Teach everything you know

These are the slides from a talk given at WordCamp Miami 2016.

Take a moment to think about who you trust online. What do they have in common? There’s a good chance that they thought you something valuable. That’s how you remember them and it’s also why you trust them.

That trust that you have in them can translate to different things. Sure, they might want to sell you something. But it doesn’t have. You might want to hire them to work on a project or your company because you respect their opinion. You might want to use their open source project because you trust their coding ability.

All these benefits came from teaching you something valuable. And the good news is that you can do this too! You have unique insights that you can share that can be of value to others. Are you ready to start!?

Perfect, then this talk is for you! It’ll look at some of the obstacles that you’ll face on your journey into teaching. You’ll see how you can overcome them so that you can start building trust online.

You can read the companion article at: https://carlalexander.ca/teach-everything-you-know/

Transcript

1. Teach ________________ you know everything
2. Carl Alexander
3. @twigpress
4. carlalexander.ca
5. Who you _______ online? trust
6. What do they have in ____________? common
7. They ________! teach
8. They _______ on their blog write
9. They _________ at WordCamps speak
10. They ________ their code share
11. That’s ______ you trust them why
12. You want to _________________________ buy their products
13. You want to _________________________ use their projects
14. You want to ______________ hire them
15. Just some of the _____________ of _____________ benefits teaching
16. And you ______ do it too! can
17. But it’s not without its _______________ obstacles
18. Fear in a teacher’s world
19. Teaching is scary at first
20. We’re scared of sooo many things
21. Each of them affects us in different ways
22. Impostor Syndrome
23. What is it?
24. Fear of being exposed as a fraud
25. Common among developers
26. I’m living it as we speak right now
27. "Who are you to teach this to other developers!?”
28. "I've only spoken at four WordCamps.”
29. "If this was important, someone else would have done it already."
30. It’s hard to outrun these thoughts
31. But it's often the best time to teach
32. Why?
33. You’re in the trenches
34. It makes you authentic and relevant
35. They want to know what you learned
36. It gets harder the longer you wait
38. That’s why I’m doing this talk now
39. Judgement everywhere Judgment,
40. I’m scared of pressing "Post" on Facebook
41. Publishing on your site is easy
42. You're like Frodo who’s carrying the one ring
43. No one suspects you have it!
44. Posting online changes that
45. It’s like putting it on in Mordor
47. The evil of the internet can see you now
48. That's how I feel each time anyhow
49. I’m scared of being misunderstood
50. I’m scared of being called out
51. I’m scared of being hated
52. Impostor syndrome feeds on these fears
53. Public speaking magnifies them
54. People are judging you in real time
55. You can’t run away once you started
56. Mastering your fears
57. Can you master your fears?
58. Fear is like love and hate
59. We learn to manage it
60. How?
61. You face them over and over
62. Until the feeling is familiar
63. Easier said than done
64. Example:
 Public speaking
65. Speak at WordCamps
66. Speak at meetups
67. Speak at your office
68. First time is the scariest
69. Next time is a bit better
70. Keep the ball rolling
71. Forget the magic bullet
72. It's about taking small steps
73. Questions?
74. Building teaching habits
75. Let’s look at your favorite teacher
76. They produce content regularly
77. They create blog posts
78. They create YouTube videos
79. They create podcast episodes
80. What they produce isn’t important
81. It’s that they produce it regularly
82. They never end the week with nothing
83. But
84. One does not simply start a new habit
85. So what can you do about it?
86. Start small
87. My first writing goal: 1000 words a day
88. That was a horrible goal!
89. I didn’t like writing that much
90. We always think we can handle more
91. Break things down into tiny habits
92. New writing goal: 100 words a day
93. Large enough that I had something
94. Small enough that I could finish easily
95. Small enough that I could do more
96. Small enough that I could grow the habit
97. Train your willpower
98. Willpower is often seen as well
99. We imagine a resource that we can get more of
100. Willpower is closer to a muscle
101. It fatigues as you use it during the day
102. We do worse when it doesn't recover
103. Start small to tax it less
104. Repeat every day to increase its strength
105. Practice until no willpower needed
106. Let’s you add new habits without losing the old ones
107. Learning to pick yourself back up
108. Things won’t go well all the time
109. We have off days
110. The idea of all-or-nothing is a recipe for disaster
111. You need a plan for the off days
112. Example: Writing every day
113. What happens when you go on vacation?
114. Please don’t stop going on vacation!
115. Plan for these situations
116. You could write in the morning
117. Avoid taking more than a day off
118. It goes downhill after that
119. Questions?
120. Knowing your students
121. Teacher help their students be successful
122. Who do you want to teach to?
123. Always a good question to ask yourself
124. Do you want to help your ideal clients
125. Do you want to help theme designers
126. Do you want to help BuddyPress users
127. It's tempting to teach to everyone
128. It often leads to the worse results
129. Your teaching becomes generic and unmemorable
130. It applies to everyone but doesn't help anyone
131. Finding your audience
132. You need a specific audience that you can help
133. There’s no right way to pick an audience
134. Pick an audience based on your goals
135. It’s ok to not know either
136. There’s no “right” audience
137. Start teaching and see where it leads you
138. Know where they hang out
139. This is where knowing your audience helps
140. Where do they hang out?
141. It could be in a Facebook group
142. It could be in a subreddit
143. It could be in a Slack channel
144. It could be in a forum
145. Invaluable sources teaching material
146. Listen to their problems
147. Teach them how to solve them
148. You even know where to share it!
149. Staying in touch
150. Knowing our audience often isn’t enough
151. You need to build a bond with them
152. Potential students come from anywhere on the internet
153. They come once and often never return
154. Email is the best way to fix that
155. But no one gives out their email just like that
156. It’s why you see exit popups asking for your email
157. Websites hope they taught you something valuable
158. So you’re willing to giving them your email
159. You should ask your students for their emails
160. Getting it means that they care about your teaching
161. But don't ask for their email and never email back
162. Your students will forget that you exist
163. Try to keep in touch every few weeks
164. Ignore most of this
165. I wanted to teach a topic that no one talked about
166. I was passionate about teaching it
167. But I had no potential students
168. But I had no hang out spots
169. But I had no questions to answer
170. I decided to pitch my tent anyways
171. This goes against everything mentioned to you so far
172. It's possible to do it
173. It's just a lot harder
174. Staying in touch is even more important
175. Closing __________ thoughts
176. This takes a lot of ______ work
177. Every _________ was a __________ at some point teacher beginner
178. The ____________ is they ________ started difference
179. There’s no _____ time to ______ start right
180. It’s your _______ speaking fears
181. That _________ doesn’t ______ moment exist
182. You’ll have to ______ the ______ make jump
183. Thank you!
184. Any ______________? questions