Teacher Stories: Courtney Eliseo

Meet Courtney Eliseo, who teaches two online classes, Beyond the Logo: Crafting a Brand Identity and By The Book: Create a Style Guide for Your Brand. She’s enrolled over 1,700 students across the globe and has made over 20k from both of her classes combined! Read on to find out tips and tricks Courtney used to make her class so successful.

After college I began freelancing right about the same time I started my first job in NYC. A few years later, that freelancing experience led to launching Seamless Creative, the design business I now operate with my husband Brian, a web developer, as well as Design Work Life, a design inspiration blog where I post daily. Since then I've been focused on working with small businesses to build their brand identities, as well as collecting and sharing inspiration through DWL.

I was approached by Skillshare about potentially teaching a class, and since it was something I had been wanting to try out for quite awhile I jumped at the chance. I had no idea that it would take off the way that it did. To overcome it, I did my best to get the word out through DWL, social media, friends and family. That definitely got the ball rolling.

I took a lot of time before putting the videos together to plan my content out in detail and made sure to include a ton of practical information. I've found that as someone teaching and also taking classes like these, that students really want as much "how to" information as possible so that they can apply it to their own work. I also made sure to include lots of additional resources so that students could delve further into a topic on their own if they weren't getting as much as they needed out of the videos.

There have been a lot of great student projects since the class launched. I think the preliminary steps I go over in the first unit—creating a Creative Brief and Mood Board—are key. Those who really followed those steps and put a lot of time and love into them had a more successful outcome, which is something I 100% stand by in my own professional work as well.

Teaching has definitely gotten my name out there a bit more. I've received several work inquiries from people who have either taken the class (as a business owner) or have somehow found me through Skillshare, which is great. Post-teaching I am still brainstorming new classes to launch, as I've found I really like teaching as a part of my daily work life. I've also always loved learning, so I take quite a few Skillshare classes for my own personal edification as well.

You can teach a class too! Simply head to skillshare.com/teach to get started today.