 Perfect. All right. So I'm going to talk to you about teach everything you know. I'm Carl Alexander. I write, well, first of all, this is my Twitter handle. If you want to ask me questions or just annoy me or send me memes, I accept all those things. I also write at this address, Carl Alexander.ca. I will also have a written version Of this talk ready early next week. So if you just want a Written copy on top of the slides, it will also be in the Description of the slides once i post them online. All right. So who do you trust online? What do they have? Actually, i'm just going to take a small Pause here. I want the preview thing. Yeah, this works. Perfect. All right. So what do they have in common? They teach. They write on their blogs. They speak at work camps. They share code online. And it's also why you trust them. It's why you want to buy products that they built or you Want to use their open source projects. Or maybe you just want to hire them. And those are just some of the benefits that you can have from Teaching. And the best part is you can do it too. But there's obviously some obstacles to that. And this is what we're going to talk about today. It will be about the obstacles that you face if you decide To start on this journey into teaching. So the first obstacle, fear. Teachings is really scary at first. As humans, we're scared of a lot of things like spiders and Heights. I'm scared of heights. I hate heights. And the worst part is each of these fears kind of affect us In a different way. And that's why i'm going to talk about them. But it's obviously you have to kind of go through them in your own way. So the first one that's really popular is imposter syndrome. If you're not familiar with imposter syndrome, it's this idea That you'll be exposed as a fraud if you come forward and try To share or publish or do anything. It's really common in developers. I don't remember when i first heard about it. I remember the first time i did, i was like, oh my god, this is me. And i'm living it right now. As i'm speaking to you right now, i'm living this imposter syndrome. I'm wondering who am i to teach this to other developers. Because i've only spoken at four work camps. I mean, it might be more than most people, but to me it still feels Like insignificant in the sense that what is for, like i could Have gone up four mornings in a row and there's plenty of different Ways that this could have gone wrong. So i'm just, it feels so insignificant. And the worst part is especially for me, because the way i Pick my topics is if this was important, someone else would Have done it already. And this is a really kind of scary Part i find. Like for feeling as a Fraud, especially i think for body press developers, especially There's not as much content out there. And it might feel like, oh, well, if it was really important For me to share this body press knowledge with somebody else, Maybe somebody else would have done it already. Maybe david would have done it. Or jjj would have done it. Why am i the one that has to do that? But why am i the one that thinks that this is important? Shouldn't somebody else that's smarter than me have thought about It before? it's really hard to outrun these Thoughts. But i also think it's the best time to teach. Why? because you're in the trenches. You're the one living with these feelings, with this Uncertainty, you're discovering. And it makes you authentic and Relevant to the people that you want to teach to. Because, again, you're in the tick of it. So it's not like you've done it before. They want to know what you learned right now. And it's also harder to do the longer we wait. That's because, as humans, we're really good at storytelling. And either embellishing or forgetting the bad parts that we don't want to remember. And often it just ends up looking like this. You're on top and you're like, oh, yeah, it was easy. And the person's not at the same level as you. So it's really important, i find, that you do it as early as you can. Because that's also when you're in the same field as the people That you want to help. So it's really important. That's why i'm doing this talk right now. Because i want to teach about, i want to share what i've learned as a beginner. While i still feel like a beginner. I've only done this for a year. So i feel relatively new still to this. And i still remember what it is to feel scared to be in front of people right now. And yeah, i think it's important to do it now. So the other thing that you're going to fear is judgment. Judgment of others. Judgment everywhere. And i'm going to start with a small anecdote. I'm really scared of pressing the post button on Facebook. I find that publishing on my site is really easy. Because you're like Frodo Baggins. You have the one ring. But nobody knows you have the one ring. If nobody knows you exist, it's easy to publish online. There's nobody that can come and see you and knows that you exist. But when you publish online, whoops, i skipped a bit too far ahead. But when you post online, that changes. It's like putting the one ring in Mordor and this happens. And that's how i feel every time i post on awp by the way. I'm always like very, very scared that the evil on the internet Is going to come and attack you. And that's how i feel each time. And i'm scared to be misunderstood. Because maybe the way i explain something wasn't done correctly Or people won't understand what i'm trying to teach. Or they'll be called out for trying to promote myself When i'm just trying to help them. And at the end, sometimes i'm scared to be hated because of it. And the imposter syndrome feeds onto that fear of others. Because you feel like a fraud but you feel like being called out. But i find that it's just a small aspect of it. And often public speaking, if anybody here has done it before, It magnifies those fears because now people are judging you in real time. Like right now, you have an opinion of me. And i can't run away. But that doesn't matter because there are ways that we can master our fears. I don't like the term necessarily master or overcoming. I feel that we just kind of learn to live with our fears. Or to understand the feeling. It's a bit like love and hate. We all know what it feels to feel love and hate. But it's not something that you can run away from. We just learn to manage it. So how do you do that? You face them over and over again until the feeling is familiar. And i know it's a lot easier said than done. But i'm going to use a small example of public speaking. There's different ways that you can approach fear, for example, of public speaking. You can obviously speak at work camps, which in the large scheme of things Are very friendly environments to speak at. Everybody's super friendly and excited to see you. And it's very communal. But if that's still too intimidating, you can even go a bit smaller And just speak at a meet up. That's an even smaller group of people. So it's even less intimidating. You can even speak at your office. So now you're speaking to coworkers. People that you know that you feel comfortable with. Obviously the first time is always going to be the scariest. And the next time is going to be a bit better. And hopefully you keep the ball rolling. And, you know, there's no magic bullet for it. So it's just about taking small steps and keeping going. So i'm putting some question breaks in between. I don't know if anybody has questions or things like that. I like answering questions in the middle if people have any. Yes, jonathan. Okay, so i have a small anecdote for that. I'll compare what i did today versus what i did at work camp us. Work camp us, i tried to relax and not think about it. Made it ten times worse. It made it ten times worse because the more i thought about it, The more i couldn't get rid of the thoughts about it. Versus what i did today is just kind of go eat. Come sit in the back and move up to the front. But i think it depends really on each person. What i was trying to do when i was at work camp us is just To kind of take on like i meditate. So i was like i'll meditate before and it'll be better. Apparently i'm not that good at meditation. Really just get in the flow where you're not thinking so much About the fact that you're coming forward because it just Initiates a lot of the fight or flight feeling. So the more you can try to dodge that, the better it is. So the other obstacle with, i don't know actually is there Any other questions? All right. So the other obstacle when you start teaching is building Teaching habits. If you look at your favorite teacher, like tom McFarland, JJJ, anybody really in the word press community, they have One thing in common. They produce content regularly. They produce blog posts. They produce youtube videos. They produce podcast episodes. But it's not really what they produce that's really important Is that they produce it regularly. One of my favorite sayings is they never end the week with Nothing. What that means is that the more you have this habit of having Something to show to the world at the end of the week, the More it kind of builds on itself. It's like building an asset. You just have more and more of it. So i really like it. But one does not simply start and you have it. So what can you do about it? I'm a big fan of starting small. Another personal anecdote. My first writing goal was a thousand words a day. That was a horrible goal. And i'll be honest, i don't know if anybody here knows Nathan berry, but he does a lot of basically what i'm doing Right now is teaching other people to teach online. And he had this post where he's like i write a thousand words a Day and i'm like sure, i'll write a thousand words a day. Except i don't like writing a thousand words a day. So that really didn't work for me. And really it comes down to human behavior. We always think that we can handle more. But really the best solution is to break things down into Really tiny, tiny habits. So my writing goal was a hundred words a day. And really a hundred words a day is large enough that i have Something. If you write a hundred words a day, At the end of the week you have seven hundred words. Unless you're a long form writer like myself, which i know a Lot of people hate, seven hundred words is actually a pretty Decent blog post for most people. It's definitely better than the, you know, you need Three hundred words. That's actually three days. So it's really not that much. And it's small enough that i could finish it easily. So it's not, that's another aspect of goals. If you have to write a thousand words and you're not used to Writing a thousand words, it's daunting. But writing a hundred words, i'm pretty sure most people have Found a hundred words on facebook today right now. So it's really, it's pretty achievable. But it was also small enough that i could do more. So let's say i got in the zone, let's say you, often like the First obstacle that you have is just sitting down. So if you start sitting down and you start writing, you'll Often end up with more than a hundred words. So it was really, really useful about that. And it was also small enough that i could grow the habit. And by that i mean is like, if it starts getting easy to Do a hundred words, you write a hundred fifty. And then you add, you add fifty and you add fifty. And then you can even break it down after that. So let's say you're writing three hundred words a day. You could write a hundred fifty for an article and a hundred fifty For, well, i'm a programmer. So for documentation, because documentation is important. But it's a lot of writing. Training your willpower. So in behavioral psychology and just research in general, People tend to view willpower as a well. You're like, oh, i have so much willpower. I just wish i could get more of this well. It's always a resource that we imagine that there's just more of. But it's really closer to a muscle. In the sense that when you wake up in the morning, you always Feel more motivated to do things than at the end of the day. Because it fatigues. It grows weaker. Like, you use it all day. You're like, oh, i'm not going to eat this cookie. I'm not going to eat this cookie. I'm not going to eat this cookie. And at the end of the day, you're just tired. And you're like, i'm going to eat this cookie now. And it does worse when we do worse when we don't let it Recover as well. So by that, i mean if we don't rest well, we don't exercise, Or we're stressed, there's always a big difference between Like if you have stress at work versus no stress at work And your ability to do, like, habitual things that might Not please you most of the time, but you do them anyways. So this is another place where starting small is good. Like i said earlier, because it taxes this muscle less. But you want to repeat it every day. Because if you repeat it every day, you increase your strength Of your willpower, but also it becomes easier to do. So you practice it until you need a lot less. And then you can add new habits after that. So let's say i started off last year. I was writing and then i added meditation, which has nothing to Do with teaching, but it's just something else that i added. But it's hard to add all these things at once if you don't Kind of build it up slowly. And the other other aspect of habits that is important is Learning to pick yourself back up. Because things won't go well all the time. We all have off days. And the idea that anything has to be all or nothing is really The worst thing that you can do to yourself. We all go to work every day, but we all have sick days. It's really hard for people sometimes to dissociate the idea That if you fail once, you failed forever. But it's really something that you should not think about. Failure will happen, and you really need to plan for those off days. For example, if you write every day, what happens when you go on vacation? I'll tell you what. Please don't stop going on vacation. Because you need to go on vacation. But really what's important is that you should plan for these situations. So instead of saying, oh, well, i'll be on vacation, i could just Write in the morning instead. But the idea of doing that is That you could take a break during your vacation, but in General, it's worth avoiding taking more than a, i say a Day off, but you can do two or three. Because we forget, and it tends to go downhill. Our minds really crafty at finding excuses for us not doing Things that we don't really want to do. So if you give them a bit too much loose on the leash, it Will just run away from you. Any other questions? Yes. Yeah, i can, i can, i think i, Yeah, i couldn't talk about every anecdotal thing. But so for example, for this one, for writing, my initial, i Had also an initial setup where i would say i will write Something after two weeks. So i will publish every two weeks. I will publish something. So i had a hard deadline. And i would just arrive the day before and then just kind Of write it all out and like, i was just a slacker. So i would slack off till the end and then do it. And i should have known better because a lot of the stuff that I mentioned about habit, i'm very familiar with because i like a Lot of behavioral psychology research. And i should have known that setting deadlines like that Versus the small ones would have set me up for failure. But like i said, sometimes we just think we'll do all right. You know, that's why new year's resolutions exist. Like we think we'll do fine, but really we should take it small And then grow from there. And i find if anything, This talk versus any other piece of material that i've come across Doesn't really, you see a lot in habit blogs and stuff like that, But you don't see it too much in teaching or habit building Around teaching. But i find that is very important Because i have a lot of friends in the wordpress community That wanted to write. And most of them still don't Write because they're just like i'm going to write an article And write an article. But often when you start, It's just getting words on paper that's hard. Like forget the articles actually like too far ahead. Really it's like the things like the blank page. That's still really hard for me. Like once i get an article going, Like once it's a few hundred words in, it's a lot easier to sit down to. But once i publish it and i go back to it, even if i have an idea pad, It's still hard to kind of get the initial momentum. So people kind of forget about that or don't think they're Better than that. But really you're better off being conservative. And then at worst you'll just increase it faster. That would be my recommendation. i don't know if i answered your question. I feel like kind of a drone down. Yeah. i have an entire section on that a bit later. So after i have another question break at the end. So you can ask me again if i didn't answer it properly by then. Yeah. Carl alexander.ca. Any other questions? all right. The last little bit is about knowing your students. So you've decided you want to start teaching. But the best teacher has helped their students be successful. And that's something that's often forgotten. You start writing and you're like, oh, i'm going to publish this. And it'll be great. But really what you're trying to do is help somebody. So with that in mind, you want to know who do you want to teach to. And that's always a good question to ask yourself. Before you even start, it's a good question to ask yourself. So you want to help your ideal clients. You want to help team designers, buddy press users. It's really tempted to want to help teach everyone. Because, oh, i have the largest pool of possible users. Not users, but people that i can help. So it's good for sql or things like that. Sorry. But it often leads to the worst results. Your teaching feels generic and unmemorable. It applies to everyone but doesn't really help anyone. So what can you do about that? Well, you want to find your audience. You want a specific audience that you want to help. And there's no right way to pick an audience. You really can pick one based on your goals. But it's okay to not know either. There's no right audience. The right audience is the one that you connect with as a person. Because passion, i find, translates very well. If you're passionate about something, people feel it. So it's really important to at least have that. But there's no perfect audience. There's no like, oh, you're a team designer. This should be your audience. You should pick something that makes sense to you. That's why you can start teaching and see where it leads you as well. So what's important is to know where they hang out. And this is a bit where knowing your audience kind of helps. Because when you know where they hang out, it could be a Facebook group. It could be a subreddit. It could be a Slack channel. It could be a forum. It's actually invaluable sources of teaching material. Because they're there, and they're talking about their problems. And you can listen. And then you can teach them how to solve them. Which is useful, because if you're looking for material early on, Which is difficult, it's an easy way to find some. And then you even know where to share it. It's where they hang out. So it does simplify things a lot. And the last thing that you want to do is you want to stay in touch. Because knowing your audience in this day and age isn't enough. You really need to build a bond with them. Because your potential students come from anywhere. And they often come once and never return. So the best way that seems to come up over and over again is e-mail. Email marketing. But the problem is that no one gives their e-mail like that. Just like that. So that's why you see a lot of exit pop-ups. Asking for your e-mails. Websites think that once they've taught you something valuable. So if you've read through a large enough chunk of an article, You might feel more receptive, more willing to give out your e-mail to them. And you should do the same. You should ask them for their e-mail. Because getting an e-mail means that these people care. If they didn't care enough to give you their e-mail, then you're probably not hitting a strong enough cord. So an e-mail is a really, really, really strong signal if you're teaching the right thing. But a mistake that you see often is people ask for the e-mail and then they never e-mail back. And that builds a bit on the fear that we had earlier. I still remember, and i'm still scared sometimes to send an e-mail out. Because i'm just like, maybe i haven't talked to them in long enough. And they'll forget about me and i'll just get a whole bunch of unsubscribes. But it's really important to stay in touch. Because otherwise they'll forget that you exist. And then they'll get an e-mail from you. And they'll be like, who's this guy, Carl, unsubscribed? I've never been flagged as spam yet, so knock on wood. But please don't flag me as spam. But the ideal scenario is that you want to try to keep in touch every few weeks. I try to aim for two to three, but definitely under a month. And now you can also ignore everything i said so far about your audience. The fears and the habits, please listen to that. Why? Because i didn't do any of that. I wanted to teach about a topic that no one talked about, which is advanced programming concepts related to WordPress. And i was just really passionate about teaching that. But i had no potential students. I definitely had no where they hanged out. They were in various agencies. I knew them through like work camps, like talking. But there was no dedicated aunt. And they had no questions that i had to answer. But, you know, i decided to do it anyways. And this goes against everything i've mentioned so far. And i felt that it was my due diligence to actually mention this. Because what i've talked so far is what i've read, what i've seen other people do. What i've tried to implement myself. But it's also to show that if you're really passionate about something, it's possible to do it. It's just a lot harder. It's a lot of work. Again, because a lot of the little levers that you can use. Having a place where they hang out, questions to answer, things like that. You can't leverage them so much. So it's kind of you paving the way for them to know that you exist. But that's also why staying in touch is even more important, that scenario. Because since there's no hangout spot, you're kind of the hangout spot. At least that's what i want to think. But, yeah, closing thoughts. Like i said already, this, even if you don't do, even if you use Known hangout spots, you're answering questions. It's still a lot of work to do this. Obviously you have to write a lot or publish content. You're going to be a noob, so it's going to be ten times harder to do It than somebody that's advanced. But keep in mind that every teacher that you know today was a Beginner at some point. And the only difference between you and them is that they started. Maybe they got there faster than you will. Or maybe you'll get there faster than they did. But you won't know that unless you start. And there's no really a right time to start. It's just your fear is talking when you're like, oh, if i just had, You know, this piece of code or i can't even think of reasons. I just made up a ton of reasons. Like mostly, if nobody talked about it, then there was no reason For me to talk about it. Was the one that came up often with me. But the fact of the matter is that moment doesn't exist. And if anything, one of the most defining things that happened to me Related to just the advanced topics was at some point, i can't remember when. I just realized that if i didn't talk about it, nobody would. And that was the moment that i needed, but to each his own, obviously. But you'll just have to make the jump to figure it out. Thank you. Any other questions? Did i answer your question, by the way? So, so. My goal is to write a book right now. But ideally it's a mix of just writing a book, promoting a project, Projects and just helping the community. Initially it was to just start a business, but i figured out that i'm also New about that. So i'm just kind of figuring it out as i'm going. Yep. Yes. Good question. This is my first non-technical talk. So i don't know if you guys liked it. If you did, then perfect. Need more cowbells? Need more cowbells? I agree. Thank you. One section that i wanted to, i actually haven't written it even In the article yet, but that might be relevant to your question, Is empathy towards your students in general. So it's really important, even for tech talks, especially for me, Like there's a million memes about me, like you lost me at Hi, i'm Carl, because usually i just talk about too advanced stuff Even for most WordPress technical people. It's really this idea of empathy. So trying to put yourself in the student's shoes, Try to understand what's painful for them, Over explain. Honestly, at this point, even for technical talks, I almost explain line by line the code in text afterwards When i have a code sample. Just because that's what really i think works well, Is like if you try to put yourself in their shoes, what they Might feel, what they might have as questions, it's hard. There's no perfect solution for it. I try to put memes, but i don't know how much that Works that depends on the crowd as well. Just try to be funny and yourself for the non-technical stuff, But i'm honestly figuring it out today. Any other questions? Personal question, did i talk too fast? No, okay, thank you. I thought i didn't talk too fast, but thank you. Yeah, that took me a long time. Alright, well, thank you.