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.