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If you’ve been in the creative industry, you’ve seen just how many creatives have pivoted into education over the last two years. Some educators have created valuable and educational resources, while others have offered lackluster content that probably shouldn’t be charged for yet. In today’s episode, we’re talking about what you should consider if you’re providing or investing in education, to be sure what you’re doing is ethical and impoactful! Listen in as I share three questions every educator should ask themselves before jumping into education, along with three steps to take when you do!
This episode of So, Here’s the Thing is brought to you by my quiz for creatives, What Type of Educator are You? Whether you’re meant to be a coach, a speaker, or a course creator, this quiz will help you understand how you can best start leading in your creative industry.
As we all saw during the pandemic, many service-based creatives shifted and pivoted in their business to offerings that didn’t require them to be in person. For many, this included education. While I’m a big proponent of building out valuable educators for this industry (it’s literally my job inside the Creative Educator Academy), I truly believe we need to do a better job at creating ethical education.
Generally, we used to look at educators as people who could be trusted for their expertise, but anyone can create a course or educational offering in this industry. It takes more work to become a genuine quality educator, but I think it’s worth it – and your students will too.
Before we dive too far into this topic, I want to highlight a few caveats:
It’s pretty common in this industry to get the occasional request for a coffee date to pick your brain, but when does that hangout turn into coaching or mentoring? You’re time is valuable, but before you start charging your peers for this, you need to really think about what you can offer and if education is right for you. If you’re considering the pivot into education for your business (or maybe you’ve already started), there are a few questions I believe you should ask yourself before you officially begin charging for education.
1. Have you seen success and have you helped anyone else find success in whatever it is that you’re teaching?
This first question is so important, because you shouldn’t be charging someone if you can’t provide results. If you decide to start offering education in any capacity, you need to be able to show success in your own work or in someone’s work that you have already helped with.
For example, if you’re going to teach social media marketing, but you run a business based on word-of-mouth, you may not have the knowledge, experience, or expertise to offer social media marketing education.
2. Are you filling a gap in the market or are you actually able to recreate the success you’ve seen?
This second question is important because while there may be a need in the market for what you want to offer, that doesn’t immediately make it the right fit for you. If you’ve created success for one person, but aren’t able to pinpoint why it was successful or even replicate that success for someone else, you shouldn’t be charging for it.
In my role as a coach for creative educators, I have potential educators come to me for audits of their educational offers. Many of them turn out to not actually be running profitable businesses. You need to ensure you’re offering value.
When you’re not providing ethical education, people can usually tell when you’re not actually an expert in what you’re doing. This will lead to you struggling to sell an offer.
3. Are you willing to damage your reputation?
Let me go ahead and help you out here, your answer to this question should be “No.” We are in an industry where people are blasting both praises and negative reviews all over the internet. Are you willing to damage your reputation by offering lackluster education that you can’t back up just to make a quick buck?
If you decide to pursue education, take the ethical approach with actual knowledge and experience that wil back it up.
Once you’ve determined that you’re able to offer ethical education that your students can implement and find success in, let’s walk through three steps you should take in becoming an ethical educator!
1. Give it time.
While I believe that being an expert in your field takes time, I also don’t believe there is a formula or set timeframe for you to become an educator. I do believe knowledge and experience come with time. If you’re not sure that you can offer the success your students are looking for, give yourself time to grow in your own knowledge.
2. Put in the work.
Becoming an educator is hard work, but becoming an ethical educator is even harder. So take your own advice in whatever you’re teaching, invest in yourself and grow. If you’re looking for education on how to be a better educator, I do offer The Creative Educator Academy. This course helps creatives take their zone of genius and turn it into impactful education… without any prior training.
3. Work on your self awareness.
Self awareness is key in becoming an ethical educator. You know yourself better than anyone else, so it should be pretty simple to identify what you need to work on. You may have the ethics in place to be a great educator, but have you seen any other red flags in your work or curriculum that you believe you need to work on? Find those needs and improve them!
If it’s time for you to take the next steps, I want you to know that I believe in you and I know that if you can identify what you need to work toward, you can become an amazingly impactful educator. If you’re ready to find out what type of educator you are, make sure you take the quiz! If investing in your own education on how to be a better educator is right for you, check out some The Creative Educator Academy or my Mentoring Mini Course!
Resources Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
Quiz: What Type of Educator are You?
Review the Transcript:
Welcome to so here’s the thing, the podcast for small business owners, entrepreneurs and creative educators who are ready to take their business to the next level, through candid conversations, tactical approaches and a few unpopular opinions. We’re lifting the veil on what it takes to build both a life and a business that you love. I’m your host, Laylee Emadi, a coach for creatives and founder of the creative educator Academy, where I help entrepreneurs step into the role of industry leaders and educators. I’m so glad that you’re here. Now let’s jump into today’s episode.
Hey, friends, welcome back to the show. Today’s episode is all about creating ethical education in the creative industry. And this is a topic that I think could be very easily taken the wrong way, I might get a little spicy, it’s something I’m very passionate about. And so I have a few caveats before we dive in to talking all about the importance of and how to make sure that you are creating education in a really ethical way. The first thing I want to talk about is the fact that my literal job is helping creative entrepreneurs become successful, profitable, impactful and effective educators. And so I want to make sure you know that I’m not saying in any of this conversation, I’m not saying don’t become an educator, I’m saying let’s talk about how to do it right. So that you’re actually helping people and that everything you put out there is a win win for you and for your students, you’re going to grow your business, and you’re going to provide education, that’s amazing and impactful. So when I’m putting out some of these red flags, some of these, you know, warning signs on potential unethical education, I’m gonna make sure you know that my actual livelihood revolves around making sure that you’re becoming the best kind of educator you can be. So I am by no means saying don’t do this.
All right. The second caveat I’ve got for you, if you’ve been here a while you know that every single rule has an exception. I always say that, in fact, I’m pretty sure the very first podcast episode I released was a conversation with photography, industry educator hope Taylor, about getting into education, and how she was really the exception to a few quote unquote, rules that I was putting out there and how important it is to realize that so just know that for everything I’m saying, of course, if you’re listening, and you’re like this, this doesn’t resonate or like this sounds wrong, there could be an exception to that rule. And you could be that exception, that’s fine. And the last caveat I want to put out there is a reminder for my friends out there who struggle with imposter syndrome. It was really important to me to mention this because I find myself continually struggling with imposter syndrome. And having had struggled with it for the past almost decade in my business, this might not at all be something that you need to worry about. This topic is definitely more prevalent than ever, in what I do with the Academy. I’m seeing it all over social media, I’m seeing it in the education industry, I’m seeing it in the creative industry. And so I’m sharing this to hopefully help the people who maybe need a little bit more help before they jump all in. I’m sure that you guys have all noticed alongside me that since 2020, there has been a massive increase in people creating and selling educational resources and content. And with that increase, we’ve probably all seen people that maybe shouldn’t have just jumped in, maybe we see them selling ineffective or lackluster education.
I think that we’re all starting to see and realize that not all educators are offering the same level of quality. I mean, before I think back to before, like COVID, before everybody started, quote unquote, pivoting into education. And I think people just thought that educators in the creative industry should generally be trusted and looked up to I think that was kind of the general vibe that was out there. But the fact is that anyone can make a course anyone can create an educational offering. But it takes a lot more than that. It takes a lot more work to become a genuinely quality educator. So please hear me. If you’re holding back on starting your journey because you’re afraid you’re not good enough. That’s not the message I want you walking away with as I dive into this episode. This episode is built all around preventing those pitfalls for those who want to be ethical in their educational offerings. So don’t let that imposter syndrome stand in your way. And I’ll actually be sharing more about imposter syndrome in a future episode to one that’s dedicated solely to that topic. And so I’ve got you covered. But I wanted to open with this because I just don’t want anyone feeling discouraged. I just want you to be able to move forward with kind of the best insight possible and the best knowledge to back up what you’re doing. I did also want to share a free resource that can help you figure out what kind of creative education you might want to create if you’re stuck in that place.
So if you want help on that, head to layleeemadi.com/quiz. We’ll link it in the show notes as well to take a fun short quiz and find out what kind of creative education might be best suited to you. So if you’re feeling stuck if you’re starting out, or even if you just want to see if your results match what you’re already putting out there, again, you can head to layleeemadi.com/quiz to find out. All right, let’s dive in to the big part of this. Actually, it’s two parts of this episode. The first is I’m going to talk through three questions that you should ask yourself before charging money for educational offerings that you’re putting out there. And then we’ll talk about three things that I’m going to encourage you to do if you’re interested in becoming a profitable educator. So let’s start with the questions to ask yourself. If you are in any kind of creative, like industry, Facebook groups, or if you follow any creative educators on social media, you’ve probably seen people talking about charging for coffee dates charging to pick your brain. I’ve seen a lot of cute quippy quotes that are like, you know, before somebody asked to pick your brain, ask them to pick their payment method, like I love that message. And it’s a great message. But here’s the thing, you can’t just charge people for your time, if you’re not actually going to deliver a great product, or you shouldn’t be I guess, is what I’m saying.
And I’m not saying you have to show up to a coffee shop for free. I’m not saying you have to take these quote unquote, pick your brain calls for free, you really shouldn’t do that, unless you want to. But I am saying don’t charge someone just to sit there and then not actually have a plan to help them move forward. Because that’s literally taking someone’s hard earned money to hang out with them. That’s not coaching. That’s not true mentoring, that’s just having like a q&a coffee date that you’re being paid for. And it really might not leave that lasting impact, or help change the trajectory of that person’s life or business. And that’s what you want to do as a mentor. That’s what you want to do as a coach or as an educator. So you’ve got to craft a plan first. And if you need help with that, I’ve got a mentoring mini course in my shop to help you with it. And obviously, this is not a sales pitch. You guys know I’m not about that life. But you should know that there are resources out there that can help you on this journey, if it is something that you want to do. So I wanted to throw that out there as we dive into these questions that you should be asking yourself before asking for somebody’s money. Question one. Have you seen success in your own life in business? And here’s the kicker? Have you ever helped anyone else duplicate, replicate, find that same success in whatever it is that you’re teaching on? So for example, teaching social media marketing, when you have a word of mouth run business, probably isn’t a really great way to start off your educational career, right? Because maybe you have success in your business, you have a profitable business, and you have a great social media presence. But is your business actually coming from that social media marketing? And have you ever helped anybody else achieve success and achieve profitability? By using social media marketing?
If not, I would challenge you to kind of ask yourself, Okay, so what have I seen success in? And what could I duplicate? What can I replicate for somebody else, using the processes that I use, if you can’t duplicate that success for someone else, that’s a red flag that you should probably take a step back before creating something to sell, and make sure that you actually can create something that’s going to help someone else succeed. The second question you’ll probably want to ask yourself is, and this one’s a hard one, so bear with me, but you’re gonna want to ask yourself, Are you filling a gap in the market that you’ve seen? Like, are you are you seeing an opportunity and taking it? Or are you actually able to recreate the success that you’ve experienced? So for example, I see a lot of people who come to me for audits of their educational offerings, who are actually not running profitable businesses.
And and here’s the thing, I’m not passing judgment in this, like we all struggle in our businesses from time to time. However, if you’re struggling to create a profitable, successful business on your own, and then you start to offer things like what I’ve seen are maybe some paid groups, or events like retreats, or masterminds, or one on one mentorships to teach what you’ve done so far, but your own business is struggling, then a couple of things can happen. One, you may not sell seats, you may not sell that offer Well, or two, you might sell it, and then people kind of start to discover that you’re not actually an expert in what it is that you’re teaching. And a lot of things happen after that, which we’ll talk about in question three, but a lot of things happened to your reputation after that, and it’s really hard to work backwards. So it’s really important that you realize one there are so many reasons that you could struggle to sell an offer.
But I want to focus on the one reason that has to do with ethical education. And that is that people can usually tell when you’re not an expert in whatever it is that you’re doing. And if they do end up investing with you, and it doesn’t deliver, that’s not really, that’s not really a great look, you guys, and it’s really hard to come back from that. So Question three, as we move into this is, are you willing to damage your reputation, which in my opinion, is the one thing that you really need to work hardest to keep intact in an industry where people are literally getting on the internet, and blasting their experiences, whether positive or negative, but they’re sharing their experiences really openly to a wide array of people?
Are you willing to damage your reputation in order to make a quick buck without the actual knowledge and the actual experience to back it up? I hope not. But it’s something that we need to be aware of. So all these three questions really run together. One, have you seen success? And have you helped anyone else find success in this, too? Are you being an opportunistic educator or an ethical educator? So are you filling a gap in the market that you’re seeing? Are you actually able to recreate the success that you’ve seen? And three, are you willing to damage your reputation in order to make that quick, Buck? And again, the answer to that is I sure hope not, I’m going to give you the answer right. Now, let’s say no. Okay, let’s say that together. So this is not like I said, this is not meant to deter you to moving forward. In fact, we’re going to go ahead and switch gears and talk about the three things that I would encourage you to do if you’re interested in becoming a profitable educator. And hopefully, this will help get you on your way to doing things in quote, unquote, the right way to ethical way, the first thing I’m going to encourage you to do is to give it time, and I’m not going to tell you how long it takes to become a great educator because it’s different for everybody. Like I mentioned in the very first episode of this podcast, which was gosh, I guess, over two years ago, we talked about how hope Taylor jumped into education very quickly, and how that was the exception to the quote unquote, rule.
For others, it takes years. So I’m not going to give you some kind of like formula, because that wouldn’t be genuine. But I will say this, think about how long it took you to get to where you are in your industry. And give yourself that same amount of time to grow into a new role before getting discouraged. It’s not going to happen overnight. People who are experts in their field are not necessarily going to immediately become expert educators, it’s a very different skill set. And that’s not to say that you can’t learn and grow into the role, you absolutely can. Again, I want to stress that I am not saying you shouldn’t become an educator, a mentor, a speaker, a course creator, whatever you want to be. In fact, again, it’s my job to help creative entrepreneurs do just that. That’s literally what I teach inside the creative educator Academy. But let’s all just agree maybe together to put in the time and effort to becoming an impactful educator, not an opportunistic, one who’s again, just jumping in to make a quick dollar or to fill a perceived gap in the market. We want to make sure that we’re actually dedicating ourselves to growing this new skill set to growing this craft of becoming a strong, impactful educator.
The second thing I want to encourage you to do is to put the work in. So how do we do this, we take our own advice we invest in ourselves in our growth, we take our time we get a coach, we invest in a program or a course, of course, shameless plug, because I love our program, you can always join the creative educator Academy, but do the work, whatever you do, find someone to really pour into you to keep you in check to give you good advice to challenge you. Because at the end of the day, we want to become profitable, we need to become profitable in our businesses. But being an educator, being a leader means that what you do directly impact somebody else’s life, someone else’s family, someone else’s ability to pay their bills. So take that seriously. And give yourself a gut check. Next time we think about charging someone for the content that you’re creating, and make sure that you’re creating that content to the best of your ability.
So that way, it’s that win win amazing feeling that like you have created impact in this person’s life. You have helped this person’s life and business thrive, there’s no better feeling I will tell you that. If you don’t hear anything else in this episode, hear me say that like the feeling of being able to deliver on success for somebody else is one of the most rewarding things out there. And I believe that you can do it. The third thing I want to encourage you to do is to work on your self awareness. So some of you might listen to this episode and think, Okay, well lately is really pushing me not to do this. Or you might be thinking, I already know my content. I know I can teach my content. Well, I know I can help people. So I’m all set. I don’t need this episode. Or maybe you’re hearing a few red flags that you probably should be working on you could be working on but overall, you feel pretty good about where you are in your educator journey. And you feel like right now you already have strong ethics in place. Whatever you’re thinking about right now in response to this episode.
I want to encourage you to be as self aware as possible. And remember that it goes both ways. Don’t be overly hard on yourself. And again, given to that imposter syndrome that, oh, I’m doing it the wrong way I need to stop or I need to slow down, that might not be true. Only you can know that, or your coach or whoever you’re working with, can help you identify that. But don’t be overly hard on yourself. And on the flip side, don’t make excuses for yourself, find where you’re at. And then make a plan to improve where you need improvement. And honestly disregard the things that don’t apply to you. You need to be able to lay your head down at night and know that you are doing things the right way for you and your business. And for the businesses again, and lives of your current or future students.
Also, I really want to as cheesy as it sounds, I want you to know, I really do believe in you. And I know that you can identify what you need to work toward. And if you identify that, then you really can be well on your way to becoming an amazingly impactful educator, I want to give you that encouragement, because it is a hard thing to do to be self aware. It’s very difficult. And it is difficult not to be overly hard on yourself. So I want to make sure that I’m being really clear on that self awareness is key. And that’s something that’s hard work. I hope you know that I am cheering you on, I believe in you 100%. And as a reminder, if you want help figuring out what kind of creative education you might want to create what is best suited to you, you can head to Layleeemadi.com/quiz to take that fun short quiz and find out and as always, friends I am cheering you on. If you loved this content, spicy as some parts of it might have been share it with a friend or tag me on instagram with your favorite takeaway because I just love to see it. I know that you’ve got what it takes to help impact the lives and businesses of others.
If you’re just willing to take the time to really ask yourself the tough questions and put in that work. I’m cheering you on. See you on the next episode. For show notes and resources mentioned on today’s episode head to so here’s the thing podcast.com This show is brought to you by the creative educator Academy where we teach creative entrepreneurs how to teach because I believe that industries thrive when experts can share their knowledge. Well, if you’re enjoying the podcast, I’d love to read your review in iTunes or see your rating on Spotify. Thanks so much for listening and I’ll catch you on the next episode.
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