BONUS: Behind the Scenes of The Creative Teacher Lab

Kirsten 0:01

You're listening to the creative teacher podcast, a show for busy teachers looking for ways to engage, inspire and make an impact in their teacher businesses. I'm Kiersten, a teacher business owner who is all about simple and actionable tips, strategies and resources that result in wins, big or small. If you're looking for that extra spark of creativity, you've come to the right place. Let's dive in together.

Hey there, and welcome to another episode of the creative teacher podcast. This is a bonus episode because I wanted to take you behind the scenes of something new that I recently launched as of yesterday, and that is called the creative teacher lab. So I'm going to give you an overview of what it's all about. And I will go into a little bit more depth about what to expect in each of the three labs and how you can get access to the trainings.

So I had been thinking of after what to do next with after the product listing lab. Because this is was the course that was specifically on product listings. And I also added some information about marketing and some branding. But a problem I've noticed is that number one, there are not really a lot of branding, like the whole process of branding courses for teachers, sellers. And there isn't really a lot of graphic design, like actual, you know, theory that's geared for TPT seller businesses. And that was kind of what I wanted to do. But I wasn't sure how to go about it. So this has been brewing in my brain for the past, maybe a year or so. And like I had so like, just even six months ago, I had a completely different direction in where I'm at now. But I knew that I wanted to do something and share information just mainly about branding and graphic design. That was mainly the thing.

The other thing is, I know that I offer services for TPT sellers, I have a variety of services, custom branding, product listing VIP days, I have the you know, just different customer services. But it is at a premium price point it is a higher price than I know a lot of us would like to shell out and even though I do have payment plans, you can put down 50% deposit, it still may not be necessary or accessible to everybody in the TPT space. And so what I wanted to do was provide a DIY way for sellers who eat for whatever reason, aren't able to hire somebody to do their branding. And just really would prefer to do it themselves. And they're motivated to do it themselves. So they can learn the process of branding a business and also learn graphic design theory and best practices for designing resources and marketing materials rather than having to hire somebody to do that as well. So just getting in and actually learning it so that they can improve on their design skills.

So that is where the creative teacher lab was born. So kind of riffing off my product listing Lab. I'm wanting to continue that theme and also combine it with what I have with my free creative teacher. podcasts. And so just to make it super simple, I decided to name it the creative teacher lab. So that is where this next part comes into play is what to put in these labs, how did I want to organize it and structure it. And eventually, I came up with three separate trainings, three labs that can be taken independently of themselves. But of course, the best path, I believe, is to take in a certain a certain order. So I'm going to talk about each of those courses. And the main thing about it is they are really short each. Each lab is like a mini course, it's six lessons. And it gets you from point A to point B.

So let's talk about the first one, which is brand strategy for teacher sellers. I actually the first iteration of this course, I tested out on my mastermind, we did a zoom call, we meet every guest twice a month. And we one of the trainings that we did was on brand strategy. So we went and I just added, like, I just put up some slides of information that I wanted to teach in the actual course down the line. And we went through it, and they really liked it, they gave me feedback of how to make it even better. And I took that information that I shared with them and their feedback and combine it to what we have, which is the brand strategy for teacher sellers. So I've been a guest on several podcast talking about brand strategy. I've, I have an episode on having a brand strategy and identity. And I the reason why I separated brand strategy and brand identity is because it is something that's important just to heavily focus on. And so I wanted to hyper focus on just in one lab and hyper focus on brand identity and another lab. So that is where brand strategy comes into play. It's thinking about your long term plan for your business. And deciding who your target audience is how you can uniquely positioned yourself. And also just thinking about your purpose, core values, all of that good stuff of what goes on beneath the surface in a business. This is different from a marketing strategy, not the same thing. We're mainly focusing on internally our TPT business as a whole. And I'm walking you step by step in this course, with nine exercises, starting from your brand core, moving into your target audience, your unique positioning, and then your messaging and we go through exercises to create ultimately, what is your brand strategy. I include a workbook in every lab that's in the creative teacher lab, of course. And it's basically following along with that brand strategy progression. This is a really great way to like think about it workshop style. This is more of the workshop style course, because I tell you to pause the video work on the exercise, and then we move on to the next exercise. I also have a fictional TPT store. So after I share with you what you're going to be doing for an exercise, you're going to see an example of a fictional TPT store Fun and Fancy classroom decor is this brands name and I walk you through how the exercise would be completed with this fictional TPT business so that way you can have a clearer understanding of what you need to do. And you can pause the video work on that exercise and then move on to the next step. I personally did these exercises in the same order with my southern teach designs business and I did it with the southern teach business with my other mastermind friends. And it was really eye opening that's one of the things I noticed with when you know I had my I've had brand strategy calls and I did it with my mastermind and myself and it's it's one of the main words is eye opening or just like things that I never thought about before. And also one person said like I wish I had done this earlier in my business.

So I think this is a really great mini course if you are just feeling lost of what to do what what type of resources to sell, what type of niche you would like to be in or what type of niche you need to focus on these exercises will help you clarify that. Going into lab number two, graphic design for teacher sellers, this was a super fun one to create, because it's going into graphic design theory, we know we need a cohesive store, we know we need an appealing graphic or our resources need to be laid out nicely and be legible and you know, easily consumed by our audiences. But sometimes we need to go way back to the basics of design to understand why this is important and how we can do that. So graphic design for teacher sellers is primarily a theory based mini course, it's going to be more of your traditional like, here's the information. But the workbook that's included with this particular lab is making you Well, of course, I'm not forcing anybody to do anything, but you are able to analyze certain aspects of your business. So you could be analyzing your brand, your overall brand, you're analyzing your best selling resource, analyzing your storefront, analyzing your website, analyzing your marketing, graphics, your email. So I help you think about different aspects of where you're designing in your business. Of course, you may not be doing all of it. So you may not be using every single page. But it is a great way to help you kind of think about what is working, what you're doing design wise that's working well in your business and what you probably need to do less of in your business. So before I ramble on, let me just tell you a little bit about what's in it. I start with just a overall introduction about graphic design theory, what it is, we go into the principles of design, there are seven principles design that I focus on. And we also talk about color, y'all like this is probably my favorite lesson out of the ones to record and just create in general creating the slide deck for it. Because we go into the additive color system, the subtractive color system, and how they all relate together, how these colors come together, why we have a whole color spectrum in general. And hex codes, we're going to be learning about how hex codes are laid out and what it means like what the first two digits of the hex code are versus the second two versus a third two. So we talked about all of that. And we also talk mainly about typography, types of typography, font pairing tips. And then we go into layout with margins and grid systems and just appropriate spacing in general. And then we put it all together. So there's a lot that goes into it. But I think even if you have been a TPT business for a while, and maybe you're not necessarily you like your brand already, you don't really know what type of resources you want to sell you possibly have. You like your logo, you don't want to refresh anything of that sort. But you want a deeper understanding of design theory in general. And maybe you've tried to understand you, you can Google stuff, of course, we can Google anything. But if you want something specific for our niche of TPT businesses, then I highly recommend that you check out graphic design for teacher sellers.

Alright, the third lab is brand identity for teacher sellers. And this is basically a step by step like here is what I do with my clients when I am branding, custom branding designs and logos and coming up with color palettes and fonts with my clients here is my process that So this course is mainly a like, come over my shoulder and look at my screen and see how I'm doing these things in Canva and PowerPoint kind of thing. So they're it's very heavily focused on tutorial videos, and how I'm walking you through the process of how we're going from start to finish having nothing, no visual brand graphics to having a variety of brand visual graphics. This was also really fun to record as well. It took a lot longer than I thought it would I was thinking oh, this will be a piece of cake but and then I look at the time and I'm like oh my goodness, it's a lot but I didn't really edit a lot out I wanted you to see the natural process of how I'm doing things in real time. So if you purchase this particular lab a and you want to fast forward it you can all Always do the speed to two times, but I'm just I want you to see everything I'm not I didn't edit, really hardly anything out, I think I had a kid screaming at one point. So of course, you know, you got to crop that out, we don't want screaming children in our courses. But either way, I think that if you're really wanting to like he maybe you are not sure how to design certain things in and you just want certain design tips in creating different visual branding graphics such as different types of logos, banners, quote boxes, and just you want to kind of behind the scenes look at how you can do this for yourself for your business, then I recommend you check out brand identity for teacher sellers. I also go into ways you can find inspiration, and utilizing and finding a color palette, how you can narrow it down different color harmonies and how you can find different color harmonies and which colors pair well together. Similarly, with typography, which fonts pair well together in the process of looking for fonts. And then of course designing the different logos and variations. I do both tutorials in Canva, and PowerPoint, and also different brand graphics. Then at the end, we are putting a brand board together and I give you one of my most recent templates that I don't have shared with anybody else except for my own branding clients. So you will have access to that. And you'll be able to create a brand board in Canva, using what we have talked about in that course. So that's just a little bit about the brand identity for teacher sellers.

Now, let me just talk to you about the method to my madness of why I have it structured in a certain way. So my thinking is, if you think about an iceberg, where you have a lot of the iceberg underneath the surface, that would be the brand strategy. And that's kind of similar, it's like everything internal that we don't see in a business brand. Everything above the surface is the what I can compare to a brand identity. It's the logo, typography, colors, all the things we see all the storefronts and product covers that we see. That is the brand identity. And graphic design theory is kind of in the middle of my iceberg, it's like right at the like right at the very edge of the water. And because that's reinforcing what we need to know about breath best practices for color and typography and just laying out things in general do basic design principles. So that's why I kind of ordered it in the way if you buy the bundle, because you'll have the option to buy each course individually. Or you can buy them completely as a bundle.

My recommendation is to start with brand strategy, start with lab number one, and then go into graphic design theory, understanding the basics of graphic design. And then the third lab, it will be recommended to do the brand identity for teacher sellers. So that once you have that foundational understanding of graphic design, and you have your strategy in place, then it will be a lot easier to come up with your brand identity and visual branding. So that was kind of what I was thinking with that.

Thinking about if you're interested if you're listening to this, and you're like, Okay, I'm interested in one or more of these courses, I do have a bundle that you can purchase completely all together, you get all three of them. If you purchase the bundle, you'll also get access to three additional bonuses.

The first bonus is the creative teacher lab private podcast where I will be releasing monthly episodes and you'll get your own unique feed that you can add into Apple podcasts or other platforms that you might use. So you'll see a new episode in there every month, and it's gonna go into more depth expanding upon the course content. And it's just kind of extra insights. And you know, if you really liked the creative teacher podcast, then you'll definitely like these extra monthly bonus episodes because I go into more depth about the content in the actual course.

The second bonus I have are graphic design checklist. There's six of them in the bundle of checklists, and it's in an editable document where you can easily go in and see okay, what do I need to fill Besides, for my resources for thinking about the principles of design, thinking about colors, what do I need to remember thinking about typography, thinking about layout, so it's giving you some tips and suggestions. And just like, Did you remember to do this, and that's specifically for resource creation. Then I have another one for social media graphics. I have another one for email, I have another one for website, I have another one for storefront and product listing. So there's six of those graphic design checklists that you can utilize and it's in a Google Doc, you can easily just check it off and duplicate it, whatever you want to do.

The third bonus that I have, if you purchase the bundle is a master class Video and workshop bundle. So this is maybe like a library of different master classes and tutorials that I have presented in the past could be ranging from a TPT forward session to something from another TPT seller LEAD conference. I also have a couple of guest speakers in the different tutorial libraries. And this is growing, of course, but I just added in my favorite ones, they're really juicy. There's different topics in there from product listings, to ways to stand out in the search results. And there's a variety of modalities that where it's like over the shoulder, let's let's go in and do things or going into just theory like content, heavy content. So that's another extra bonus, I find that a lot of people really enjoy having access to additional tutorials, and just topics that are not necessarily specifically aligned to branding and graphic design, but are still helpful for your TPT business.

So if you're interested at all, in any of these courses, whether you want to purchase each of them individually, or you want to purchase the bundle, then you can head over to the southern teach designs.com forward slash enroll. I am not closing the course this is not like a limited time. Oh, you have you are gonna miss it. If you don't sign up right now. There's no urgency, it's there when you need it. I will say that each individual course does include six lessons. And each course includes a lab workbook, with additional links and resources in each lab, depending on the content. But if you purchase the bundle, you will get a discount. Because you it's you know it's bundled, and you're gonna save some money just by purchasing all three at the same time. And then you additionally get those three extra bonuses. And for all of the labs, its lifetime access. I price these courses at a very, very low price. I feel I want it to be accessible for as many TPT sellers as possible. Whether you're experienced or you're newer, I don't really my philosophy. I've changed my philosophy over the years is I'm not trying to make a quick buck out of TPT sellers, like I want to help TPT sellers. And I do feel that making information that's compiled for the TPT niche, and making it accessible and easily consumable and informational. And helpful is the most important to me, rather than trying to like trying to get a ton of money out of sellers because I don't overall I make more money, you know, in my TPT business, right, that's what I'm focusing on mostly. And it's kind of just like added bonuses to be able to help you guys listening TPT sellers. So that's my philosophy on that. If again, you're interested, you can check out the page, the southern teach designs.com forward slash enroll, and you will get access as soon as you check out and purchase.

All right. Well, I hope you enjoyed this bonus episode. Let me know what you think. You can always ask me any questions that you might have about the courses and labs in general. You can DM me on Instagram, send me an email. I'm at the southern teach dot designs and my email is Kiersten at the Southern teach.com All right. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll talk to you again soon.

Thanks for listening to the creative teacher podcast. If you enjoyed listening to today's episode, feel free to subscribe and leave a review. I'd love to hear your feedback. You can also follow me on Instagram at the southern teach dot designs. Have an amazing day.