The “Why” Behind Creatives on Camera

Lyric Montgomery Kinard (00:01.518) Hello my friends, it is so good to see you and I am so excited for this new adventure starting the Creatives on Camera podcast. And I thought I'd introduce myself, tell you a little bit about me, my journey, why I'm here and what I'm here to help you with. My driving purpose, my big why, the thing that makes me love what I do the most is I love it so much. when I see the people I help be successful in their businesses. I love helping people to create the kind of lives that they love. And in turn, I'm an artist, I'm a teacher. And doing this helps me spread the joy to so many more people. Being creative, learning to make things, learning to do things with your hands, to bring beauty into the world brings goodness. into the world, brings joy and creativity into the lives of so many people. So when I get to help other teachers spread their joy, it's like I am exponentially expanding the joy that I can help put out there in the world. And that was a lot, right? I tend to ramble, here I go. Lyric Montgomery Kinard (01:25.388) Let me tell you a little bit of. Let me tell you a little bit about myself. My name is Lyric Montgomery-Kinnard. I'm an artist. I work in textiles. So I dye and paint and print and stitch fabric. And I have been traveling. I get hired by quilt guilds, who knew, to travel all around the world, play with fabric, play with my art form, play with the most amazing people. And I get to help people who think they're not creative understand it. they really are. And when that light goes off in one of your students, it is so exciting. It fills a teacher's soul. You're a teacher, you know how this is, right? You understand. So I've been doing that forever, but I started teaching what I do online way before Craftsy. Like when there was dial-up modem still. quiltuniversity.com was one of the first online quilt class education places and it was fantastic. I had to take a lot of pictures, I had to write a lot of the lessons because there was no video. People were on dial-up modems. But I met people from all over the world through this joy of doing the thing I do and being able to share it virtually. At the time, I had little babies at home. I have five children. They are all grown now. They are amazing people. But I started the teaching journey when all five were at home and the youngest was about three years old, the traveling part of the teaching journey. And transitioning or adding in online courses allowed me to stay home. I could teach with a Lyric Montgomery Kinard (03:23.778) crying baby on my lap if I needed to, right? The flexibility and the reach was entirely different than having to pack your bags, pack all the supplies for your students, get on an airplane and travel somewhere. Not to mention arranging everything that had to happen at home, right? And so many people are limited in the reach they have by geography. Teaching online eliminates all of that. I was teaching online before Craftsy, Craftsy approached me and I said, no, not really. I looked at their contract and I wasn't entirely thrilled with it, especially with them owning my content. So eventually when Quilt University went away, I had no classes online for a little while until technology improved and it became so easy for teachers to be able to create their own content and put it online in their own classes. Lyric Montgomery Kinard (04:33.536) Now I had had some experiences before this. I've appeared on television shows that were on PBS. I've been on camera in professional studios teaching what I do as well. And I filmed an instructional DVD with my publisher. I also have a book and it was fantastic. It was a huge learning experience. I learned a lot. The first time I was on TV, I think I watched it once, cringed. and then like forced myself to watch it one more time just so could write down all the things that I needed to do better next time. And I did better next time and the next time and the next time. I was terrible for a long time, but I learned and I grew. And also that DVD that I filmed with them, I earned royalties on it. And... understanding all the work that went into that and then seeing really the tiny, tiny bit of income that I gained from it made me realize I wanted to own my own content. So the next time I wanted to do an instructional DVD, I hired an editor to fly in, film, edit everything, and then hand over the content to me. I owned it. I owned the copyright. And I am telling you, even as expensive as that was, being able to sell my own content at full price, full retail, I made back everything I spent plus more than I had earned in three years of royalties within four months. The comparison was just, there wasn't even a comparison, right? It makes so much more sense to own your own content. Now, over the years, that was a while ago, over the years, I have accumulated knowledge, I have learned how to film my own courses. And filming and presenting a course that teaches you how to make something with your hands offers a few different challenges than just talking to a camera, right? There are camera angles, there's noise that goes on, there are things like, what do do when your hands are covered with stuff? Lyric Montgomery Kinard (06:54.08) and messy and paint or clay and you can't touch your equipment, right? So I have learned and I have grown and I have accumulated this knowledge and started filming my own courses, posting my on-demand courses online, still traveling because I love to travel, right? It's apples and oranges. They are two different things. And then COVID happened. COVID was such a pivot point for our entire world, right? I was a traveling quilt teacher. My colleagues and I, entire business was shut down overnight. It happened to so many people around the world. So another friend and I co-founded a company where we took our colleagues, educators in the quilt industry, who were willing and able, sometimes just willing, not entirely able, to try out live virtual teaching and we put them in front of the people that would hire them from around the world. So Global Quilt Connection is still a business that lists virtual teachers and puts them in front of Quilt Guild leaders and quilters who hire them either for live Zoom virtual workshops and programs or on-demand courses. So from that I realized that my colleagues needed a lot of tech help. Not everybody is as excited about all the new toys and all the software and all the things like I am. So I started mentoring my people, the business people, the other teachers that I love and adore. And out of that grew the Academy for Virtual Teaching. And here we are today. This podcast is coming to you from the Academy for Virtual Teaching, where... I bring in creatives, people who make things, artists, quilters, knitters, chair-caners, weavers, all kinds of people who make things with their hands and want to share their skills, share the creativity and joy that they get and the knowledge that they've earned to their students through video, through a broader screen. Lyric Montgomery Kinard (09:21.166) through a broader geographical reach. So that's what we do at the Academy. We help people learn the tech. We support each other. It's an amazing community. You should really check it out. If you're interested in teaching, join academyforvirtualteaching.com and just hop in and talk to people, ask questions, see what's going on there. We aren't just quilters. Again, that's the world I come from, but... All of this knowledge applies across such a broad spectrum. If you are somebody who makes things with your hands and wants to film it, wants to create video, wants to offer online education, and you know that education can be just YouTube tutorials. It can be social media videos that just show off your designs. We can help you. I can help you. That's what we're here for. And hopefully this podcast is entertaining and interesting, but most especially, practically valuable enough for you that you'll come back and listen time and again. I plan to bring in a huge number of guests who have some sort of knowledge, some sort of skill, something that will help you to appear better on camera, to speak better on camera, to understand the complexities behind communicating with students through a screen or something about the software or the hardware. Anything around this idea of teaching what you love to make through a screen, we're going to bring in people who can teach you a thing to make it better for you. to expand your reach. Just imagine yourself teaching the thing you love online and reaching students from around the world. It's phenomenal, it's amazing, it's wonderful. You can share your joy and your creativity so much further than the area that you can travel to in person. So I hope. Lyric Montgomery Kinard (11:45.982) that gives you kind of an idea of what to expect here and who I am. Again, I love this and I love you. I'm not afraid to say it. I say it all the time. I'm one of those super embarrassing people. I really love you guys. I love my students. I love the people I teach. I love my colleagues and the more creativity and goodness and beauty that we get out there into this struggling planet. this struggling world, this struggling society, the better it's going to be. We create community through the things we make with our hands. We create beauty and joy in people's lives. So I hope to see you again soon and we'll see you on the next episode. Take care friends, bye bye.