Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Teacher Built a Side Hustle in Educational Escape Rooms
Transcript
- Lucas: So a middle school science teacher in Phoenix — Sarah Chen — was frustrated that her students found cell biology boring. And she came up with a fix that turned into a forty-five-hundred-dollar-a-month side hustle. Luna: I love stories that start with someone just trying to solve their own problem. What did she actually build? Lucas: She created an educational escape room. The first one was called 'Cells and Organelles' — students had to solve puzzles about cell parts to unlock a plastic box with candy inside. She ran it in her classroom, her kids loved it, and she posted the materials for free on Teachers Pay Teachers. Luna: Free? That's a generous starting point. When did the light bulb go off that this could be a side hustle? Lucas: Other teachers started messaging her — not just with thanks, but with requests. Could she do one for photosynthesis? For the water cycle? And they were offering to pay for editable templates so they could adapt the puzzles for their own classes. That's when she realized there was a real demand. Luna: So she moved from free downloads to a paid product line. What did that look like? Lucas: She launched a bundle of five escape room kits on Teachers Pay Teachers for twenty-five dollars. Within a month, she had sold two hundred copies. That's five thousand dollars in gross revenue, minus the platform's fifteen percent cut. She was still teaching full time, so she put the earnings into expanding the line. Luna: That's a lot of initial traction. How much time was she putting in? Lucas: About twelve hours a week at first — mostly after school and on weekends. She was designing puzzles in Canva, testing them with a small group of fellow teachers, and formatting the files so they could be edited in PowerPoint. The key insight was making everything editable — not just PDFs — so buyers could change the content for any subject. Luna: That makes sense. A history teacher doesn't need cell biology puzzles, but if they can swap in dates and events, the same game structure works. Lucas: Exactly. And that pivot — from 'science escape rooms' to 'escape room templates for any subject' — is what opened up the market. She now has kits for math, ELA, social studies, even for corporate training and team building. Luna: So she expanded beyond teachers. What's the revenue breakdown now? Luna: So she expanded beyond teachers. What's the revenue breakdown now? Lucas: She's at about forty-five hundred a month. Roughly sixty percent from Teachers Pay Teachers, thirty percent from Etsy, and ten percent from direct sales to corporate clients — like a local bank that used her team-building kit for a staff retreat. The kits sell for twenty-five to seventy-five dollars each, depending on complexity. Her profit margin is around seventy-five percent after design and platform fees. Luna: Wait, the corporate angle is interesting. How did she land that first client? Lucas: By accident actually. A parent from her school worked at the bank and asked if she could adapt the team-building kit for their offsite. She charged a flat five hundred dollars for a custom version, and it took her about six hours of work. That's over eighty dollars an hour. She now has a page on her site specifically for corporate inquiries. Luna: And we should mention — and this is a little behind the curtain moment — that this kind of deep-dive reporting on specific side hustles is only possible because a handful of listeners chip in monthly through Buy Me a Coffee dot com slash fexingo. It literally funds the time we spend tracking down these stories and interviewing people like Sarah. Luna: Yeah, and we keep the podcast ad-free because of that support. It's a small group, but it makes a big difference in how detailed we can get. Lucas: Exactly. So back to Sarah — she's now spending about eight hours a week on the side hustle, down from twelve, because she's streamlined the design process. She uses templates for the puzzle structures and just swaps in new content. That's the leverage. Luna: What's the most popular kit she sells? Lucas: Ironically, it's a generic 'End of Year Review' kit that teachers can fill with any subject's content. It's been downloaded over three thousand times. She says the key is making it easy for a teacher to customize in under thirty minutes. Luna: So the product isn't really the puzzles — it's the time savings. Teachers want the structure without having to design from scratch. Lucas: Exactly. And she provides video tutorials, answer keys, and even a list of cheap props you can buy on Amazon — like plastic locks and lockboxes. She's basically selling a complete system. Luna: What's the biggest lesson for someone listening who thinks, 'I could do something like this'? Lucas: Start with what you already do. Sarah didn't learn escape room design from a course. She just adapted a classroom activity she already ran. And she didn't try to sell the first version — she gave it away free to get feedback. That feedback told her exactly what the market wanted: editable templates, not finished products. Luna: That's the opposite of what most people do. They try to build the perfect product first. Lucas: Right. And she also tested pricing. At first she charged ten dollars per kit. Then she bundled five for twenty-five. The bundle outsold the individual kits three to one. That's a classic bundling strategy, but she discovered it by experimenting, not by reading a marketing book. Luna: How has she grown her audience? I mean, Teachers Pay Teachers has built-in traffic, but she still needs visibility. Lucas: She posts free sample puzzles on Instagram and Pinterest. One reel showing a 'lock box' opening with a correctly solved puzzle got over a hundred thousand views. She also created a free mini-kit that people can download in exchange for their email. That list now has seven thousand subscribers. She sends a monthly email with a new puzzle idea. Luna: So she's building an asset beyond just the product sales. Lucas: Exactly. And she's now considering a subscription model — ten dollars a month for access to the entire library of kits. She's testing it with a small group, and early retention is over eighty percent. Luna: That's a huge jump in recurring revenue potential. What's her endgame? Does she want to leave teaching? Lucas: She told me she doesn't plan to quit. She likes the stability, the benefits, and the classroom connection keeps her ideas fresh. But she now works only three days a week at school — she negotiated a four-day schedule — and spends the extra day on the side hustle. That balance is exactly what she wanted. Luna: That's the dream, right? Not necessarily quitting your day job, but having the flexibility and extra income. Lucas: Yeah. And for her, it's about forty-five hundred a month now, and growing. She expects to hit six thousand by the end of the year, mostly through the subscription model and more corporate clients. Luna: One thing I'm curious about — did she ever worry about IP? Like, other teachers copying her puzzles? Lucas: She did, but she decided not to over-engineer protection. She put a simple copyright notice in the files and relies on the fact that most teachers would rather buy a polished product than recreate it from scratch. And she keeps updating the kits, so even if someone copies an old version, the new one has better puzzles and instructions. Luna: So she competes on quality and updates, not on legal threats. Lucas: Exactly. And that's a good lesson for any digital product seller. If you keep improving, the copycats are always a step behind. Luna: So if someone wants to start a similar side hustle, what's the first step Sarah would recommend? Lucas: Identify a recurring problem in your own job or hobby. Spend one weekend creating a basic solution. Test it with five people in your network. If they ask for an editable version, that's your green light. Then list it on a platform like Teachers Pay Teachers or Etsy, and don't overthink the price. Start low, bundle later, and listen to what buyers request. Luna: And the investment? Sarah spent maybe fifty dollars on Canva Pro and a few props. Lucas: Right. Low risk, high potential upside. And the time commitment — twelve hours a week at most, and that includes the learning curve. Luna: I think the biggest takeaway for me is that she started with what she already knew. She didn't try to become an expert in something new. Lucas: That's the thread through so many of these stories. The best side hustles often come from the skills you already use every day. Sarah just packaged her classroom creativity into a product. And now she's earning more from the side hustle than from her extra teaching stipends. Luna: Something to chew on for anyone who thinks they don't have a marketable skill. Chances are, you do — you just haven't framed it as a product yet. Lucas: Alright, that's it for episode forty. Next time, we're looking at a dental assistant who built a side hustle in medical billing consulting. See you then.