Instructor Offers Online Wellness Classes for Seniors

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

One of the biggest challenges that online course creators face is recruiting students. You can be an empathetic, authoritative instructor who spends dozens or hundreds of hours putting together a transformative experience. But if you have no source of student signups, you probably won't succeed in bringing that experience to many people. Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

Now to solve this problem, there are lots of different marketing tools and tactics, but what if you approached it from another angle? That's what we're gonna look at today. We often talk about marketing and how to recruit more students or customers or clients. But in this story, a tech savvy senior helps others create community and find their zen. Actually helps them find their zen with technology, all while getting paid for classes she doesn't have to find customers for.

That's kind of the key takeaway here. How can you teach a class or some sort of educational experience where you're getting paid, but you're not responsible for going out and actually creating your own customer base? So you're gonna hear that in today's short story and analysis all in less than 10 minutes. Let's jump in. [Music]

Linda Springer was teaching liberal arts and education courses as an adjunct instructor for two universities.

She'd been teaching online for eight years after getting her master's degree, but her day job included lots of grading. And when her students complained about their grades, she would have to regrade their assignments. In February, 2020, Glenda received an email about becoming a guide for a platform called get set up.io. The role would involve teaching part-time classes online to seniors. Get set up as a place for older adults to learn and connect in small online classes.

Something that was about to become very popular in 2020 as the pandemic swept across the world. Get set up has guides and students in several countries. When Glenda got the email, she liked the idea of teaching something online that didn't require endless grading. Also, since she was herself 60 years old, she matched the age group she'd be teaching. So after doing a video interview where she taught a skill remotely, she became a guide with get set up and started teaching technology classes through the platform.

So how does it work? Well, the company handles the marketing and advertising for her classes. They also work with certain health insurance plans and local agencies on aging so that seniors can access the classes for free. Instructors, meanwhile, get paid a flat rate per course regardless of enrollment. Could Glenda earn more teaching on her own?

Possibly, yes, but this platform makes it easy for her to, well, let's say get set up. Classes are offered through Zoom and get set up has a scheduling tool where she can update her availability. This means she can set that availability around her adjunct work with universities. Startup costs were zero. Technically, to do this, you do need some equipment, but it's pretty common equipment, a laptop or desktop computer, a webcam, a microphone, and some lighting.

Basically, if you have done any video calls over the past year, you already have everything you need. Guides should be familiar with Zoom and at least one app that allows you to make screencast videos. You should also know how to create slides and be able to share them in a Zoom screen share. Again, this isn't rocket science. Most people know how to do this or have some experience or could quickly learn.

Glenda started out teaching Squarespace, then she added classes in making YouTube videos and another on using the iPad. She's now teaching around 10 hours a week and earns up to $1,500 a month. As the pandemic evolved, Glenda branched out from her technology classes into topics on wellness, since that's been a long time interest of hers. She started with a social hour on meditation and a stress management techniques class that she developed. She then moved on to mindful chair yoga, which became especially popular.

The best part of the experience has been seeing how much her students value the knowledge she shares. The pandemic has had a huge impact on seniors because many of them already had limited socialization and depended on senior centers that had to temporarily close. Some have bonded with Glenda and each other through the classes. She even has students who take every class she teaches in order to socialize with each other. Next, she's developing more classes to teach online, including breath work and how to use your intuition.

She's also in an online Zumba teacher training program. Finally, she's considering offering more classes using the private feature in YouTube so that they could be invite only. With her community building and technology skills combined with her new student following, she's built a solid foundation without any marketing of her own. [Music]

All right, so in Glenda's case, the platform came to her. This company gets set up, approached her.

Could you approach the platform? Like what if you haven't got an email this morning asking you to teach a course? Well, whether it is this company or another one, a lot of these platforms are looking for instructors. And if you're trying to solve that problem of, well, I have this expertise, this skill, I would love to invest some time in creating a course, but I have no idea where my students would come from. As I said, you could spend a lot of time working on marketing and figuring out how to develop your own foundation and tools and tactics and such, or you could work with a platform like this.

So I was looking at the website, getsetup.io. It says, get set up offers many ways for community members to engage with each other. They reach over 2 million older adults globally and are always looking for interesting ideas, hosts and influencers. So there's a form there. Actually, you can fill out the form and their community manager will reach out to get you set up, or that's what they say.

I have no affiliation with them. Just passing this on as we look at different resources for our community. And now I think I'm gonna go learn about some mindful chair yoga. All right, that's it for today. Inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is better.

Hope this gets you thinking. If you wanna see the show notes for today's episode, including links to everything I mentioned, go to sidehustleschool.com/1744. If you've got a comment or question for the show, you can leave that on the site as well. Hope you will subscribe or follow, come back tomorrow, new episodes every day. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.