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Toyin | Math PhD + Lecturer + Entrepreneur

@drtoyinalli

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👩🏾‍🏫 Biz Owner @theacademicsociety_
Helping professors turn their side hustle hobby into a semester-proof business

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The face of academia has changed and so have we.
Tenure used to be the finish line.

Now, most professors I know are juggling multiple jobs, consulting, adjuncting at three campuses, or quietly running a business on the side… not because we’re unfocused, but because the old model no longer creates the life many of us want.

We want to be academically excellent and financially secure.

We want fulfillment, flexibility, options, and income that isn’t tied to burnout.

For me, that meant choosing entrepreneurship.

I started my business in 2017, built it with the few hours I had available, and today it brings in multiple six figures every year—doubling my academic salary while still leaving room for my life, my family, and my students.

And now I help professors build their own semester-proof businesses—businesses that run even when you’re teaching, grading, or navigating a hectic semester.

If you’re ready to stop piecing together random tasks and finally build a real business system that brings in income consistently…

The next cohort of Six Figure Professor starts in January.

The waitlist is officially open.

Comment SFP and I’ll send your invitation.

✨ Your career can be brilliant and financially abundant. You don’t have to choose. by @drtoyinalli

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10 months ago

Please help us welcome Maxwell Dele Odima to our family! Dele is a Nigerian 🇳🇬 Yoruba name meaning “to arrive home”. We felt it was appropriate for how we want him to always feel with us. Thank you for every note, text, phone call, and words of encouragement over the past few hours, days, weeks, and months. Welcome home, Maxwell. 🤎🤎 by @drtoyinalli

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21 days ago

Maternity leave starts now. 💙

By the time you’re reading this, I’m officially stepping away from social media as my family gets ready to welcome our baby boy. 🥹

Which means you won’t see me around here for a little while.

BUT...

Independent Professor class is still in session. 👩🏾‍🏫

I’ve been having so much fun teaching this series over the last few weeks—and from your replies, DMs, and conversations, I know these lessons are hitting on something a lot of professors building businesses have been feeling but haven’t quite known how to name.

So before I signed off, I scheduled the next few Monday Morning Memos + Independent Professor Lessons to be delivered directly to your inbox.

No social posts.

Just two emails a week continuing the curriculum we’ve already started.

So if you’ve been following the Independent Professor series here but aren’t on my email list yet, now is the time to join us.

You’ll get the next lessons through Professorpreneur Weekly while I’m away.

Join at the link in my bio.

And then I’m closing the laptop, putting the Academic Operating System AND Entrepreneur Operating System away for a little while, and going to have a baby.

See you in your inbox.

— Toyin

📸: @katenaumiphotography by @drtoyinalli

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a month ago

“I don't have enough time for my business.”

I hear you.

But before we rearrange your calendar, buy another planner, wake up earlier, or create a new time-blocking system...

Can we look at the business you're trying to find time for?

Because sometimes we're trying to fit an entire entrepreneurial ecosystem into the five hours left after teaching, meetings, research, service, grading, mentoring, and LIFE.

And then we assume the problem is our calendar.

But here's the question I'm sitting with this week:

What if your business is simply too big for the amount of money it's making?

Not because any individual piece is bad.

A podcast can be great.
So can YouTube.
A newsletter can be an incredible asset.
Courses, memberships, funnels, lead magnets, websites — all useful.

But does your business, at its current stage, need all of them?

That's a different question.

Because complexity has a cost.

Every new offer needs to be sold.
Every platform needs content.
Every funnel needs traffic.
Every community needs engagement.
Every system needs maintenance.

And suddenly you've created a business that requires 15 hours a week... before you've created one that reliably makes money.

So this week, I'm not going to help you squeeze more business into your faculty schedule.

We're doing something else.

We're asking:

What is the smallest version of your business that could still accomplish its most important job?

Which is, at minimum: Help the right person solve a valuable problem and get paid for doing it.

Everything else has to earn its place.

Tomorrow we're talking about why building a business that fits your academic career might require you to make it smaller, not bigger. Make sure that you're signed up the the Professorpreneur Weekly Series to get the full lesson in your inbox. by @drtoyinalli

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a month ago

👀

You have:
A website.
An email list.
Instagram.
LinkedIn.
A lead magnet.
A funnel.
A course.
A coaching offer.
Maybe a workshop.
Three pieces of software talking to each other.
And approximately 47 things on your business to-do list.

Then you look at your faculty schedule and think: "I don't have enough time to run a business."

Maybe.

Or... maybe you don't have enough time to run THIS business.

Because I think a lot of professors are trying to build businesses with the infrastructure of companies making significantly more money than theirs currently does.

We're trying to maintain ALL THE THINGS before we've built the simple mechanism that consistently turns our expertise into revenue.

And then our solution is: I need more time.

So that's our question this week:

Do I actually have time to build a business as a professor?

But before you start rearranging your calendar, I want you to answer this:

If you only had five hours a week for your business, what would actually need to happen during those five hours for the business to make money?

Not everything you could do.
Not everything a business could have.
What is essential?

And don't answer with a new productivity system....

We're going somewhere different this week. Independent Professor Lesson #5 drops in your inbox on Wednesday! Make sure you're signed up! by @drtoyinalli

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a month ago

I know.

The homepage could be better.
Your About page needs updating.
You haven't decided between those two fonts.
There's a button that doesn't quite line up correctly on mobile.
And you really should probably redo those photos because they're from two years ago.

But I have some wonderful news: There is no rubric.
No committee is reviewing it.
No one is giving you points for formatting.
And your website does not need to receive an A before you're allowed to sell something.

In fact...
You might not need the website at all to make your next sale.
That's what I hope you take away from Independent Professor Lesson #4.

This week wasn't really about websites.
It was about the things we put between:
“I have an idea that could help someone.”

and

“Would you like to pay me to help you?”

Sometimes those things are necessary.
Sometimes they're useful.
And sometimes they're just preparation that makes us feel safer than selling does. 👀

So before you spend another weekend fixing the website, recording another module, creating another freebie, or researching another platform...

Try this first:

Make the offer.
Let someone respond.
Let them ask questions.
Let them tell you what they need.
Maybe even let them pay you.

Then build what the evidence tells you to build. by @drtoyinalli

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a month ago

Two professors have the exact same idea for a course.

Professor A decides to do it the way she's used to doing excellent work.
She researches.
Outlines the curriculum.
Creates 8 modules.
Records 32 videos.
Designs the workbook.
Builds the website.
Writes the sales page.
Sets up the email funnel.
Six months later, she launches.

Now she gets to find out if anyone wants it.

Professor B has the same idea.

But before she builds the course, she talks to a few people who have the problem.
She creates a simple version of the offer.

She tells them:
“I can help you solve this. Would you like to work with me?”

Someone says yes.
She delivers it live.
And while she's delivering it, she learns:
What her customer actually needs.
What they don't care about.
Where they get stuck.
What language they use to describe the problem.
What creates the biggest transformation.
What they would happily pay for again.

A few months later, Professor B might build the course too.

But now she's building it with data.

That's the difference.

Professor A used six months to prepare for feedback.
Professor B used the market to generate feedback.

Neither professor cares less about quality.
Neither one is less thoughtful.
Neither one is cutting corners.

They simply changed the order of operations.

Academic Operating System:

Idea → Research → Build → Perfect → Launch → Feedback

Entrepreneur Operating System:

Idea → Offer → Sell → Deliver → Learn → Build

So here's today's question:

Which professor are you right now?

And more importantly:
What could you learn from a paying customer that you can't learn by spending another month building?

That's Independent Professor Lesson #4: Validate Before You Create. by @drtoyinalli

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a month ago

There is no dissertation committee coming to check your website before you're allowed to make your first sale.

But sometimes we build businesses like there is. We decide we need:

A website.
Branding.
A lead magnet.
An email sequence.
A course platform.
A finished curriculum.
A bigger audience.
A perfectly optimized Instagram or LinkedIn bio.

And once all of THAT is done... then we'll finally tell someone they can pay us.

This is such a natural way for professors to approach entrepreneurship because we're used to preparing before performing.

Study → exam.
Research → publication.
Draft → submission.
Preparation → presentation.

So of course we assume: Build → perfect → sell.

But here's what I want you to notice this week:

Some of the things you're working so hard to finish might be things you don't actually need yet.

And worse? You might spend months building them before finding out whether anyone wants what you're building.

Yesterday I asked:

What are you telling yourself needs to be finished before you're allowed to start selling?

Today, go look at your own business launch checklist.

Then find the item that says:

“Ask someone to buy.”

How far down the list is it?

Independent Professor Lesson #4 drops on Wednesday in your inbox! by @drtoyinalli

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a month ago

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a month ago

Professors, look at your last 10 pieces of content.
How many demonstrate your expertise?

Now ask a different question:
How many directly invite someone to pay you for that expertise?

There’s an important distinction there.

Academics spend our careers learning how to prove.
We demonstrate knowledge.
Support our claims.
Teach.
Publish.
Present.
Contribute.

So when we start businesses, it’s natural to bring that same behavior with us.

We create content that proves, over and over again, that we’re qualified to help.

But business requires another skill:
Inviting.
“I help people with this problem.”
“I have a way to help you solve it.”
“Here’s how you can work with me.”

That’s not the same as demonstrating expertise and hoping the right person connects the dots.

So run the experiment.
10 posts.
How many were proving?
How many were inviting?
If your ratio is 10:0, you just learned something useful about your business.

You may not need to create more content.
You may need to give the people already consuming it an opportunity to buy.

That’s Independent Professor Lesson #3:
Proving isn’t the same as inviting. by @drtoyinalli

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a month ago

There is a very specific kind of selling professors like to do: Selling where we never actually ask anyone to buy anything. 😅

We'll teach.
We'll explain.
We'll share resources.
We'll write an incredibly thoughtful LinkedIn post that could have been a paid workshop.
We'll answer someone's question in the DMs with a response so thorough it deserves citations and a bibliography.

And somewhere in the back of our minds, we're hoping people will think:

"Wow. She's really good at this. I wonder if there's some way I could pay her?"

And then...

They don't. 😩

Because we never told them there was.

This is something I see all the time with professors building businesses. We're very comfortable demonstrating our expertise.

We're much less comfortable making an offer.

So instead of:

"I help people solve this problem. Here's how you can work with me."

We keep providing more evidence that we could help them solve it.

And hope they connect the dots themselves. 👀

Remember yesterday's question: Why does selling feel so uncomfortable for professors?

I think there's something much deeper happening here than simply not wanting to be "salesy." Because many of the behaviors that make us excellent academics... don't automatically translate into the behaviors we need to become confident business owners.

That's what we're talking about tomorrow in Independent Professor Lesson #3. (The full lesson will be in tomorrow's newsletter. You can sign up via the link in my bio.) by @drtoyinalli

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a month ago

You figured out what you want to sell.

You know it could genuinely help someone. And then comes the part where you have to actually say:

"I can help you with this. Here's how. Here's what it costs. Would you like to work together?"

And suddenly, the professor in you has some concerns.

"I don't want to be salesy."
"I already mentioned it once."
"Maybe I should give them more value first."
"What if people think I'm just trying to make money?"
"If my work is good enough, shouldn't people just...find me?" 👀

So that's our question this week:

Why does selling feel so uncomfortable for professors?

Today, I just want you to notice your answer.

Finish this sentence:

"I feel uncomfortable selling because I don't want people to think __________."

Don't fix it yet. We're going to unpack it all week.

Independent Professor Lesson 3 drops on Wednesday in my weekly newsletter! by @drtoyinalli

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2 months ago