that's where we met um so he was working as a teaching assistant in a local secondary school part-time because he was looking after Archie at the same time so the decision at that point became how do we manage financially and again we were relatively lucky in that I managed to pick up some informal sort of admin assistant work with a family down the road and that meant that I was able we were able to at least pay bills and that lasted for a little while until the whole sort of entrepreneur business thing started but certainly while we were inside that decision there was no thought of setting up a business I was trying to think about finding remote work with one of these companies that like base camp or somebody like that who are based in the US and I was trying to do that alongside this informal work but honestly again we were in a really lucky position in that we've got parents who are fairly well off and we knew that we wouldn't be like we wouldn't starve essentially and we felt that my mental health and looking after the children was more important at that stage and if we were going to have to you know give up the house that we were living in and go somewhere cheaper we would have done it I think. I think that's that takes us back to the original Pit Pony video really one of the core things we talk about is letting go of stuff that we think matters the most like do you really need the Sky Sports package when you can have a fire stick do you really need to go to the gym and sometimes you have to take a step back with what you think are the trappings of life that's so important let that go saving the knowledge you can build it back up but when you're at your lowest when you think you're losing this job that's your identity that's everything you're it's those trappings that are so important to you and that's where you get caught in this cross the crosshairs of this pain point and having to give up this job and now having to give up this lifestyle but it's so important I think to realise that it is a lifeboat position when you leave you've got to haven't you I mean we were kind of lucky in that we had distance on it as well I think I would have found it a lot harder to make that decision if I was in the school every day with the children feeling those feelings of guilt like I'm letting the children down because we've joined the teaching profession not to make money and be incredibly successful but because we believe in education and we think we know we're going to change the world child by child that's what we're doing isn't it and so I was I think the decision may not have been the same and I might not have escaped perhaps quite so easily but I was I'd been out of it for six months I'd seen because I had the school on Facebook group that you know the class were doing really well and they had this teacher who was doing really well for them and I felt content with that the things that I had to come to terms with were did we have enough money to pay the rent and you know do those things yes we did I had to come to terms with the feeling of having failed at teaching because that's that's a big one and I still have regrets in that area I don't think I'll ever fully come to terms with it but I was okay with that I lived with it and I think I was also very lucky to have an incredibly supportive family who said you do what you need to do because I know so many teachers whose family go oh but you know like you've worked so hard like that sort of um the sunk cost what do they call it the opportunity cost where people say but you put four years into doing your your big long PGCE or whatever what a waste and you're like no no god people are looking for those skills everywhere those teacher skills are so valuable but you can't see it at the time. Hello loyal listeners this is a little plea on behalf of myself and Sarah to donate a few pennies to the Pit Pony Podcast Production Fund. Sarah's taken to selling her cure records on eBay to fund the episodes so see the bios the ko-fi link in the notes below and save her collection of Robert Smith's warblings for us will you thank you. I think what's interesting as well and it is going back to this concept of the support plan there will be many listeners sat here going yeah I can see I can see where this could have gone and you swerved that with your with your life choices we get a question on the group a lot Sarah and it'd be interesting to know your take on this and they're very they're just very blank posts about to be put on a support plan has anybody ever got off it has anybody ever successfully worked through a support plan and I would love to know the statistics that sit behind this because there are so many people who are given these support plans and the first thing they do is contact their union and look for a way of negotiating themselves out of the classroom. Sarah do you know of anybody who's successfully made their way through a support plan? Yeah but but it's it's context driven it's when a support plan was genuinely a support plan when something needed to be adjusted when the right support was in place where it's been where it's been support in its truest sense and and I think it's very difficult there are no stats out there that I'm I mean I'm I'm not even sure that that the unions would hold stats about they certainly wouldn't about successful support plans I don't think and within the group we are an echo chamber so we're always we are going to get the the side of things where people are asking and going almost what we talked about a few minutes ago of that well I've got choices here I either find a way around it find a way through it or I'll walk away and and I think most people's most people's natural response when they're faced with that is to go I'm not going to get through this they clearly want me out even if that's not the case in the small minority of cases where that might be true and and so you go to what's the line of least resistance and I think that's where sometimes in the group I we try and be balanced because people will be critical of the union so all the unions are just trying to negotiate people out yes because that's what people have gone and asked for get me out what's how can I get out of this before it goes to it there aren't statistics and I don't know without looking the group's the wrong place to draw that conclusion from but I know personally from work in schools over over 25 years and I know from other people that I know that there are people who have come through support plans but when they are done genuinely supportively got you got you so okie dokie we've got Katie Stone she's out of teaching pretty much saying I've had my kid at arm's length where work's concerned I don't want to do that again I'm going to build a world for myself on my terms would that be fair Katie that you you wanted to build so tell us now what is it you actually do so I'm a virtual assistant and it's a very good question the reason my business is called Katie Stone PA was because I didn't believe anybody would know what a VA was and back when it was first set up actually most people in the UK didn't really obviously everything went online in 2020 and at that point VA's exploded it proliferated but yeah at that time no so a VA is somebody who a jack-of-all-trades somebody who can take business admin off the plate of business people so that they can focus on doing the thing that makes their business grow so instead of like a lot of people who have their own businesses will feel that feeling of being in the weeds where you've got to get your invoicing done and you've got to like you've got to do your marketing and you've got to do and you know that none of this stuff is the actual stuff the reason that you created your business but I feel like teachers are pretty amazing at that stuff because we are used to having a to-do list that never ends and always has more stuff shoved on the bottom of it than falls off the top we're also especially primary teachers I think and I was primary but I think primary teachers are incredible generalists like we're not experts at anything but you ask us to do anything at all and we will roll up our sleeves and find a way of doing it like my NQT year they were like guess what you're PE coordinator and I was like dudes look at me I haven't run for a bus in 10 years let alone done netball and so that was the way I end up using my skills but in the end it was it was quite forced the setting up the business in that I found it hard to find the remote work because I didn't have experience of working remotely and that's what a lot of the firms were looking for they loved my CV they really liked the teacher skills on there I think because I was able to talk a lot of them were customer service positions and I was able to talk about communicating with multiple stakeholders you know like working out how to communicate something to a six-year-old and then communicate that same thing to its parent and the same thing to a governor and the same thing to an Ofsted inspector like all those different levels of communication but when they would ask me oh and have you done any remote work before I'd be like oh no I haven't and they would be and so somebody else would always get that position and then in April 2020 obviously the world closed down and I'd heard a bit about VAs but haven't really paid any attention to it nobody in my family owns a business that we don't we're not entrepreneurs we go to work I went to a grammar school they didn't even mention the idea that you could have a business you went to university and you got a job preferably a teacher like something academic was what what we were told we should be doing but yeah like we all closed down Toby was doing his PGCE at that point so that went online and he was doing a maths secondary PGCE so we had quite a lot of grant money so we were lucky enough to know that financially we were okay Toby was watching the kids and my mum sent me 500 quid because it was tax year end and so I had enough money to build a website you know get some insurance and really have a run at it which is what I did and it yeah it grew that's that's kind of how it in a nutshell began so that was really long no no that's perfect because people will be sat here going what is a virtual assistant what what does she mean by a VA and and I think you're absolutely right primary school teachers we've got a head office right Connexus has its head office and we have three members of our team they were all ex-primary school teachers you are absolutely right and I would say they are jack of all trades and master of them all in the end because what we've got them invoicing marketing stuff the whole lot we are insane administrators because we you never focus on any one thing when you're a primary school teacher you're doing all the subjects you're marking all those bloody books as well and you're doing the the marking and you're doing the stuff on the computer and you've got your to-do list and then they ask you to be a coordinator of something you've never heard of and plus could you just do this little extra thing over here and oh by the way we're doing after-school clubs now you've got to do one of those a week and do you know so you do end up being able to juggle a lot of stuff and that is the prime when you're doing business admin I have we've got a team of nine of us now so there's 10 all together that's and I sent out my Christmas cards this year it was more than 40 of them to clients no one client asks us to do the same thing there are a lot of things like that we end up doing that are similar but no one client needs the same thing because all of them have different things that they hate doing different things they procrastinate over different it's and that's the delight of it that's the bit that I love is getting my fingers into somebody else's business and they'll be like oh but you know like people will send me messages to ask me if I can tutor so and so and it falls through the crack and I forget and I'm like I can build you a system for that I can do that so that no it cracks again and it's it's honestly delightful it really is it gives me joy every single day love it and I get to stay home it entirely like I am talking to you now from the wardrobe in my bedroom because that's where we've got space to me for me to work from I'm like Harry Potter brilliant but we get to take the kids to school I get to like I went to the nativity and well I'll talk about that later on because you're going to ask me for that little moment and I am going to ask you do you know what I mean what you did was you took your skills and you did monetize them you were entrepreneurial I think you and I have met at a conference haven't we we met we were at the tutoring conference because I did the lead magnet one the email marketing talk at the tutoring conference John Conyon told you I wanted you to be my best friend Sharon I remember that's why you're I do because you're back to bed very fast you were you accosted me on some stairs but Sharon and I'm like okay okay okay it's one of the mad ones Sarah uh no it's brilliant it was absolutely brilliant and and that's what I did I I stepped away from the classroom I monetized my skills as an English teacher but then built a business and there's nothing you can't find out if you don't google it I don't even know how I passed my degree without google I mean oh god fine isn't it what you all them library books honest to god who'd do that now Christ alive but you throw and I think what's important Katie you are good on social media you are very available and if anybody wants to get in touch with you for any advice any support I know that you'd be more than happy to help anybody people do often and I am always pleased to just give advice and help out people who are just looking for an exit route because I think there are multiple exit routes as well like mine was my own individual story and there were so many just sort of like not lucky turns but just things like circumstances that would never rear their heads again I mean having a pandemic to build a business in where you didn't really have to worry about finance and you had six months to just do what you want not that's not happening again parents who were happy for me to look like a husband who was so supportive all of these things made my own individual journey but everybody I think the thing that I would love to have told myself when I was leaving teaching back then is building this business has given me back like my self-worth when I came out of teaching I felt like I was useless I felt like I was worthless like I had failed at the one thing that I wanted to do best better than anyone and now this business is like it's like my third baby it's it's so precious to me that not only do I still get to help people but because we just we chose a niche is a marketing tool but we chose to niche into education businesses and I love the fact that I still get to be a part of education like in my own small way I'm still helping kids because I'm helping tutors and I'm helping consultants and I'm helping all these people who are going into schools and making kids lives better and I just I really wish I could go back and say to myself you are brilliant you're infectious you're absolutely infectious and you know what the irony is not lost on me that we spent the first part of this podcast talking about you on a support plan having then built a business to support people so I think the word support has been it's been writ large throughout this episode and and just a we've taken it back haven't we Sharon that's what we've done we've taken that word back so with you I think you and Sarah have done exactly the same thing you've taken that word back and made it mean what it's supposed to mean thank you for that thank you um you're right you're right when we support we mean support in so many ways for you guys as well not just for kids but for all them teachers who are coming out of teaching and who need it thank you for that so so you know what I'm going to ask you now don't you now you love your life life from life from your wardrobe what what's your sliding doors moment not your sliding wardrobe doors I've now got a new name for my blog it's going to be life from Katy's wardrobe I couldn't decide between two one's really brief and the other one is a little longer the first one was when Rosie went to nursery I had a really hard time with Rosie when she was a baby like she didn't sleep well she and I were not good friends and honest to god when it got when she got to a year old and she could go to child care I drop kicked her through them doors and ran screaming in the other direction and child care was the thing that gave me back my relationship with Rosie and I remember it was before lockdown going to her her nursery nativity and it was only little because it's such a tiny school that my kids go to because we're so rural and we were all sat in this little hall and all the parents once again all the parents on them tiny little chairs and they all walked down the middle of us and Rosie walked past me and she had these little angel wings because she was an angel and she turned around when she got to the front and I'm going to cry when I tell you it was my best thing ever and all the other parents looked at me like I cry at sad donkey adverts Sharon like I will cry out but honestly that still makes me go and my other big one which is more of a business one because this is since I actually built the business I was still doing just admin work back then last year I took my kids out of school a week early and we buggered off to New Zealand for three weeks and went to see like my step-mum has a sister over there and I gave my children an experience that they will never ever forget we went to wetter workshops we went to this horrible smelly place called Rotorua which was on a volcano and stank of like still Rosie still talks to me about that place and they're going to remember it forever Archie came out of that we saw dolphins we tried to see a killer whale and didn't manage one um and Archie wants to be a marine biologist now off the back of that like so I mean whether he will or whether he won't I said to him on the front of the boat while they were chasing the dolphins Archie please be a marine biologist I want you to do this for a living so that you can take mummy on your boat so he better not it won't be it might not be a life-changing thing for him but they'll never forget that and neither will I because we got to go with my dad and my step-mum who are now in their 70s and probably won't manage a long haul flight ever again like all these last chances and we never got a chance to do them before could I have taken my kids out of school god no I couldn't have taken myself out of school could you imagine yeah so there you go those are two oh they're beautiful and I think it's the one with Rosie in the wings because yeah oh my god I love that one she was so beautiful Sharon you've got no idea no it is because I I had something not dissimilar with Ellie we did not gel early doors because I was working I was stressed you're right it was like oh god I've given birth to this mini narcissist who hates me was she a second I think seconds are always a bit of a surprise I'll tell you something if she'd have been my first she'd have been an only child this is what I say about Rosie wouldn't have had another and now she's my best mate um but no that has been for me a cracking episode because you brought something to the fore which has been the conversation around support plans we will do multiple episodes with people who've been in this position whose outcome has been different you've also brought to me and to our listeners something that I think is quite accessible which is your business model because we've had chocolatiers and celebrants and fire door specialists but at the same time that is quite specialist there's a real passion there behind that kind of talent and artists and things like that but what you've done is you've taken a series of skill sets you've taken work ethic you've taken the ability to multitask and you have created a very very successful business for yourself still within the field of education still supporting those who need it the most it's a belting thrival story it really really is it's a belting thing for anyone to do and you don't have to like I know so many teachers who've come out and I know quite a few who've come out and become virtual assistants and I'm the only one in fact I'm the only VA that I know apart from maybe one other who's niched into education most of them run screaming because they never want to see education again and I don't blame them there are so many things like start off as a generalist and people find out oh my god I love making automations and they'll turn themselves into tech VAs who just build automations for people or they'll be like I mean I fell in love with email marketing and now I still do my generalist VA stuff but I also do specialist email marketing consulting and charge an awful lot more for that because that's not VA level like I've heard you describe a VA before as like a really trustworthy teenager who has no real sort of specialist skills but will bloody well go and work really hard at what you've asked them to do and will get it done and that's what I say to all my clients is like I'm probably no better at you than this I haven't worked in this thing either this piece of software you're asking me to work in but I tell you what like I will take the time off your hands that you would have spent hunting through your help documentation on the phone to someone like to you know customer care crying quietly over trying to make that automation. You're preaching to the choir and before I built before I built my head office team I used a company called Pink Spaghetti and Pink Pink Spaghetti the founders live in Limb near me. Really I haven't realized. Yeah they're brilliant firm they're a great franchise model just brilliant so listen we're rambling as always of course we have me and you will forget we're recording and be right right what you having for dinner um so thank you Katie um it's been a belting episode I'll see you soon no doubt you'll probably be coming to our conference hopefully this year in July and Sarah any last words of wisdom or just a thank you for Katie well yeah just a thank you I've really enjoyed it really enjoyed it and and is making me think of a I please don't panic Sharon I'm not going anywhere but you know there could be a different there could be a different world out there for me when I take early retirement okay so at what point in all of that am I not supposed to panic and on that note Katie Stone you've been brilliant thank you so much for being a guest and we'll see you soon I loved that I loved her she's great isn't she yeah super uh I like the energy and um then it was interesting that she reflected off audio after we'd finished recording about she almost she did articulate the kind of two-part what did she say it was the story hill of a of a pit pony the first part is always like really and then and then that kind of redemption bit afterwards um now I really enjoyed that and I think there's so much of what she said um the fact that as teachers were able to do she coined it really nicely an ability to do work at a reasonable pace to an appropriate standard and that being important when you're exchanging time for money I thought that was that was spot on and and I think it took me back to when I came out of teaching and that kind of what can I do what can I utilize what can I what can I leverage and and it was exactly that do a bit of photography do my own photography work do some for other people I did a bit of VA stuff I did some tutoring I did explains I taught myself how to use a piece of software so that I could do it for somebody else because they couldn't figure it out it it's all that sort of stuff and I think you go back to that word just that I'm just a teacher it's all I've ever known yeah do you know how skilled that actually makes you what a work ethic that you've got but words that this is always the peak irony when I listen to people's thrivals and what they're doing and I'm not going to reference previous episodes in case people are not listening to them in order but we have got pit ponies who have either been put on a support plan made to feel inadequate have had to leave the classroom and then when they have have thrived doing the very things that they were being scrutinized and not able to do it's bloody the irony book it's going bing bing bing so this is a woman who needed help with her organization that her plans matched her delivery that how can we support you in this way and that way she's built a business around being super organized helping to support other people multitasking planning we come back to it every time people are in the wrong environment if you are in the right environment a supportive environment a safe space where everybody wants the outcome to be success you will thrive she she went back to that time where she sat on those tiny chairs with a completely and I don't want to speak out of turn about a head teacher because she was very kind about her head teacher I'm sure I'm sure she doesn't fall into the toxic category but a disorganized unclear head teacher is trying to put a support package in that has the complete opposite effect on Katie. Katie's now got a team of nine PAs around her she's outsourcing work she's supporting businesses in the education world and she was sat down muddling through what am I even doing wrong and that's where the problem comes we have a massive talent pool in teaching a huge talent pool that are not being managed correctly it's almost like you're a budding actor and your agent keeps putting you up for roles you can't do you know there's a there's a role coming up in this film I didn't get it I wasn't very good at it you know because people are not being put in the areas they need to be in to allow them to shine and it's such a shame it is such a shame. I think I think it goes back to conversations that we've had before as well about how much the system has changed and I'm not sitting here as somebody who doesn't believe that things need to evolve and change over time because that's very much my role now is about is about change management putting systems in that make things better and so on and so forth but if you go certainly for me if I go all the way back to my first seven or eight years of teaching it was about planning for what I taught teaching it assessing it it was completely teaching focus completely and and over time I think there's been so much added in we use the phrase weighing the pig in in terms of data you you keep on weighing the pig and and that doesn't make things better because actually the act of weighing the pig is taking you away from actually teaching the kids and planning for teaching the kids something's gone amiss somewhere in terms of where the focus is and how much time people have actually got to to plan and teach and and assess because they're the critical bits and so much other stuff has been loaded on around it which means that people don't have the time and you look at different education systems around the world and at the risk of sounding like a politician who's just going to pick one off and go oh we should do that but not change our own system just add that on you look at other education systems teachers get so much more planning time in some countries not all um and I I think that's fundamentally where where it's gone wrong the focus is not on teaching and where it is sometimes not all cases I'm not going to generalize brilliant schools there are lots of them but this this whole thing of moving to standardizing everything and you must teach in one particular way and you must have your standardized powerpoint slides and all the rest of it that actually imposes more work than than if you are allowed to teach in the way that works for you I couldn't teach like that now everything you've just described does exist in some way and it's tutoring and I mean obviously you know we come from a place of bias in that respect but if you really look at the art of tuition that's it what does this child or this group of children need from me right now and you know what ironically makes the most successful results for kids is that a good tutor doesn't plan they prepare I've got my bag of tricks right what what last week you said you've got your Macbeth coming up no no Sharon um on Monday we've got an inspector calls okay so guess what I do in that moment I pivot and move and meet the needs of those kids so actually when that head teacher was saying to me but your plans don't match what was in the books good because then I wouldn't be making the assumption or the presumption that that teacher's pivoted in the moment because that's what those kids need long-term planning for me is nuts in teaching because how can you plan in September where that kid's going to be in July and what they need and and and this this this I think was what I was saying and and you know me I remember details of of things there was there was a time where the inspection framework specifically talked about talked about this in terms of um teachers being able to judiciously change change tack in within a lesson based upon that kind of oh right they're missing that foundation skill well there's no point in us going there until we go back and do that and it and it goes to other conversations that we've had people being criticized because um a TA wasn't in a lesson because they'd had to go out and deal with a first aid incident but that wasn't on the plan well of course it's not on the plan it's it's real so and I'm I'm I think you're right in terms of long-term planning a long-term plan for me is what do I need to cover with these children over the next 12 months or the next two years if it's a GCSE course whatever these these are the the key topics but in terms of the actual and I remember it with business studies I used to overwrite overwrite how much time it would take to deliver the finance module of the business studies course because the kids generally really struggled with it but remember one year they all flew through it got it really quickly and so that period of time compressed down to about four weeks worth of lessons and it normally would have been eight but a different module took the eight rather than the four that it was planned for because they just weren't getting it that's you adapt your plans it's life it's nonsense it's life being able to check I loved her I thought she was great um I think it's a good episode again going back to what are my options available to me particularly for people who still want to work in the world of education but don't consider themselves to have a core subject that they can maybe move into tutoring it's just another example of for me and this is the sadness people thriving outside of the classroom when they could have been brilliant still serving from within um I also just want to make that point as well and I think and it's where I'm going to leave it today we are very very grateful to our guests who come on and relive what they've gone through and there's been a couple of guests who've said to us afterwards my parents haven't even heard me tell this story or I haven't thought about this for five years and we said all the way through didn't we that these podcasts were going to be the antidote in many respects to the echo chamber of the group where people are coming on at points of desperation and and points of being utterly lost these are the examples of the thrivals but in order to tell the thrival story there has to have been that awful awful experience so not only would I like to thank Katie but I'd like to take this opportunity in light of what she said to us to thank all of our guests really for sharing some of the the darkest parts of their lives just prior to the thrival which is which I think is what makes our podcast something that we're very very proud of really the feedback there is amazing our message is ping ping ping that was a brilliant episode um and there are lots of opportunities to give us feedback you can leave us messages you can leave us reviews but more than anything we're going to end this episode with a little warm feeling that our random recordings do make a difference and I hope one day they end up in the ears of people who can make some changes within education and start listening to some of these stories realising they are not one-offs there's so many common scenes running through and people who can make decisions in education go we are hemorrhaging talent left right and centre from our education system and we've got to do something about it agreed okay I'll end that on the part of political broadcast on behalf of the Pony Programme right pal we're off ski I'll see you on the other side see you later thank you so much for staying with us throughout another great episode and on behalf of myself Sarah Dunwood and all at the production team we appreciate your continued support if you wish to contact me directly for a support session or a clarity call for your next steps please find my link in the comments below see you soon