Teach your Craft Workshop | Day #1 📆 Tuesday, September 8

Well, hello, hello, everyone! Welcome to day number 1 of Teach Your Craft. I'm so excited to be here with you today. We're, we're using some new tech. We're using some new tech. So thanks for bearing with us for a second. If you are here trying to get into the chat room, Stay tuned. You should be in in just a second. Um, we are thrilled to welcome you officially to the Teach Your Craft Workshop. I have so much in store for you this week. We're gonna get straight into it. But first, I do want to hear from you. I would love for you— hi, Daniela— to share with me where you are joining from and also specifically what your craft is. Okay, so tell me what your craft is in the comments. I have been blown away by welcoming you all for several weeks through email and also in the community as of yesterday, and we have crafts and artisans and makers and creatives from all over the world representing so many different categories of crafts. It is absolutely incredible to see you all. Charis, hello! I'm so glad that you're here. Micah, hello! Veronica is here from Switzerland. Hello! Kathleen from British Columbia. Hello, Nikita from Texas. Hi, Carolyn. Hello, says graphic design. Denab says painting. K. Rob says painter. Welcome. Hollis is says my main craft is watercolor. Okay, amazing. Kirsten says I'm not sure yet. All right, you're in the right place because we're gonna figure it out today, my friends. From Pennsylvania, I am a seamstress. Okay, I love that. Hello from Western Canada. Sharon from Queensland, Australia. I make patchwork quilts. Sharon, good morning. It's early there, and I'm so honored that you got up to join us. Okay, so without any further ado, I'm gonna jump into today's presentation, and we're going to dive right on in. Okay, so welcome officially to Teach Your Craft. You made it! I am so glad that you're here. We have something in common, all of us here. We are creators, and we're all here because I think we understand the value of education. We understand that having access to information is the most direct path to learning and expanding our knowledge and empowering ourselves in our path, and we are grateful to those who have gone before us willing to share what they know with us. And so that's kind of where I would love to start today, is if you would tell me in the chat who taught you your craft. Who taught you your craft? Now this could be a mother or a grandmother. This could also be a professor or a teacher. It could be someone who was doing workshops or a friend. So tell me who taught your craft? Who brought you here today? For me, it was my mom. So my mom was a— well, is a prolific creative. I grew up in a, in a home saturated with craft, and, and she taught me everything I know. Okay, so let me read some of your comments here. Let's see.

My sister.

My granny and my quilt guild. Yes.

My grandmothers. My dad.

Many of us are self-taught. Yes, self-learning in all the crafts that I do. Phyllis says, my grandmother. Amazing. Yeah. Okay, amazing, amazing. Alright. So you're here. If we don't know each other, I am Bonnie Christine. I teach surface pattern design. That is my craft, and I care deeply about helping creatives build work and a life that feels meaningful and beautiful. And sustainable. So we are going to get to know each other a lot over this week, and I'm going to tell you my story and all about how all of this came to be in a few minutes. But before I talk about me, I want to first talk about you. I want to talk about why you are here, why you decided to take this time for yourself to sign up for this workshop. You are here to turn what you know into an online course. In other words, you are here to teach your craft. But I know that it is so much more than that. You are here to potentially take your knowledge seriously, to earn consistent income from the craft that you love, to grow your income without filling maybe every available hour that you have, to be there for the moments that you don't want to miss, to make more room for your own creative work, to reach people that you could never teach maybe in person. To feel really proud of what you're building, and to know that what you've learned can change someone else's life. Now, in your own words, I've heard from so many of you over the last few weeks. Last year I completely sold out, and this year at the same show I sold nothing. Shared with us, who's tired of inconsistency. I was enrolled to finish my art education degree, but decided to stay home to raise my children. That pull has always been there. That's from Julie, who's ready to get back after it. At craft fairs, I got a lot of people asking if I teach. I would love to, but I have no idea how to start. That's from Katie, who's already got people asking for her course. For many years, I put my family and their needs before my own, and I lost who I was somewhere along the way. That's from Allison, who's ready to do something for herself. It's been on my mind to figure out how to make a living from my hobbies, but I never gained any traction. That's from Gigi, who's finally ready to figure out how to monetize what she knows. And after a long, brutal tax season, I told myself that I'm going to invest in something that was really me. That's from Lori, who's ready to build a life that is fulfilling and creative and one that she loves. Now, I think I could teach this often turns into, but where do I even begin? I know what happens the second that you take that thought seriously. The questions arrive, right? Like, how would I even film this? And where would I find students when I don't have an email list? And then there is the class itself. You have so many things that you could teach, but you don't know which to teach or how to turn something that comes naturally to you into lessons a beginner can follow. And somewhere in the middle of all of that comes the question, what if I put all this work into making a class and nobody signs up? Those questions, my friends, they deserve answers. But you don't have to answer all of them at once. We're going to put the decisions in the right order, starting with what you'll teach and who you can help. That's where we're headed today. I want to allow you to really see yourself in this room. You might be here, you might be an artist, an artisan, a maker. You might be a photographer, a chef, a choreographer, or someone who works in health and wellness. Again, what brings us together is that you have learned something through practice that would help someone else. So together we are finding where education belongs in the business and the life that you want to build. So choosing what to teach first is not the same as choosing the only thing that you get to do. You are also welcome here, whether you've never taught anywhere or if you've been teaching in person for years. We have so many of both of you, and you bring different experiences and both give us some somewhere really solid to begin. You are in the right place if you hold knowledge earned through practice, if you have one idea, many ideas, or potentially no clear idea yet, if you have never taught or you already do teach in person, if you've tried teaching online but you didn't get the results that you wanted, if you are tired of just every dollar requiring another hour of your work— we call that trading time for money— Or if you're building a new direction or another part of your business. Now let me tell you who this is not for. Okay, so this is not for you if you are absolutely brand new to the skill that you want to teach. So you do not need teaching experience. We— a complete beginner in teaching, this is absolutely for, but you do need experience in what you want to teach, right? So you need experience in what you want to teach. This is also not for you if you want to sell a course but not invest in your students' success. So at Team Bonnie Christine here in our education business, we measure our success of our business strictly, strictly by the success of our students. And so that is the type of education that I am interested in teaching you how to do, is one that truly helps your students succeed. So where are you beginning? I want to hear from you in the chat. A, B, or C. A is I have an idea. I know what I'm here to teach. I'm ready to go. B is if you have approximately 1 million ideas. Okay, so there's a million different things that you could teach. You're not sure which one it is. Or C, you have a feeling that you have something worth passing on, but you aren't sure exactly what it is yet. Can you tell me in the chat? Vicki says A. I love that. I immediately want to know what it is. So many of you know exactly what you are here to teach. Many of you have a million ideas, and I figured that might be the case. I figured that might be the case. And C, you have a feeling that you have knowledge that's worth passing on But you're not sure exactly what that looks like. All right. We're going to help you notice the knowledge that has become so familiar to you. Oftentimes you even stop seeing it. You're going to figure out how to kind of extract that in today and tomorrow's lesson. Okay, so that's why you're here. Now I want to talk to you a little bit about why I'm here. How did I get— how did I get to where I am teaching this workshop this week? I wanna give you a little bit of context. So my story really has 2 parts. The first one is what I call the call to creativity. For my entire life, I was crafty. I was very creative. I sewed, I refinished old furniture, I played with air dry clay, I DIY'd, I made candles and woven wall hangers, hangers. And basically, if I could see something in the store and and think to myself, I could probably make that, I would go home and totally make that. So naturally, I handmade every Christmas gift and made all of my thank you cards. I even turned some old— I even turned some old pallets that I found in a parking lot into a headboard, and I made every single piece of decor that you can see in this picture. This was— This was right after I got married, when I was in my early 20s. So in summary, I was crafty, and I suspect that you might be as well if you own a glue gun. If you have a craft room, closet, or drawer, we are 2 peas in a pod. Now, naturally, this led me to opening an Etsy shop. So early in around 2009, I started selling handmade aprons and tea towels and camera straps and art prints and printables. And so I loved it. I loved what I made. I loved choosing the fabric and I love choosing the fabric and sewing and spend— sending something that I know someone had chosen to buy from me that I had made. You know that feeling, you know how good that is, but every order meant cutting, sewing, packaging, and shipping it again, or packing up the car and setting out for a weekend market. More sales always required more of me. And I wanted this business to support a specific life that I wanted. So I asked the question that I think every maker needs to ask: if this worked really, really well, what will it require of me? So I did the math. Okay, how many aprons could I make in a day? How many days could I work? So I calculated 5 days a week, 52 weeks out of the year. And what if I sold every single one? So if you know my story, you know this number. Even in that most perfect year, what I could bring in was about $40,000. So that was my capacity. My hands were the limit. Okay, so this was also before paying myself and before expenses. So this was before paying myself and before supplies and before shipping costs and before expenses. That was the absolute max ceiling that I could make before I started trying to outsource or hire help, right? And I was a one-woman show. Now, my mom owned a craft, a quilt shop. I grew up surrounded by people making things, and eventually I had a dream to see my own designs come to life on fabric. So I fell in love with, I fell in love with fabric design. That was the next stage of my kind of creative career. And then people started asking me, how do I do that? How do I design fabric? So I was officially cruising in surface pattern design and licensing my work with companies all over the world. And about a year into my pattern design career, a big old company reached out to me and said, hey, will you come teach for us? Now, I had never taught. I had never taught. I had never thought about teaching before or sharing what I had learned. But the idea That was exciting. And I knew that I had a heart for making what I had just gone through easier for people coming in behind me. So I knew that I could help people have the same moment I did that day that I was in my mom's quilt shop when I looked and saw fabric and, and wanted to make that come to life. So I said yes, and that gave me an unexpected life-changing experience. Now, this is me teaching. This was 2014. That's my mom, my first son. Bear and my sister. Now, after the workshop, I went home. I absolutely collapsed on my living room sofa and I told my husband, I'm so glad that that is over. Um, it had gone well, but it was the most nerve-wracking experience of my entire life. And I was so happy to get back to my craft, designing fabric. Then emails started pouring in. I started hearing stories. I heard stories from people all over the world whose lives had been changed because what I had taught. And it wasn't until then that I realized that really my true work had just begun, that this was actually my calling. Now, that is what I consider the first half of my story. The second half is what I call my call to contribution. It wasn't until then that I realized that my true work was to help amazing people find the same freedom that I had found, and I needed to do everything in my power to get this skill this ability to use creativity for their life into their hands. Now, there was only a few small problems. First was that I was absolutely terrified to be on camera. The next was that I didn't have any of the tech know-how. I wasn't sure how to translate my skills to lessons. Oh, oh yeah, and I didn't have an audience. I didn't have an audience to speak of, of any kind. However, I started. I awkwardly got my camera out and I started, and then I started over and over and over and over again. I wasn't good on camera and I wasn't good in front of people and I wasn't good at speaking and I did not know what I was doing and I was crippled with imposter syndrome. But I decided to dedicate my life to sharing my secrets and to opening up doors to freedom, to opening up this opportunity to the people who needed it in their lives, to awaken the creativity in as many people as possible and help them create a career that maybe they never thought was possible. Now fast forward to 2018. We're going to fast forward by 2 babies and 4 years. Okay, this brings us to 2018 when I did my very first course launch. So I decided to teach what, what we call Surface Design Immersion. Now, at the time, I had 8,000 email subscribers. Now, some of you think that's not a lot, and some of you think that you would do anything for 8,000 subscribers. Let me tell you that it took me a long time to get there, and it's relatively a very small email list. So I had 8,000 email subscribers, and I opened a course for $997. Now, that first time that I launched the Surface Design Immersion Course, it generated $352,000 in launch revenue over the course of a single week. This was surprising. This was about 4 times what I thought it would even potentially do in its first year, and it changed my life forever. Now, remember my apron math? My hands could have never produced that much revenue in a week. In fact, it would have taken me nearly 9 years to make the same amount of revenue, but that does not even come close to considering the profit margin. So an average profit margin for a handmade seller is somewhere between 20 and 40%. Now the average profit margin for an online course creator is somewhere between 70 and 90%. And my friends, because I am a designer, I just have to tell you that my custom font is not showing up correctly, and that's why some of these look a little funny. And it's killing me slowly because, because it looks so good in the right font, but I'm on a different computer and I forgot to install the font. So that online course creator is going off the label right there, but it will be fixed tomorrow, my friends. Okay, so today my floral designs are sold all over the world. My magazine is in every Barnes& Noble, and I have taught over 200,000 people in more than 100 countries the art of pattern design. So since— see, there you go. So since 2018, from teaching my craft, so from teaching my craft alone, That has generated more than $40 million. All of that was sitting on the other side of a simple decision that I had to make. Do you know what it was? A person like me shares what they know with others. Now, I want to give your— I want to give you permission to have a really big vision. Okay? What would you want this to make possible? What would education make room for in your life? Would it be potentially Picking up your kids without having to ask someone permission? Would it be a weekday in the studio? Would it be the freedom to choose what clients you want to work with? Would it be a business that supports your family while helping people around the world? I would love to hear from you in the chat. What are you building towards? What would be exciting to you for this new revenue stream to make possible in your life? Luana says a house by the water. That is what I'm talking about, Luana. You are allowed to have a big vision and a big dream and a big goal. Beige says freedom with the kids. Bee says travel. Rachel says freedom. Hollis says more time to create my art, more income for my family. Income is one thing, right? Income is great, but what income makes possible is what I'm really looking for. So if you're telling me income, Tell me why. What does that income make possible? Does it mean that you can do something that you want to do? Does it mean that you can get out of debt? Does it mean that you can finally change your living circumstance? Or maybe it's make an impact and contribute to something that you really find meaningful. Retirement income. Travel to help my family. Nina says support myself. Financial independence. Yeah. Personal freedom. Amazing. Okay. All right. So that's where we're headed, my friends. Up until this point, I have taught my craft, which is surface pattern design. So this is the first time ever, truly, like today, right here, right now, is the first time ever that I'm teaching creatives how we built the actual education business. So the way that we think about curriculum, the systems that we've built, the things that we've tested and optimized, and the way that we think about heartfelt marketing with integrity. So that's what I'm here to show you this week. But I want you to very much picture the beginning correctly. I did not have a team. I was a solopreneur. I was a one-woman show for a decade. Um, I did not have a studio. I didn't have any teaching experience, and I didn't have any tech know-how or filming. I didn't have a— yeah, I just didn't have anything. And so I don't want you to look at the business that I've built today And get overwhelmed. If you, if you feel like I can't do all of that, you're looking way too far ahead. The job for you right now is to take something that you know and help someone else learn it, and then everything else may follow. Okay? So I want you to— I wanted to show you what's possible. And then if you're feeling like, well, I can't figure all that out, I want you to, to bring your gaze right back in front of you, right to the next step. Okay, there are 3 different reasons why I am so incredibly passionate about education and teaching. Teaching gives 3 different gifts. It gives something to the craft, something to the student, and something to you. So the first one is what we call the artisan gift. If you are taking notes, I want you to write these down. Let me not say that. You better be taking notes because if you don't write it down, you don't remember it. So be sure that you're taking notes. If you need the workshop worksheets from today, you can get them right here on the hub page. So the gift, the first gift is the artisan gift. It is impact and legacy. I told you that I grew up surrounded by making. My mom owned a quilt shop, but our family also baked and sewed and cooked and gardened. Knowledge moved through the ordinary moments. Someone showed someone else how to thread the machine, how to follow the recipe, how to fix the part that had gone wrong. That is how craft lives on. And you are a part of that story now. You carry techniques and decisions and lessons that you have earned through years of practice, and when you teach, you give that knowledge a way to travel farther than your hours and farther than your hands. It will literally live on beyond you and create an amazing ripple effect that truly you, you really won't even ever understand the full reach of it. Number 2 is the student gift. This is for someone else. When I wanted to become a fabric designer, I spent years piecing together my education from literally every corner of the internet. I searched, I guessed, I bought the wrong things, and I spent time learning things that I had that had very little to do with what I actually needed to learn. I was willing to do the work, but I needed someone to show me where to begin and what to do next. I know this struggle and this pain of piecemealing so much. In fact, I wanted it so badly that the moment that a course in my industry did arrive, I purchased it on It's opening day. I got an email and there I went. So I want you to think about helping someone finish something that they're working on. Maybe it's their first quilt if you're a sewer, or their first garden, or finally being able to play a song that they've always wanted to learn. They still practice and do the work, but it's your guidance that helps them move through the confusion and they experience the satisfaction of saying something like, I did it. Now, gift number 3 is the teacher gift. This is scalable revenue, and this is what we've touched on a little bit already. The 3rd gift is all coming back to you. Teaching deepens your understanding of your own craft. You get to slow down enough to notice why you choose what you do and why you make those adjustments and how you problem solve in a particular way. Teaching helps you put words around what you know, and it helps you see how much experience you've gathered, and it will sharpen the work itself. So there's truly no better way to master your craft than to teach it yourself. That same experience will support your life. You've likely heard us say this phrase, your craft can pay you twice, once through the work that you create and again through teaching what you know. So a recorded course, right? It would allow you to record it once and then teach it, reach students from all over the world at all hours of the day. There is so much work in building that kind of business and also in caring for the success of your students. But the purpose is to support the creative life that you love and start earning revenue that is not tied to the hours in your day. So if anyone is feeling a little something there, I want you to really give yourself this permission. You are allowed to want your work to be both meaningful and profitable. It— when you, when you start to think about monetizing your knowledge, a lot can bubble up for us, right? But you are allowed to want your work to be both Meaningful and profitable. You're allowed to want it to change your life and the, and the lives of the generations that are to come. And teaching gives you a way to pursue both. So here we go. We're going to cover today how to find the course hiding inside your craft. Tomorrow we are going to outline it. On Thursday, I'm going to crack open my marketing book. Yes, I said it, marketing. And I'm going to teach you how I think about marketing and I think you'll be surprised. So come, come Thursday with an open heart and an open mind, and let me teach you how to market with the utmost integrity. Friday we're gonna learn how to bring it to life. Okay, now this workshop is in celebration of something I'm so incredibly excited about. It is our brand new course, Artisan Educator. Later this week I'm going to open enrollment for the founding class of Artisan Educator for the first time ever. It is the complete program that I have built to help you take what you begin here through a full signature course and an entire education business path with scalable revenue. I'm going to share that invitation with you on Thursday after we've done our work together, and you'll know what it includes, who it's for, what it costs. You can make your decision then. We're going to focus our— the rest of the workshop on the work that we're doing. It is so incredibly valuable, and what we do here, you're going to be able to take forth with you. Regardless of whether you want to join us for Art as an Educator or not. Okay, but we are wanting to invest in you. This font, oh my goodness. Okay, so we want to invest in you. I believe in this workshop and the content that I am teaching you today to my core. And so we are going to give you up to $400 in tuition credit as you take the workshop. Now let me read all the details about this to you because it's important. You can earn up to $400 towards Arts as an Educator. This part is not a drawing. It is open to everyone, and the credit that you earn is by just watching the lessons. So here's how it works. During each of the first 3 lessons, I'm going to share a studio word. You're going to know when I do it. It's really obvious. I get a big old slide that tells you what it is. I'm going to do it at the end of the— of our time together today. When you get that word, you're going to go to the tuition bank right here on the workshop page, and you're going to enter the same email that you registered with, and then you're going to submit that word, and you're going to click Bank My $100, and then you've earned $100 that you can use towards your tuition if you decide to join us. You might as well bank it. Now, if you complete all three, we're going to automatically add another one, which will bring your total to four hundred. So you have to get all three, and then we'll automatically add another one. The fourth hundred dollar is your completion bonus. So please don't get stuck trying to write the perfect answer in the question form. We're not grading it. Okay, we're just at we're just engaging with you. So don't don't overstress about the question that it asks you. It'll be like. A takeaway from the lesson today. So here's the main thing that you need to know: you can bank your tuition through watching live or by watching the replay, but you only have 24 hours to do it from the time that the lesson goes live. Okay, 24 hours to do it from the time the lesson goes live. So you can do it through the replay, but you have to do it within 24 hours. Then your tuition is going to expire Monday At 11:59 PM ET. Okay, this is what it looks like in practice. You're going to go down to your tuition bank, you're going to put your email in that you registered with, then you're going to put in the studio word. This is not today's, it's just a practice one. And then you're going to tell us an answer and you're going to click Bank My Tuition. Now, as long as you use the same email every day, it's going to keep up with what you've shared. It's going to keep up. So tomorrow when you come back, it'll add to what you've already gotten. Right now, this one's hard to read because of my font. We also have a giveaway stack that we're building towards. Okay, so this one is for live attendance only. So watching the replay doesn't count. This one is for live attendance only. Together, we are going to unlock up to fifteen thousand dollars in prizes. All you have to do is click on the check-in button on the hub during our live session. Okay, so let me show you what we're giving away and. Where the total gets released. So you can track it right there on the hub and you can check in up to 4 times. So today, tomorrow, Thursday, and Friday. When you check in, it also automatically enters you for these giveaways. Okay. So this is what we're giving away. We have to rally together. The more people who show up, the more, the more things we're giving away. If half of you show up live for half of our sessions, we will reach the full giveaway amount. Fair?

Good.

This is what it looks like. You can put your name in, and then you'll click I'm here. That's your check-in. That's all you need to do. That will count you and enter you into the giveaway. Okay, my friends, um, in order to get started, you first have to know exactly where you are. You cannot know which direction to go on a map unless you know where you're starting from. Am I right? So I want to walk you through a little exercise. Every person who has struggled to monetize their knowledge typically falls into one of these seven categories. So I'm going to go through all seven, and then I want to I want to ask you which one is you. The first one is who we call the jack of all trades, Jackie. Jackie quilts, paints, crochets, bakes, makes jewelry, and just picked up something new last month. She. Calls herself the jack of all trades. She gets overwhelmed by the things that she could teach, and the indecision stalls everything else. She second-guesses every choice. Picking one feels like giving up the rest. She's worried that she'll choose the wrong one, sink months into it, and find out too late that it should have been something else. That's jack of all trades Jackie. Next is zero followers Zoe. Now, Zoe says, I've got zero people on my email list, and her followers, they're friends and family. She hates social media. It's exhausting. Marketing feels icky, salesy, and forced. She's a maker, not a marketer, and she does not want to become an influencer to make this happen. Deep down, she's been waiting to be discovered. If her work were good enough, people would find her. She's worried that she'll pour months into building a course And no one will sign up. The next one is Tech Timid Tammy and Tom. Tech Timid Tammy. What camera? What lighting? What app? She can check her email and post a photo, and that's about where her tech confidence ends. Words like editing, lighting, microphone, and platform make her want to close the laptop. She's tried filming herself and it came out blurry. She's convinced she needs a professional studio. She's worried that technology is a wall that she'll never get over. Next is camera-shy Cami. Do I have to show my face? She's a private person. She might call herself an introvert. She hates the sound of her voice, doesn't like herself in a video. She keeps asking the same hopeful question, can I just show my hands? She's afraid of being watched by strangers, judged, or maybe internet bullies, and she's worried that teaching online means become someone that she's not. And there's no version of this that fits her. Next is Frustrated Fran. Okay, she's tried teaching online. She's tried maybe YouTube or Zoom, maybe a Facebook group or a membership. Some of it worked a little, but none of it stuck. Her membership has just a few members in it. She started to wonder if online courses are fading and if she already missed her moment. She dreads spending another year or another dollar on something that stalls. Next is Too Busy Betty. Betty, well, she's already running a one-person show. She's making, selling, packing orders, markets and fairs, the website, the social media, and the rest of the life on top of it. She has the desire but not the margin. She wants to spend her energy on her craft, not on marketing. She's tired, not lazy, on a tight budget, and afraid that teaching will swallow the craft that she loves. She's worried that her dream will always be one day. Next is in-person Pam. In-person Pam, while she's taught for years— workshops, guild meetings, the local art league, a classroom— her gap is not teaching, it's the online translation. So her classes are hands-on and personal, and she can't picture that magic surviving on a screen. She's more ready than anyone in the room, she just doesn't know it. She's worried everything that makes her class special in person will get lost online. Okay, so tell me which one you are. And for the fellas in the room, I've got a list for you as well. So tell me in the chat, which one are you? Too Busy Betty and a touch of In-Person Pam. Camera Shy Cami. Yeah, Pam. In-Person Pam. Many, many, many of you. Already teach in person. Yep, you can absolutely be more than one.

I love it.

A little bit of every one of these. Veronica says zero followers. Zoe. France is a little Jackie and a little Cami. All right. Well, I have good news. First of all, you're in good company. None of you are alone. These are all so common and all so Um, also something that we can manage. For the Jackies and the Jacks and the Zoeys and the Zachs and the Tammys and the Toms, you are actually all so close to doing what it is that you're here to do. The problem is that the way that you've been taught how the online world works has maybe made it harder or more confusing to get consistent revenue, and that is because There is a system and a process to earning revenue from your knowledge when you use the right method that makes students all over the world be, be able to see what you offer and know that it's for them. This system is the way to succeed with online education regardless of where you're starting. Now, this formula, this method has only 3 steps, and it might just be the missing piece to helping you finally turn your knowledge into online revenue and results for your students. If you want me to share it with you, just type missing piece in the chat. Just type missing piece in the chat. Before I show you the method, we got to talk about what's happening right now. Yeah, missing piece. All right, all right. Method is coming. Method is coming. The more automated the world becomes, the more valuable human guidance. Becomes. We have information available to us right now more than we could possibly ever use. We can search for almost anything and everything online. We can get a question and an answer in seconds, and yet having an answer and knowing how to use it are 2 very different things. So the space between knowing about something and being able to do something with that knowledge lives in good teaching. The person who can show someone the way becomes a guide, and that's the opportunity that I want you to see. The more automated the world becomes, the more valuable human guidance becomes. So the screen quite literally delivers the invitation. So online, the screen is how you have access to millions and millions of people from every corner of the world. You right here are an example of that. Online gives us the ability to reach people. Your craft delivers the transformation. So something that gives the student more capability, more choice, and more ways to use what they earn and love— this is the kind of education that I'm interested in helping you build, the kind that delivers transformation for your students. There is something happening right now. It's called the analog advantage for online educators. Where people are going online to learn knowledge that will help bring them into their life. So we are in the midst of an absolute renaissance, and the research is telling us as well. So 3 out of 4 adults participated in a craft project last year. That's up from 58% just 10 years ago. Searches for analog hobbies have increased 136% over the last 6 months. And 82% of consumers said tutorial videos make them more willing to try a new craft. And the $353 billion industry of online education is projected to pass $1.4 trillion in the next 7 years. Okay, my friends, put those 4 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 meeting. This is why I want you to take this possibility of teaching really seriously. You already hold the knowledge to help someone begin. So grab your pencils, we're going to dive into the method, my friends, okay? The number one mistake that I see creatives make when they go to teach online is that they build something without evidence that anybody wants it. So before the tech, before the camera, and before the first lesson ever gets made, we have to choose what deserves to be built. So we gather what I call proof before production. Proof before production. What that looks like is a little bit of a Venn diagram. So this is where your skills, your passions, and market demand all overlap. Okay, this is where they all overlap. So that purple area in the middle there, that's what we're after. So I first want you to start wide. I want you to write up to— I'm going to say 3, even though I know some of you could do a dozen. I'm going to say up to 3 broad categories that you could teach. Now these are areas of knowledge that you hold that you could teach. We're not choosing a particular class at this point. If you have one, if you only have one, perfect, write it down. If you do have more than 3, write down as many as you need to, but we're going to try to get it down to 3 and then to 1 by the end of the day. So examples of this could be something like embroidery. Painting and quilting. Okay, if you only have one, let's say you're here as a photographer. Photography, photography is your thing. Then you could compare branches of photography that you could teach. So that might look like portraits, wildlife, and product photography. Okay. So start with what you've practiced and what people ask you about. I'm going to give you 30 seconds. I'm going to go grab a glass of water. I'm going to give you 30 seconds. To write down your 3 broad categories that you could teach. Again, some of you will only have one, but some of you really are here with many different things that you could teach. I'm going to give you my examples to look at while I go grab my water. So my examples are surface pattern design, flower gardening, and high-protein plant-based nutrition. Yes, I could teach on that. Okay, I'm going to give you 30 seconds to write yours down. Okay, you got them. Perfect. Now, what you're gonna do if you have your worksheet pages is fill in this table. If you don't have your worksheet pages, you can jot this down in your notebook.

Okay.

They are over on the hub if you need to grab them, but this is going to work great as well. So what you're going to do, I'll use mine as an example, is fill in the first 3 under the word idea on the left-hand side. Now I'm going to walk you through how we're going to rate these. So the first one is on passion. You got to look at these 3 things and say, do I really want to teach this? Okay, so number 1 is, you know what, I don't really have a desire to teach it. It is absolutely possible that you be amazing at something and there'd be tons of demand for it, but you don't really want to teach it. Um, teaching requires a little fire in your belly. Teaching requires something like, I would really love to see someone else win with this, and I can hang with creating content and answering questions about the topic, right? So number 2 is I've got a little bit of interest. Number 3 is I would enjoy teaching this for sure. Number 4 is like, okay, this actually lights me up. And number 5 is like, this is my calling. Like my calling, talk about a fire in my belly. Like this is a calling to pass this on. Okay. So it might be helpful to picture helping a beginner experience their first success. And are you excited about that? Got it. Can you rate that? So let's use mine as an example. Mine, 5, absolutely surface pattern design. Like, I am— one of my life's calling is to pass on surface pattern design. I think I overshot flower gardening a little bit.

Um, when—

okay, this is great because I made a mistake. So like, when I was filling this out, I was like, yeah, I love flower gardening. But actually, when I think about teaching it, I would rate that around a 3. I don't, I don't, I'm not really lit up about like teaching people about soil types and stuff. But I do love to do it for myself. So that's a great example. It's not how, right? How much, how much would you love to teach it? And then number 3, feeling the same way about that high protein plant-based nutrition. I, I love it, but I don't necessarily want to come alongside someone and teach them all the ins and outs. Of it. So that's how I've rated mine. Okay, you rating yours? Feeling like that's clear? If it comes back to it, you got to think fire in your belly. Do you really want to teach this, answer questions about it, and work on lessons about the topic? Rate it 1 through 5. The next one is skill. So how skilled are you? Can you guide someone to a result? So number 1 is you know what, I am still learning the basics about this one. Number 2 is I have some experience, but I think translating it, teaching it would be a bit hard. Number 3 is I can guide a beginner to a result. Number 4 is I'm experienced and I've helped others. And number 5 is I have strong judgment. I can absolutely troubleshoot. I feel like an expert, right? So remember that you don't have to be a leading expert to rate yourself number 5, right? So nowhere this list is I'm a leading expert in my industry, right? There are millions of people that can choose number 5 because you know your craft well, you are skilled. And I would say anywhere from a 3 and above— so if you're rating a 3, 4, and 5, that's high enough to push this skill to a course. All right, so this is how I would rate mine for skill. Surface pattern design I mean, it's my life's work, so I rate that a 5. Flower gardening, you know, I'm gonna rate my skill a 3. There's plenty that I don't know about it, but I could help someone get— I could help someone get started. Same with my plant-based high-protein nutrition. I can for sure unlock some things for, for people, but there's so much that I don't really know about it. about, you know, health and how it all works. Got it? So I want you to rate yours via skill. Now, demand is one that takes a little bit more. I'm going to show you what it is, and then we're going to dive into how do we really calculate demand. And you're going to have to probably go do some of this work tonight, but it won't take you long. So demand is what evidence can I point to that there is actually demand for this topic in the marketplace? Okay, so number 1, I haven't found any evidence that anybody wants to learn this. 2 is there is general interest in the category. 3 is that there is interest in related content or books or classes. 4 is, you know what, there's tons of like repeated questions, engagement, struggles that I can help with. And number 5 is, you know what, there are direct people who are requesting this of me all the time, and there's lots of demand in the marketplace. So I'll teach you how to look not only at your own audience, the people that you currently serve, but also outside of anybody who you might have in your audience, especially if you don't have an audience. Okay, so we're looking for demand. There are 4 places to find demand. Step number 1 is to again look inside your own kind of circumference. Now Some of you may not be able to do this portion, and that's okay. But if you do, if you have shared your craft, if you have sold your craft, if you've taught your craft in person, open up your DMs, your emails, your comments, and start to look for requests to explain how you do something. We're looking for evidence that people in your audience are looking for help with this craft. You can also revisit any of the questions that you've gotten at an in-person event. So whether you sell at an in-person market or you teach at in-person workshops, maybe you can go revisit the feedback that you've gotten, or the follow-up emails that you've gotten, or just the questions that you get asked when you are at an in-person event. Number 3 is to search your inbox. So, or your Etsy inbox if you sell on Etsy. So search, look for common questions, requests, or struggles, you're looking for phrases that start with, how do you, can you explain, or I'm struggling with. Those are what you're looking for. Okay, now step number 2 is to go kind of out in the world and look for proof in the marketplace. Okay, so we got to be careful when we do this. Because all we're looking for is evidence that people are looking for help with this topic. We are not going to compare ourselves to other people. We are not going to copy anything that we see, and we're going to protect the mission that we have. But we do need to go make sure that there's evidence in the marketplace that people want help with this topic. So I want you to search for— search YouTube for your craft for beginners, right? So if you are a flower gardener, you could type in flower gardening for beginners, and I want you to start looking at the content on YouTube. Same thing with Google. Google it and find what there is that is currently available for help in your topic, in your category. Then I want you to do some research. So this is called market research. You're going to read the comments, you're going to read the conversations, you're going to look for what people want to learn. Maybe what they've already tried, maybe what they still don't understand. What we're doing is building what I call an evidence stack. Okay, so from this, I want you to save 5 to 15 questions that are coming from different places online and specifically pay attention to any struggle that repeats itself. Okay, any struggle that repeats itself, I want you to star or circle. Because when several beginners struggle with the same thing, you have found a specific place where they might need guidance, and that is where your course idea can get stronger. Now, step number 3 is to find evidence of spending. So are people willing to pay to get help with this category, with this topic? So you can try these Google searches: your topic plus books or book reviews, your topic plus workshop or workshop reviews and your topic plus online course. So I want you to add to your evidence stack relevant paid offers that people are already spending money on. Okay, this gives you a sign that yes, people are not only looking for help with this, but they're also willing to spend money to get the help. Now the last one is totally optional, but it is really fascinating. There's a website called Answer the Public. Have you used it. It's called Answer the Public. It is a tool that you can use for your evidence stack. Now you can get 3 free searches a day on Answer the Public, so use them wisely. And I would use them for your top 3. So you can start with a free account, and then what you do is enter a simple topic like cut flower garden, and then you can choose a country and a language, and then you can open up organic searches that people ask for. So what Answer the Public does is it shows you the top things in that category that people search for. You see how helpful that could be? So this is what it looks like. It's incredibly interesting and also incredibly helpful. So take your top 3, go pop them in Answer the Public. Remember, you get 3 free a day. You don't need more than that. Then it's going to give you all of the searches for that category that people are doing, and it will give you ideas to validate your idea. It will also give you ideas to expand on it. Okay. Alright, so you've got to do a little research to validate the idea. Remember, this is the evidence. I haven't found any. So if you, if you go through all that evidence, I mean all that research, and you don't find any evidence, you gotta rate it a 1. All the way to number 5 is not only do I find evidence, evidence in the marketplace. But my goodness, I'm also being asked directly to do this. Now listen to me. Listen up, buttercup. If you're— if you are multitasking, come back to me for a second. When you do this, you will feel imposter syndrome. All right. So when you feel it, say, there it is. I knew it was coming. Hi, how are you? Been a while. Okay. When you do this, when you go looking for all the different things in your category You will feel imposter syndrome. You let that fall at your feet. It does not get a say in the work that we are doing here. You are called to pass on your craft, and the students that need you are waiting on you, and they are begging you to continue. So don't let anything that your little eyes see dis— um, uh, dissuade you or move you off of this path. Okay? All you're doing is getting evidence for demand, and then you're putting your eyes right back on your own paper. Okay?

Okay.

All right. Moving on. Let's score via demand. So this is my example. Demand for surface pattern design is a 5. Flower gardening is a 4. High protein plant-based nutrition, also a 4 based on what I could find. So when you do that, what you're gonna do is total them all up. Now again, you might not be able to finish this particular part right now because I'm gonna guess that you need to go do some digging, just maybe 10 minutes after our call, 10 minutes of looking around, searching your inbox, looking at your DMs, and doing some research online in order to validate this demand. Um, okay, so you might have to come back and do this, but what you'll do is choose the highest scored category. Okay, choose the highest scored category. This is going to be the most exciting thing that you're most skilled at that also has the most market proof that there is demand for it. Now, once you do that, okay, so you can do this. I see somebody says I have 12. You can do this with as many ideas as you have. And let me go back because if you have a tie, what I want you to do is choose the one that has the, the clearest transformation for your student. So we'll talk more about this as the week goes on. But if you have a tie, choose the one That has the clearest student win, right? So we'll talk about kind of building that backwards tomorrow and how to identify a student win. So you can come tomorrow with a tiebreaker and we'll do it. We'll do it live. Okay, so then once you have the winner, I want you to make the winner a little bit more specific. So I'm guessing that like me, you have some broad interests written down. So a broad interest is like gardening. But a learning need, right, could be way more specific like that, way more specific than that. Like, people keep asking me how to store dahlia tubers over the winter, right? So that's very specific. What we're starting to lean into is something called a niche. Some of you might say a niche. I say niche. A niche is the very specific intersection where your unique skill skills or expertise meets a highly defined target audience looking to learn that skill, and it's incredibly powerful. So your niche, super powerful for 3 different reasons. Number one, it reduces competition. So standing out as a general music teacher can be really difficult, especially online, but you can easily dominate, dominate a market as like jazz piano teacher for kids, right? Because instantly people know that it's for them if they're looking for that. You can also command higher prices. So learners pay a premium for specialized expertise that directly solves their very specific creative goals. All right. And then your niche, once you figure it out, will also help you simplify your messaging because knowing exactly who your students are is going to make it so much easier to write content that resonates with them. So let's practice. All right, if you wrote down something like woodworking, a more exact version of that that you might actually want to teach is something like hand-carving wooden spoons. A hairstylist— this is my favorite example because if you tell me you're a hairstylist, I'm like, okay, great. But if you tell me that you specialize in cutting curly hair, I'm all in. I'm super listening, and I'm telling all my curly-haired friends about you. All right, I actually drive an hour and a half to go to someone who is certified in the Curly Girl Method just to get my hair cut because she specializes in curly hair. So do you see the power of the— the power of a niche? Not only does it mean that I can recognize that it's for me, but even if it's not for me, let's say I had straight hair, I would be like, okay, that's not for me, but I have a friend who has curly hair, and I'm going tell you— her about you, right? So a niche will instantly help someone recognize whether you are for them or not. Crochet— maybe from general crochet you go to designing plushies. If you're sewing, maybe it's learning to adjust sizes from store-bought clothes. If it's painting, maybe it's pet portraits, right? So we're just looking to get clearer about the exact portion of the category Let's take my 2 examples for my signature courses. So I could teach Adobe Illustrator for graphic design. That is very broad, but I, I defined my niche specifically for surface pattern design. That means that the people— so let me just talk about this for a second. Doesn't this feel a little scary? Like, because if I taught general graphic design, Adobe Illustrator for graphic design, by the math and the map, there are more people that would qualify for that. When I narrow it— when I narrow it in and say, nope, this is only for people who are interested in surface pattern design, right, then it's less people, but it's more magnetic because the person who's interested in that immediately knows that this is for them. And are there enough people in the world world to where a niche will actually be okay? Are there enough people in the world that narrowing in and making it very clear that it's for a specific person is okay? Say it's okay in the chat. It's okay to narrow it in, because when you talk to everyone, you talk to no one. Okay, when you talk to everyone, you talk to no one. You got to narrow it in, and we're going to immediately recognize ourselves in it. Actually, I mean, literally just thought about this today. It's what we're doing right here. So could I teach generally anyone how to teach online? I could, because, you know, under the hood, a lot of it is the same. But I decided to teach creatives specifically, artisans specifically, because there is a unique way that we feel and we see the world and we speak to each other and we connect, right? So immediately, my hope is that you knew this was for you because you are creative. Okay, the power of a niche. Power of a niche. All right, so proof before production. The number one reason that creatives launch to crickets, okay, is because they built a course with no evidence that anyone wanted it. That is what we are here to eradicate today. You are going to build a course that you know people are going to want. All right, so we're ready for your homework. This is your homework. Number 1, finish up the demand. So I suspect you might have 5 or 10 minutes of research to do on looking for demand in your category. It can be broad, but if you can start to narrow it, narrow it. The second thing that I want you to do before you come back to class tomorrow is to map out the chosen craft. So once you circle the winner, I want you to map it out. We sometimes call this the process exercise. Okay, so I want you to set 10-15 minute timer, and I want you to list out. So I like to do this by hand. Okay, so step away from technology and do this by hand. I want you to list out as many of the major steps in your process as you can. I want you to list 10 to 20 if you can. If you've got 50, the more the better. Truly, this is going to become something that is very highly useful for us tomorrow. So I don't want you to judge it. All right, we're not judging, we're not deciding what you're going to teach, we're not deciding on your course. So if you have something that you know you would never teach, don't, don't not write it down. We need to document the process. So this is no judgment, it is a brain dump of everything that goes into the process of your category. All right, so for instance, surface pattern This is what my, my list looked like. Okay, I'd write gather inspiration, make quick jots and thumbnails, sketch or paint, digitize the artwork, choose the color palette, build and place the motifs, create repeat patterns, organize the files, build collections, create a portfolio, research companies, pitch the work, negotiate your contracts, work with copyright. Write and add multiple revenue streams. Okay, so there's no judgment. I could have written down 50, and so I want you to just exhaust your process. I want you to think through it step by step and just write, write, write, write, write everything that you can write down about your process. And that's what you're going to bring to class tomorrow. That's what you're going to bring. Oops, I'm so sorry, I didn't have my example That's my example. So that is what I want you to bring with you tomorrow. All right, now Tuesday— today we're finding it, we're deciding it. Tomorrow we're going to outline it, and I'm going to show you my method for how to extract your knowledge from the work that you do today into outlining your first course. Thursday we're going to talk about how to find your people, even if you you have zero people on an email list or a small following or no following, or if you have a big following, Thursday is all about how we think about marketing and how we find our people. Now Friday is when you become an artisan educator. Friday is also when I am going to teach you the simplest tech setup to help you bring your course to life. All right. Now, just like our craft, I believe that teaching is a craft worthy of craftsmanship. We've got to choose the right starting point, explain the step you know to do by instinct, and then help someone experience their first success. You can learn to do this well. I believe that what you know is worth passing on. So much of what I know began with someone who was willing to teach me. Now, skills stay alive because people practice them and people share them. We know this. I believe that artisans are called to be educators. We always have been and we always will be, and we, my friends, are next in line. So are you ready for our studio word of the day? This studio word is the word for your tuition credit today. The word is legacy. The word is legacy. So it's on the next, the next one as well. Take a screenshot of this or go write it down right now. To earn your $100 in the tuition bank, you will insert the word legacy. You have 24 hours to do it, so you can do it from the replay as well, but it does expire— not the replay, just the word— within 24 hours. Okay, so your tuition credit will build throughout the week. It will compile and it will build in a bank. Bank, and then you can use it all the way through the end of the day on Monday if you choose to join us in Artisan Educator. We'll be sharing all the details as the week goes on. Got it? Legacy. All right, that is a wrap for today. You've got your homework. This is what happens next. I would love for you to share with me your biggest takeaway in the chat, and I would also love to invite you to ask a question, to submit a question. So I'm going to come We're going to take a small break to give you a minute to go bank your tuition credit and to also submit your question in the team. Actually don't know where it's at. It's on the hub page. You can submit a question for the live Q&A portion of our call. So the live Q&A portion, completely optional, but I would love to hang back and answer your questions and talk about teaching online. So submit your question. We're going to take about a 10-minute break, but I'll leave the video here, and we're going to come back and do Q&A after you have a minute to submit your questions. I know my team has the link in the chat for you to submit your questions, so don't put them in the chat. You've got to put them into a little form that we have in the chat. All right, and I will see you back here in just a minute.

I'm—

I have a really special video for you to watch from another course creator. I'm going to try to play it for you.

Like, if you think about your biggest dreams and then multiply them— I don't even think by 10, Bonnie, I think by 100 or more— that is what's just the cusp of what's possible when you go online.

Hi everyone, I'm here with Jennifer Long from Sew a Story. I'm so excited to invite you into her world. Jennifer is first and foremost a doll Her work is incredible, and she's also been an incredible online educator. We're going to dive all into it. Jennifer, please say hello, introduce yourself, and tell us a little bit more about your world.

Hello, Bonnie and everyone. Yes, my name is Jennifer Long. My business is called Sew a Story, and I was a professional ballet dancer, I say turned early childhood educator, and brought those 2 worlds together into the doll making world. Now I run a business where I get to do my passion from my home in my small town, and I get to be online with the people that understand my craft. And I have had so many doors open up because of this opportunity to teach online, becoming a fabric designer with a leading fabric company in the world, as well as create memberships and courses for this craft.

Take me back to doll making. How did you get started in doll making, and long did you do it? And then take me to the moment that you decided to start reaching people online.

I've always been really excited about doll making because as a child my grandmother owned a sewing and knitting store, and I used to sit by her feet. And I— we didn't have a lot of money, so I would imagine that I wanted something for my doll and she would just create it. She would create the pattern, she She would knit it, she would sew it, and it was there where I like kind of got a spark that you could do this. Danced in a professional ballet school, I saw costumes come to life and just change people's— like your ability when you put on a tutu, you could just like change who you were. And so that is like my storytelling through fabric kind of sort of side of it all. But it actually really happened for me when I had my first, um, child and then my second child. We have 4, but when I first had them, I wanted to make some stuff for them, so I made like quilts and I made dolls, and I didn't think anything of it. They were so young, my first 2, like toddlers, 3 and 1 and a half. And I was like, clean up, clean up, we're gonna clean up. And they put all of their toys into the toy bin, but they specifically put their handmade dolls up on the fireplace shelf, and they just sat them there. And I didn't say anything of it. I just thought that was cute. And And night after night after night, they continued to do this. And I thought, wow, they're so young. I'm an early childhood educator. Why are they treating these toys any more special or different than the other? And I realized then that it was because handmade can be felt all the way through the project. And it's different. It's different. I know it's so different. And that was like the turning point. That was the point where, to me, where I knew like this was what I had to do with my life, was to like share how making something can impact others, my children, other generations, on how they can just treat and feel loved from something as simple as a toy. Making that doll gave me pleasure, but seeing them treat it so differently just changed it completely for me. So that's how I got into doll making.

I showed you while you were talking, but I literally got chills from the top of my head to my toes because doesn't that sum it up? Like, we fall in love with our craft because we can feel it. And then when we can give that gift to someone else for them to feel it, it's so incredible. Okay, so I still don't know though how you took this and got it on the internet. So at what point were you like, I'm going to teach this online? When was that? How long ago was that? And did you just know that you wanted to do it online? How did you come to that?

I haven't aged at all, but my first is 20, I will say. And, um, so when— so that this was about like, I would say, 18 years ago that I really started thinking that I could teach doll making. Teaching just felt natural to me because my grandma had taught me, but also because I was an early childhood educator and I just felt like I needed to I just wanted everybody to know how this changed our family. But I was making dolls for other people and I was seeing it actually more and more like it was changing others' lives. And it wasn't me making it for a child that I even knew, but they just knew that somebody had purchased a handmade gift. So I live in a very, very, very tiny town. My husband and I have been together, married for 25 years. 5 years this year.

Yay!

And he lives in— we farm in a town of 800 people in Canada, in central Canada. And so I just don't have a lot of resources around me. And so literally the moment that I could get out and meet other people that wanted to learn this, so I actually just started doing it as maybe many people do for free on like Facebook Lives. I was just building a community and just doing that. People were coming together from everywhere, like it was just so amazing to me. From people I was just telling you earlier, Bonnie, that like someone today came from Australia. She woke up at two o'clock in the morning to come to one of our lives, and it's because when you connect something that you are so passionate about, it reads through and people want to come. Started off free, but I think as this whole course experience is going to show us all, is that people. actually want to pay for this experience, this curated example of what you can teach them? And so, you know, we started to build from there.

You know what that really makes me want to like talk about for a second is that as much as we love our craft, so you'll have to tell me if you feel this, but I feel it because my craft is surface pattern design and no one in my real day-to-day life has that in common with me. They don't know what exactly that is. And so the power of the internet, like why this woman woke up at 2 AM to come, is that this is her opportunity to be surrounded by people who get it, who love dollmaking, who understand the language. She's invited into a room that she clearly does not have access to where she currently lives. Can you talk about that a little bit? Like, that's why I started creating community a long time ago was like, it's a little lonely to be so obsessed and speak such a language around something, and you want to share it with people who get it too. And teaching online is one of the ways to curate that.

Yeah. And the beautiful thing is that when it is your community, you get to control a couple of things that work well for you, like the time of day that you meet. And so I'm sure if She got to pick 2 in the morning, wasn't her favorite time, but you know, it worked, works for me. But back then it worked when my kids were napping, and so I could pick a time for people, um, within my life where I could be at home. I could do it when my children were napping or when I had cartoons on for them and meet together with people. So it was able to like really fit into my life and like you said, was able to fill me up in a way that I could share some Something that I was so deeply passionate about that I wanted to like pass on, and that even experiences and techniques and all of these things from there while in the midst of like the life that I was trying to build and have with my 4 children.

Okay, so let's talk about your 4 children. I know your business has been wildly successful. Would you tell us more? Would you tell us more about what this has made possible for you? What has it looked like for you and your family? What meaning has it brought?

I think that's something that, you know, we don't go into this thinking that is going to happen. Because I didn't go into— I mean, I just wanted like to really connect with people and share my love for doll making. And because the internet gives you exposure to the whole world, you're able to pull in together people that are all like-minded, that, that So once you have that, other opportunities and other doors start opening up that you could not even imagine. Like, if you think about your biggest dreams and then multiply them, I don't even think by 10, Bonnie, I think by 100 or more. That is what's just the cusp of what's possible when you go online. It's really, it's really phenomenal. And, you know, we have done a job, if you aren't comfortable online, we have done a really good job of protecting. Didn't put my children's faces online. It was really just me putting myself out there and my craft and my hands. Because of that, I have been able to become a fabric designer with my, like, favorite fabric company, you know, working on my 16th fabric collection already with them. You know, being able to, we never thought that, you know, my income could do that for our family. And so being able to make the path easier for them, and not always easier, but just wider, faster for them, is, is just like absolutely incredible and such a gift that doll making could do. And so my grandma, who is no longer with us, would be just so proud that me sitting by her feet at her rocking chair asking, can you make this pink dress that I really saw in the old catalog that we had, um, has turned into something like this where I'm really passing down what she has taught me.

Okay, second time chills all the way down. Um, but that resonates with me because my craft also came from my great-grandmother to my grandmother to my mother to me, and now I see it in my daughter. One thing that I want you to speak to specifically is doing this from a So I also live in a tiny town, not quite as tiny as yours, but mine's tiny. I mean, in the thousands. And because of what I do online, I am able to stay in the small town that I want to be in, which means that I get to raise my children with my sister in the same town as my parents, as David's parents. The opportunity that it's opened up goes so deep. So talk to me about what it's meant for you. to be able to stay in a small town and still be able to reach people all around the world?

When I got married to my husband 25 years ago, my grandma, who isn't with us, made me a little thing that said— I almost might cry about this— that said, bloom where you're planted. And I just loved it so much because, you know, I wanted to be in this small town, but I was also very apprehensive, and it was a hard to break into, you know, being coming from the city into a small town. You know, I was able to raise my kids at home, and we are able to be here and do all of the things that I never dreamt even possible when I, um, we moved out to this, this small town. It's been like no other occupation that you can dream of, and doing what I am so passionate about.

Go in your to the place of a person who has a craft, they have a passion for it, and they're, they're thinking about teaching online, and it just feels anything from like fuzzy to overwhelming to vulnerable to scary, and they're not sure. What would you tell them?

I'd say you can absolutely do it. People are coming to you because you are attracting them. You have something to offer, and So you don't have to feel like people— I have never had someone on a live call be mean, and I feel really sensitive, um, because you're attracting people that want what you have. You know, with the internet, people can leave your room so easily. They don't have to stay. And, and so that is not— that is a fear that I think we could just like bust out the door because in fact, like, it's not just Just think about your community or your town or your church or your school and the people that might be interested in you there. Take the, like, the top of the people that would be the most interested in you, and those are the people that are getting attracted to, to what you have to teach. And also, you can control how you teach them. So maybe at the beginning you only show your hands, um, you know, or maybe you show your face and then Go right down to your hands quickly. And, you know, it— you have everybody on silence and you just have a chat going. So there is an interaction happening. There's so many ways that you can control it online. And so you can build it for what works best for your life and it could change. So I'm in a different position now than I was when my kids were 1 and a half and 3. So I can like interact differently with our community now than I did.

Thank you so much, Jennifer.

I love you.

I love your story. And most of all, I'm so grateful that you decided to teach your craft online.

I am just so excited for the Artisan Educator and what this means for all artisans and this whole industry. Like I said, my grandma— I just feel emotional about it— she would be so, so proud of what we have built with the knowledge she passed to me. And I know that we are touching and changing Lives all of the time too.

So, so excited. Hey, welcome back! Who's ready for a little Q&A? Uh, thank you so much for everybody who submitted questions. They're amazing, and I'm so excited to just dive into them. So This is casual. I hope that you have— I wish we could see each other. I hope that you have something cozy to, to drink maybe, and we'll get through as many of your questions as I possibly can. Okay, the first one is from Jennifer. Speaking of Jennifer, that's who you just met was Jennifer Long from Sew a Story. I hope you enjoyed diving into her world of doll making a little bit. She's incredible. Okay, Jennifer said, in my field there are a lot of free tutorials available. How can I earn money in in a saturated market where people are offering free tutorials and courses? Okay, this is such a good question, and it's one that we're actually going to touch on tomorrow quite a bit, but I would love to go ahead and talk about it here as well because I don't think we can talk about it enough. It's almost the same thing as what I was talking about with your niche. Sometimes we find that when we start to narrow Well, the same thing is kind of opposite from what we think with free content online. So the more free content online, the better it is for you. Let me explain. The more free content online that there is, number one, that, that drives demand up on your tally significantly.

Okay.

So the more free content there is, So the more free content online, the more validation, the more evidence you have that yes, this is something that people are looking to get help with. Now equally, it means the more confusion there is. So the more free content online there is, the more confusion there is as well. I also know this firsthand. So for about the first 20 months of me being a surface pattern designer, I piecemealed together everything I possibly could from every corner of the internet. One teacher would do it this way, another teacher would do it this way. One YouTube tutorial taught this, another YouTube tutorial taught this. They all had different priorities, they all had different workflows, and I spent so much time going down rabbit holes I didn't need to go down, learning things in hindsight that I didn't need to learn but I didn't know time, not being confident or certain that the person I was learning from was doing it the right way or doing it the way that I wanted them to do it. So absolutely, I mean, you tell me, haven't you felt this yourself? Haven't you felt this yourself if you try to learn something on your own? So what people are doing at that moment is begging for someone to kind of reach through the fog, grab them by their hand, and come say, let me show you the the way. Like, people— we call that a path, right? But what people want to do is pay for the filter. So people will pay you to be the filter so that all the noise gets quieted, all the searching and all the endless rabbit holes go away, and you say, let me show you step by step by step. I've been there. And so one of the things that I think is the most important thing that I can teach you as an educator is to be the So one of the things that we get really tempted to do when we teach online or build a course is put like everything in it that we possibly could. And that is, again, it feels like it's in service to our student, but it's actually not because we're failing them the filter. So the best online courses, the best online education experience is when an educator knows well enough to give their student everything that they need and also remove everything that they don't need. That is the filter that people pay for, and that is the filter that is so incredibly frustrating when there's so much content online. So the more free content online, the better. It means that there's absolutely demand, and it also means that people are, uh, wanting someone to be their filter to say, hey, I've got you, let me show you the Tons of you say yes, yes, yes, like this is absolutely how it feels to be online and trying to piecemeal it all together. So be the filter, know that it is a good thing if you, if you find it. Okay, Jackie says, what if you don't sell your craft? So I would love to hear from those of you here who don't have a physical thing that you make. So if you do you know, pottery, or you sew, or you paint, you have like a physical product from your craft. But what if you don't have a physical product and you're here? Let's say you're a health and wellness coach, or you're a choreographer, or you're a music teacher. Tell me what it is that you do in the chat. And then also, um, you may have a physical thing, but you may not sell it. And so that's completely fine. So sell Pull up the chat. Selling does not— it's not really related to your knowledge unless you're trying to teach people how to sell it. So this is kind of where we're headed tomorrow. Tomorrow we are going to identify the end result for your student. So let me read some of these. Yeah, digital artist. Okay, interior designer. Kathy, that's a perfect example. Okay, choreographer. Perfect. Chorus teacher. Perfect. Art safaris. Oh my goodness, this is so fun. You, you all are my people. It is so fun to be here with you. Okay, so So I lost my train of thought. Oh, tomorrow what I'm gonna teach you how to do is identify the end result, the transformation that your student is gonna have. So the best example that I can tell you maybe is about the dahlia tubers, right? So if you are a gardener, like I could teach this class. If you are a gardener and you love dahlias like I do, there's a whole method to digging your dahlias at the end of the season, storing them over winter. Making sure that they don't rot and being able to plant them the next year—that is an online course, right? That is a little course. Now, where we got to get really careful is like: What if I also sold those dahlia tubers? Because the fun thing about dahlia tubers is they multiply like a ton every year, and so if you have a dahlia that you love, you can divide the tuber. Tubers, and then they've multiplied and you can sell them. So what if I, I don't, but what if I also were to sell my dahlia tubers? Well, then tomorrow I'm going to be torn. Am I teaching them how to save and store their dahlia tubers, or am I teaching them how to sell their dahlia tubers, right? Which one? So we got to get really clear on that, because if we're not really clear, I'll be very tempted to add And then also, this is how you can make money by selling your dahlia tubers, right? So if the end result is I'm going to teach you how to save your dahlia tubers and never lose another one to rot over the winter again, end it there. But if I decide that the end result is, and I'm going to teach you how to monetize that, I'm going to teach you how to sell it, that's the end result. And so that's how we know what to put in the course. Otherwise, it does not go in the course because it's everything they need, nothing they don't. So if you, if you promise save your dally tubers and then you also throw in how to sell them, you've done a disservice to your student who came to you to only learn how to save them, right? Because now they're like, well, should I sell them? So you do not have to teach how to monetize. And so if you haven't monetized your craft, I would say suggest that you not teach someone else how to monetize your craft. I'm trying to think, there could be some exceptions there, like if you have— if you somehow have that knowledge skill, um, somehow without have actually done it, you're doing it yourself, that's completely possible. But it doesn't necessarily qualify your knowledge just because you monetized it. What qualifies your knowledge is being able to get someone to the end result that you promised. And so that's where we're headed tomorrow, we will be discussing it in detail on how to identify the end result, and then you were going to work backwards to build the course, and that will be used as the filter for what goes in and what stays out. Okay, okay, the next question. Okay, Heather has a good question. Heather, I wish that we were sitting together with a cup of something at the café. Heather says, my biggest concern is what if I'm totally burned out on the thing that is rising to the top that I'm most skilled and knowledgeable about? I know I should do that, but I feel the burnout rise up when I think about it. So Heather, so much love. Um, I think you're probably in good company. I think a lot of people feel this as well. And so there's not an easy answer. Uh, number 1, I would say that your passion needs to be scored very low. So if you are feeling burned out by this thing, and also that it's rising up when you think about it, I would score your passion as a 1, meaning you're highly skilled and there is demand, I'm guessing, but you do not, you do not feel lit up about teaching it. And that means that you could teach it, and we can talk about, you know, how to kind of like work around the burnout. But if you are truly burned out by what it is that's coming up for you, um, teaching it is going to expose you more to it. So teaching your subject is, you know, the benefit of it is that it's going to make you more knowledgeable about it and understand it in deeper ways than you ever knew possible. But it does mean that you kind of eat, live, and breathe it for a while, not necessarily the rest of your life, but while you're teaching it and, and working on the curriculum and helping your student and answering the questions, you kind of eat, breathe, and live it for a little while. And you've got to feel okay with that. Now, there are tons and tons of people who decide to teach something that doesn't score super high on passion because they're good at it and because there's demand for it. And so I also do want to give you permission to teach something that doesn't have to be, you know, your life's greatest passion, um, if it can help someone and you feel driven to pass it on. And also if you feel driven to— so my question for you, Heather, is, which I really wish we were sitting together, is how could we dig in to figure out why you're burned out? Because for instance, if you are burned out because because every dollar that you make is tied to you and always asks more of you and another hour of your time and another hour of your hands and supplies and all of that, then education could be your way out of that. And so teaching online could alleviate that pressure and the stress and give you a way out of your burnout. Okay. But if you're burned out because of the thing and the topic itself, then I would suggest maybe we steer you in another way and, and, and, and not. So that's really a bigger question is, why do you think the burnout is there? And do you think online education is, is the right way to kind of pivot your knowledge and pivot your career so that you Um, don't have to be so tied to it, and then maybe the burnout alleviates? Or is it truly that you've had enough of the craft? That's the question that I'll put back at you. Okay, so these are maybe similar. What if I haven't shared my craft on social media? And Metro Bird says, what if the people on my email list are not the people who want to take my course. So both of those are fine. Um, I know that there are some of you here with audiences. Uh, when I talk about an audience, right, I'm talking about social media followers, email list subscribers, um, and anyone who is following you on any of the discovery platforms. So that's YouTube, all the social medias like, um, X, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest. If you have a following, this is going to be easy. If you don't, and if me naming those made you feel a certain way, just hang in there with me specifically through, specifically through Thursday, because I'm going to teach you how you can do this without becoming the thing that you fear, without being tied to your phone, without being a content creator, and without being on a platform that you don't want to be on, and without doing anything that you don't want to do. Um, okay, so many, many, many of you don't have— are, are here with what we call zero followers Zoe, right? So maybe you don't have an email list, or you have a following or an audience that isn't the people who would take your course. That's what Thursday is all about. I'm going to teach you the way that I think about this. Um, there are 2 things that are huge unlocks for how you can begin thinking about attracting the people who do want your course. And you can start from zero and it is completely fine. So I think the 2 ways that I'll share with you on Thursday— I don't, I'm, I don't think I'll go into them right now, but they're coming, um— are going to be the biggest unlock for you potentially of the whole workshop when you start to understand how you can start to gather your people, um, without doing ads and without necessarily doing any of those things that you don't want to do, like become, you know, like dance on TikTok or whatever it is that you have in your head. The only thing that I will see now that I do want you to think about is while you don't have to do anything you don't want to do, you do have to be discoverable. You do have to— you do have to be willing to be discoverable online. I think you all agree with that. Um, I think if you want to teach online, you've— you have to admit that you also have to be findable online. But there are many, many, many different ways to do that, and we can work with, you know, where you're at and not only the size of your list but also how you want to see that come to life. There are many, many different ways that we can do that to make sure that you feel comfortable and still gather your audience for this course. So even if it's— let's say, um, let's say you're a photographer but you want to teach in Broidery, right? So you maybe you have 100,000 people on your email list, but they're all photographers. Well, then you're gonna start from zero with us, and I'm gonna teach you how to start gathering the audience for this for this offer, and that will be okay. Okay. Hang in there with me. We're gonna. It's gonna be okay. It's gonna be okay. Okay, how did you grow— Carolyn, great question. How did you grow comfortable with teaching live and giving demos, demonstrations to students? There's only one way, Carolyn. There's only one way. I did it uncomfortable first. So sorry to tell you that, but I hope you watched the video where I shared with you today of all Starting so many years ago of me online, I did it uncomfortably. I am an introvert, and there were many years where I hated to be on camera. I actually think, for the record, that online teaching is especially helpful for introverts. So tell me if you're an introvert. And if you're an introvert, you may be feeling like, no way can I teach this online. But let me tell you why it is so incredible, because as I'm just literally, I'm just sitting here in my studio all by myself. You want to see it? Just sitting here in my studio all by myself. Nobody's here. And when our call is over, I'll just be here all by myself in my quiet studio. And so it's actually quite wild. It It doesn't— as an introvert, teaching online does not— it isn't as draining, if you will, as something like an in-person teaching or in-person event. If you're used to doing something like a market or talking to a lot of people, there's— I think some of you may know more. I'm not an expert, but I think that being an introvert means that energize with alone time. And so, um, you can still maintain high energy when you teach online because it's so, um, it's, it's honestly so excluded. Amy says also. Um, so Marsha says, I'm just terrified of being judged. All right, so let's dive into this a little bit more. There's actually quite a few things that I want to talk about. Nobody that I know was comfortable out of the gate. It all takes being willing to be uncomfortable. In fact, being uncomfortable and being a little bit awkward is part of is is part of being willing to do the work. Oftentimes, I think people think that once they get to a certain place, like the difference was that they were. Confident. And I know many people who are successful online, and I can tell you that none of them are successful online because they were confident from the beginning. They were not confident, but they did it anyways. So they were terrified, including myself— terrified, full of fear, full of imposter syndrome, full of being afraid of being judged, but willing to do it anyways. And I'll talk to you about why in just a second, but willing to do Anyways, now confidence we know is not something that you can just have. So the only way that we can grow confidence is by telling ourselves that we're going to do something and then we do it. All right, you know this. Probably the best example to to help this click is like sometime in your life when you wanted to get healthy. I'm I'm guessing that we've all had a time in our life where we wanted to. Start eating better or cutting out sweets, or start walking every day, or start going to the gym every day. And so sometime in your life, you've held true to that promise. You promised yourself and you held true to it. And if you can close your eyes and just remember for a moment the way that it felt when you were doing what you promised yourself that you would do, your confidence skyrocketed. Okay, that's because the only way to increase confidence is to promise yourself you're going to do something and then do it. Whatever reason, we lie to ourselves more easily than anyone else. So we will promise ourselves that we're going to do something and then we will not, over and over and over and over again. And that does the opposite of build confidence. It depletes our confidence. So the only way is to say you're going to do it, and then you're going to do it, and it's going to be awkward, and you're going to do it anyways. And this is why. Because when we are— I, I want to normalize this so much because no one is immune to it. All right, so when you start teaching online, all kinds of things will come up. You will not like the way that you look. You will not like the way that your, your voice is. You will be afraid of being judged by others. You will be afraid of someone asking you a question that you can't answer. You'll be afraid that someone will realize that you're faking it the whole time. What Whatever, all of those things will come up. The only thing that will get you past that is to focus on the person who needs you, and I mean it. So all of those fears are really selfish, and I'm going to say that because it's okay, because me too. All right, they're all very selfish when I am consumed with fear over what someone will think, what someone will will say, how they will judge, what they will think. I'm focused on myself when I'm feeling those things. And actually, the only reason that I'm here today right now is that the only person that I'm thinking about is the person who needs me. It's the person who needs me to show up today regardless of how I feel about it. They need what I have to offer. And I'm— this is so like meta for me in the moment right now. Like, I'm— I was feeling this today, okay? And the only reason that I got to show up anyways is because I don't care about what anybody thinks. I don't care about what anybody will say about me. I am 100% focused on the person who needs the information that I have to give them, okay? And when I do that, all of the other stuff falls to my feet. All right. Right? It's not about me. It is not about what someone might say to me. It is not about what someone might judge me for. It is only focused on the person that is waiting on me to help them. And I have something that can potentially change the trajectory of not only their lives, but of their children's lives. And the ripple effect from the people in their life is bigger than my worry about what I sound like, look look like, what I say, what people will judge me for, or whatever. It is bigger than that. Okay, so my purpose, my why, has to be bigger than all of those internal dialogues that want to keep us small. If you let those keep you small, they will keep you small forever. They will always be there. That's the thing— you cannot wait for them to leave. You have to learn to manage them, and the only way to manage them is to get really, really clear about what— why it is you're here. What is it that you want to do? What do you want to change in your life? Who do you want to impact with the knowledge that you have? And then let that be more important than all of those worries. Okay, I feel like I just talked a really long time and I didn't look at the chat. Let me check in with you. Okay, okay, good. We're all just here afraid. Just let that be very clear. We're all just here very afraid. And also, aren't we glad that people are willing to show up afraid? And people need you. People need you to do the same. Bye, Nicola. Bye. Okay, next question. Um, Ross or Rose, I'm not sure, says, I have a website already with a random thing offered for teaching. Can I still create several classes to teach at once, or am I crazy to do that? You're not crazy to do that. Um, okay, so there are many, many people who teach many, many different things, and they do so very successfully. But I think that you will get more clarity as the week goes on, because the way that I think about especially what we talk about on Thursday is finding your people. The way that I think about that means that the more different categories of people that you're finding, the more work it is, which is fine. But it does take a very specific amount of work to gather the type of person for your online course. And you'll have to do it over and over and over and over again, based on how many different categories teach in. Can you do it? Absolutely. Um, I, I am doing it right now. This is— but this is the first time that I've ever done it. So this is the first time that I've very intentionally kind of like, um, grown a different— gathered a different kind of person from my, um, from my traditional. So traditionally I'm very focused on teaching surface pattern design. This one we got to expand into creatives of all kinds, which is why you're here, which is really exciting for me Because you are our people. And so it's really fun to be able to, to differentiate audiences, but it does get more complicated the more you do that. So again, I think you'll get more clarity over that as we move into Thursday. But what I would ask for you, Ross, is to choose one for our practice today and tomorrow. So Completely fine if you have several classes that you want to teach at once, but I want you to double down on the one that scores the highest, or if they are tied, the one that you are, are most excited about to double down on today and tomorrow. Okay, so choose one, and then you'll understand how to take what we do today all week and apply it to all the other ones as well when you're ready. Okay, Brenda says, will you be addressing tech things such as how to construct, purchase something that will do great overhead shots without getting in the way of me actually doing something live? So yes, Brenda, loud and clear. Tech is the number one thing that everyone has in common of wanting to figure out. So that is what Friday is reserved for. I'm going to show you, um, there's many, many different levels of technology. So the studio I'm in right now is dedicated to video. And my goodness, uh, it took me, uh, like 13 years to get a dedicated studio. Okay, so I have many, many, many years of different setups that still look really good. So I am going to be revealing to you on Friday my favorite simplest We're actually going to do it live together, and I'm going to let you watch me set up the simplest tech setup that I love. And just say a prayer that tech is nice to me on Friday because we're going to be doing it again. We're going to be doing it live. But I want to show you hopefully how easy it is to use the simplest setup that still looks really good and sounds really good, and you can use it to bring your course idea to life. That is what we're doing on Friday. Okay, Jackie says, what if you feel that you can teach a course that you learned from another teacher that is still active? Okay, so this is a great question. There is a saying, Jackie, that everything has been done before, but it has not been done by you. And so I very much believe that there is room for more educators because there are so many students. There was another question that was about things feeling saturated. But right, let me look this up. Yeah, do you know how many people are in the world? 8.3 billion people in the world. 1.5 billion of them speak English. If you are an English speaker if your course is going to be in English. And so there's a lot, a lot, a lot of students, and I would encourage you— we'll do this together later this week too— but I would encourage you to figure out just how many of those students do you really need to make an impact in your life. Um, so, but I do have some thoughts about that, right? So, uh, you should never teach something that you learned from someone else in the way that they teach it. As an educator, you will have your own perspective, you will have your own viewpoint, you will have your own methods. And so what has to be true is that if you learn something from someone else, you have to apply all of those unique qualities, unique aspects of it that you have to it well. So take the craft, right? So maybe it's watercolor painting, and a lot of people are watercolor painting. Well, you can take the craft and infuse it with your own unique perspective, your own unique way of thinking about it, of doing it, the process, the tools, right? So I do absolutely think that you should never teach— you should never copy someone, right? So you're not going to copy anyone's course or their method or exactly exactly, um, how they do it, but you can apply your own unique perspective to the same craft, right? So nobody owns the craft category. So if you haven't— if you've learned from someone else and you still are mimicking the way the teacher did it, my suggestion is to push it further. So push it until you do have your own unique way of troubleshooting, of correcting, of making judgment calls, of seeing the process, right? And so that is how you take craft and you make it your own in a way that would make you a right fit for maybe a different kind of student. So again, something that we'll get into probably on— probably when we talk about marketing is that there are different fits for different people. And so some of you are going to fit to my style of teaching this week, and some of you won't, and that's okay. That means that maybe there's another teacher who's teaching how to teach online that you do fit with, and the fact that you didn't resonate with the way that I'm teaching it does not— it's okay. Like, that's kind of the point, is that you're here to figure out whether you are the right fit for what it is that I'm teaching. And so when you teach, you have to think about it the same way. I'm here to find the people who are the right fit for what I'm teaching, how I'm teaching it, my unique perspective my unique viewpoint. And when they're not the right fit for you, that's okay. They're going to go to another, another teacher who is the right fit for them. So again, I don't know if that was enough context to, to let you really feel how that works, but that's how I think about it. And so there's absolutely enough. You just have to infuse your own unique perspective with it. Okay. Okay, next question. Well, Kimberly says something similar. I'm struggling with the fact that I want to do a course, but I have no one to sell it to. That is then another thing to learn, and I'm not sure which should go first. Okay, Kimberly, so we're gonna— we're doing it in the exact right order this week. So before you produce anything, thing, you have to prove that there is demand for it. Not necessarily in your own audience, just enough evidence that means like, okay, there is market demand for this, right? So it's impossible to guarantee success, but it is possible to go on more than just a hunch, right? So that's why we kind of collect evidence. In Art as an Educator, we build like a very robust evidence stack before we move into I'm giving you a solid taste of it this week so that you can absolutely move forward with the course and class idea you have based on the market evidence that you gather this week. And then if you don't have anyone to sell it to, that's what Thursday's for. I'm going to teach you how to begin gathering your audience. But so yeah, just so. You guys, Thursday is going to be amazing. You're gonna, you're gonna love it. So I'm going to teach you how to start gathering your audience, even if you have zero people on your email list, Kimberly. So be here on Thursday. So that is another thing to learn. It's okay, because you're going to learn it on Thursday. But my suggestion is that you validate proof before production, right? So you validate, and then you begin to produce. Now there are definitely ways to prove more as you go. There's ways to survey your audience and bring them into the creation process. There's a way to, um, sell something before you make it to make sure that there's demand. But what we're going to be doing inside of this week is proof before production, outlining it for the student, and then by then we've got this through line. Okay, so tomorrow again we're going to identify the end result that we're going to get the student. And then on Thursday, we're going to start here and, and quite literally create a through line that will allow you to attract the right person who needs this course on the same through line. So that's where we're headed. Okay, great question. Says, I teach bookbinding in person and I want to also do online courses, but there's a lot Of courses already. How do I differentiate and stand out? Okay, great question. But again, I think I probably already answered it. So Manta, you have a different way of doing this, even if you technically are doing the same, you know, the, the same technique, right? Like, I'm, I'm a little familiar with bookbinding, but only a tiny bit. Um, so I also, um, I took bookbinding to make my first portfolio. I took it at an in-person, and I taught, I taught how to do a portfolio version of that many, many years ago. So even if you're using the same exact method that many other people teach, my hunch is that you yourself, Manta, have your own unique perspective. You have a personality, you have a way of educating, you have a way of giving instruction. You have a way of outlining the method that is different, and it's yours. And so I would again just say, absolutely, the students who resonate with you, who are the right fit for your way of doing it, need you to push forward and create this class. Yeah. Aviva says, I love your courses. I'm interested in How do you market? How, how did I do the marketing for my very first course launch? Well, we're going to talk more about that. So I'll tell you a little bit more about my course launch and see if I can decide what to tell you and not ruin the rest of the week. I wanted to teach this course with everything in my soul. It took me a minute because I was a little busy. Having babies. So I had my first son in 2013, and then I had my daughter in 2015. Then my first course launch was in 2018. Now, in October of 2017, I feel like the whole world was talking about the importance of your email list, and I felt like I was in a beautiful baby-filled black hole. Like, I had no idea what everybody was talking about. I had no idea how to do it. And all I knew was that at that time in October, I had roughly 4,000— I think it was like 4,068 people or something like that on my email list. And they had gathered on my email list from a blog that I had since 2009. So it took 9 years because my blog had a little thing that said join my news And for 9 years it sat there and it collected 4,500 people. No, for just 4,000 people. Do you want to know what my open rate was? Do you know what an open rate is? Open rate is how many people open your email when you send it. A healthy open rate is somewhere between 30 and 50% for the industry. So a healthy open rate for your email to your email list is 30 to 50%. Do you want to know what my open rate was? It was 6%. 6%, which means that these 4,000 people did not know who I was. It means that I was not emailing them. It means that they, yeah, had no idea who I was, and they certainly were not opening the emails when they got them, meaning they probably joined my email list 5 years ago and I had not emailed them. Hadn't emailed them ever since, right? So nobody's opening my emails. So I had some work to do. So I am gonna teach you on Thursday what I did. Okay, I'm gonna teach you on Thursday what I did. And from October to February— so 2017 October, February 2018— I doubled my email list. Okay, so I doubled my email list from 4,000 to 8,000 people. And I opened— I increased my open rate to 60%, doubled my list from 4,000 to 8,000. And I increased my open rate from 6% to 60%. And I did so without spending a dollar. Okay, so I did so without spending a dollar. I was a one-woman show. And I'm going to teach you how I did it on Thursday. That's a pretty good cliffhanger. What'd you think about that? You got to do tomorrow's work though in order to reap the benefit of Thursday. Okay, so you got to do— don't skip tomorrow. You got to do tomorrow's work. Okay, the next question I have— how are we doing on time? Um, I'm doing great. There's There's about 4-ish more questions that I'm going to try to get to, and then we'll call it for the day and let you go get on with your homework. Okay, Legacy says, how do I build confidence if I feel shy about being on camera? So I have so many tips and trips for— trips and tricks and tips for this. I did already share with you that there has to be a little bit of just being willing to show up many ways, but there's also so many different things. Okay, so, uh, you can do pre-recorded, right? So I'm live right now, which means that if I can't say trips and tricks and tips, then you're gonna hear me mess up. Um, it also means that the font on my slide deck was wrong and I couldn't fix it because I'm live. You don't have to go live like this. You could always do pre-recorded. I've done— I mean, a ton of my work is pre-recorded, especially my course content. So you can always do pre- That means that you can take as many takes as you need to. I, I do love someone being able to put a face to a name, but even if so, I'll, I'll share with you on Friday how you might even use a teleprompter. I'm not using one today, but you could even use a teleprompter and say, hi, my name is Bonnie Christine. Welcome to my course on how to save dahlia tubers so that you can plant them in the spring. Spring without losing one all winter long, and then cut it. Okay, that's all. So all you got to do is nail that, and then cut it. And then the rest of it could be like your hands, right? So you could just show your hands, but I'm a big believer in just letting someone kind of connect to you, the human, because that's important. But there's so many different ways to reduce the vulnerability, to reduce the, um, yeah, the risk of feeling like you might say something or embarrass yourself or be a certain way. And then you can cut to the project. You could— if it's— some of you are doing things that you might do a screen recording, or some of it might be hands-on work, um, or some of it might be presentation style. So, so many different ways to do it. And, um, slowly you will get more and more confident. Probably my best suggestion is pre-recorded until you feel more confident. Yeah. Fabry says, how do you put a specific tone of voice into the teaching material so that it isn't the same as many others online? Well, Fabry, I would just encourage you to really think about what makes you unique. Um, this really kind of goes into a values exercise So, Fabry, what makes you you? What, what, like, what hill will you die on? That, that's a great way to look at it. Like, when I was thinking about Art as an Educator and the Teacher Craft Workshop, I'm like, what am I, what am I really— What do I really stand for? What kind of hill am I willing to die on? And there's a bunch. And one of them is that I believe that it is our responsibility as someone who holds knowledge that could help someone else's experience or their life or their craft improve, that it becomes our responsibility to pass it on. That's something that makes, you know, my perspective unique, but it— I didn't necessarily just walk around saying that and feeling it until I sat down and thought Like, what are my unique beliefs about this topic? Okay. So there's a lot of exercises that can be done about that. What is your unique perspective? What are the hills that you're willing to die on? What are the values that you want to bring to what it is that you want to teach? And those are the things that will make you different. They're the things that will make you again, that fit, right? So we'll, we'll talk more about a magnet, but you want to be a magnet, right? Which means that that you're gonna, you're gonna strongly attract the right people who are a fit for you. And also, you know what magnets do? It also repels the people that are the wrong fit. And that's okay, because there are plenty of right-fit people, and you want to become that magnet so that the right people know immediately, hey, they are for me. This is exactly what I've wanted to be. You know what, I agree. I feel the same way. And then people who are like, no, I don't think that this is the right for me, right? It's the opposite, which helps you, which helps you find success more quickly. Okay, Shannon says, I'm a few years into painting with watercolor, but I'm not an expert, but beyond beginner stage, and I started to sell my own art now, but I have zero following, and I I haven't yet started teaching in person or anything. Am I actually ready to create a course with how much competition there is out there? So, Shannon, so much love. I think this is so relatable. I think many of us are feeling the same, the same exact way. One thing that helps me is that I always— I recognize this very early on because this is imposter syndrome talking to you, meaning if you kept your eyes on your own paper, you wouldn't even know that there was so much competition out there, right? You would only be focused on the person that you can help. But it's okay because we all do it. But what I realized early on is that there are always going to be people behind me and there's always going to be people in front of me. So there's no, there's no like, I've arrived. There's no moment of like, oh, I've arrived at the most industry expert Expertness that I can be. There's always— you're always going to be in the middle somewhere. And so, I mean, I guess one person isn't, but I don't know who that one person is who's at the very tippy top. And so as long as you can take what you know and help someone a few steps behind you get started, then absolutely you can teach. A couple of things that I think are— number one is you'll use this information to make sure that the student transformation that we identify tomorrow is within your capability, right? So Shannon, you might not teach, I don't know, like, I don't know, like something more advanced than your skill set. So you won't promise something that is with— that is outside of your ability to get, like a result that's outside of your ability to get someone. You're going to choose an end result that 100% is within your ability. And then that's going to be made very clear to to the student. So no student is going to come in and expect a result way over here because you promised a result right here, and that's going to be made very clear through your messaging. And then they're going to get what they expected, and it's going to be amazing. So nobody comes in for this and expects this. The other thing that I think comes up for people is like a fear about being asked something that's outside of their And I just kind of want to say, like, it's okay to say you don't know. If someone has signed up to learn something from you and this is the end result that you've promised, and you can get them to that end result, and they ask something about something over here, you can say, you know what, I don't know the answer to that. You can also say, you know what, I do not know the answer to that, but I'm going to try my best to find out and I'll get back to you. to you, right? Um, but I think that it's quite empowering to be able to tell someone, not only for you but for them, meaning, you know what, not only do I not know the answer to that, but I didn't have to know the answer to that to get to where I am. And so you don't either. Like, that's really powerful. That is part of the filter that we talked about. Okay, two more questions. All right, Sandy says, "All right, I've got ADHD. It makes choosing challenging. My brain is a bit of a blender." All right, I'm sure that is very relatable. This has been a huge obstacle to deciding and trying to map out a path suddenly becomes a thousand steps and over. Overwhelm takes over. The problem isn't brainstorming, it's overstorming and struggling to recognize task priority. Any tips or thoughts? 2-time immersion alum. Okay, I love that, Sandy. So yes, first of all, um, do the practice that we did today and rate the options that you have. So I'm hoping that you can get it down to 3, then I'm hoping you can rate them or score them and then choose one that you're going to move forward with. Now, the other thing that happens— I don't know if this is happening for you, Sandy— but the other thing that happens when we choose one is that I think, especially as creatives, we can almost mourn the ones that we said no to. So, um, I want to kind of change that for you. I want you to be willing to say yes to one and not yet to the others. And so you don't have to say no. In fact, you can even go through the practice of all of them and then catalog them. But you do have to have— you do have to say yes to one. And then I want you to follow through with the one idea throughout the duration of the workshop. Like, be willing to commit to the one idea. Now, overstorm tonight. I actually love that. I call it heartstorming. But I would love for you to do a super thinking session, heartstorm, uh, just your craft pieces. Okay, map everything out. Tomorrow is the filter. So tomorrow is when we will decide what the end result is that your student is going to have. You do not have to teach everything that you know. You can teach one portion of what you know, and it can be an incredible experience for both you and your student. And so tomorrow we will use that as a filter, and we'll decide on what portion of your craft you want to teach. And then we're going to only put in the course what has to be in there for them to get to that end result. So nothing else is allowed to go in. Okay, so you'll almost use your Overstorm session, you'll almost use it as a menu tomorrow to choose where, where your student is headed. It's going to be really powerful. Okay, last question is, how many weeks is the course gonna be. I know that we've got some eager beavers, and I want to be careful that the workshop is focused on the workshop. But also Artisan Educator is coming. We're very excited about it. I cannot wait to tell you all about it because it is truly impossible to even begin to cover what we have in store for students of Artisan Educator. It is an 8-week course. So it begins September 21st, and it's an 8-week course with 12 weeks of support. That's where we're going, but that's all. We're not gonna spend too much time about it until a little bit later in. Okay, my friends, that is a wrap for today. Don't forget to bank your tuition. That is not here in the chat. Okay, that is over on the hub page, and there's literally a section that says like bank your tuition, and there's a button that you. Click that says bank it. So do that. You have 24 hours to bank today's tuition credit, and then check in for today. All right, go check in for today so that we start calculating towards our giveaways. All right, everybody, thank you so much for being here. I'll be back in your inbox tonight with the replay, in the morning with Morning with Bonnie, and I'll see you live tomorrow afternoon. Bye, everybody.