Goal 1: Win the trust
As a fashion illustration tutor, my job was to teach fashion designers how to bring their ideas to life through drawing. At the beginning of my teaching career, I faced the ongoing task of building trust with each new group of students. I needed to establish myself as a credible and trustworthy guide. Interestingly, gaining their trust often hinged more on instilling confidence in them rather than solely demonstrating drawing skills.
I realised the magic of trust when I created my YouTube channel and started to record online tutorials.
I’ve met people I saw for the first time in my life and they smiled at me like they knew me!
This is when I’ve learned the lesson - demonstrating in-depth knowledge and experience in your field can help you to win the trust in potential clients, employers, or business partners.
Goal 2: Market yourself or your business
Ask yourself: what do you want to sell through the book?
A few years later, I had my own business - a school of sketching and design. We were teaching fashion, interior and product design. I did the same thing with other tutors - we recorded some free tutorials, so people could see a real person, their skill and methodology.
With this marketing strategy, we did pretty well in the first two years, until new competitors entered the market and started to sell very cheap courses. They had to compromise on quality to make it more affordable (cheaper art materials, lower hourly rate for tutors, cheap rent).
I didn’t want to win a competition for being “the cheapest”. I wanted to keep the same quality of art materials and keep our cool fashionable loft in the city centre. I thought that instead of cutting expenses, we could add more value to the service and professional image of the founder.
And this is when I thought this was the right time to write a book.
After publishing a book, I had no free chairs in my classes. My courses were sold 2 months ahead and I had to increase the price for my offline lessons. This book became a free advertising tool. My publisher wanted to make it popular - they made a great marketing campaign, with no efforts from my side.
Goal 3: Sharpen the saw
Stephen R. Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,
Habit #7 - sharpen the saw.
“Sharpening the saw means continually honing our personal development through deliberate actions that renew and recharge our energy. The result is a happy, holistically healthy, and effective individual.”
Writing a book is a great way to develop your knowledge: When you explain something to someone, you often gain a better understanding of the topic yourself.
When you explain something, you naturally organize the information in a way that makes sense. You connect the dots and put everything in a nice, tidy order. It's like arranging your thoughts into a well-organized story that makes the topic easier to understand and remember.