Kerstin Cable: Women in Language and Teaching Careers in Languages

Welcome to the Actual Fluency Podcast with Kris Broholm. This show will inspire, motivate, and teach you how to learn foreign languages the best way. On this show, you'll hear incredible stories from amazing language learners who've learned 5 to 10, even 30+ languages, as well as industry experts who help shape modern language learning through innovation and research. As we dive into language learning methods, techniques, and apps, you'll quickly discover what works and what doesn't. This is the Actual Fluency Podcast, and this is Kris Broholm.

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, you're one of the favorite fan favorites. Been on a few times.

My third time, second time, third time, I think.

And um before we get into some of the new stuff going on, I just wanted to ask you what you've been up to. It's been almost two years. We just checked. You were here uh in January of 2019 to talk about setting great New Year's resolutions and goals and habits. And uh so almost two years have passed, which is uh like 10 years in internet years. So uh what have you been up to? Where have you been?

I had already, I think, moved to my new location in the South of the UK. So I'm still living in the South of the UK. I live in Canterbury. I am still learning Welsh. I have started learning Mandarin Chinese. It is it is still to be seen how much progress I'm making. But I can sort of, you know, when I hear people speaking Chinese, I can now pick out personal pronouns and all that stuff, and it's no longer a big jumble. So that's quite exciting.

Nice, yeah, and uh I noticed that uh you overtook me recently on the uh Fluent Show. You you uh almost at by the time this goes out, you're almost at episode 200, so congrats on on the consistency and and persistence on producing so many great episodes.

Thank you. Yes, we're having a live stream for episode 200. And on the Fluent Show, I also want to just give a shout-out. I do this as much as I possibly can. Last year, after a lot of debating with myself and, oh, will anyone be interested and I don't know, I decided to just put it out there and ask the listeners if they, because every now and then, you know, listeners are so kind and they email you and they say, how can I support you? And I'd always be like, you can buy my course, I guess, but I know what you really want to do is support the Fluent Show. So I put the Fluent Show on Patreon, and we started a Patreon last year. And it's a, yeah, it's a really exciting thing. It is so humbling and and energizing as well to know people are excited and get involved and help me make the Fluent Show. So that's going strong. And we've got, yeah, like I said, we've got the live stream coming up for episode 200. So it very, a lot of good reasons to get excited about the Fluent Show.

Nice, here's to another 200 episodes, hopefully.

Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm here for it.

And uh we just also talked a little bit before, there's so many great new podcasts coming out, as well as great to see that other people in the language learning community are picking up the microphone and recording their own experiences and thoughts and interviewing uh people with in their own style, and I I think that shows in in the whole big picture that language learning is not uh going anywhere, you know, it's growing and growing quite fast, I think. And it's funny how I always think about this thing that the world is getting smaller and smaller if you think about it, you know, we're getting high-speed internet to almost every corner of the the world, but it seems like the value and and interest in in learning people's languages are are actually going up, which is strange because you'd think, oh, the whole world's going to know English at some point or, you know, Google Translate's going to be good enough to just have conversations. But I find it very um I guess it's it's somewhat a trust in the human spirit that people are more and more interested in in actually learning other languages and and and in so doing learning other cultures too.

It's very true. And I more and more believe, especially, I always say this, if you're an English native speaker, you you don't really have to learn a foreign language. There's very few occasions when you really have to, have to. And yet you do, you know, yet we do. Yet there are so many people out there. We've seen it with Corona, um just getting getting more and more excited, getting into learning a language. And I think that is because we we go way beyond the utility of what language we speak with with somebody else on a practical, you know, how do we best complete the transactions. Learning a language is inside of us. It is a I in a way, it sounds really hippie, but you but you know me, I'm a bit hippie. It's it's like a fulfillment of our human potential.

Sure, it's natural for us to do it, so.

Yeah. And it is such an achievement, and I think especially in a world where we are we are ever it's ever more visible what everybody else is doing around us. We need those achievements. We need those things that really are personal, that are inside us, and that make us feel like, yeah, I've got this. I've managed something really, really cool and really challenging. And so I think language learning is going to go from strength to strength in the future because not just what it does for how we interact with other people and how doors open for us when we do know somebody's language. And Google Translate's never gonna it's never gonna do like my my dad's dialect of German, you know what I mean?

Yeah, and if uh if anyone hasn't listened to the full uh 200 episodes of your podcast or or certainly the 180 or so of mine, it's it's a very common topic as well, to to kind of equate personal development and language learning because they are essentially the the same one and the same. So I I definitely.

Yeah, there's a reason we do this, and that reason is not because um, you know, you you want to order a beer on holiday. That's not really the reason, not if you're serious about this.

Right. And I guess showing more people that what's possible with, you know, it it doesn't take like a four-year university degree to be able to converse in in Spanish for an English speaker, for instance. Showing the opportunities and and the results that people are getting with, you know, modest efforts. I think maybe that's what's motivating new learners to come in and and say, hey, that looks achievable now, whereas before it was almost like mythical, you know, like how do you learn languages without the internet? Is it even possible? You had all the tapes and the cassettes and whatever. Um and it obviously people were still doing it, but now there's a real exposure, and you have the the conferences and the the events, and going to talk about one of them a little bit later in the show today, but that I feel like it encourages people to get their feet in because they just realize it can be done to begin with. That's the first hurdle anyone wants to learn really anything, I suppose. They have to believe that it's possible. Because if you believe that learning a language is some kind of mythical feat of strength that only a select few people are capable of, then you will never even look into it, and you won't get those benefits of of doing it, like uh connecting better with people of that culture, or just the personal benefits, you know. There's some there's great studies published about the the brain chemistry improving, staving off dementia. Um and I'm sure concentration is also better because you you kind of sit and and uh practice doing one thing for an extended period of time. And you touched on something as well, like um career benefits, you know, opening doors. I think that's definitely true. If you're working for a company that has uh a big uh presence in another country, then if you learn that language, I mean, it can't hurt your position in the business, right? So, um, yeah, definitely a lot of good stuff for languages, and I love seeing all the new faces that are doing podcasting, and there's a lot of new great blogs out there too, and YouTube channels, and just a lot of very nice people. And uh hopefully we can get back get back to doing conferences at at some point, uh again, meeting in person and uh hanging out and sharing beers and you know, I definitely remember a few beers in Bratislava, uh last year, and hopefully that'll come back in in due course, but until then, we're kind of forced to, I would say, is probably the right way to these things online, but fear not, fear not, there are lots of online opportunities. We had the uh the gathering was online and a big success. Polyglot conferences coming online, a big success. But one event that's always been online is the Women in Language. So Kirsten, do you want to give us a little introduction to what is Women in Language, and how did you come up with it?

Yeah, very happily. So I'm one of three co-organizers of an online event called Women in Language. And Women in Language was conceived under the mission or around the mission of celebrating, championing, amplifying the voices of women in language learning. That was sort of our angle, and Lindsay, Shannon, and I got together in 2018 to run the first Women in Language event, and put it online straight away for many different reasons. We thought about, we thought about accessibility. We wanted people to be able to join us really easily. We weren't sure about how this concept would land. We we felt very confident and excited about it, about just being able to put on an event that is ever so slightly different. But, you know, you don't know if if people would really travel across the country for for that kind of thing. And in addition to that, I live in the UK. Shannon lives in California, and Lindsay at the time was actually over the course of organizing it, sort of hopped around between three different countries, and I think was in Peru when we finally ran the whole show. So it was always going to be an online event. Lindsay approached, I think she chatted to me, and she was like, I've sort of been thinking about doing something for International Women's Day. We could have this sort of like um maybe some kind of event, do you think you're interested? And I I just went, yes, oh my God, yes. And it it it it kind of hit on something that has been had been growing in my mind, where I felt I would really love to put something out there, you know, where we've got we don't put like necessarily the polyglot angle on it, and we take out pretty much, we take out any kind of this this sort of associations with it, but also, as soon as you don't, this is something I noticed and that I can put into words now, when I I think I had a feeling for it at the time. As soon as you say, do you know what, we'll only, we'll restrict our speaker pool artificially, I guess. We'll say, okay, we're only going to have women speakers, because we know too many amazing women who don't get the chance, or don't really get like the spotlight, and we want to we want them to have the spotlight because this is cool, right? And we want you to hear from these people. As soon as you put something out and you say, we'll take a slightly different angle, what emerges is this fresh thing, and it's not a remix of conferences that you already have, where it's like, okay, we've got our, you know, like as soon as you say, we've got a conference where we really want the world's leading polyglots. As soon as you say that, you you think of five people, which are accepted and known as that, and you go, okay, cool, which all pretty much all happen to be guys, or if you you could argue that it's 80% guys, but did did the point stands, right? And as soon as you say, do you know what, we'll just do it slightly differently. We're going to approach this from a different angle. What you come up with is, or what emerges is this lineup of fresh voices that not necessarily you've heard from before. This sense of excitement because you get a lot of first-time speakers who some of them didn't even really expect to be speaking at this kind of event, who were like, oh, okay. I guess I'm, you know, I'm going to come and I'm going to stand up to this. So you get people with that drive of doing something for the first time. And that brings the whole event this amazing new energy. So this is 2018.

Wow, yeah, that's I didn't I didn't know that fact actually, that's that's pretty amazing that you you you're able to just completely freshen up everything and have a completely new roster.

Yeah, it's daunting, right? Because you know.

Well, as a personal friend, I can certainly attest to those things. Um but I I I thank you for the explanation there, because I'm sure there are a lot of people out there thinking, probably mostly guys, who are thinking like, why is this even necessary? Like what would what's the point really? But I think you explained that quite well there that first of all, it's not just about the gender equality thing. It's also about it's a totally different event. And I think actually I would argue with you that that's the primary thing. The primary benefit of of your event is that you're giving people who aren't really, let's say, as immersed in the community or as well-known the ability to get exposure to to it's actually networking, I guess. Um and I would say the fact that it's a it's a female roster, I would say it's almost secondary to that. It's a really positive thing to have that kind of lead-in and and networking opportunity, which is so much less terrifying than, let's say, going to uh Bratislava and speak in front of, you know, 300 people in a classroom, which I find terrifying, by the way. I mean, I know you've done a lot of presentations, but um but I'm not quite there yet in terms of the public speaking. Um but is there anything you want to add to that, like the um maybe some of the critics, or if if people are thinking this is silly and we don't need this, like maybe tell us a little bit more about what it where it came from and and and why you you came up with it?

I I want to start this definitely off by saying that, and this is a misunderstanding that I think we have every year because we're called Women in Language, and we thought about it, you know, and no, this is the name now. So because we're called Women in Language, sometimes people think that we restrict our ticket sales to women, and that is not the case. So our ticket sales are completely and utterly open to everyone. And I saw Lindy Bweta's tweet the other day, and she put it as Twitter sometimes, you know, it gives you the conciseness to put things into exactly the right words. She put it this way. She put Women in Language, by women for everyone. And that is what we are. So we really are for everyone. If you're into the idea of seeing 30 incredible experts share what they know about languages, panels, with this year, we've got live language exchanges with the conference attendees. How cool is that?

Yeah. And uh just as a as an aside, the the last two guests on this podcast have have I found because they had Women in Language presentations. So.

How cool is that?

There you go. I mean, that's that's amazing.

That's amazing.

But um, do you think there are any are there any sort of structural limitations to, let's say, more female speakers at conferences, or is it solely the biggest problem is simply that the the mindset and the kind of you you said speaking themselves out of it and shyness and like what as a guy, maybe it's not easy to understand where that where those problems stem from. So can you share a little bit are there any kind of is there anything the events could do better to accommodate more female speakers or have a more let's say, closer to a 50/50 in in terms of of the speakers there or is it is is it more personal reasons really?

I mean, first of all, you know, I'm not talking about events in the whole world, but I know that in our language learning world, on the whole, and again, this this isn't just about gender equality, you know, as soon as we if we get gender equality, right, we still got a lineup of all white people, then we we might still have, we might still say we don't have the the variety of voices that we want. I think we can only strive, right? We can't be all perfect. It's not possible.

That's great.

Yeah, it's so cool. But and and me too, and Shannon too. So it's it's the same, you know, we listen to a podcast, we hear somebody call, we go, they'd be awesome for Women in Language. But also we get a lot of nominations over the years. We also get.

But what does it take though, sorry to interrupt you, if you like what are you looking for in a in a Women in Language speaker? Is it uh new ideas? Is it a a very uh, you know, a well-spoken person? Is it a what what is it a new kind of area of language learning? Is it a research?

Well, I can say we with some language with some of the speakers, I don't even really know them before I contact them, you know. Uh so it's it's not one specific criterion. We don't ask people to propose a talk. So we do kind of go off of what we've heard of these people before. So somebody who has presented maybe somewhere else, but it could be somebody who did podcast interviews, it could be somebody where the they they're active on social media, or they've got a blog going on or something like that. It's just anything that we notice. So it's not one specific thing. But this is very different to a call for papers where you propose your talk. So you've got to before you get involved, you've kind of have to do the thinking about what exactly will I talk about. You've got to commit to what you'll talk about. You've you put yourself out to potentially be rejected, and your idea to be rejected. And that's a fairly involved process, and it's also very active process. Whereas what we do is just notice people, notice people, notice people, get nominations from previous attendees. So every time after after Women in Language has been, we do a big survey, and we ask both the speakers and the attendees, who do you think would be great for this? And they all go on this list, list, list. And of course, we end up with a list of like 80 people. We could do the month of Women in Language, which is impossible because there's only three of us. But we then kind of go through the list and, you know, Lindsay gets a few, I get a few, Shannon gets a few where we say, definitely want to hear from this one. Um and that that makes up I think about half of the speaker. And then we we add this year, I think um I actually did a I did a random.org because I do believe if they're nominated, they're they're probably going to be great. And if they're not going to be great, they're going to tell me, and then I'm just going to say no. You know what I mean?

Yeah, absolutely.

So I've got a lot of faith in this. And it is a very different process to looking through essentially an application. That's not what we go through. We go through this kind of suggestion list. Then I contact people. Again, I I run the speaker side because I love it. I'm a people person. And then I make the people essentially they still go they go, oh, what what do you want me to talk about? I'm like, I don't care. Just tell me what time of day because with an online conference, the most important thing is that you make sure everybody is actually available at the time that they're going to that they said that we're going to be available.

Is it live?

Yeah.

Wow.

It's 100% live.

That's that's pretty intense.

It's like 35 different streams live.

Oh, God, that's a that's sounds like an organizational nightmare.

It works. It works.

You guys work.

We get the live energy, you know, it's special.

Yeah.

You know, then it would be easier to say, if you travel all the way to Montreal for LangFest, then it doesn't matter if you speak at 10:00 in the morning or 2:00 in the afternoon. But if you're at home and perhaps you're managing your family as well, then it's really critical.

Yeah, and then they're all in different time zones too.

And they're all in different time zones too. Yeah.

Yeah, I was just about to say.

So after that, they get told or they they I try I I really every year so far, I've been doing reasonably well. We um I I put them on the schedule, and then I send an email saying, this is your time slot. Are you happy with your time slot?

Yeah.

And now I'd quite like to hear what you want to talk about.

Right.

Right? So it goes back to front. I don't know whether that is a model that any other conference would ever want to do. And it's not for an in, you know, for an in-person conference, it's not the same type of model, etcetera. Um, but what it does, I think, is in terms of the talks, in terms of the content, it gives people a yes before they need to think about what they're going to talk about. And what I hope it does is it allows people to go with the thing that they really want to talk about, even if they think, maybe people don't really, I don't know if I, you know, like if you're proposing a talk, you think about what do people want to hear. But if you already know you're giving a talk, I hope at least, and I try to encourage this in the speakers, you maybe it's a little bit easier to go with the thing that you really want to talk about.

Yeah. The stakes are a little bit smaller, yeah, because you're not applying for it.

Yeah. And the fact that somebody contacts you and says, we you know, we would like you to invite, we would like to invite you to come and speak is entirely different to here's a massive call for papers because the minute somebody says, we're interested in you, you know, as a person, every year, I get people going, did you really, I don't know, do you really mean me? I mean, are you running out of speakers? Is this a problem? I'm like, are you joking? I got 100 people. I don't know.

[laughs] Oh, they're self-sabotaging again. The self-sabotage is coming in.

Every year, every year. Um and I always feel like, okay, as long as this still happens, I'm going to still do this. But it's different to putting yourself forward off your own back and thinking in the back of your mind, and I think this in the back of my mind. Um, oh, I don't know, because there's going to be this person, there's going to be this person, and they're going to want this person, and I don't know if they've got space for me and, and I really what's the point of trying?

Yeah.

So we try to get around, this is already, this is a long-winded way of saying, we we try to get around people saying, what's the point of trying? But I don't know whether this is a model, and I don't I'm not I'm not here telling you, this is the answer to of all of life's problems, or anything like that. Because I think you, you know, you get the conference that Lindsay, Kirsten, and Shannon put on. You don't get a conference that anybody else would put on. So this isn't the event that is all the answer. This is just a this is the event we want to make.

Yeah, that's the point. That's the point. It's your event and you're you're having a lot of achievements with that based on that. But I think that's also a common misunderstanding is that, you know, what you said in the beginning, it's it's a brand new kind of event, which if you ignore everything else, has a lot of benefits. Like the idea of not not asking for topics. Um and and inviting new people every year. That's also interesting. Like if you look at the presentations of some of the other conferences, maybe there's a lot of repeat speakers every year. Which is not a bad thing necessarily, but it's different. You know, it's it's like a different experience. And some people might appreciate that they come back to hear, I don't know, uh Lydia every year, or Lindsay, or uh Richard, you know, some of the people that often or yourself. I know you also like to do presentation presentations at those events. So I think that's a big kind of uh a big what I noticed from when you explained it a few minutes ago is that it's not just about the women thing, you know, that's important, of course, but it's actually also creating something that wasn't there before. It's not like making a female version of the polyglot gathering online at all. It's totally different, totally new, and brings with it new positive benefits and um for the participants, but also for the um for the speakers.

Yes, yes, that is it. I think for the for the speakers there is a often I feel like it it can be a little catalyst, and uh I I go out of my way whenever I can, like I offer the speakers help. So I say, you can book an appointment with me if you want to just talk through your talk idea. If you're feeling uncertain about what you should talk about or what you want to talk about, you can book an appointment with me and I'll help you out with it. And that is hope like my hope is on the one hand, like, I don't know, we no one's ever proposed something really insane. We've had we've had in the past, I think we've had some people say, like someone proposing a talk that is more for an English learning audience.

Right.

And then but you know, we can go back and say, that's not quite the talk that we're after, but we still really want you to speak. Do you think you can angle it somehow? And it's never failed. Never, ever, ever. Like the the hope is that once we've got our list and stuff, we really try not to, we really try to say yes, as much as possible. And we we try working new things. And I know like now I've spoken at a few at a few conferences. I know the first time I spoke at the polyglot gathering, I felt much more pressure to prove myself and to be credible. Whereas.

In the, yeah.

At the AHO in Berlin, yeah. And it was a good talk, you know. I'm I'm I'm satisfied with how that went.

Did you talk about?

Uh, I it was about how to choose a tutor and how to spend your money well in language learning.

Oh yeah, very very very very useful information.

Um, it was yeah, it was a good talk, you know.

Very much that year. And I was I was tutoring way more then, right? So it was really also from the point of view of look, I work with people every week, and this is this is how they waste their time with me, kind of a thing. Yeah, maybe that maybe that's a really good segue to uh talk a little bit about yourself, uh because I remember we on the podcast, you've previously talked I mean, on this podcast, I mean, on your podcast, I presume you've talked about everything, but on this podcast, you've talked about in the past uh tutoring, like uh how to be a better teacher. I think that was one of your first appearances. And then you talked about German as well, German pronunciation. You had a a German course out.

Yeah.

It's still awesome. It's still good.

Then we had the habits and everything, and um but have you sort of pivoted a little bit away from the teaching aspect um and into in the language learning niche, or what what what is interesting you at the moment? When I moved to South of England, unrelated, but you know it's a big life change. I think that year, I I stopped one-to-one language tutoring.

Uh-huh.

But I don't think I stopped as a German teacher. I don't think I stopped as somebody who, you know, loves a language and wants to share that language with other people. Uh, because the next year, I made German Uncovered, which is my my course that I I have with I will teach you a language. And that was the most involved in-depth course I've ever made and made me kind of was like a consolidation of all the teaching I had done before. And at the same time, really a chance to apply all my skills and learn even more and to grow as a teacher. You know, I I built the curriculum for a beginner's German course that takes you from A1 to B1. That's that for me was an achievement. That was really cool.

That's huge, yeah.

That's huge.

Right, and you also you also obviously running an online business, so I guess you're you're in your Teach and Thrive, you're you're kind of living proof of that methodology of of, you know, you start out as a maybe you start out as a as a part-time tutor or you're already in a in a teaching role, and you want to maybe pivot a little bit to make it slightly less active, maybe have some passive income, create online assets like your courses. Um so in a sense, you sort of uh you're providing the blueprint to what you're you're doing yourself.

Yes, I love doing Teach and Thrive. I love it. It's one of my favorite, favorite things. Uh, this month, I'm doing, this is so cool. Like, I've done a podcasting one-on-one this year. I have done a course on Lindsay's done a course on how to market on Instagram, which I'm really grateful because I get to learn from Lindsay.

Ah.

I love it.

But I think a lot of people, going back to the beginning stages, I I I think there are a lot of teachers out there who are not even thinking along those lines because they are teachers first, and they maybe have set up a nice routine. Maybe they, you know, make relatively good money for for what other options they have, and they're flexible, they work online, maybe. Uh and they're not even thinking that, you know, all those knowledge and all this experience you have can can be translated into a way to not only increase your overall income, but also maybe get buy back more of your time. So instead of having, let's say, 30 hours of tutoring per week, maybe you just have 5, 10 with your favorite student or your best kind of most interested students. And then the rest comes in through like you say, like group classes or mentoring in a different way or or just having online courses where people can learn from you 24/7, 365 days a year. But you have to get that inspiration first. I feel like a lot of teachers out there kind of in the groove, you know, they're just teaching away, and there's nothing wrong with that. Don't get me wrong. And this online business thing is definitely not for everyone, but I I I like the the fact that you're you're sharing not only because you're doing it yourself, but also with Teach and Thrive, and the content you put out, you're showing different paths that are available if you have skills in a language. And I'm excited by the fact that almost anyone listening to this could go and replicate it because for instance, English is the most learned language in the world, so there's definitely people out there looking for you to help them with your with their English, or if you are fortunate enough to speak other languages really well, then you could teach that language. And it seems to me like if you're passionate about languages, that's a a natural step. But of course, a lot of people need that first initial inspiration or, you know, you can help them a lot of the way with the technical stuff and and the um the setup. But if they don't have if they're not even thinking about the possibility of doing it, then they're not going to do it, right?

Yeah. I think there is a huge difference. There really is a huge difference between starting to tutor, which is relatively, it's it's actually really fantastic that we've got a relatively easily accessible opportunity for everybody to experience what it's like to teach a language. I think this is amazing. And if you love languages, you there's a good chance you're very quickly going to fall in love with teaching languages, which is is a special in itself. But you've got to be able to try it out. There's just there's a huge difference between that and any kind of, however it looks, any kind of version of running a language business.

Yeah, and I think there's definitely two distinct groups there that we're kind of talking about. There's the the people who haven't even started their first lesson yet, but are thinking about tutoring, let's say, in English or something that doesn't require too much to get started. But there's also the group that maybe you've been maybe you have a teaching degree, and you've been teaching for a long time, and you're kind of switching your business online to teach online, I mean. And then or you're you've been online teaching for a while, and you have a an established group of students. But I think all those three groups uh whether they should think about it from day one or not, I'm not sure that's too helpful. Maybe it is. Um, but the the starting point is just there's inspiration to do other things. And I think for a teacher who's really good at it, the kind of course route is is so ideal because you get to impact like you say, more people, but also it's a way, like I said, to reduce you're the active hours, so you don't have to have 30 to 40 students every week to uh to make your full-time income. Um so that's really the my my hope I often mention these uh online business, call it Langpreneur if you want. I don't know if that word is going to gonna catch on on a global scale, but, you know, people who are basically building uh time independent businesses with language skills one way or another. The reason I talked to about that so much is I feel like it's a really it's a good path to visualize in front of you to move towards. And you can do that from ground zero without having ever taught anyone. Or you can do it as the very established teacher who's been teaching for ages, you can pivot into more um we call it passive income. Really it's just front loading the work and being clever with the technology and and like you spending a lot of time creating a course that you don't need to spend as much time every time somebody goes through it. Usually it's no time, but of course then there's some customer support and there's some some support questions maybe once in a while. Um and I really like to feature that on the podcast as as often as I can because I think there's a lot of people out there who are thinking, I really love languages, or I really love teaching. Uh but I don't know how to turn that into a quote-unquote serious career because in teaching you're always going to be limited by the amount of hours, right? So how do you pivot into something that can can grow to something bigger than and, you know, if you wanted if you want to teach, there's absolutely nothing against it. I think people who kind of find their their um ideal work that way is great. But I I also think that you're leaving a lot on the table that you could grow and potentially have more time off to spend with the kids, or the husband, or travel, or whatever you want to do, uh and you and it doesn't have to be that difficult. But that's why a program like Teach and Thrive is great, because you you teach all those like, you know, small things that people don't think about, like the technology, social media, like how do I get students, all that kind of thing. Um, but I'm just happy to have it mentioned in another episode. So people are are inspired perhaps to to look into more. And of course, our friend Jan and Ollie's podcast Langpreneur is great, but I would say he interviews people who are, you know, obviously they're successful, but I would say they're very far into their journey, typically. Like most of them have been doing it for 5 to 10 plus years. Um, so I would be a little bit careful of using them too much as a guideline because it's uh, it's a long way from not having done a single tutoring lesson to listening to someone like, I don't know, uh someone like Ollie who has like, I don't know, 30 courses and 50 books, and it's been doing it for seven years, you know, and he was employed by the British government to do teaching and teaching teachers how to teach, you know. Um, but definitely look into it and and check out Teach and Thrive to uh to get on the right path. And uh I'm sure you, Kirsten, are willing to help anyone who has at any stage in their uh language business or they want to start a language business and uh just go to the website and and check out more about that.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you. Cool. Brilliant. They didn't come here for an endorsement for that, but I'll very happily take it.

I'll be happy to endorse it.

It makes me it makes me massively happy because partly because in Teach and Thrive, what we get to do, um and I think Lindsay and I, this is um I I enjoy I enjoy working with with Lindsay because I think we both come to this with a sense, or we come to this with this a similar perspective of sort of groundedness, like not not necessarily like, yeah, man, I'm a digital nomad entrepreneur, here are my 25 labels. I don't feel that way. I just feel like I like to teach and it's weird now, you know, when people ask you what you do, and then I say, I have an online business.

Absolutely. And I think for people.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Sorry.

yeah, and I think for people who are who are just starting out, you know, I think that I think it would be very um I think it would be silly to expect that you can just kind of create an iTalkie profile and then suddenly get London wages, you know. I think that the beauty of online teaching is that you could do it one hour a week or two hours a week, whenever you have time on your from your other projects. And you build up that experience, but also, you build up a pool of students, typically. Like I found when I was doing some teaching online to try it out, that people who liked my style of teaching and liked the lessons, typically booked with me again. And so, when I when I felt like I had enough experience, and I was providing more value than the I mean, I just set the rate really cheap in the beginning to get more students. And I think that's a very um very common. Yeah, and I think that's a very good tactic because you're building up the pool of customers. You're getting reviews, social proof. And then a month or two later, I would double the rate, and I would get pretty much the same amount of students. So, they didn't they didn't care. They didn't get me just for the rate. Of course, there were some people who who uh dropped off. But because I charged double the price, and I didn't lose half the students, I was well way better off. And I was more focused in the lessons that I actually had because I didn't have to do like 30 hours a week or 40 hours a week, you know, to make any kind of reasonable money. Um but I think that's a great system that we have, and the flexibility is there. And I've heard of some of my friends, I think uh you were one of the people I heard from at some point where you were you had a really good hourly rate on on a tutoring platform. One of my friends from France is uh is charging like 40 euros an hour. You know, so just because you start at eight to get customers and social proof and experience, doesn't mean that you're going to be at eight for the rest of your life. You know, you will improve, and you will be able to charge a lot more, a lot quicker. And, you know, your competitiveness in the beginning might be on price, but soon it will be on experience, on customer approval. And, you know, maybe not everyone is great at teaching, and you're your customers are going to hate you. Well, then it's not fair that you're going to charge a big price anyway. So you need to figure out what the problem is in that case. But most people listening to this uh love the and and love languages, so for them it's very natural to teach, and I doubt that anyone who who's going into it will have any problems with with negative reviews or anything. But I think that's a it's a great world we live in, isn't it? Because imagine without, you know, imagine a world without internet, that would be kind of hard. But imagine that the only language schools in the world were actual language schools, physical language schools. You couldn't just show up there with no experience, no degree, and say, hey, can I teach the French class every Friday? You know, I'm from France. They'd be like, well, who are you? But because of the internet, because of this like decentralized and and open options, anyone can do it. And you can compete on price to begin with, and then you just increase your rates, and once you have a lot of students, you make a course like Kirsten did, and you ask your students, hey, do you want to check out my new course? I'll give you a a a discount or something. You know, and you have an instant audience too. So, to me, it's just perfect, all of it. It's just beautiful.

Yes, it's it's a good one. It's it's a good kind of way of going. And it's funny, isn't it? Because because you say that now as if um you you know, I you just email people, you know, hey, I've got this new course. You should do my new course. And but I remember how terrifying that was at the start. I remember how how much how much the voice in my head was like, who are you to think you have any kind of skill to make any kind of something. And it took many, many years to put things out there. And it took many, many years. I think for for me, the the personal growth, or the the confidence growth and the attitude growth that entrepreneurship has given me, because I didn't come into this thinking, oh, I'm going to start a business. I I literally didn't really think about not that much. I'm a bit intuitive. And um the confidence growth that that has given me to to a point where after after a little bit more experience, to be able to put something out and say, this is what I want to offer you, and the same with Women in Language, right? Is we say, this is what we want to offer you. If it's not for you, that is fine. It's okay to take a no.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Sorry.

Oh, yeah. That's true. That's true. The the kind of conversation that we often have is with teachers who feel like they could be something more here, but I don't know, and maybe I don't know, and then and then you have that voice that goes, who am I to do this? Or, how am I supposed to do this? Or, how does marketing work? Or.

Oh, yeah.

You know, all these extra questions, and that's that's that's a different thing. So if you're if you're completely if you know you want to be, I don't know, a a publisher of language online courses, then you don't have to put yourself through five years of teaching. Um, no. You can invest your money or your time. That's uh I always say that.

Yeah. Exactly. If you've got to you've got to love what you're doing.

Yeah, I think so. And if you just did it for the business, they'll probably other industries that are a little bit more obvious, and probably bigger, really. You know, language learning is quite competitive, and the courses that are available out there, uh, you know, you it's very hard to sell a, let's say, a $10,000 German course. Of course, it's possible, and it could be like a zero to nothing. But if you go into the, let's say, make money online space, or stocks, or crypto, or insurance, or whatever, you can probably get like or real estate, you know, infinite income generating there. But, you know, I I prefer languages. I like it here, and I I hope that people listening are tempted to uh to try something more. Or or certainly if you're an established teacher already, maybe you're in a in a school, a language school, physical language school, or you have a lot of online teaching lessons, then definitely check out what you can potentially pivot into, and spend a few hours here and there creating some um, you know, courses, or materials. So, you know, I always say to people, if you're a video kind of person, make a YouTube channel, record regularly. If you're a podcast if you're an audio person, do a podcast. And if you're a blog writing person, do a blog. Just to have that kind of presence and platform, because that can always be leveraged into something later. Um, but anyway, Kirsten, times up. We've run out of time.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. So I didn't want to interrupt you while you were endorsing Teach and Thrive. So, please do.

That's fair enough. No, I also recommend uh Langpreneur, our friends Jan and Ole. They definitely have a lot of inspirational content. Uh if you want to see what kind of the the uh I would say the the unicorns, can you call them that? You know, the outliers, maybe. Like some of the really successful people in language learning, how they got to 4 or 5 million subscribers on YouTube and crazy amount of views, uh or maybe they made a lot of courses. So check out Langpreneur as well. And check out Teach and Thrive, and check out Women in Language, Fluent Podcast, The Fluent Show. And uh anything else we forgot?

Uh, no, absolutely. If if any of your listeners, if if you're listening and maybe you're thinking some of this sounds interesting, and you just want a little bit more information or advice. I know we share an awful lot. So just an invitation, an encouragement as well. Um if you send either send me an email, the email address is hello@fluentlanguage.co.uk, or you just find me on social media, um I'll be able to give you the right link or send you a point you in the right direction, give any more information. And yes, Women in Language, $30, four days, 30 speakers, amazing. Everybody should come. Uh, 17th to the 20th of September, 2020. And tickets are live at the moment at womeninlanguage.com.

And if you're listening to this in the future, there's probably going to be one in 2021 and beyond as well. So check out womeninlanguage.com.

Yes, definitely. All right. Thank you, Kris.