Find Your North Star: Teach Your Art Online Without Overwhelm (with Lyric Kinard)

Every creative business needs direction, and that’s where your North Star comes in.

Episode 31 of the Creatives on Camera podcast is for artists, crafters, and creative teachers who feel overwhelmed by everything it takes to build a sustainable online business.

Lyric Kinard talks about finding your “North Star” — a clear vision of the creative life and business you want — and why clarity matters more than speed or hustle.

If you’ve been stuck planning, second-guessing, or circling the same ideas without moving forward, this conversation offers a calm, practical way through. Lyric walks you through imagining your finished business, identifying just a few systems that matter, and choosing the smallest possible next step so you can move forward without burnout.

In episode 31, you’ll learn:

How to define a clear “North Star” for your creative teaching business
Why big goals are meant to guide you, not overwhelm you
How to identify only 2–3 systems that really matter right now
How to take a 20-minute baby step instead of freezing in place
Simple examples of first steps for video, email lists, and online classes

We talk about these ideas every day inside the Academy for Virtual Teaching. You’re invited to join our free community, listen in on live conversations, and get support from other creative educators who are taking their next baby step too.

00:00 Why your creative business needs a North Star
01:30 Imagining your finished creative life and business
02:28 Why your biggest goal should feel scary
03:20 Defining what success really looks like for you
04:33 Taking inventory of what you already have
05:20 Choosing only three systems that matter
06:10 Backing up to the smallest baby step
07:00 Easy examples of first steps with video and email
08:43 Invitation to the AVT community and resources

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Click here to read a raw transcript of this episode

Lyric Kinard (00:04.046)

Hello friends, this is Lyric Montgomery-Kennard with Creatives on Camera coming to you from the Academy for Virtual Teaching, where we help creative entrepreneurs, those who serve makers with shops or with education. We help you to take the tech overwhelm out of video making because video making is vital to reaching your audience, to making that authentic connection to

getting them into your shop, to helping them learn the technique. It's the way we serve our audiences. I want to talk to you today about something that might seem off topic, but really it's at the core of what we as entrepreneurs and business people are doing. What is your North Star? If you had an easy button and you could slam it and there were no obstacles,

nothing at all in the way. What would your finished business, your ideal most perfect life with your creative business, what would it look like? I want you to think about it for a minute, maybe put this on pause and close your eyes and imagine it. What would it have involved? What are all the big parts? What are all the amazing things? And I want you to specifically envision who you're serving.

as well. That's what we're doing, right? We are serving our audience. Who are they? Now with this finished, amazing, perfect, successful business, what does that do for you? What does that do for us? What lifestyle or how does it help us live? Right? If you are making a certain amount of money, what comes off the table that you're worried about now?

If you are reaching enough people, what is different about your life? And I want you to think in ideals, right? Are you busier than ever or are you more relaxed than ever? So take time and really, really imagine as many details as you can about your biggest, most amazing finished business goal. Now,

Lyric Kinard (02:28.95)

it's going to seem scary. In fact, it should seem scary. It should be so big that you're like, I don't know if there's any way I'm ever going to complete this. It should be. Think about the North Star. You can go in a direction. It can guide you. It's steady. It's constant. But are you ever going to actually set foot on the North Star? No, you're not. But you can get to mountaintops. You can get somewhere amazing. So

Write it all down. Think about the most amazing goal, the most amazing outcome you have. Now, I want you to define it clearly. Write down what it looks like, who you're serving, how much you're making, what your life looks like. Then, break down two or three things that need to be in place in order to get there. Two or three

big things, do you need to have online classes that are running on an evergreen format with advertising funneling into them? you need to have events in your shop? Is your shop a certain size? Do you have a certain number of employees? If you're a designer, how much time do you spend designing and how are your creations distributed to your audience? What does the whole big thing look like? What things do you need to have in place?

three of them. Not all of them, just choose three of them that will get you to those goals.

You have a North Star. You have somewhat of a defined path to get there with those three systems, with those three things that you need in place. Now I want you to look down at your feet and take inventory of where your business already is. What resources do you already have? What is already in place for you to get to?

Lyric Kinard (04:33.378)

that finished business. Do you have a website? Do you have an email list? Do you have assistants or employees? Do you have social media channels? Do you have a YouTube account? Do you have an online course platform? Do you have marketing materials already in place? Do you have a course that you're teaching? All of these things. Take good stock, take inventory of what you already have, because that tells you where you're standing.

and what your next step needs to be. Now choose one of those three systems, those three goals, those three things you need to put in place in order to get to your North Star and back it up to the easiest, tiniest baby step towards that goal. We're talking something that you can get done in 20 minutes. An easy success.

an easy win because so often we get so caught up in how much there is to do and we get overwhelmed and there's too many things on my plate that we never take a step in that direction. We walk around in circles. But if you plan out one easy thing, the very first step, that's how you get to the top of the mountain. None of us have seven league boots. We can't fly to the top of the mountain.

We have to walk there. And the way you walk there is one baby step at a time. So thinking of that big finished business that you imagined, and then thinking of one of the systems that you have to put in place, and thinking of what you already have in place, what is the easiest action that you can take right now in that direction? And do it.

Promise yourself that you'll do it today.

Lyric Kinard (06:41.708)

Baby steps are the things that are going to get you where you want to go. And just take a baby step every day. Because my friends, I know you can do this. I know you can do this. If you're creating online classes, maybe the baby step is pulling out your phone, cleaning off the lens, and talking to the camera. The easiest thing, choose the easiest thing. Talking to the camera can be just.

hey, this is the thing I teach. What can you talk about right now for three minutes off the top of your head without planning anything and just do it? And that's a baby step. That's showing up on camera. You don't even have to post it anywhere. You can delete it. But practicing is what is going to help you be comfortable on camera. And talking out loud to the camera is one of the ways you get better at being on camera.

Right? If you don't have an email list yet.

Find one service where you can get an email list. That's it. Just research and write down one thing about email services. This might be the thing I'm going to try. You don't have to sign up for it or do anything. Write that down as your baby step next. Right? So what I want you to do is think big, imagine big, and then don't overwhelm yourself with how much there is to do to get there.

Look down at your feet, pick up one of them, move it forward one step. That's what I want you to do today, my friends, because that is how you succeed in your business. That is how you move forward instead of moving in circles. We talk about this stuff all the time at the Academy for Virtual Teaching. We talk about what is your business? What are those steps? How do you get there?

Lyric Kinard (08:43.852)

I invite you to join us in our free membership. You can go to academyforvirtualteaching.com and join the discussion. Listen to some of the guests that we have on our live seminars. You can ask them questions there. They're live on Zoom and there's a lot of back and forth and participation.

And also you can check out our video making crash course or our virtual teaching masterclass where we hold your hand every step of the way through the whole building a business teaching virtually process. So I can't wait to hear about your North Star. You can always send me an email at info at Academy for Virtual Teaching and let me know what you're thinking.

Let me know what your dreams are and then tell me that you took the first baby step my friend. You're amazing, you're creative. The world is a better place because of the way you serve your audience. So go do it my friends. And if you have the time, leave a review, like and subscribe, all that stuff. It really helps to get.

the word out to more people who need this. We lift each other and everybody rises with this beautiful, creative, collaborative community that we have. Take care and until next time, bye.

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