Teach your Craft Workshop | The Catch Up 📆 Thursday, September 20th

Well, hello, everyone! Welcome to the Teach Your Craft Catch-Up. You tell me if Maybe you got a little behind this week. Maybe you attended one day and missed another day, and you've been looking to get caught up on Teach Your Craft ever since, and, and haven't. That is what this is all about. I'm taking the highlights, all of the key teaching points, all of the major takeaways from the entire Teach Your Craft workshop, and I am compiling them into a single session with you today. We have so much to cover. It's also going to be an incredible time for you to recap if you have already been through the workshop as well.

To—

hold on, let me make sure that we're live. You'd say we're live. All you have to do is refresh, even though you may not know that if, if you can't see me right now.

We—

is it going to be an incredible time to recap and refresh everything that we've worked through over the past week as well? We are so excited to be teaching Teach Your Craft, to be welcoming people into Art as an Educator. So without— I forgot to bring my name wall over. Shall I? You all are, you all are getting situated. Let me bring my little name wall over. It's not little, by the way. And you see— wait a second, is my shirt on backwards?

It is.

You never— you would never know that, though. This is our founding class of Artisan Educator students. We have students joining us from all over the world, and if you've joined us, your name is on this wall, and if you are still yet to join us, You are— you've got a spot. I left a spot for you right here. You see that? Has your name on it. Okay, we have so much to cover today, and I want to just be the best use of your time possible. So I am going to share my screen, and we are going to dive right in. Okay, welcome, welcome, welcome! This is the finale. This is the last time I'm going live for Teach Your Craft, and I am so excited that you are here. If we are just now meeting, my name is Bonnie. I usually have my shirt on right side out. I teach surface pattern design, and I just care deeply about helping creatives build work and a life that feels meaningful and beautiful and sustainable. So we're gonna get to know each other a ton over the next 90 minutes. I'm also going to tell you my story about how all of this came to be. But before I want to talk about me, I wanna talk about you and why you are here. Why don't you tell me in the chat what brings you to Teach Your Craft? You are likely here to turn what you know into an online course. And also to build a revenue stream that isn't tied to your hands or your hours. But we also know that it's so much more than that. You are here to take your knowledge seriously and create lasting impact. You're here to earn consistent income from the craft that you love. You're here to grow your income without filling all of your available hours. You're here to have more time and to be there for the moments that you don't want to miss. You're here to make more room for the creative work that you love. love in the first place. You're here to reach more people, more people than you could ever reach in person. You're here to feel proud about what you're building, and you're here because you know that what you've learned could change someone else's life. In other words, you are in great company. You are in the right place if you hold knowledge that could help someone else. Now, many of you have one clear idea on what you want to teach. Some of you have a million ideas. Some of you really don't have an idea nailed down yet. And that's all okay. You're in the right place. You're in the right place if you've never taught before, or if you have taught in person. You're also in the right place if you've tried teaching online, but it didn't give you the results that you had hoped for. You're here. You're in the right place if you're tired of trading time for money. If everything that your hands and your hours can do are doing it, and you've hit kind of a cap or a ceiling that you want to break through, you're in the right place if you want to build a new revenue stream or another part of your business. Now, this is Jane.

Welcome.

I see you. This is not for you if you are brand new to the skill that you want to teach. So to be clear, you do not need any teaching experience at all, but you do need experience in the thing that you want to teach, right? That makes sense. And then this is not for you if you want to sell a course but not invest in the success of your students. We have a rule around here. More like a belief, a guiding belief that we measure our success by the success of our students. And we, and we teach to create impact. Okay, so that's why you're here. Let me tell you a little bit more about why I'm here and how I got here. My story has 2 parts to it. The first one I call the call to creativity. I grew up crafty, creative my whole life. I sewed, I refinished old furniture, I played with air dry clay, I DIY'd all of our home decor. I was a candle maker for a little while, and I did woven wall hangings for a little while. Basically, if I could make it, I tried. So naturally, I handmake every Christmas gift and all my own thank you cards. I even found this picture from, uh, right after me and my husband got married some 20 years ago, where I made everything you see in this picture for our home decor. I was crafty, and I suspect that you might be as well. At least you would likely say that you were creative. Now, I naturally opened an Etsy shop, and so I spent years selling handmade aprons and tea towels, and I loved it. I loved what I made. I loved choosing the fabric and sewing and sending something that I made to someone that had chosen to have something that I created in their home or to gift. You know how good that feels. But every order meant cutting, sewing, packaging, and shipping it again, or packing up the car to set up for a weekend market. That's what I'm doing here in this picture. But more sales always required more of me, and I wanted this business to support a specific kind of life that I wanted, one that was full of freedom. So I asked a question that I think every maker needs to ask: if this works well, What will it require of me? So I sat down and I did some math. If I made as many aprons as I could and I sold out every single one, so if I basically had a perfect year, I could bring in just around $40,000. So that was my capacity. My hands and the available hours in my day were the limit. So working harder couldn't solve the equation. I needed a way for the work I did once to keep creating value. This was also before paying myself and before paying for supplies and before paying for any expenses. So that changed how I thought about building a business. If you are also here with an income that is capped by your available hours, I would encourage you to do this same math, even if you want to do it for the next minute or 2. Like, what is your ceiling to success if you had the most successful year that you could have in what you're making, because when you know that number, we can start to build in order to surpass it. Now, the craft came first, and it's always my first love. Um, my mom owned a quilt shop, so I grew up surrounded by making things, and eventually I had the dream of seeing my own designs come to life on fabric. So I learned how to become a fabric designer. I made the work. I signed my first licensing contract back in 2012. I am still a fabric designer to this day. Just turned in a brand new collection, by the way. And then people wanted to know how I did it. So people began asking, how did you learn this? How do you do it? How can I do it too? Well, in 2014, I had a big old company say, hey, come teach for us. And that changed everything for me. I had never thought about teaching before or sharing what I had learned, but I did know that I could help someone who was interested in learning the same thing. So I said yes. I created an online course for them that gave me an unexpected life-changing experience. This is me. My son just turned 13. Oh, this is me, my mom, my sister, and my son. So this was me teaching this class that I'm talking about. I got home and I collapsed on the living room sofa and told my husband, I am so glad that's over. It was great, but it was exhausting. It was the most nerve-wracking experience of my life because I had never taught. I had never been on camera before. And then emails started pouring in. I started hearing stories from women all over the world whose lives had been changed because of what I had taught. It wasn't until then that I realized that I think my true work has only just begun, that really that was my larger calling. So that brings me to the second part of my story, which I call the call to contribution. It wasn't until then that I realized that this was part of what I was meant to do, that if I could help people find the same freedom that I had had and the same joy from my craft, that I needed to do everything in my power to get this skill in their hands. So my contribution to the world was not only my craft, it was also helping people do the same craft. Now, there were a few problems, like I was terrified to be on camera. That's why that experience was so nerve-wracking. I didn't really have any of the tech know-how. I did this in front of another company's setup. How do I set this up on my own? I wasn't sure how to translate all of my skills into lessons that built on each other. And of course, I didn't have a big audience, but I started anyways. This is me. I awkwardly got my camera out and started, and then I started over and over and over and over again. I wasn't good on camera. I wasn't good in front of other people. I wasn't good at speaking. I didn't know what I was doing. I was crippled by imposter syndrome, but I dedicated myself to sharing my secrets, to opening up the doors to freedom for other people, to help people just like you create the that we want to see come alive in the world and to awaken creativity in as many people as possible and help them create the career that they never thought was possible. Now fast forward 2 babies and about 4 years, and I finally launched my very first course on my own platform. This was called Surface Design Immersion, and it's a course that I still teach today. I had built an email list by then, taken me about 9 years to build an email list of 8,000 people. It does not have to take you that long. I quickly learned how to grow it way more effectively, and I'll teach you how to as well. This course at the time was $997, and that first course brought in $352,000 in revenue in one week. Yes, my life was forever changed. So to put that into perspective, if I sold every apron that I could make and I made $40,000 a year, It would have taken me 8.8 years, so nearly 9 years to make the same amount of money. But that doesn't even consider the difference in profit margin. So a handmade seller typically has a profit margin of 20 to 40%, but an online course creator has an average profit margin of 70 to 90%. So since 2018, from teaching my craft This business has generated more than $40 million, and all of that was sitting on the other side of the simplest decision that I had to make, which was this: a person like me shares what they know with others. Now, up until this point, I have only ever taught my craft. For the first time ever, I am teaching creatives how we built the education business. So the way that we think about curriculum, Uh, the systems that we've built, all of the things that we've tested over time, how we grow culture in our business, how we communicate with our customers and how we've optimized everything along the way, as well as how we think about heartfelt marketing with integrity. So that brings us to today. Teaching, especially online education, gives 3 gifts. Gift number 1 is the artisan gift. It is through creating impact and legacy. So you carry techniques and decisions and lessons that you learned through years of practicing what it is that you do. And when you teach, you give that knowledge a way to travel farther than your own hands ever could. Gift number 2 is the student gift. This is a path to follow. So think about helping someone finish their first quilt or grow their garden, or finally play a song that they've wanted to learn. They still practice and do the work, but your guidance helps them move through the confusion and the experience and have that satisfaction of, I can do this now. Now, gift number 3 is the educator's gift. This is for you. This, um, is scalable revenue and true mastery of your craft, because teaching actually deepens your own understanding, your own mastery of your own craft. Learning how to teach it will sharpen the work itself, and then a recorded course allows the lessons that you create to serve more students without requiring you to teach it from the beginning over and over and over again. So you can reach someone across the globe at all hours of the day. Scalable revenue allows your work to support the creative life that you love. The number one thing that we have to agree on here in order to move forward is that you are allowed to want your work to be both meaningful and wildly profitable. Online education gives you a way to pursue both. So this is where we are headed today. We're going to cover how to find your course, how to find the course inside your craft, how to outline it, how to find your students, and how to become an artisan educator. This workshop is in celebration of the opening of our brand new course, Artisan Educator. We have been open all week. These are our students that we're welcoming behind us. Their names are here, and I will share everything about program that you need to know at the end of our time together today because enrollment closes today, and I want to make sure you've got all the information that you need to make the decision that is best for your future. Now, we're also doing a live bonus, so 3 of you that are here live today are going to win a chance to have your course reviewed by me. So we'll be choosing 3 of you live This does not depend on you joining Art as an Educator or not. So if you're here and you're interested in having me review your course, then there's gonna be 3 different times in today's session that you'll be able to submit by commenting, and we're gonna choose random winners for this.

Alright.

Super excited to see your course outline. Okay, something extraordinary is happening right now. The more automated the world becomes, the more valuable our human guidance becomes. We have more information available to us than we could possibly ever use. We can search for almost anything. We can ask a question and get answers in seconds. And yet having an answer and knowing how to use it are 2 very different things. The, the benefit that we have as artisans is that so, so much of what we do is in the practice itself. That space between knowing about something and actually being able to do it is where online education lives. Now, the person who can show someone the way— that's you— becomes the guide, and that's the opportunity that I want you to see. The screen delivers the invitation, so online is how we reach people, but your craft delivers the transformation of the student. That is the kind of education that I'm interested in helping you build, something that gives the student more capability, more choice, and more ways to use what they learn and love. Now, this works for digital creatives. This also works for coaches and instructors as well. The result does not have to be something that you can hold with your hands. It just needs to be something that your student can do, can make or use or experience because you helped them get there. Right now, people are going online to find their way back into real life, and that is an extraordinary opportunity for people who know how to do something that people are wanting to learn. They want to grow something, make something, play an instrument, create something they're proud of. They want the feeling of becoming capable at something that matters to them. We are in the midst right now of an analog renaissance. I bet that you can feel this, right? We can see that desire in the research as well. So 3 out of 4 adults participated in a craft project last, last year. That's up from 58% just a decade ago. Searches for online hobbies have increased by 136% over just the last 6 months, and 82% of consumers said that online videos make them more willing to try a new craft. But here's the exciting part: the $353 billion industry of online education is projected to pass $1.4 trillion in the next 7 years. So when you put those things together, people are searching for something to learn, and watching someone teach helps them believe that they can do it. This is where I see an enormous opportunity for you. The demand for creative experiences and the ability to teach beyond your own doorstep are coming together right now in a really incredible way. So you already have everything you need in order to, to make this a possibility, and that's why I want you to take it seriously. Now, the number one mistake that I see creatives make when they go to teach online is that they build something without any evidence that anybody wants it. So before the tech, before the camera, before the first lesson, we have to choose what deserves to be built. So we gather proof before we head into production. Okay, so this is what this looks like. We want to build something that is in the intersection of something that you love, that you're passionate about, that you have the skills to teach and that's something, uh, and something that people want to learn. There's active market demand for it. Okay, so we're going to workshop a little bit today. Some of it I want you to actually put on paper. The first thing I want you to do is write up to 3 broad categories that you could teach. Now, these are areas of knowledge before we choose a particular class. So if you have just one, I want you to write that. If you have 12, I want you to narrow it down to your top 3. So it could be something like embroidery, painting, and quilting. If you only have one, say all of your ideas sit inside like photography, then you could compare branches of it like portraits, wildlife, and product photography. So I want you to start with what you've practiced and what people have asked you about. If I am moving too quickly for you to do this as we go today, just jot down what you wanna do later, right? So write up to 3 broad categories of things that you could teach. So here's my example. I could teach surface pattern design. Spoiler, I already do. I could teach flower gardening, and I could teach high-protein plant-based nutrition.

Yeah.

So the next thing that I want you to do is jot out this grid. Okay, so we're going to use a rating system to decide on the one that gets our attention. So on the left-hand side, you're going to write down your 3 broad categories. So there's mine: surface design, gardening, nutrition. Now I'm going to come back and show you this grid many times, so if you're not done with it, it's okay. I'm going to move on to talk quickly about passion. So when I think about passion, I think, do I want to teach this? Think about teaching the craft because you can be really, really good at something and not really want to teach it. So scoring a 1 means that you really have no desire to teach it. 2 means that you have some interest. 3, you would enjoy it. 4 is that helping someone learn this would absolutely light you up. And 5 is that you deeply want to pass this on. So imagine explaining it to a beginner, answering those questions, and seeing their first successes. How do you feel about that? Does it excite you or not? So go ahead and rate that. Picture helping a beginner. So here's back to our example, passion. So for me, My passion for teaching surface design is a 5, deeply called to pass it on. Flower gardening, I would say a 3, and I would also say a 3 for plant-based nutrition. I, I personally love it, but I don't know that I feel really excited about teaching it to someone else. Okay, so go ahead and score yours. The next one is skill. So can I guide someone to a result? 1 means that you are still learning the basics yourself. 2 means that you have some experience, but you think maybe guiding someone else would still be pretty difficult. 3 means that you can help a beginner get a result for sure. 4 means that you have done it repeatedly, solved problems, and maybe you've already helped people. And 5 means that you have strong judgment and can troubleshoot this and can absolutely help people that are beginners in, in this skill. Now, if you've been solving these, these things for years, I want you to feel validated in giving yourself credit for that. You do not have to be an industry expert to rate yourself 5. If you have strong judgment and you can troubleshoot and you could help a beginner, then you can rate yourself 5. Okay. Okay. So now let's go to skill. Skill for me is 5 in pattern design. It's my life's work. Flower gardening, you know, I'm still I could definitely help someone, but I also have a lot to learn still. Same with plant-based nutrition. So I could absolutely help someone who is a beginner wrap their mind around it and get some good results, but there's so much still for me to learn. Now we're going to talk about demand, and this one comes with a little exercise that you'll have to do after our session today. Demand begins with evidence. So a 1 means that you haven't found any evidence yet. 2 means that you do see general interest for this. 3 means that you can point to an interest in related content searches like books or classes. 4 means that you see repeated questions, engagement, and struggles that people are looking for help with. And 5 means that you have been directly asked to teach this already. People have raised their hand and said, if you ever teach this, please let me learn it from you. Or there's a lot of evidence in the category, so there are other books workshops, courses, memberships in this category that people are paying money to, um, get help with what it is that you are teaching. So we have to talk about this one a little bit more. Number one is, how do you find out this information? So the first place that I would encourage you to do is open your DMs, open your emails, look at the comments that you're already getting, and look for requests to explain how you do something. The next one is to revisit any of the questions that you get in person. So if you have feedback, if you have chat logs from something, if you have follow-up emails for where students need help or have questions about what it is that you do, and then you can also search your inbox for common questions or requests or struggles. If you have taught online or you have exhibited at a craft fair. Then you've likely got these conversations in the back of your mind as well. Now, the next one is to find where people get stuck. So now that we've looked kind of internally in our own world, you can also go externally and find evidence out in the marketplace that people are looking for help with this topic. So you can search YouTube, you can search Google, just insert your skill or your craft for beginners, and then start reading. Read the comments, the conversations, Look for what people are wanting to learn, maybe things that they've already tried or things that they don't understand yet. I want you to start building a little stack of proof. I want you to save 5 to 15 questions from different people that you either found in your own work, your DMs or your emails, or that you found out in the marketplace. Okay, so again, you can, you can try these searches: your topic plus books or book reviews. Your topic plus workshop reviews, your topic plus an online course or membership. So again, you're looking for evidence that people are paying money to get help in your category. Okay, so this is just a first level. In Artisan Educator, we build what we call an entire evidence stack so that we can be really confident about the course that we build before we build it. Right now we're just kind of doing a surface level. Are there people interested in this? Are there lots? Is there content that exists out here? And that's a good thing. So for demand, you might have to do a little homework and come back and fill this in. But demand for me, it's a 5 for pattern design. It's a 4 for flower gardening based on what I could find, and about a 3 for high protein plant-based nutrition. So then I score all of my options and pattern design wins. Okay, so pattern design is a 15. Now we go back to our where everything overlaps. All right, so I want you to kind of circle the one that is the highest. The number one reason that creatives launch a class unsuccessfully is because they build a course with no evidence that people actually wanted it. So I cannot overstate the importance of this research on market demand, because if you build a class that nobody wants, it will not be successful. You have to do your research and make sure that people are actively looking for help in the category. All right, the next thing that we do is map your craft. So this is going to be your second thing that I would love to invite you to do after our workshop. You can set a 15-minute timer and list your entire craft. I'm going to give you some examples from A to Z. So no judgment here, you are not deciding what to teach or what lessons to include, you're simply mapping your craft from top to This is what mine looks like. So for surface pattern design, I would write down that I gather inspiration, I make my thumbnails, then I start beginning to paint and sketch. I move it into a digital space, I choose colors, I build motifs, I create the repeat patterns, and on and on and on. So you're just mapping your craft from top to bottom. Now we start to find the craft inside your— said that backwards. Now we find the class inside your craft. All right, now I hear you, some of you are saying, but Bonnie, someone can already learn this for free online. I want you to know that this is a little bit counterintuitive, but the more free information online, the better. It means that there, there is demand in the marketplace, that people are looking for help with this topic, but that they're also likely confused and overwhelmed, and some of them would love to pay you to give them a clear path. There are 7 things that we know people pay for. One is clarity— what exactly matters? Number 2 is guidance— what exactly comes next? Number 3 is speed— I want to get to this result without wasting time piecemealing it all together on my own, help me get there more quickly. Number 4 is context— How does this uniquely apply to me? Number 5 is feedback, so help getting it right one-to-one. Community, people who speak their language and understand what it is that they're doing to do this alongside with. And 7, a trusted mentor, someone who knows the way, who has been there, done that, and can help them. OK, the next thing we do after you map your class is to harvest the So we want to pull a single win out of your class to promise as the end result for your course for your student. So look at everything on that page. This is where the overwhelm usually arrives because you think, how in the world am I going to teach all of this? But here's the decision that changes that. Choose one complete win for your student from inside that process and that map. It likely holds years of experience and dozens of possible classes, but you're just going to choose one. Choose one. Okay, but Bonnie, is one part of my process enough? It absolutely is. You can help someone solve a problem that keeps them moving forward. Now, one of my favorite examples of this is Laurie Ann Gonzalez. Laurie Ann is a fine artist who sells original artwork and prints very successfully. So she noticed that other artists struggled with one particular part of her process, which was taking an original piece of and turning it into an art print. So she built her course. It was called Art to Print around that single result. So people come to her with their own fine art and she teaches them how to turn their fine art into high-quality art prints. Okay, so that became a successful course alongside her art business. She found one part of her process that other people needed help with, and I want you to look at the map that way. Now I invited Laurianne to come talk to us a little bit about how she decided this, because I really want you to unlock this. This is about 2 minutes long. I'm gonna let you meet Laurianne.

Hello there, I am Laurianne and I am a fine artist. I paint acrylic landscapes and I have made pretty much my entire career selling art prints from my original paintings. Paintings. I wanted to figure out what could I teach, like what is something that could be really helpful. And as soon as I learned how to make art prints and like make the best art prints, my fellow art friends noticed and they were like, how the heck are you doing this? Tell us how you're doing this. And so that was how I decided what to teach, and I created a course called Art to Print, and I taught artists how to create the highest quality art prints from their original paintings. Art to Print was such an amazing course, and it did a lot for me. It not only was an amazing financial piece in my career, like, it was an excellent revenue stream, but I really got to help so many artists make money. Like, I taught them a tool that they could turn around and immediately go make money from their own artwork, and that just felt really, really good. And I I hate the saying that, like, the starving artist saying. I hate that because I've never been a starving artist. I've always, like, worked really hard and figured out how to sell my work. And making— figuring out how to make art prints was one of the ways that I did that. And then Art2Print itself was just a really amazing way for me to help other artists. It's super fulfilling, and I am so unbelievably proud of my students, and it just tickles me to them making art prints and like making a living as an artist. Like, that is unbelievably fulfilling. So I guess my biggest advice is just follow your gut and try everything and see what sticks, and don't be afraid to change your mind.

Laurianne, love her story so much. So when you think about your process and what you want to teach, I want you to keep in mind that there are 3 types of courses. There's a skill-based course, a project-based course, and a signature course. So a skill-based course is, I can do this. It is a skill that they can use again and again. A project-based course is, hey, look at this, I made this. It's a finished project. And a signature course is, I became this. It is a larger transformation built from many skills and projects that are linked together. So you do not need to teach your whole craft to create an incredibly valuable class. Some of my formatting got off when I, when I brought this slide deck over, but that's okay. One skill or finished project can create a breakthrough for your student. It can also create an incredible breakthrough for your bank account, my friends. Now, a skill-based course— I can do this. Examples of this are play a song Mix a watercolor palette. Bind this quilt. Okay, so it's a capability that they can use again. A project-based course is I made this. So sew a tote bag, paint a floral bouquet, build a raised herb bed. I finished thing that they can point to and say, "Hey, look at this! I did it." Now I became this is like I am now a ceramicist. I am a watercolor artist. I'm a basket weaver. It is a larger transformation, like an identity transformation built from again many skills and projects that are linked together. So for my craft that I mapped, which was surface pattern design, here's an example of the win that I might harvest. Where does your knowledge meet someone else's need? That's my focus. So from my whole craft to one teachable win could be. Be, hey, I'm gonna teach you how to develop a 10-swatch color palette that works together beautifully in your artwork over and over again. That would be a skill-based class called Illustrator Color Palettes That Work. Alright. Now I want you to meet Rachel. Rachel is a candle maker that I actually just had the pleasure of meeting this past weekend. Rachel came to me. She wanted to teach online. She had been making candles for 7 years, but she was worried about teaching online because she felt like, you know what, I am not the leading expert in my industry. She was not sure if she should teach because, you know, anyone could learn how to pour candles on YouTube. And her mom was concerned that if she teaches, she would be giving away the very secrets that make her successful. So I mapped her craft. It looks something like this. Okay, so candle pouring involves everything from choosing the feeling behind a Finding dependable suppliers, developing custom scent blends, choosing the right vessels, selecting and testing the wicks, measuring and mixing and pouring with all the right ratios, troubleshooting the problems like bubbles in the top of your wax, testing and documenting the finished candle, calculating the costs and setting prices, creating a recognizable brand online and in person and for shops around the world, designing and sourcing the packaging. Photographing the candles, describing the scents for people who are shopping online, creating the, the booth and market experience, managing wholesale and inventory, and fulfilling orders. Okay, so you can see how much is there. We started with, I make candles, and look at all of the things that she knows how to do. So from this, I had fun creating 7 different classes that Rachel could create from her 7 years of experience. Okay, this is so fun. Are you ready? Ready? The first one is called Beyond Vanilla: Blend Your Signature Scent. So this is how to create a custom fragrance that smells like your brand, not every other candle on the shelf. You'll learn how to combine, compare, and refine fragrance fragrances into a blend that's uniquely yours. Now here's the fun part that I want you to be thinking about for yourself. Let's say this is— this class is $197 and she finds 200 students. She just made $39,400.

$39,400.

Now, class number 2 is called The Candle Brand: How to Stand Out from the Crowd. So create a recognizable candle brand through your vessels, labels, packaging, and your online presence. Learn where to have everything produced and how to pull it together beautifully on a budget. Now, this one is B2B, business to business. It's a little bit more expensive. It's a $497 class. And she finds 100 students. She's made $49,700. Now, class number 3 is called the Candle Clinic: How to Fix Your Pour and Find Your Wick. So troubleshoot the bubbles, your uneven tops, and wick decisions that keep sending you back to the drawing board. This one is just a quick fix. It's like a troubleshooting class. So it's $37. She finds 300 students. Students, she makes $11,100. Is this fun? Are any of these classes ones that you would take? I love this one. It's The Candle Maker's Little Black Book. So this is how to find the right wax, wicks, vessels, and fragrances without buying your way through every supplier on the internet. Basically learn through her mistakes, right? Get a curated sourcing guide, learn which materials work together, and decide what to sample before committing to a bulk order. This is a $97 class. She finds 30 students, and she's made $2,910. Class number 5 is to price for profit, not just wax. So how to calculate what your candles actually cost to make, including the packaging, your time, and the expenses that are so easy to overlook. You'll set retail and wholesale prices with room to pay yourself as you grow. She prices this class at $149. She has 120 25 students, she makes $18,625. Now class number 6 is my personal favorite. It's called Selling Without Smelling: Copywriting for Candle Makers. Help online shoppers choose a candle that they've never smelled. So turn fragrance notes into descriptions that they can picture, pair them with photographs that communicate the mood, and build product pages that help them find their favorite. Oh my goodness, I would take this class because we also sell candles online. At Flowery, and we, we have this problem. It's hard. So it's a $150 class. She finds 250 students. She's made $37,500. Class number 7 is a candle booth that pulls you in. So plan a market booth that makes it easy for shoppers to stop, sample, and choose. Work through your display, scent testing setup, signs, product groupings, and the conversations that help someone move from I'm just browsing housing to finding a candle that they love. Leave with a booth layout and a market day-by-day plan that you can use again. Now this one is again B2B, and also specifically on how to help someone else make more money with their candle business. So it's priced higher. It's $997. She finds 100 other candle booth makers who want this class, and she's made $99,700. My friends, there is a class inside your craft. You do not have to teach your entire craft. You can choose the thing that you do that people really struggle with and pull it out and teach that, or you can teach your whole craft too. But you likely have dozens of classes inside your craft. Now let's go to Beyond Vanilla: How to Blend Your Signature Scent, because in talking to Rachel, this was actually her sweet spot. She blends custom scents. And I think it would be just the best course. So what you do is define the starting point of your student and the finish point of your student. So the starting point is that this is actually for a somewhat experienced candle pourer, and the finish line is now you can mix custom scents. So when you look at how you mapped your craft and you've got all of these things that you could possibly teach, Well, you first decide the starting point and the end part and the endpoint. Then the lessons that get them from that starting point to the endpoint are what go in your class. So sourcing wax, they already know that. How to pour candles, they already know that. So those do not go in the class. But mixing custom scents, yes, that gets taught. Getting the right ratio of the scent to the wax also gets taught.

Taught.

But also making custom colors, not the end result. It is not for this class. It could be another class, but it's not for this one. And pricing for wholesale, not for this class. That was not the end promise, right? So you start with the starting line and the finish line, and then you build the lessons in between those 2. What I want you to think about is giving your students everything that they need and nothing that they don't Now you become the filter, and what you've got to understand is that giving your students everything you know and the kitchen sink does not do them service. Students want to pay you to be the filter for them, give them everything they need and nothing that they don't need so that they can get to the end result more quickly than ever. So this is question number 1 for our giveaway. So as a recap, we're giving away 3 3 random course reviews by me. Now, this is how you enter. We're going to do 3 of these. This is the first question. What is the course idea that is inside your craft that you could teach? It's okay if it's messy. We just want to hear it. So what is the course idea inside your craft that you could teach? If you'll put your answers in the chat, we are going to randomly select a winner, and then we will announce them at the end of the call today. But before we do, Q&A. Now that you have the class, we gotta find the people. So the first thing that we want to talk about is email list versus social media. I can suspect that you've heard a ton about both of these things. What's the difference? Which one is more important? How do they relate? So this is how you look at it. Social media is for discovery, and email is for depth. Okay. So social media is to allow someone to discover you, and email is where you go deep in that relationship. What I want you to make sure of is that you do not build your business on borrowed land. So I've known many, many people over the years who build their business on platforms that they do not own— on Spoonflower, on Etsy, on TikTok, on Instagram. They do not own those platforms. And so they are at the whim of what happens to that platform. They could wake up tomorrow and it'd be gone. They could wake up tomorrow and their account be gone. We've all known these things actually happen. So we want to use social media for what it is, for discovery. And then we want to invite people to come and grow a deeper relationship with us on our email list. So how do we do that? Well, we grow our email list by giving people a reason to join it. This is called an opt-in, but it's really just a free resource that allows someone to say, hey, I opt into that. I want to give you my email address for that free thing. So they experience you, your teaching, they experience a win with you, and then you can invite them to continue if they want. But I'm a big believer in high-quality free resources that let someone really truly get a win for free and experience who you are. Here are some of my favorite free resource examples. Uh, free mini class, a free practice sheet, a tools and supplies guide that would help someone save them time and money, a troubleshooting guide, a template or a pattern that they can use, right? More would be a before you begin checklist so you can help them avoid common mistakes, or a quick reference chart like put the measurement settings or combinations like this, or a mini project so you guide them to a finished result that they're proud of. Now the way that we talk, the way that we think about a resource is that it needs to be on a through line. So your course is on a through line. That's why we start with the course so that you can work backwards from there. So your course, you've already decided exactly what it is and where the students stop— starts and stops. So when you work backwards from there, where is the perfect free resource that would guide them towards being potentially interested in continuing with you? So here's an example. So for example, let's say your course is custom calligraphy. The perfect opt-in, or one of them, would be a calligraphy practice sheet for tracing. This identifies people who are actively learning how to practice and do calligraphy. It also gets their pen moving, right? And it's also a complete win. Like, what a gift to give me a practice sheet that I can actually use to improve on. I am raising my hand for that and potentially usually definitely interested in continuing with your course. Now, other ideas that are not way off, but they're just not quite on the through line, would be like a beautifully calligraphy-lettered desktop background, right? It might attract kind of some of the right people, but it's not necessarily the student who wants to take your course, right? And then this one, how to price custom stationery. Again, but for sure some of those people are also going to probably want to learn custom calligraphy, but maybe not all of them. So you have to think about the through line. Your free resource delivers a win, and your course can invite them to go farther with you if you want. Now that you have the free resource, you've got to find the people. There are 3 ways to get traffic on online. They are organic, paid, and borrowed. Now organic traffic is— this means that you don't have to be everywhere, but you do have to be somewhere, and you have to be working to get that organic traffic on one of the discovery platforms. Paid traffic is really— you don't have to be anywhere, but you do have to pay for the traffic. See, so there's a trade-off. Organic costs you time, paid costs you money, right? So neither of them are perfect. I do believe that you have to have a heartbeat online, even if you aren't actively— you've got to, you've got to have a presence, right? You have to have an, like, a website, and you have to be, you know, a living, breathing person for someone to want to learn with you. The third is borrowed traffic. So again, you don't really have to be anywhere, but you do have to build relationships So let's talk about organic. The discovery platforms are social media, so Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X. The next category is search, like YouTube, Pinterest, blogging, or podcast. And relationships are in person, typically things like shops, guilds, groups, and markets. Now, you do not have to be on all of these, and you certainly don't have to be on any of them that you don't Enjoy, but you do have to at least choose one. I think we all need to agree that if you want to have an online course, you have to be discoverable online. So if you agree with me, if you're willing to do that, I want you to put discover in the chat. This brings me to— good. This brings me to Amelia. Amelia, you're going to meet a little bit later today. She began with no advertising budget. Amelia teaches garden She's a mother of 5. She began with zero marketing budget, and she posted about her first free workshop on Instagram. She had 600 people join her first free workshop, and her first launch brought in several thousand dollars. Okay, this past year, Amelia's business brought in $297,000, and I cannot wait for you to hear what that has made possible for her family.

Family.

The next person is Diane. Now Diane's audience was already asking to learn from her. Diane shares her painting process. It's chinoiserie. So amazing. So she built an engaged email list of about 5,000 people. Okay, zero marketing dollars. And her first course launch made £80,000 in revenues without any paid marketing. Okay, so I want you to really see the opportunity, expand what you think is even possible with this. Now the next one is borrowed. So your audience is already gathered somewhere, you just got to go find them. So you've got to start where your future student is already going. So think about your future students. Where are they hanging out? Are they watching a particular YouTube channel? Are they on Pinterest? Are they searching for something specific on Google? They— do they follow specific people who are doing that craft on Instagram or Facebook or on a podcast or on TikTok? Um, are they gathering for a local class or at a local shop or at a local community? When you find a complementary audience, right? So not a highly competitive audience, but a complementary audience. Let's say I'm going off script. Let's go back to Rachel and her candle pouring business. Let's say that she knows she She's gonna teach Beyond Vanilla. Okay? And she reaches out to the company that she buys her scents from, and she says, hey, I'm teaching this course on how to blend your own custom scents, and you are the people that I'm gonna suggest everyone buy their scents from. Would it make sense for us to work together? Do you wanna help me promote my class to your, to your audience? I'm, you know, I'm gonna tell them to buy scents from you, and I'm also gonna teach them how to use it, right? So that is like beautifully and perfectly complementary. You've gotta make it in service to them. So take a screenshot of this. This is an example of a message that you could send on an outgoing message. Hey, I love the way— here, let's, let me fill in the blanks with our example. Hi, candle scent making manufacturer. I love the way that your scents help candle makers blend beautifully natural fragrances. I teach how to do custom blending, and a question that I hear all the time is, how do you do that? So do you think a short— I haven't decided what the opt-in yet is, but like a short thing called this could be helpful for your community? Maybe it's a little mini class or like a PDF guide. I would teach them how to begin blending. Blending, and then I would invite them to my course about how to fully blend custom signature scents. If that sounds like a good fit for your people, I would love to send it over to you, right? So it's just borrowing someone else's audience but making it in service to them. So giveaway question number 2 is, who would you love to help with what you know? Tell us who you're picturing when you think about your future students. Who would you love to help with what you know? You're gonna put your answers in the chat. My team will draw one at random, and we'll announce the winners at the end. Again, you are entering to get a course curriculum review with me. Okay, my friends, the next thing that we've got to talk about is the elephant in the room. It's marketing. And I know some of you came excited to hear about marketing, and some of you have been dreading the moment that I start talking about marketing. But I have a really unique way of believing and thinking about marketing, and I call it heartfelt marketing. And so I want to let you into how I think about this. The first belief in heartfelt marketing is that selling is a service. If you believe your course can change someone else's life, I want you to sell it with that conviction. Persuasion is a truthful communication that helps someone recognize the value, believe in the possibility, and take action. Heartfelt marketing does not mean timid marketing, but some of us have a bad taste in our mouth about marketing because we've experienced manipulation. That's when somebody exaggerates a promise or hides information or manufactures pressure, and that breaks Trust. So what I'm teaching you begins with believing in what you sell. You know what learning this craft has made possible for you in your life, and you know the frustration that you can help someone move through. I believe that you have a responsibility to help that person find you. Show them what your course makes possible. Explain why it's worth the investment. Repeat the invitation. Ask them directly to buy it if you believe that it will serve them. them well. Their decision belongs to them, but your responsibility is to let them know that your solution exists. So I want you to become excellent at this and be really proud of how you do it. Heartfelt marketing belief number 2— this one you've probably heard before— is people who pay pay attention. Now, an investment gives someone a reason to say, okay, I'm going to make time for this and I'm going to do this. Um, when I paid $25,000 to go to college for one year, right? You better believe that I showed up to class and did my homework every single day. However, like, my town offers free classes in business and in the arts, and I've never, I've never gone because invested students commit to taking action, they commit to getting results, and they commit to entering a room with other people who are serious about their success. So having someone inviting them to invest in your course is actually such a gift. It is going to give them more results, they're going to be more committed, and they're also going to have incredible community with other people who are serious about taking action. Now, number 3 is that marketing should be magnetic, okay? So it should strongly attract the right person and strongly repel the wrong person. So I want you to say what you believe, show how you teach, name who your course serves, because the faster that people recognize that this is a great fit or not a great fit, the better for both of you. This will save your students time, it will save you time, it will save your customer service team time, and it will drastically reduce your refund requests. Okay, that's just 3 of the many different beliefs I have about marketing. a gift. Now we got to talk about filming. So I know many of you don't love the idea of being in front of the camera.

We call—

we, we have a person for this. This is Cami, Camera Shy Cami. So I'm going to go through several different teaching formats, and I want you to listen for just one that you would be comfortable starting with. Okay, so I'm going to go through several. I want you to identify just one that you would feel comfortable starting with. The first one is what we call talking head or face to camera. This one is great for straight-on teaching things like encouragement or direct teaching principles. The next one is conversational or casual. So this is unscripted, very casual, kind of off the cuff, typically kind of, you know, outside of a recording situation, but just teaching on the go. The next one is interview style. I love interview style because you come with nothing prepared and someone else prepares the questions that they want you to answer, and they turn that into teaching. So super helpful when you don't necessarily know how to craft the lesson itself. The next format is overhead. So maybe you just want to have your hands on camera, you want to focus on the overhead shot, and you can do your craft while someone watches. The next one is a screen recording. So this is when— this is an example of me teaching Adobe Illustrator where I'm not seen, I'm not visual at all. All you hear is my voice as I teach the program. The next one is a narrated video. So this often works well for when you have a very loud craft. You might need to record it and then come back and narrate over it. It, or when you are doing a time lapse. So let's say your craft is like a 12-hour, I don't know, process or drying process or something. You can use a— you can speed that up and do a time lapse and then come back and narrate over it. The next one is voiceover slides. So this would be where, almost similar to what we're doing here, but again, not even my face. So you would see a slide and hear voice teaching the concepts. And then the last one is something that we call Come With Me. So this is kind of over the shoulder, out in the field, someone following you, and you can kind of teach on the go. This is great for if you are a gardener or a forager or any kind of thing that needs to be like outside of a recording situation.

Okay.

Okay, now let me, um, let me introduce you to some people. When Elizabeth created her course Dream to Design, I want you to hear this, she filmed the entire thing at her computer's webcam at a desk in her living room. That course in the first launch generated $60,000. And so Elizabeth is a stationer, and her mission is to tell you to not let perfection keep you from My friends, your craft is not meant to end with you, and I would love to build it with you. The reason that I built Art as an Educator, the reason that I have poured 12 years of everything that I've learned about teaching online into this program, is because it should not take you as long as it took me to figure it all out. It should not be as lonely. You should be able to do this in community with other online educators. Leaders that understand what you're doing and can help. You shouldn't have to guess at how to build your marketing plan or how to price your course or what to do when a student complains. I figured all of that out the hard way and over many years, and I would love to be the filter for you. Now, I've already shared with you what this has made possible for me, but I want to introduce you to some new people as well. Bale Ansari was selling digital files for laser cutting, and people kept asking her how does she do this. The process that she had figured out was something that people wanted to learn. So she turned what she knew into an offer called Project Academy, and she got $30,000 in revenue from her first launch, all from just paying attention to the things that people were asking her. Now, you met Diane a little bit ago. Diane's specialty is chinoiserie painting. People started asking about her brushes and her paper, and eventually they wanted to learn how to use them. So by the time she launched her course, she had an engaged email list of 5,000 people. She made £80,000 in revenue her first launch. Now you already met Amelia and you're going to meet her again in just a few minutes. Amy Small created handspun yarn, so customers wanted patterns showing what to make with it, then wanted help in how to use it. So in 2017, she introduced a knit-along combining a yarn kit with a digital class. She made $12,000 in revenue on its very first day. Knit Collage, her business now, reached its first 7-figure year in 2020 and has stayed there ever since. Alex, her biggest takeaway is when she shared with me, sometimes I'm teaching to thousands of people at the same time, and we're all painting the same flower at the same time. And an hour before, 1,000 paintings did not exist, and an hour later, 1,000 paintings do exist. Isn't it powerful that we can spend our time making something beautiful and learning Something together. And then I love Jennifer's story because Jennifer lives in a Canadian farming town of 800 people. She began teaching doll making for free, choosing times that worked around her children's naps, and today she has an incredible business that reaches people all over the world, all from a teeny tiny town in Canada. So my friends, we have worked on finding the class inside your craft, choosing your your student, outlining your teaching, and finding the people who want to learn it from you. Your outline now needs to become lessons inside a course with a marketing plan and a launch that is built to fill it with students. There is a process for doing that. I have spent years doing it in my own business, and I want to show you how to carry your work through because online education is a craft as well. This is where Art as an Educator will take you. There is a big difference between planning a course and actually launching one. So when a student pays for your course, everything needs to be student ready. Lessons written in order, videos that look and sound professional on the right platform. There's also the depth underneath it. So understanding why people actually decide to enroll in a course. What does someone need to know and experience before they're ready? How do you balance something like an opt-in and an email list and a launch? This is what I walk you through inside Art Is a Dead You have gotten a, a big old beautiful taste today. Artisan Educator will give you the mastery. So this is everything that Artisan Educator includes. It is brand new. You will get the full Artisan Educator path, 12 weeks of world-class community, the Love Squad, a live Q&A call with me every week, the done-for-you library, the click-by-click toolkit, the guide and the calculators, 6 bonus modules. Schedules, all of our Team Bonnie Field Notes, the Writing Studios, and the Swipe File Library. Now, as you choose what to teach, you might be thinking, which of my ideas should I teach first, Bonnie? What do I choose? How do I choose the right size course? How many lessons do I include? How much information do I include? How can I make sure that students are going to buy it? How do I define my niche and my ideal student? What should I call my course? And what should the end result be for my students? This is what cover in Module 1 inside Artisan Educator. Now, as you plan your lessons, you might be thinking, what do I teach first? How long does every lesson need to be? How many lessons should I have in total? How do I sequence them? How do I write the curriculum? And how do I create resources and worksheets and assignments that go along with them? That is everything we do in Module 2. It's called Craft: Turn Your Know-How into lessons. So this is where you'll build your curriculum, your lesson scripts, and all of your practice activities. Now, as you create your course, you might find yourself thinking, should I teach live or prerecorded? What camera or gear should I use? What equipment do I actually need? How do I film my hands on my— or my screen? How do I get comfortable on camera? How do I edit out my mistakes? What if I want to create a physical workbook for my students? What platform do I use? And how do I create the actual course home and hub that my students are going to live in? So this is everything that we have in Module 3. It's called Create, Film It, and Give It a Home. You'll choose between 3 different levels. You'll get all 3, but you'll follow just one: the Simple Build, the Custom Build, or the Studio Build. These, um, are defined by where you're at in your business and your budget. So none of them sacrifice quality. They're all going to give you an incredible experience for your students. You will learn how film, edit, create your materials, and build out your course home. Then you might be thinking, how do I find students and actually grow my audience? What should my messaging be to find the right people? How do I market my course with integrity? How do I price my course? How do I set up an opt-in or a free resource? And how do I grow my email list? How do I grow organically? And when should I try paid ads? And if so, how do I even do that? That's everything that's in Module 4. So this is called Grow: How to build an audience that trusts you, learn where your future students are, what help they're looking for, and how to earn their trust. You'll build out your messaging, your first free resource, and your email path. So you do not need an audience to begin here. We'll have many people who have a small or non-existing audience, or they're building a different audience. You only need to be ready to find them. Then as you're getting ready to sell your course, you might find yourself thinking, what goes on a sales page? How do I build anticipation for my course? What do my launch emails need to say every day? Should I include a bonus or a payment plan? What policies do I need before taking payments? What do I do if sales are slow? What if I want to have an affiliate program? And what should happen right after someone enrolls. This is what we cover in Module 5, Make an Invitation That You Believe In. So you'll build your offer, set your price, write your sales page and your emails, and you will plan your launch. You will help the right person see what learning from you makes possible, and you will have a plan to fill your course. Then as you welcome your students, you might find yourself thinking, how do I help students who you fall behind? What if someone disrupts the community? What about customer service and support? What do I say when someone asks for a refund? Or what do I do if someone's payment plan fails? How do I collect great testimonials and case studies? What if I need to hire someone to help me? How do I create culture and community? And how do I make this an evergreen offer? Evergreen means that it runs in the background kind of while you go back to your normal life. So that's what we cover in Module 6. This is called Sustain: How to Build a Business That Lasts. You'll welcome and support your students, set healthy boundaries, and use their feedback to improve your course and build on what works each time that you teach, and then create a repeatable business that protects the time for your craft. We help you with all of this through this incredibly comprehensive course. This is where you're going to go from artisan to Artisan Educator. It's where you learn the language of online education along with the skills that you need to be able to bring your course to life even as a beginner. And it's one of the things that makes Artisan Educator the most comprehensive course online for online education that exists. So if you're thinking my subject is too specific, Bonnie, don't forget that Diane built a course around chinoiserie. If you're thinking, I don't have a studio, remember that Elizabeth filmed Dream to Design at her desk in a living room. If you're thinking, I am such an introvert, I don't think I can do this, Alex says that teaching online feels way easier because she's in the comfort of her own home. And then if you're thinking, my audience is used to free content, don't forget that Jennifer began with free Facebook Lives for a long time and then later created a paid course and a membership that has sustained her family. and her business. And if you're thinking, but Bonnie, what if I built the wrong thing? Will you give me one-on-one feedback? Well, we haven't announced this until today. We have a brand new bonus that is for all of you who decide to join us. It is only for our founding class, and it's called the Course Clarity Checkpoint. So you will have someone on my my team, human, personally check your course. So you will deliver us your course plan, and we will personally review it before you take it into production. So you'll get specific feedback on your title, your tagline, the end result that you're promising, the student that you're creating it for, the evidence that you've found, and your high-level kind of outline of the entire course. This is our way of making sure that what you produce gets big green check in all of the things that we've learned and taught so far on clarity, on proof, and on transformation. Oh, we're super excited about this. Okay, so let me walk you quickly through everything that you get in the program. First is that you do get the complete Artisan Educator course. Of course, it's 6 modules. It takes you through choosing your class, writing your lessons, filming, finding students, launching and delivering the experience, and making it repeatable. This is the complete path to turning what you know into an online course that serves your students and supports your life. Then we get to work together live, so you can bring your questions as they come up and as you build your course. So I'll help you think through these decisions. We're going to do a live Q&A call every Friday at 1 PM Eastern. This is— I want you there live, but also you are welcome to submit your questions in advance and then catch the replay. You don't have to be there live to get your answers, your questions answered. Next, you'll get our writing studios. So your lessons, your nurture sequence emails, your launch emails, and the sales page each have a place in order to be built. So you're going to get the structure, the prompts, and all of our own examples from years of doing this so that you're not staring at a blank page. Your voice is going to fill the pages, but we've already tested all of the formatting and all of the layouts and all of the sequencing for you. So this is a truly incredible resource. The next is called the Click-by-Click Toolkit. So this is where we show you how to actually button by button do things like set up your course home, connect your checkout, build your email list, and edit your videos. You can pause these, go back and re-reference them, but follow along click by click. Click with us. The next is called Team Bonnie Field Notes. So this is where you're going to hear from me and the people on my team on how we see online education, how we make decisions about customer service and marketing and launches. We'll share with you what worked, what we've changed, what we— what mistakes we've made along the way and how we've corrected them. You get to kind of bring that, our hard-earned experience into your own business, and that should save you years of figuring it out on your own. The next is the done-for-you library. So alongside the teaching, you get more than 50 templates and done-for-you resources like our community guidelines, all of the surveys that we use in our business, all of our hiring resources, and literally so much more. We've taken the systems that our team uses and made them adaptable to your course and your business, so more of your time gets to go into your craft and your teaching. With that, you'll also get the swipe file library, so you'll get messages that you can adapt for your own business. Again, our launch emails, our student welcomes, our support replies, how we handle refund requests and failed payment follow-up. These come from messages that we have again been using in our business for the last nine years and optimizing them. So when an unfamiliar situation lands in your inbox, you are going to. Have language to work from. You'll also get the full Artisan Educator Path, which shows you the stages of a growing Artisan Educator and the milestones that mark your progress. You can see what deserves your attention right now and what ones come later. You can keep it beside you as you build your first course and as you continue to grow. You'll get our Launch Studio. This brings your launch all together with a forecast, a timeline, uh, your free teaching, uh, your sales page, your emails, and the official invitation to join your course. And you'll know how to really use it. This is going to, um— this also includes your Launch SOS. So if you launch and something is not going how you expected it to go, you'll be able to diagnose and attend to the problem. You'll get our guides to choosing gear, to hiring help and to producing student materials like the workbook. I have our workbook right here for those of you who want to look at it today. And you'll also get our calculators, so how to price your course, how to work with your budget and your goals, and how to ensure profitability. Finally, you get community. You get our private community full of other creative educators. Share your ideas, ask for feedback here, celebrate the work that you are completing. These are people who understand why this matters to you. And so for 12 weeks we're coming together in community to work through the course together. What I want you to see and take away is how one course launch could potentially change everything. The question that I have for you is, how many students do you feel like you have right now in your current circumference that might be interested in learning from you? So this could be followers or email subscribers or past students or past customers or people at a place that you work. Tell me in the chat, how many students do you feel like you have in your current circumference? Again, that could be past students, past customers, your current audience, or your followers. Yeah, amazing. So take a look at this. 30 students at 100 $300 is $3,000. 10 students at $250 is $2,500. 20 students at $500 is $10,000. And so I see you all saying 20, 30 to 50, 50, 500, 100. So I want you to jot the math down quickly because these numbers are very achievable. These are very affordable classes. And Extremely attainable student numbers, right? So just thirty students, just ten students, just twenty students. Okay, of course you can go way, way, way, way beyond that. So do yourself a favor and do the math. I want you to start imagining what this could make possible for you. The investment into Artisan Educator is two thousand four hundred and ninety seven dollars, or we do a six month payment plan of four ninety seven. Now this. Is a special for the first year, the founding member, the class of the founding students. So next year this course is going to be its full price, which is $2,997. We also offer Klarna, Afterpay, and PayPal credit. You have to choose the one-time pay in order to get access to those, and tons of our students have found that really helpful. So they all have different kind kind of, uh, uh, uh, what am I trying to say, like terms on the back end depending on where you live, what country you live in. But most of them will allow you to take more time to pay off with oftentimes 0% interest. So it can be really helpful. So join us at bonniechristine.com/artisaneducator and think about what this could mean for you. If all this program did was help you launch one course that was still paying yourself in 5 years from now? If, if all this did was get you working from home and on your own terms, or if all this did was help you pay off the debt, or maybe finally take that family vacation that you've wanted to, would it be worth it? Um, I want to help you build a scalable revenue stream by Christmas. That's my goal for you. Okay, my friends. So the third question For today is giveaway question number 3. What could one course launch mean for you? Tell me what you would do with the added revenue and the added freedom. So what could one course launch mean for you? Tell me in the chat and we will randomly select the winner. It's almost time to share all 3 winners. Remember, you are allowed to want your work to be meaningful and wildly profitable, and teaching gives you a way to pursue both. We are going to go to Q&A. Okay, so we're— look at that, I, I stayed right on 90 minutes, 91 minutes, even though we started 2 minutes late. So we're gonna go to our Q&A portion of today. I've got Amelia that I want you to meet, so we're going to take a quick break to allow you time to enter for the giveaway and to submit Your questions, so submit your questions via the form right here in the chat, and then we will announce the winners as soon as we come back from this little break, and then we will dive into your questions. Okay, my friends.

I was able to be there present with my kids during one of the hardest seasons of our life, and my business sustained itself.

Hi everyone, I'm here with Amelia McCall from Mother Sews Best. Hi Amelia!

Hello!

I am so excited to dive in with you today. Tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do, what your industry is, and what you teach online.

I'm Amelia, like Bonnie said, and I teach sewing, specifically clothes garment sewing, and specifically Specifically to moms is kind of how I started. I've had lots of grandmothers join as well, but to women in particular, and women who want to sew clothes for themselves or, and/or their kids. So I started back in like 2020 is when I very first launched anything. And yeah, I'm a mom of 5 kids myself, so very busy.

So tell me a little bit about your history with sewing. And I, I really want to get to like, how did you decide to teach online at first?

So I sewed a little bit when I was a child with my grandmother, but not enough to where I even remembered how to thread my machine. And then I had my first daughter when I was 19, and just, I very quickly was like, I need a hobby that is something for me that is not centered around my Because like that was my whole entire life, but I needed something that was just for me. So I got back into sewing, just fell in love with it. Like I sewed for years and years just as a hobby. I've always just been an entrepreneur, like since day one. Um, I've never had a real job. I don't tell that very often because it's kind of embarrassing for some reason, but also not. Um, I've never had a boss. I got married young, had kids, and I was as a stay-at-home mom for years. So I had a few different kind of sewing-related things that I was doing business-wise. But then COVID happened, and it was all around the same time that I stumbled upon this baby carrier company that, like, people in this Facebook group were just crazy about these baby carriers. They were all like, wanted to do these cool designs because all the baby carriers were solid, but they wanted to fabrics. I was like, I could figure that out. So I developed this whole pattern for these carrier covers that went on. And so I started on that path of like, okay, I'm going to make these carrier covers. I also definitely have ADHD and just get bored kind of quickly. So I was getting very tired of just making this same carrier cover over and over and over. I'm like, this isn't what I want to do forever. So I had these like 2 paths. I was like, I want to do something online, but also this carrier cover thing, it was doing well. And I was at the point where I'm like, am I going to start hiring it out for other people to do it? And it was all during the COVID era when I was like, I was sewing a lot just for myself. And I was like, just one day, like had a light bulb moment of like, okay, I've been listening to podcasts about like courses and like all these things and I've been sewing. Like, I thought that it was these 2 paths and I'm like, why am I not teaching sewing online? Like, I, it just like hadn't hit me to even do that. And when it hit me that day, I almost immediately made the decision that like, I'm putting this business that's doing well down because I don't want to do that anymore. Like, I just knew like it was not a great financial decision to like stop that and pursue this. But I was like, that's what I want. That was 2020, which was probably a good year to jump into it 'cause everybody was at home wanting to learn these things. But I completely bootstrapped it. Like, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have money for ads or anything like that. And like, it was not the way to go about it now, but like, it worked. And I ended up getting 600 people to sign up for my first, like, I didn't know it was like a PLC. And I was like ecstatic.

Okay, so you had 600 people in a free workshop or class. Do you remember how much you made?

A couple of thousand. Yeah, it felt like a lot to me at the time because I hadn't made that kind of money, like especially from something that wasn't me like, oh, now I just sold $1,000 worth of things, I have to go sell all of this stuff.

Um, it felt different.

So it's huge.

It's so different.

Okay, so what's I wasn't at all dependent on my income then. It was not making me thousands of dollars a month. It wasn't making me hundreds of dollars a month. A lot of months it was making enough for me to pay the babysitter for my kids so I could just keep doing it because I truly loved it. Like, I was doing it because I loved it and with the hopes that it would make money one day. And then in the end of 2024, I had some reels blow up. Oh my God. Just completely. I think I had like 2,000 or 3,000 followers at the time, and it—

On Instagram?

Yes, on Instagram. And I had been very close to the point a few months before, I'm like, what am I doing? Like, I'm spending so much time on this, I'm not really making any money to speak of. Like, when I would file my taxes, it was very depressing because it would look like I had lost money every year, and I kind of probably had, but When these reels started taking off, it reflected and people started buying my course. And I was like, oh my goodness. It felt like I was kind of just thrown into the deep end. I, I had like the foundation of like, thankfully my business was fairly built. Like I had the course, everything was there.

Yeah.

And then it was just like, okay, here we go. Like, hold on. Because it just grew exponentially. Literally overnight. I think I had made like the entire year before like $10,000, and then that month in January I made $20,000 that month. And it was just truly my life changed in that month where I was like, this is what I've known it could be. I think what that was one of the most like rewarding months of my life, just seeing it happen. I don't want people to think, oh well, you have to have an Instagram, you know, blow up because that's not true. Like now I'm doing good to post on Instagram, you know, ever. That was kind of like the kickstart, but now my business is sustaining itself and without having to like hustle, hustle, hustle and post every single day and all of that. 'Cause I'm not, I'm not doing that anymore.

Wow.

Tell me what your business does roughly, like Last year I made $297,000, and being the perfectionist that I am, that really annoys me that it wasn't $300,000. But still, when I think back, I'm like, I always try to remind myself, like, 5 years ago, if I had heard that, I would have been like, are you freaking kidding me? Like, that seemed like the dream. And now I'm like, okay, $297,000 versus $300,000, Amelia, be quiet.

Like, so tell me about that. Tell me, money is amazing, but money is only amazing because what it makes possible. So tell me what it has made possible for you. How has this changed your life?

I'm gonna give the fun version and then the not fun version. The fun version is I remember we as a family went on vacation that I completely paid for, and that was just felt like such huge moment, like such a huge win that like, I did this. Like, I had, you know, never been in the workplace, so I had never brought in money, and I had had a lot of, you know, things in my past. Just, it was just very rewarding to say that I did this. I took us on this trip. That was huge. Then the not as glamorous but still Also just as rewarding, I would say, is, you know, I've had to support myself and 5 kids in ways over the past year, 2 years that I really never thought that I would have to. I was able to be there present with my kids during one of the hardest seasons of our life, and my business sustained itself. Like, it was okay. And I worked maybe 30 hours over the whole summer. So I think—

Oh, wow.

That's like, I never could have had a job that I go into and just be like, hey guys, it's, it's a rough season. I'll be back once my kids go back to school. But, you know, it's, it's given me the freedom to be what I need to be and who I need to be for the people I need to be and still be able to pay bills.

I got chills when you talked about that because it's It's really like freedom. It's like freedom of choice and freedom to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done and still feel like that one weight has been taken care of. Like, things can be hard and changes can be happening, and also we're financially secure. Like, I can't really imagine a more reassuring, you know, thing to have happening in the background.

So true.

What do you have coming next?

I do launches of my course every couple of months, couple of times a year. And so I have another one coming up in September where I just teach people how to— most people who want to sew, they have either never taken it out of the box or tried messing with it and been like, nope, that is way too intimidating. I love, I love just seeing people go from like, I can't touch my machine, it's terrifying. fine to being like wearing something and being like, I made this, I never would have been able to do it without your help. Like truly it's just so satisfying and fulfilling to be able to help other people get past their own fears and do things that it's not just sewing, they're not just learning a skill, it's increasing their own confidence.

Okay Amelia, I would love to ask you what advice you have someone listening who has maybe a hand-on craft, they're thinking about teaching online. So what advice would you give someone who was considering this?

I think it's truly about what do you want your life to look like? Really sit down and envision, what do I want my life to look like? I might love making 50 pottery mugs a week and selling those. You might love that. That might be your thing. But if you're like me and you're like, nope, I need something different. than that. I want to be a little more in charge of like, you can only make so many pottery mugs. You can only sew so many nursing covers. And that's why I was like, even though it doesn't make sense to put this down and chase this, I'm going to because down the road I know. And just having the like grit to keep with it, even if your first thing that you put out there is a complete flop, because I've had my fair share of flops, but just being able to pick yourself up and be like, okay, I am going to keep going and I can still see that me in the future that I want to be and just keep going towards that person that you want to be.

That's amazing advice. Amelia, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you so much.

Of course. I'm so excited that you're doing this. I think it's so needed and I wish so badly that I had had this when I was 6 years ago, you know, Oh my goodness, I would have paid any amount of money for it.

Thanks. Me too. Thank you. Amelia, isn't she amazing? Um, okay, let me come back to you.

Hi.

All right, we have giveaway winners to announce, and then we're gonna dive into your The first— so this giveaway, as a reminder, is for 3 of you who have been commenting when I've prompted the questions during our live, and you are going to win a course curriculum review with me. The first winner is Avril Parks. Avril, for her comment that said, I want to teach people how to draw a realistic dog. Oh, that's so cute. dog's nose in pastel pencils. Okay, love this. Winner number 2 is Jenny Atkinson: adult women who love wildlife and want confidence in drawing. Okay, love that. And then winner number 3 is Alyssa Heath: to continue to work for myself and have the flexibility to be there for my children. Thank you so much for everybody who is here, and if a winner, we'll send you an email to follow up. Okay, so let's dive into questions. The first one is from Selena. Selena says, I am feeling really overwhelmed trying to decide if I'm ready. I've been weaving for years. Honestly, I have a loom museum at this point, and I want to pass this tradition on, but I'm lost in self-doubt and how I would ever narrow weaving down into a course. I'm afraid that I would spend the whole 12 weeks just trying to figure out what my course even is. So the version of this that I keep hearing is kind of, I know my craft, I just don't know which part of it to teach. So if you are frozen in between course ideas, this is really where we spend so much of our time in Module 1, not only to decide what you're teaching, but to feel really solid about the foundation of what you're teaching and do that, um, uh, proof before production. So I guide you through building what we call a full evidence stack so that you can be really confident in the decision that you take to move forward. If you are feeling like it's overwhelming and you don't want to teach your entire craft, then what we'll do is map your craft just like we did today and pull out possible, uh, courses from that. There is a way to do this that will identify the one that is going to be most successful, and So that, that is the whole goal of Module 1. And so you are not meant to come in with it all figured out. We do that together. Okay, Rachel has the second question. Right now I have no website, no audience, and no social media. I'm camera shy on top of it. Should I go build all of that first before I even think about the teaching part? So in other words, I don't have any of this stuff, right? Do we have to become an internet person before we start teaching? So absolutely, you are not alone. I think that the majority of people coming into Art as an Educator either are in the same place as you or have this kind of new part to their business. And so they feel like they are starting from zero. So imagine someone who has an incredible— I'm not sure what your craft is, Rachel, but let's say they have an incredible business selling, and so they have a large customer base, but a customer base isn't necessarily a student base. And so many of them will be growing the student base. Um, this is not new to me. This is— there is a method to this, a proven way to do this, and you do not need it in order to come in. It's kind of like what we do together is build your audience. I'm also going to walk you through exactly how to build your website and build your social and build your audience. And so Um, yeah, you don't need any of it before you come in. I'm also going to take you by the hand and teach you all of the camera know-how that you need. We went over teaching formats today, so all you have to do is choose one that you're willing to start with. It could be just your voice, it could be just your hands, right? We'll go through how to do all of that. Um, but it also makes me think about one of our bonus modules that everybody gets by Zalie Barclay called Camera Confidence. So Zalie's whole business is based around how to get people confident on camera. And that bonus module comes out in the module where you are going to be learning about recording. So truly, we've got you. You could— there couldn't be a better place for you than right here in Art as an Educator. And also, we all start at this place. We all start from zero. I started from zero. You started from zero. We're all starting from zero. It's just at different places in our, in our timeline. Kelly says, I don't have any camera equipment other than my cell phone and my laptop. Is that really going to be enough to film a course that people would pay for? So the bigger question here, right, is like, I'm not techie, is this gonna work for me? So absolutely, Kelly. Um, we do filming in 3 different builds, so Simple, Custom, and Studio. So the Simple build uses your cell phone and And your laptop. It could also, if you don't have a phone that has a camera on it, you could also use a webcam. I give all of my, all of my detailed gear instructions inside Module 3. And you can absolutely— so we don't, we don't sacrifice quality. So it will be high quality. In fact, Amy Small, who you met, who is the knitter who does a 7-figure business has only ever recorded on her phone. The quality is actually incredible. The one thing that I suggest is to improve your audio, and so we give you a build that's under about $100 inside Artisan Educator that improves your audio and gets you set up with the most simple build. Now the custom build adds to that, so if you want a high quality camera. I've got an overhead camera, I've got an over-the-shoulder camera, I have a teleprompter, um, and I have, uh, extra lights. And so I have a custom build for you that you can start building in different camera angles and things like that when you're ready for, but you don't have to, right? So again, it doesn't sacrifice quality, it's just more convenience. It's more angles, teleprompter so that you don't have to try to memorize your scripts, right? And then the studio build is current fully built-out custom studio. So, uh, I know some people will want it, and so I've got it all, uh, linked, uh, in the gear guide, and exactly all the cameras I use and everything inside my own personal studio, um, that took me, you know, 12 years to end up in. But we do it at all different builds, and you get all 3 so you can make the choice yourself. Really great, really Great question, Asia. Oh my goodness! Welcome. I wanted I wanted to also welcome new students: Annette, Kathy, Marisa, Marissa, Tarnet, Linda, Roxanne, Tori, Christine. Welcome to Art as an Educator. We are so so so excited to begin building with you. Okay, the next question I have is from. Doug, this is my most crucial season. I am working 80-hour weeks between now and Thanksgiving, and that's 90% of my annual income. December through February is when I would actually have the time. So can I join now and start later? So we have got many, many different variations of this question, like the timing is not perfect. Should I wait? How— what's the best way to do this? So Doug, you get lifetime access to this course. So the 2026 course will be yours forever. The only live component is the community and the live calls. So what happens at the end of 12 weeks is that we go into what we call read-only. So the community and the lesson comments kind of freeze in time. So nothing new gets added, but everything gets preserved. And so you can absolutely— actually did this myself earlier this year. I bought a $3,000 $1,000 course in February because that was when it was opening. And February, March, and April is my busy season. But I bought it because I knew I wanted it, and I didn't log in until May. I logged in in May, and I just started lesson 1, module 1, lesson 1. And I went in order, and I watched the live Q&A call for that module, and I did the work. And so I actually sometimes prefer that. Like, I love that. Um, and so you can absolutely do that. The other thing, Doug, that it makes me think of is how fun would it be for you to listen while you work? So Doug, I'm not sure what your craft is, but could you listen to the content, listen to the lessons, and listen to the Q&A while you're working, while you're producing, and then cut so that you're familiar with the content, that you're kind of noodling on it in the background, and then when December hits and you actually have the time, you can hit the ground running and actually doing the work. I think that would be a really beautiful way to do it as well. Okay, the next question is from Jennifer. Jennifer says, I already teach art classes at my local library, about 30 students, and I'm booked for most of the year.

I—

but before I invest in Art as an Educator, I would love clarity on the accountability and the implementation. So how is it different from just getting information? I— the question that I hear here is kind of like, I've gotten information before. How is this going to be different? How do you really help us get there?

Right.

And so the new bonus that we just announced is a really huge part of this. And so everybody who enrolls by the time that we close tonight will get this bonus, even if you've already enrolled. And it is the course clarity check. So at the point that you are done with your course title, name, student, your evidence, your course transformation, or like the end result that you're promising, and your curriculum high-level outline, you're going to pass it over to us and we're going to sit down with it and study it and give you one personalized feedback directly on your course so that you can have this checkpoint and feel really good about what you're doing before you move forward in the into production. The other thing is the community. My goodness, I cannot tell you how meaningful it is to just have people alongside you that are building alongside you, are getting their questions answered alongside you. The live Q&As are where I'll answer your questions live, very much like this, and we get to just rely on each other. We get to say like, this is the tagline that I'm thinking about my course, like, does it make sense? Can you read this and tell what it is? All kinds Things like that. Okay, the next question is for Simon. Simon says, for those of us who have to start small because of financial constraints, is there a course platform that you would recommend? And what are all of the other costs that are— that I'm gonna encounter on top of Artisan Educator? Okay, so this is a great question. First First and foremost, Artisan Educator is a business write-off. You should know that it is, uh, whether you have an education business already or not, it's absolutely a tax write-off. And then any other expenses are— again, it depends on the build that you do. So the simple build is under $100 for your filming setup, okay? And then you can upgrade it from there. So the next level is $1,500, the studio build is $15,000. Again, that's— nobody needs that. I, I don't even need it. But, um, uh, but I want to give it to you because some of you absolutely want that level of a build-out. And, um, many of you are going to start with a simple build with one camera angle, maybe 2 camera angles. Um, so we really do meet you at every different build along the way. So, um, if you don't have a quality mic, that's going to be the only expense that you have during filming. We teach you how to do everything else your own. So we teach you how to edit your videos, unless you don't want to edit your videos, and then we teach you how to hire someone to edit your videos. But we teach you how to film everything on your own. And then the only other cost is your course platform. And we have chosen and we're teaching the course platform that we just believe in to our core. It's called Kajabi. I migrated from another platform in 2018 to Kajabi, and it allowed me to just scale. So the reason that we love Kajabi is because it's everything under one platform. So if you, if you go start adding platforms, you'll see that the price is way more than just the Kajabi platform itself. So Kajabi is community, courses, memberships, all your opt-ins or your free resources, all of your websites. So every page that you see under my Bonnie Christine umbrella is built on Kajabi. So it can entire website, can be your email service provider. Did I say community? It can also run your affiliate hub, all of your checkout, all of your payment processing, all of your failed payment recovery. Like, it's literally everything under one roof. And so because of that, it's a steal. Truly, it's a steal. And the whole goal is to get you launching a course that more than pays for Kajabi to begin with. We are— we told Kajabi that we're doing this, and so So they helped us set up a special student offer that will give you the first 3 months for $99 and also 5 of my templates that I built myself— our sales page template, our free resource template, our welcome page template, our waitlist template, and one more that you can literally just click and install, insert your own information, and you're up and running. So we're big believers, and it should more than pay for itself quickly. But we do suggest waiting to start until you're ready to start building. Okay, Louise says, do you have a calendar with the dates and times on everything? Basically, for people who are living in Australia or the UK or Canada or New Zealand, will this actually work for my clock, my time zone? my life. Um, so the modules go live on Monday at 11 AM Eastern time, so that's kind of in the mid-morning on East Coast. After the modules go live, they're yours, so you can go through them at any pace, um, at any time that you want to. And then the live calls happen at the same time as our call today, actually. So they start at 1 PM Eastern on Fridays, and they'll probably last for a good 2 hours because we're only doing one call a week. So we're going to go through all the questions. Now, you do not have to attend those live. You actually don't have to attend anything live. If that time does not work for you, you're going to submit questions in advance, and then you can submit questions anytime for those live calls. And then I just start going through them, and then you can watch the replay. So replays get posted same day. And yeah, our support team is also all scattered in different time zones, so you won't have any problem. We have a very global student body, so we're used to that. Okay, and then this question is really about money. I want this, the money is genuinely hard, what are my real options. So let me talk through that. First and foremost, I don't, I don't want anyone to do something that doesn't make sense for you and your family, okay? Would never want that. But if this does make sense for you and your family, there are, there are many different ways to pay for the course. So the 6-month plan that we have in-house has interest in it. So the best value is the one-time pay. So the one-time pay is $2,497. And then when you choose that, you can also decide to pay using PayPal credit, Klarna, or Afterpay. Now, when you go through that, you'll have to look at the terms based on what country you live in. But for most of the countries, it gives you several months to pay that back with 0% interest. So it's often a much better. It's much better for you than our in-house payment plan. So that's what I would consider. Um, I think the whole goal of this course is to get you earning revenue. I would go back to the math and just see how quickly and how easily a class offer that you have would more than pay for itself. Um, I had this— this is just something somebody told me, uh, when I, when I was thinking about paying $20,000 for a mastermind, my coach told me to not trip over pennies on my way to dollars. And I just remember that I ended up joining the mastermind, and it has more than paid for itself over and over and over again because I was willing to take, take the risk. But in the same breath, right, like, only you know if this makes sense truly for you and your life and your family. And so I would never want you to stretch yourself in a way that isn't the right decision for your family right now. But that's what I would do. I would buy myself a little bit of time, and then I would get after turning my knowledge into revenue. Um, the very first bonus module that you get is from Susan Yeats, and Susan is going to teach you how to teach an in-person workshop and charge for it. We will have people do that and pay for the course within the first 4 weeks. I know we will. That's not I can't make that kind of promise, but I know that we will have students that do that. So, you know, it's, it's up to you and how quickly you want to really hit the ground running in adding education as a revenue stream. Okay, Jane says, if I purchase today but the course access doesn't begin until September 21st, when does the 14-day money-back guarantee start? Start? Okay, great question. So we have a 14-day, no-questions-asked guarantee refund policy, and it starts from when Module 1 goes live, which is September 21st. So the 14 days starts September 21st. My team here on this call— I can't do that math, so I don't want to say a date, but it does not start from the time you purchase. It starts from the Module 1 release date. which is Monday. So 2 weeks from Monday. Truly, we want— we are so confident in this course and the transformation that is waiting for you. And if for any reason you come in and you decide that it's not for you in the first 2 weeks, that, that gives you the first 2 full modules, then we refund your money. Okay, checking in with you. Let's take a few more questions. Okay, Moniza, I love your name. Bonnie, I know AE would be great for someone starting to build a course from scratch, but before I sign up, can I ask if your course will help me to spruce up a course that I already have finished building on Kajabi and help me with marketing? I'm also struggling to show up with confidence As an educator. Absolutely, Manisa. Um, this reminds me of a question that we get with my other course, Surface Design Immersion, a ton, which is, I already use Adobe Illustrator. So I, I teach Adobe Illustrator in that course, and we always have people ask, like, I've been using Illustrator for 10 years, do I need this course? And truly, yes, because it allows you to deepen what you're doing already and move much more quickly. And so those are my favorite stories out of my other course, which is people who have, like, I had used this program for 20 years, decided to join, and can't believe the amount of success and momentum that they had very quickly. It also reminds me of a course that I took in 2019. I took The Membership Experience by Stu McLaren, and in 2019 I had a membership for 7 years already, but The Membership Experience was for people who were starting at zero, so they had no membership. I had had mine for 7 years, and I also had more than 1,000 members in it. But I took it, and I was able— sometimes I think back about this time in, in the membership, and I'm like, I gave them whiplash because I started implementing things left, right, and center that I was learning to enhance the experience, um, to make it more beautiful, to make it make more sense, um, to make their transformation, uh, achieved more easily, to make sure that people were finishing, um, to improve my marketing, to improve my confidence, all of those things. And so when you look— I wish, I, I wish I had it. I literally have a graph that I've shared with Stu before. If you look at my membership growth, it goes like this and then goes boom. And that little elbow right there is 2019 when I took the membership experience and just started implementing everything, and it skyrocketed. And so I just very much believe that that will happen for you, and I would love to help you refine The course that you're already doing. Okay, Nicole says, I have a big audience already, but they are mostly people who already do my craft in an intermediate advanced level. So how do I find the beginners who need my course to start? So Nicole, this is what we— so I love this. And also, to be a little meta, this was my, this was my circumstance with Art as an Educator. So I have a very large audience. Large audience, but they are surface pattern designers, and the audience for Artisan Educator is different. It is— you all are not surface pattern designers. Maybe some of you are, but the vast majority of you are creatives and artisans from all different categories. And so I just did this, okay? So when I say there is a method, there is a method. I built an audience from zero, literally zero, in the last, um, 6 months as we've been building towards Artisan Educator. And so the method is proven, uh, and it is also— it's beautiful. It's so beautiful to start gathering people who have so much in common. Um, so this is what we do in the Grow module. I will teach you how to develop content for organic, paid, and borrowed. So you don't have to do all 3, you can choose, or you can do 2 or 3 or just 1. But we'll start to gather people by attracting the right kind of traffic based on what you want to sell. So we'll look at your course through line and then kind of back up from there, and we'll develop it in depth in Module 4. I would love to do it with you, Nicole. Okay, this is the last question. Joan says, you've said that at the end of that first launch of your signature course, Surface Design Immersion that I said, what is life? And can you speak a bit on what was happening at that moment for you? What was that process happening within? I can hear a transformation, but I'd love to hear more specifically what was blooming out of impossible to possible. I think that's probably the best question to end on. So at that time, that was my first online education offering. Forever. And I, of my own, to be clear, of my own, on my own platform, which is what I'm teaching you how to do. And I had this just very kind of secret goal of 100 students. And I was embarrassed to even say that out loud. I only had told my husband. And then by the end of that week, we had 342 students, I The launch did 352, but there were some payment plans and things in there. So I more than tripled the goal that was my stretch goal. So my stretch goal was 100 students, and I more than tripled it. And yeah, I was left just as a puddle, just like, what is life? That made so much possible for my family. So that was the moment that my husband decided to officially quit his job. He was a cycling coach. And our kids were young, they were 3 and 5. So they were not in school yet. So he quit his job. And we were all at home together, which was the most life-changing thing. The next life-changing thing was that we paid off our mortgage, so we owned our home outright. And then the next most life-changing thing is that we bought an old— goodness, I think it was like a 1958 or '68 Airstream. And I dolled it up. And we went on a 3-week tour around the country with our 3 and 5-year-old that summer. And so, yeah, What Is Life just like radically changed our life, brought David home, working as a family, living in— living and working together all day, Airstream across the country. Yeah, it was life-changing. And so that's like my perspective of it. But the other perspective of it was this really overwhelming honor of teaching those students. So I supported all of those students by myself. I didn't have a team of any kind. And I also just did all of it, like recording and editing and all the things I'm teaching you how to do. I did all on my own in that year. And being that close to students and seeing them learn and have unlocks and ahas and going on to radically change their lives. So that's the thing that you can't quite prepare for. So you're going to see your own life radically changed, but when you see the lives of your students radically changed— so that makes me think of one of my students who lives in Australia, who, um, I think she was a part of the 2018 class, and she started licensing her work, and they got an Airstream, and, uh, she made 6 figures quickly, and they Started traveling the country. Anyways, it's just like that kind of thing that once you realize that your impact has ripples to it, it has a ripple effect that you'll truly never really see the extent of, but it gives you so much purpose and so much why. It gives you so much reason to do the work that you're doing, and it becomes really the reason. It goes far beyond how it changes your life and way more about how it changes other. people's lives. And that's also what I'm excited to see come to fruition with this class of Artisan Educator. So am I gonna be adding your name? My friends, thank you for joining me today. I love our time together. I hope that you enjoyed Teach Your Craft. Replays are available till tonight. Also, Artisan Educator closes tonight. So if you're in for the 2026 founding class, we start on Monday, and I would love to see you there. Bye, everybody.