Your Pathway to Teaching Art: Why, What, and How to Get Started | Toby Haseler | Skillshare
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Your Pathway to Teaching Art: Why, What, and How to Get Started

teacher avatar Toby Haseler, Urban Sketcher, Continuous Lines

Watch this class and thousands more

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Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Introduction

      1:54

    • 2.

      Developing your plan today

      2:02

    • 3.

      Why?

      5:23

    • 4.

      Who?

      4:51

    • 5.

      In Person?

      2:56

    • 6.

      Online?

      4:27

    • 7.

      An Adaptive Problem

      2:07

    • 8.

      What?

      6:00

    • 9.

      How?

      4:18

    • 10.

      When?

      5:53

    • 11.

      What I wish I knew first!

      5:59

    • 12.

      Final thoughts

      2:09

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About This Class

Discover how to start teaching today by using a strength based approach and identifying your unique opportunities.

My name is Toby, known as 'Toby Sketch Loose', and I started teaching art just five years ago. By understanding my strengths and motivations I have been able to find and create opportunities that fit my goals and my personality.

In this time I've developed a thriving business, my website ranks on the first page of google, I've picked up a YouTube silver award, become a Top Teacher here on SkillShare and stayed busy, happy and creating art.

In this class I want to coach you to the same success that I've enjoyed.

By considering your story, what makes you unique, and ensuring you play to your strengths you'll be able to start your teaching journey and creative career as soon as today.

Together we will:

  • Delve into your values and motivations
  • Examine your artistic and teaching strengths
  • Unlock opportunities in person and online
  • Discover your unique selling point
  • Create a robust plan to get started
  • Understand how to get feedback and improve

And, as we go, I'll give you all the tips and tricks I wish I knew when I first started out, and build your confidence in your own abilities so that you are able to create a simple, actionable plan and really understand the steps you need to take to get started.

No matter where you have reached in your artistic journey, what kind of artist or creator you are, you'll leave this class with a clear idea of your next steps towards achieving your goal to become an artist who teaches.

Audio credits:

Apero Hour Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons By Attribution 4.0 License
httpcreativecommons.orglicensesby4.0

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Toby Haseler

Urban Sketcher, Continuous Lines

Top Teacher

Hello and welcome to my profile. I am Toby, and I'm known as Toby Sketch Loose on SkillShare, Instagram and YouTube :)

Where do I teach?

I have a growing collection of classes here on SkillShare - I've bundled them together into 'Starter' classes, 'Special' classes etc - so you know exactly what you're getting into when you choose to enroll.

I also have hundreds of videos on my youtube (link on the left) with a very active community of subscribers.

On my teaching website - sketchloose.co.uk - I host in depth sketching courses for all abilities.

And on my personal/sketching website - urbansketch.co.uk - you can find links to my portfolios, instagram, blogs and more!

See full profile

Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Introduction: So you've decided to start teaching art. What a fantastic decision. Not only is teaching art rewarding. It also gives you the power to create the art you want to create when you want to create it, whilst meeting like minded individuals and making money from your passion, what more could we ask for? The difficulty, of course, is knowing where to start, how to find the opportunities and how to make sure that when we set out out our front door to teach our first art class or to create our first video that we're going to do something that we really enjoy. And that is what this class is all about. My name is Toby. I'm known as Toby Sketch lot. And I teach art both online and in person, face to face. When I first set out, I didn't have the benefit of experience to fall back on. I didn't have information or no one to help me with a plan. In today's class together, we are going to make that plan for you. It starts by creating a mind map. Examining who you are and your motivations for teaching art. What you hope to achieve from this new life journey. We'll focus on your strengths as an artist and a teacher. And from there, we can build and find the opportunities around you, whether that's online or in person. From there, we can find what makes you special, your unique selling point. The bit, which means people will come to you and come back to you again and again for more teaching. There's no point waiting til tomorrow or next week. What we want is a plan that we can feel confident in right now. None of this will happen overnight, which is why it's so important you set off on the right path. Now, if that sounds like something which will benefit you. If you want to start teaching art and start your plan today, then let's jump into the next lesson. 2. Developing your plan today: I know from very personal experience that starting to teach art either online or in person is really scary. And there isn't a lot of help out there. The learning curve is absolutely enormous, and there are so many unknowns and so many unknown unknowns, things we don't even realize that we haven't worked out yet. Today is about showing you how you can start teaching art. The idea is that whether you want to teach in person or online, there are some really simple, clear concepts and questions that we can talk through together that will mean by the end of this class, you feel ready prepared to take that first step to producing your first teaching. In doing so, get you started, get you your initial plan. Both a brainstorm of how to identify what you want to get from your art teaching, but also literally a specific actionable plan. That will mean that you are on the journey to creating your first art teaching, be that online or in person by the end of this class. As we talk through these key questions, discover more about you, who you are, your strengths, your values, the opportunities around you, and how you might go about producing your first bit of art teaching. You'll be filling out your own mindmap and producing an actionable plan. This is what I would love to see as your class project. Either a digital copy, a photo or just a few words written down, a little bullet point showing us how you are going to take the next step. Don't forget that in the class projects, you'll be able to see other people's projects. And from there, you two can get a lot of inspiration and ideas. We are not in this alone, and on Skillshow you have this amazing thing, a community, which you can interact with, learn from, and build together. 3. Why?: The first thing that we need to think about when we start our art teaching journey is why? Why do we want to do this? And this is not a question I can tell you the answer to because it's going to be so personal. What I'd encourage you to have a think about is your story so far in art. What is it that you are missing or what is it? Perhaps that you're enjoying so much in your art that you want to take another step. This is where you'll hopefully find your motivation. The motivation is the why do I want to do this? And the motivation is really important because it's not going to be easy. It will be fun. It will be hard work, and it will be rewarding, but it's not going to be easy to keep adapting and progressing as an art teacher. So finding your motivation is a really important part of the journey. As you think through your story, you might discover you have a goal. It might be something really simple. Make a little bit of money from art or teach a workshop our goals in themselves. Have a think about what your broader goal is, not your focus goal, We'll come to that later. We'll create a hard plan of action by the end. But at the moment, what's your higher tier goal? What's the thing that you'd like to achieve in a softer way? Part of that, part of the motivation, part of your story will be your values. Values are our inherent beliefs or our principles, which are important to us. They're normally fairly stable. They do change, but not over days or weeks, they change over years or decades. For example, when we start working, maybe we just come out of a university. Many of us will have ideas that being rich and being important are key parts of our life. But as we get older, Being content, having time to relax or spending time with family might be those things which are really important to us instead. So let me talk you through my little journey as well. I first thought, you know what? I really like making up. So I'm going to try and make some money from making up. And I started an Etsy shop as many people do, and I did a lot of commissions. This was really enjoyable. Every time someone bought one of my paintings, obviously, a little moment of happiness, every time someone wanted a commission and being able to talk through the creative ideas, the creative process with someone, I found really exciting, really inspiring. But I also found a lack of control in this. I found that I was always having to think about what would someone else like. And the moment of clarity came to me when I thought, what if I could paint whatever I wanted? And I got enough money back from that that I was able to just keep going. I don't need to be rich, but what if I could turn this into something which is self fulfilling where I just get to do what I want. That was my kind of initial idea, my initial motivation. This fits really well with my personal values. My personal values are, one, I want to be creative. I like making things. So in this instance, make more art. I also want an element of control in my destiny. That doesn't mean I have to control everything, but I feel much better working a 14 hour day. If it's my fault. If I've decided to run a workshop that day, that is great. Then I enjoy that work. Instead of being told where I need to be and then having to do someone else's ideas and someone else's work, I just feel much happier when I'm in full control or at least got the idea of control. I always want to be authentic. If I'm not being me, I both feel a bit sad and I feel a bit fake. It doesn't make me feel good if I'm not just being honest. And lastly, I've always found sharing a really important part of my life. So being able to share what I do, feeling that there is a purpose to what I do that I'm creating art and in doing so someone else, is benefiting in some way. That, for me, is really important. I like cooking for the same reason. But if I'm on my own, I just cook rubbish. If I'm with other people. I like cooking because I feel the benefit from someone else enjoying what I'm doing. So now, tell me your story. Where are you at in your artistic journey? Why do you feel a change is needed? Why do you want to take a step into being an artistic teacher? Have a little think about your values. This doesn't need to be a deep dive, and this is a broad goal, a broad idea for what you want to do moving forward. At the moment, this doesn't have to be specific. It just has to start that process of forming your ideas into the next step so that we can keep asking questions and then find our root, find our plan at the end. And with that, it's time to answer the first key questions. What is your story? How does that factor into your goals and your motivations for wanting tea chart? Scribble them down, we'll start making your mind map, and I'll see you in the next lesson. 4. Who?: Next up, we need to think about who we are. And there's lots of aspects which make up who we are as individuals. To key things to think about here are who we are as an artist and who we are as a teacher. This is about working to our strengths. There's time down the road when we started to start looking at our weaknesses and building on those. But when we are setting out, let's take a strength based approach, the idea of identifying where we're really strong and just taking a step forward there. This is a really important step because the art creation world, the teaching world, and especially the online teaching world is very crowded. There are a lot of people doing this. So to proceed to sort of make steps forward, we need to be in our niche in a comfortable place somewhere that we are confident, where we enjoy being and where people can see our value. And we're going to talk later about the idea of a unique selling proposition or a unique selling point. But to start with, we just need to think about our strengths. That's the first step of this process. So, for example, as an artist, there's really simple things you can start scribbling down. What do you draw with? What do you paint with? Are you an oil painter? How long does your process take and what kind of things do you produce, is it landscape, portrait, abstract art. And you don't have to find your specific style within one medium either. Perhaps what makes you a little bit more unique is the fact that you jump around all sorts of different things that you are a sort of jack of all traits. And that is something which not many of us can do. Certainly, I would be a great example of someone who has a quite specific art style. Teaching is a more difficult thing and often, if you've never taught before, you might think, well, I have no experience. But You'll have taught friends things. You'll have explained things perhaps at work or at university, or at school, you'll probably have an idea if you're a confident speaker or not, and all of these things are aspects of teaching. We can also think about teaching as the idea of coaching and mentoring. Are you good or experienced at bringing along people in their particular field, perhaps again at work or even raising children, you'll have taught someone there. Again, find your strength. If I zoom my scope in on myself, what I would say is I like to talk a lot. Now, that's often not a very good teaching style, but it works in certain ways. So I focus my teaching around full judorial where I do just talk through everything I'm doing. I also like to encourage the outcome I really want is for the other person to have enjoyed themselves, and I believe that in enjoying and in reflecting themselves, they'll make a lot more progress than if I'm hypocritical, if I point out every little mistake. I also am a certified coach, and that kind of fits with these techniques of allowing people to discover their own mistakes, whilst giving them encouragement and helping them along the path. See, all of those things, that's what I would call my sort of strengths in teaching, but that is only half the puzzle. So what do I make of myself as an artist? Where do my strengths in uniqueness lie? I recognize myself as a fairly impatient artist. I like things to be over fairly quickly. I'm never perfect. I don't want to be perfect. I found that when I take a long time. I get bored and actually it becomes a bit rubbish, a bit overworked. So we've got a quick style. We've got an imperfect, loose style, and I enjoy most ink watercolors. I do play around with other things, but not with the same confidence and not with the same joy. So there you go. Toby, is a loose in watercolor artist. I'd encourage you now to write it down, flesh out your little mind map with who you are as an artist and as a teacher. Don't worry about writing something down which might feel wrong. It can change later. It's just about getting those initial faults down. And even writing something down that feels wrong when you've written it is a really good learning point where you'll start to be able to evaluate a little bit more about which direction you want to head in in your art teaching career. And time again for you to start scribbling down and finishing off your mind map. B really unhumble here. Be confident about yourself, and let me know your strengths as a teacher and as an artist. 5. In Person?: The next question we need to ask is where? And where when we are really getting into those specifics. And there's going to be two broad arms or branches of when. In person and online. This first video, we'll just think about in person opportunities, which perhaps are easier to grab than you might think. What we're talking about with all of this are opportunities. Now, there are opportunities, which will have themes, which we're going to talk about in a second. But there'll also be unique opportunities to you or to your area, your town, or perhaps the clubs you're in, or even the online places you frequent. So it's going to be important when we talk about where that you also do some research, that you have a think about the ideas we're about to talk about, and just put them into practice for you, your situation, and find your opportunities. I'd encourage you just have a think about where you might have had workshops in the past, who you might have learned from all things you've seen advertised on social media. For example, in my town, if I take a walk down the high street, we have a library, which has rooms available for hire, where they often have little workshops on all sorts of subjects. There's a museum where they have history talks, and also, again, the room is available to hire. We have a couple of art cafes which run various workshops. Some of them more sort of party and fun based, and some of them serious and based on, you know, artists coming regularly to improve their skills. We've got art clubs locally as well, which run regular workshops, and we'll often reach out to people. They're all looking for people who are confident in sharing their style, not necessarily with loads of teaching experience. One of the most fun and rewarding ways to get started is with private teaching. In a private teaching lesson, there's not a huge amount of money that you need to spend to hire a room. The other person might want you to bring tools for them, or they might just have their own tools. And often, the private teaching in my experience, will be at a lovely place. At a cafe, they want to learn to sketch or at a nearby monument or even in their own home or in your home. You can get private teaching through word of mouth. You might have friends or family who are willing to be guinea pigs. You might have friends of friends who are really looking to learn, take up a new skill or develop in some way. Again, let people know that there's this opportunity, and you may just find that from there things snowball. Oh. 6. Online?: And now we can jump online, the opportunities online. And there are way too many two lists. I imagine that if I did some research, I could just be listing places you could teach online for the entire of this lesson, which would be a little bit boring. So instead, I'll give you some simple ideas to think about. I'll send you out to do some research. But I'll also give you a little framework for thinking about where you might want to start depending on where you are in your teaching journey. So to start online, what kind of opportunities are there? Well, firstly, there is teaching on social media. YouTube is a really obvious place. But think about Instagram reels. Think about Instagram videos or TikTok or things like that. There's lots of other opportunities, perhaps creating a Facebook group. If you're creating a Facebook group, you're almost creating a blog. So you could create a wordpress blog. And on that, you could teach with short videos, you could teach with text and articles and photos a bit like you get from magazines. I would say in our framework that that is the great place to start if you're a beginner. If you have no experience in creating online content, then start somewhere like that where you don't need to bring people to you. And where there isn't much risk involved and much investment involved. The next places up would be teaching for a third party in some way. For example, I got my little teaching break from a company who asked me to do a tutorial for them, and from that, I did another couple of tutorials. And from that, I sort of developed my confidence and move on to other things. Examples would be skill shop. Again, the advantage of a third party is that they're going to bring you the audience. The disadvantage is you might not want to totally test out your skills where there's a contract involved. The way you have to meet the exact requirements of someone else. However, if you're feeling confident, if you have a bit of experience or you've made a few tubes in the past, then I think that's enough to just jump in. You don't need to be the world's best teacher. You need to be good enough, confident and providing something of value. A really good opportunity that you might want to take advantage of. If you're thinking of online teaching is the Skillshare teach challenges. Now, I must stress that I'm mentioning this, not because Skillshare asked me to, or because I'm teaching on Skillshare. I'm mentioning it because this is an opportunity which I found when I Googled when I did some research, and it really helped me. So it got me publishing my first class on Skillshare. It got me publishing with a big group of people all learning how to make better online teaching. You can find something like that, be it this skill share opportunity or something else, then I would really recommend taking that up and just seeing what happens. Last on my little list is hosting your own course, creating a website, and selling online there, or creating online workshops and selling them, for example, via Inscram or social media. The advantage of this is total control. So you get to set the agenda the time you get to do everything to make it a success. The disadvantage is you have total control. So you have to find the audience. It's not just going to happen. People won't just find your website. But if you've been teaching on Skillshare or YouTube, then perhaps there's an audience there who know and trust you and would love to see something that is more unique to you. So don't discount these more complicated ideas, but do you have a little think about the challenges which might come. Where you have to handle all the payments, all the billing, when you have to handle any sort of challenges, complaints, technical issues. I would definitely say running your own course is a advanced place to start. I do it, and it's really rewarding, and I absolutely love it, but it is a lot of work. Time now for you to do a little bit of research. You might already have ideas of where you want to teach. B that in person or online. But I'd encourage you to put a little bit of effort in here. Do Google, take a walk down your high street, and just see what else you can find. 7. An Adaptive Problem: I wanted to add a brief interlude video here. We've been building our mind map, and it's all very stressful sometimes, trying to pin down an exact plan. And I wanted to reassure you that yes, it is a bit stressful. But no, it does not have to be exact. There's a concept in the sort of leadership and management world called a wicked problem. That is a problem which involves humans, and it has to have an adaptive solution, not a technical solution. Perhaps, for example, your recording and you find that your video isn't good enough. That's a technical problem, which you could improve by changing your editing software, changing your camera, or the camera lens, and then the problem is solved it remains solved until something breaks like the camera. Unfortunately, when we're creating a business plan, particularly if we're trying to get started in something as human as teaching, we're dealing with what is known as an adaptive or a wicked problem. In these problems, we might create a perfect plan, but something will change. That might be that our motivations or our life changes, which means we have to change what we're doing. Might be, for example, I teach a lot on YouTube. Maybe someone buys YouTube and changes how it works. That means I'm going to have to adapt and change constantly adapting to all of these external changes, which I have no control over. It's not important at this stage, when we are starting out, when we are creating our first teaching, it's not important that this is a perfect solution that will fit us forever. We will change, the world will change. Other things we can't even predict will change. We just need to create something which we're happy with at the moment and that gets us going that gets us started on that journey. 8. What?: Okay. Next up, we move to what are you going to teach. Now, to some extent, this might seem obvious from where? But I'd really encourage you to put a lot of fought into this step. When we think about what we're going to teach, there are two sides to think about. There is the obvious answer to this question. What are we going to paint today? What are we going to draw? Am I going to be teaching a group of one or two people or is it going to be a really big group? That's the obvious side, and a lot of that becomes more clear when you've worked out your where are you teaching? The other side for what is far more important because this step is where we are finding our niche. We're finding the little box that we fit in that box is where we create our space in a crowded world in a crowded marketplace. I mentioned back when we were talking about who we are, that it's important to start recognizing that A, there are lots of people making and lots of people teaching art. But B that you have strengths, you have things which make you unique. I, for example, mentioned that I am a loose impatient and imperfect artist, and I see those all as strengths. On their own, none of these things make me unique. But when I started putting it all together, finding my opportunities where I could teach. I create this little Vn diagram. My Vn diagram, that's where you create little circles, you overlap them all, and you find in the middle. That is, your unique little spot, your unique little niche. For me, I quick artist painting with watercolors and ink loose and all my tutorials are fully narrated. Yes, there are some other people who do similar things. But there's no one else I've seen quite doing exactly my style of art with exactly my style of teaching. Thus my what becomes the most important thing about my teaching. It's how I have found my space, and it's what people expect. It's why I think I get good feedback because what I do is not perfect, but people know what they are getting. They come to my classes, my courses, wherever they are, and it's me teaching. That would be the authenticity, which I've mentioned before, and I think is really important to mention here again, we have to enjoy this. When we are teaching, we have to enjoy the bit that we have found that we can do. We find our strength and we Go with that, at least in the beginning, things can evolve, of course. But if you're not enjoying that, you're going to struggle to get that enjoyment across to other people. You're going to struggle to just be honest in your love for the teaching, love for the art. Thus, you probably will just find more challenges. Need to be clear here that finding your niche isn't easy. As recent as three or four years ago, I was working with Tash, my wife and explaining how I was really upset because I just didn't feel like I had a style. I just felt like, is this loose continuous line, water colory stuff is that enough of an art style that I'll ever actually be successful? Well, in retrospect, that conversation seems a little bit silly, but it's also very understandable. Now, I do have a lovely bit of success. I've carved out my little world of loose ink and watercolor art teaching. I'm enjoying myself. It doesn't mean I don't get to play with other things. It doesn't mean I don't get to play with my pastels and take different things on holiday with me, but I'm confident and happy in my place. Time then for me to stop talking about myself and for you to start thinking about yourself. The ideas of exactly what to teach will very much come from you finding your niche. So start by listing down all the different things, those values we talked about, your strengths as an artist, your strengths as a teacher, your interest in what you actually would like to teach and how you'd like to teach. Put these things together. Eventually, you will piece together those three, four or five things which put you in the center and make you really unique. As I said. Back when we're talking about who, Your niche doesn't have to be like mine, very, very specific. Your niche could be all sorts of different things. You could be a German speaking person who likes using pastors to create portraits. That's quite specific. You could be someone who doesn't like talking, does sped up tutorials with really lovely music and brilliant editing skills. On a vast range of different medium. Perhaps your style is more the colors you use or perhaps it's literally just your editing style, and you like to use everything. You like watercolor pencils one week and oil paints the next, procreate the next. That's a niche. Don't feel that you have to copy someone else you've seen in how they've identified their niche, but find those three, four, five things which make up you and you're in the middle and only you are in the middle. That is where you'll find your happy place, your teaching place, and you what for the first step of creating your art teaching. We know your strengths now and we know your opportunities. What we want to work out here is how do they combine. By putting together what's possible and what you're good at, you'll find a little ven diagram with you in the middle. Work that out. Have a little play. See what you think comes about if you make yourself unique. 9. How?: So we are almost there. And don't worry if you don't feel almost there at all in your own head. This is a wb wobbly challenging problem to solve. As you do researches, you take a bit of time to think about what we've talked about today. I'm sure that you will get to a place where you feel you can take this next step, and this next step is how. This is where we create a sort of draft plan that we can literally put into action and start tomorrow. What steps do you need to take from now where you've decided why, where and the what. What steps takes these ideas and transforms them into your first bit of teaching, your first class, your first video. I'm going to give you a really simple idea, that is, let's say, when I first published my first ever YouTube, I had to work out how to do it. This step felt really big for me, but we can break it down into little actionable tasks. For my YouTube. What did I really need to do? I had to film it. I had to edit it. I had to upload it. Then I have to promote it and that included all of the little forms and bits you have to fill in on YouTube to make sure that people actually see it, as well as spreading the word, letting friends and family know and writing little posts on Instagram. After I've done that, I need a bit of feedback, and I need to improve. But we'll cover that in the next couple of lessons. This lesson is just about creating that first bit of teaching, getting your first bit of teaching out into the world. Let's take another example. Perhaps you want to teach one on one private lessons as your first starting point. That's where I started, and I think it's a great place. The first step here might be letting people know. How are you going to do that? Are you going to whatsapp all of your friends and family? Are you going to set up a Facebook group and put messages out like that or perhaps you already have an art Instagram that you can start advertising on. You need to let people know so that they can find you. Next, you're going to have to work out some way of taking payment. Perhaps for your first two or three or if they're friends and family, you get paid in coffee and cake. That's what I did. And then as you are confident as you have your ideas and you have your style, you can start taking real payment, cash or bank transfer. For example, it would be really easy ways to do that. You also need to think about how you're teaching. Are you taking all your supplies? Can you easily transport them? Do you have supplies for the other person if they don't need them? And are you teaching a specific subject? Or are you reacting to them? Are you coaching what they want to understand? Are you teaching them a lesson which is focused on you and your style? Both of these are perfectly acceptable. But it needs to be clear in your mind what you're doing before you get there. Same ideas are going to sort of work for any opportunity that you found. If it's a cafe, how are you going to message them? Are you going to need to supply everything? And for a big creep workshop, normally, you'll want to take a lesson plan. So you'll need to have an idea of the scene you're doing and what you expect the people to do along with you or after you or however you choose to run that lesson. There you go, just a few ideas to work on bullet pointed out, find all the little gaps. What are the little steps you don't know that you're going to have to research a bit. And then move on to the next step. Well, we'll start working out when this is all going to happen. It's time now to work out your steps for how you're going to put this all into action. Remember, when we are working out what processes we need to go through to launch, we're not talking about a perfect solution. We're talking about a good enough solution, that means you can start today that you can take that first step today. 10. When?: So when is this going to happen? And this is where we get serious. We have to take a leap of faith. And I'm going to suggest now. Now is when you should start. Whatever that plan was, the first step of that plan from our how little lesson should be something you can do now or in 10 minutes when this video is over. But it's something just to throw yourself down the path and just get started. Now, if that feels too scary, adapt your plan and find something that you are willing to start right away. You are happy to just go out and do. Again, I would encourage you if you're, for example, think of online that you take this approach for YouTube and you just do it. You just create a video. The reality is that on YouTube, it's very crowded and your first two or three videos, probably not many people will see. You will learn an awful lot. You will learn so much for just doing the processes. That it will be worth it. It'll be worth that little bit of anxiety and pain. The same is going to be true of running a workshop in a local cafe or doing some one on one teaching. You will not be as good the first time as you would have been ask you done two or three of these. But that's fine. Either has to be a first time and you've got room in your plan, for example, to say that a step of your how is to practice the scene so that you're really confident in what you're doing. When you go to the teaching, if people see you creating something with confidence, it doesn't matter if you make mistakes, doesn't matter if it's not perfect. They will find a really valuable learning experience. Having done it, the key bit I want to talk about in when is feedback. I mentioned this a lesson or two ago, but feedback is absolutely key, and it comes in many forms. Obviously, we all think feedback, that means giving someone a form or asking them to fill out a link, and that is useful feedback. It also comes from data. This is great if you're online, if you're on YouTube, you can see how many people clip your video. You can see how long they watched free video. What does that data tell you about your teaching style? You might also have data from workshops. How quickly did it sell out? Did you get the same people coming back for your second one? This is really useful information. No matter what they say, they're coming back. So there must be something going right. Lastly, is data from you. Your data. That is, did you enjoy yourself? What did you sense from the people around you? What would you like to have done differently? Or how can you elevate the experience for you? Because you have to enjoy it? When getting feedback from people, I'd also really encourage you to think about it critically. On my YouTube, I get masses of very positive feedback, which is really lovely, but not always useful. I also get some feedback, which is very negative, which isn't so lovely. But often it's also missing the point, or they're asking me to do something which I don't want to do. So this is feedback which, okay, well, not everyone likes it. That's okay. Not everyone will ever like everything. There is feedback in there, which is negative or positive and useful. For example, when I first started, I had a lot of comments about my audio and gradually, I'm not saying it's perfect now, but gradually I have improved and improved my audio, both in terms of my editing and the hardware I'm using. And I haven't had a comment about my audio for a long time, perhaps until this where I specifically bring it up. With all of that feedback, we can improve. And improving Again, we often go, we need to improve, so we will get better. But what does that mean? Well, it could mean literally we feel our teaching quality is improved. We get better feedback from people. That is a qualitative improvement. It could also be a quantitative improvement? We are teaching more, producing more videos, doing more workshops, and maybe it's an efficiency improvement. So we're doing more, but in the same amount of time. In terms of a business, these are all improvements. If you can turn out more stuff in less time and it's the same quality, you have improved. The last bit of improvement, which is really underrated, not important immediately to consider, but very underrated is growing your audience. How are you capturing people into your wake and having them follow you along. So for example, YouTube, that's subscribers Skillshare, that's followers. If you have your own private teaching outside, perhaps that's collecting with consent, of course, collecting people's contact addresses so that you can let them know when your next thing is. And this kind of gathering of people who are actively interested in you and your business, is really important because as long as they are happy for you to hold that data and they enjoy themselves in your last one, they are people most likely to come back and come back. Just like I always go to the same cafe. It's a sign of that cafe doing the right thing that they are growing their audience by having me. Well, there. The key question to answer for yourself now is, can you start? If not, why not? Consider changing your how, consider adapting your plan until you can start just now. If you're ready to start, have a little think about how you might get your feedback on your next step too. 11. What I wish I knew first!: I'm very aware that in this class, there's an enormous amount to cover and that we can't cover everything. I've explained in the Interlude lesson why this problem starting teaching is an amazing opportunity, but it's one which is challenging. And so we need a really simple plan. I did think. I would just add in one more lesson. This is one where I can talk about a few little bits. We haven't touched. I'm not going to use fancy graphics. I'm not going to make you do some thinking, but I'll give you little tips and tricks, little advice that I wish I'd had at the very beginning. Firstly, social media. It's really useful, but don't let it ruin your life or run your life. You can teach on social media, and if you're teaching in person, social media can have loads of uses from promoting your art to promoting your teaching to sharing your students work and making them feel part of a community. The algorithms are the algorithms. I've had days where I've had tens of thousands of views on a post followed by weeks where no one sees to it. Followed by weeks when no one seems to see anything. And that is fine. Mostly I automate my social media now apart from a couple of key ones where I like to interact and I have lots of friends, and I use it for that purpose. Number two is keep things simple. I spent a lot of time worrying about all of my equipment. But actually, some of my most successful videos on YouTube, which actually get me a lot of my subscribers and a lot of my sort of marketing and promotion, I filmed on my phone with nothing special. Now I've gradually invested every year. I bought something different and I have a whole setup in my studio, which is amazing. But still, some of my most successful content and videos come from the beginning. And some of the most enjoyable teaching is where I just take a little sketching bag to someone's house and we have a chat for two or 3 hours and we paint together. Number three, the concept of an audience. Now, we mentioned this a little bit earlier, but I'll just cover it again because it's so important. When you're starting out, it's unlikely that you have a big audience of people who are aware of you, who know how to hear about you. That might mean that at the beginning, your staff feels less successful just because fewer people are seeing it or fewer people are signing up to your workshops. That's okay. That is to be expected. Building an audience takes time. An audience is a list of people who know about you. They are people who have seen your things before. They are people who follow you, perhaps on Instagram, perhaps on Skillshare. Perhaps you have a mailing list or a newsletter that you send out. All of these things are invaluable. So start early thinking about how you are going to get your audience, how you are going to get people to remember you and be able to tell them in the future if you are sort of producing something new. Let your plan evolve and change. We've mentioned this a few times, but I just wanted to stress the point. As well as discussing the concept of diversification. If you are gaining success in one place, it might feel important at that time to evolve your plan. Perhaps you're teaching in one particular cafe, and you're getting recurring groups come back over and over again. If you are looking to gain a bit more stability in financial security, it might be an idea to try and find another place to teach perhaps online or perhaps in person. A really poignant example comes from recently where, for example, Elon Musk took over Twitter, and there have been a lot of changes since then. And that has met people who were gaining traction and revenue and had Twitter as an important part of their business, and now on X and X has got a lot of challenges, let's say, in the media. These things can happen. And if you were solely reliant on one place for your revenue, it might mean that your sort of financial security is a little bit less. There are loads of options, and just a list a few that I use EtS to sell art, YouTube, Skillshare, in person, building a website, teaching through cafes, teaching through art groups, having an Instagram. There might diversification strategies, as well as producing books and things like that. And last but not least, don't worry if not everything you do is a success, or if success goes up and down. That's a natural part of the process. These things take time. They take time, perseverance and luck, frankly, at the moment, for example, as we speak, I can tell you my YouTube is not doing very well at all. And I know there are reasons for that. It's because I've been focused elsewhere, for example, producing this class and producing things elsewhere as well. It's therefore natural that not every part of a increasingly complex, tangled web of things. That wicked problem that we talked about earlier, will be doing amazingly at any time. Equally, just because you're getting success doesn't mean you can take the foot off the proverbial pedal. Often. In fact, it can be good if you're getting success somewhere to double down and go with it and try and turn that into a bit of a snowball. But success can also have a huge component of luck. A can a lack of success. It's important to listen to feedback to look for patterns in feedback because that will tell you broad problems and things to improve on, but also be kind to yourself and let things flow, let things go as they will, and take it as a long term approach. 12. Final thoughts: So now I hope that you have filled up a page with a brainstorm, a mind map and then moved on and created an actionable plan that you can literally start today. The first step of your teaching journey can really start today. The possibilities are endless. And of course, the possibilities are unique to you, unique to your unique selling proposition, and the niche of art and teaching that you can create for yourself. It's really important to remember that these things take time. These successes and the way that we build on feedback and improve is not a process, which is done overnight. Some people, of course, are incredibly talented or get very lucky and they do find immediate success. For most of us, it's a matter of taking our time and making sure that we are on a journey that we ourselves are enjoying. And hopefully, is adding something to the world as well. It's impossible to cover every eventuality in a class like this. But if you'd like some more specific support, I'm also offering some one on one coaching, which you can access through the one on one sessions on Skillshare. For example, you might want someone with experience in teaching art both in person and online. To talk through your plan with you to find little holes which you can fill or to give you the confidence that yes, you are ready to take the next step, you may already have started and would like some help looking at feedback or even reviewing the teaching you've done so far. For teaching online, you might want to have a discussion about how to fill, how to improve audio, for example, the kind of equipment you might use from a basic setup through to something more advanced, more permanent even. I know that starting a teaching business is a lonely place with a steep learning curve. So if you want to learn from my experience, I'm more than happy to join you.