The Empty Nest Kitchen

Teaching Your Passion: Five Tips to Start a Successful Side Hustle with Recreational Classes

• Christine Van Bloem • Season 2 • Episode 34

Share episode

Have you ever considered teaching recreational classes? Whether is cooking, crafting, or even teaching Excel, you'll learn how to identify your zone of genius, research the competition, plan and structure your class, the importance of hospitality, and deciding between private and public classes. You'll also get a little bonus on the possibilities and advantages of offering online classes. 

00:45 Welcome to Empty Nest Kitchen

01:10 Starting a Side Hustle: Teaching Classes

02:41 Identifying Your Teaching Niche

03:32 Research and Pricing Strategies

05:56 Planning Your Class

09:04 Creating a Hospitable Environment

11:31 Private vs. Public Classes

17:17 Leveraging Online Classes

21:29 Conclusion and Encouragement



Are you so ready to feel so good in your days? Do you want to try anything? I mean, anything to keep those hot flashes at bay. If you were dealing with menopause or perimenopause or heck if you're post-menopausal I want you to check out menopause meal plans. Every week I create a meal plan for three delightfully delicious and scrumptious dinners that are easy to prepare that are based on the Mediterranean diet and are going to help you feel. Really good from the inside out. You can find all the information you need at Empty Nest Kitchen dot com.

Speaker:

Welcome to the Empty Nest Kitchen, where we're finding fun in the kitchen now that the kids have flown the coop. I'm Christine Van Bloem, a cooking teacher with over 25 years of experience, here to show you tips, tricks, and joy in your kitchen, all while trying something new. Let's get cooking!

It's 2025. And I know if you're anything like me. Your thinking about doing a little something. Burring and a little something extra in, and maybe having a whole bunch of fun this year. And I wanted to propose to you an idea. For perhaps a small side hustle on your end one. That is absolutely proven. And that is teaching classes. Now I'm a cook and I teach cooking classes and I am. Darn good at it. But there are a million different things that you can teach if indeed. Enjoy teaching. Now I gotta be honest with you to teach any kind of a recreational class, anything. Swimming cooking. Whatever it is. He got to like people. If you were a person who loves to be around people, you love the idea of teaching something that you are really. Thrilled about then teaching some sort of classes as a side hustle. Might be a great option for you. Today. I want to give you my five tips as part of my entrepreneurship, January to get yourself started in teaching some kind of recreational classes. Number one. First, what are you going to teach? You have got to identify what it is that you are really good at. What's the thing that somebody asks you to do. What's the thing that somebody says, oh, can you show me how to do that? Because I promise you. If there is something that you're known for, whether it be world's best chocolate chip cookies or needle felting, or if you're great at punch needle or you're great at sewing or you're great at teaching. Excel. It doesn't matter. But your first thing that you're going to do is identify not only what you're good at, but what you enjoy. Number two. I want you to take a little bit of time and research what other people are doing. In your field. So for me as someone who loves to teach a cooking class, I am always looking at what kinds of classes. Other people are teaching now I'm not copying their classes. Listen, you're way more creative than that. You don't have to copy someone else's class. But by looking to see what's out there in your field. It gives you a great opportunity to identify the trends that are happening. Not only that, but it allows you to see what other people are charging. And this is really important. Because I know that you want to charge what you're worth. Absolutely. For sure. But unless you are offering something vastly different. From what already exists out there. You really want to make sure that your pricing is at least in the same neighborhood. Now there's a big difference. If you're offering, offering an online class. Versus offering an in-person class and for something like, oh gosh, maybe clay jewelry which I love I'm terrible at, but I loved it. You may want to rent a room somewhere or that's even something. And remember, always check the laws and the regulations where you live, but that's something you may be able to offer out of, not just a shared use space, but maybe out of, even your own home for food where I live, because I'm in Maryland. We are definitely not allowed to offer. In-home cooking classes in our own homes. Now going somewhere else. That's okay. There are definitely rules and regs to that. So you're going to want to check for your neighborhood, your state, all of that good stuff. But think about how many people you can have. Right? How many what's your max? And if you're just getting started, it might be a little easier to have a smaller number, what you want to do is you want to look at what spaces you have available. Now. You've got one and two. Step three. You got to plan your class. Out and this isn't hard. This is really figuring out how the class is going to run. I remember when you first learned how to make an outline? Well, there you go. That's all we have to do here. You're going to simply list out. What you're going to do in the class. Now, when I was first getting started, I love to include a little objective in my notebook as I was going. So what's the objective. When we were teaching artisan breads. Well, the objective was that we were going to teach certain techniques. And then at the end of class, the students would eat certain breads and they'd be able to take X home and. We would include butter in the presentation and we would give them all the recipes. So we would just walk through what are we trying to do in a class? When I took my very first cooking class in New York. At the school that I ended up attending, I knew immediately that I wanted to teach. I knew right away that I wanted to teach, but I also knew I had already graduated college. I was not going back to get an education degree. That was not part of my plan. So in taking classes. I observed what people did in the classes. As you're learning and you're becoming more and more comfortable. At doing this. You aren't going to want to really map things out and I recommend. Keeping your classes to no more than two hours. Let's face it. If you are into it. You are going to be able to spill your guts with all of the information that pertains to a certain subject. Okay. And I can Jabber, you know, that just from this podcast. So I have had to really work out what can I teach in a specific class? So keeping the topics. To a single thing is really, really helpful. And I want you to think of it this way, when you're planning your class out. You want to be sure that you're not overwhelming your students? It's important. That you keep things contained so that. They take the most, they can out of the class. And also if you have more and more and more information, It's another class just waiting to be held. Right. When I teach a Paya class, I can go on, we are going to talk about the rice. We're going to talk about the pan. We're going to talk about the saffron. We are going to talk about so many different things, but I don't get in to too many other areas because I want to keep their knowledge focused there. And I want them to really be able to grasp the subject at hand. Now step four. And I think this is one of my most fun ones. Is hospitality, baby. When you host a class, you want to nurture. And love and take care of your students soup to nuts from the second they walk in the door. Until they leave. You want the experience to be top notch? And that is all hospitality. I was talking to a friend last night, about how much I miss hospitality. I really think it's in some folks, blood. There's actually a book out called unreasonable hospitality by a gentlemen who used to be part owner of one of the top restaurants in the world. Or I think it actually made top restaurant in the world. And the crazy things they would do for hospitality. Well, This is your chance. To shine at kitchen studio. we would always have. You know the water out and we would have drinks out and we would have packets with all of the recipes that we were doing. I always had a cover sheet that had the business name and the website address and all of that good stuff. So it was all pulled together really nicely. And those were pre Canva days. Nowadays you can give your students a little takeaway that you've done up on canvas that looks. Oh, amazing. But this is your chance to be hospitable. Now this comes with a caveat because you can spend a ton of money. You can spend a lot of money making things really just right. And it's up to you with what you're teaching and what level you're teaching. So you're really going to want to balance what that is. And again, Remembered that the health department regulations in your area will determine whether or not you can offer food. You may want to make it a BYOB event. You may want to make it a, bring your own food event. You can absolutely do that. In fact, If you're not doing cooking classes. Those are tremendous fun. And that brings me to number five. You want to determine what kind of class you're offering? And then offer it up as such. Now what the heck does that mean? And isn't that what you said? Number one. No, what we're looking at here are, do you want to do a private class? Or do you want to do a public class? Now I recommend as you're getting started. Working something out with your friends. And I would do a totally free class. I would invite your friends over. And run through it with them and even better invite half as many friends and have them bring a friend. Right. I would do that because you don't want everybody who I hate to say it, but everybody who loves you. Right. You want honest and real feedback so that when you're offering these classes, you are really getting better every time you do it. So it advantages of a private class. Private class is wonderful because you've got the built-in audience. You know, how many people you're going to have. And yes, I do recommend setting a minimum of that. Initially, you could do it for one or two people, but for me there's a number that I need to make. In order to meet Any of my costs that I've got there, there's a lot of things there that you're covering. And you also want to make sure that you are making a profit. It's oh, gosh, it's just my favorite word profit. I love it so much because you're not doing this just for kicks and giggles. Right. You're doing this as a way to bring in a little extra money while you're having. Some fun. And if my is not important to you fine do it for fun. That's great. That's awesome. You can totally do that. I happen to love making money. So I am always trying to look at everything. So in a private class. You will have a set number of people. My minimum to go to someone's house is eight people. Sometimes, if it's someone I know I might make it six, but eight people is a great number for me because when I'm going to someone's home, that's a number they can usually manage. And I know what my revenue is going to be there. Okay. With a public class. You're going to be setting things up so that folks can register to attend the class. That can be a little more risky. But it's also a great way to get started. Again, you're going to want to have a space. Don't forget. Check those regulations in your area. But you're going to want to have a space and you want to have it be really easy for folks to register and pay. Now that might include a little bit of tech on the back end that you're going to have to do, whether you're setting things up in Squarespace, which is my favorite. I love that. Or WordPress that's when I used to use a lot of people, still really fond of it, but you will want to set up a place for folks to register easily. You want to make it so easy for everybody to get into your class? That it is a simple click or to have a button. And yes, you're going to put this on Facebook and Instagram and anywhere else that you can on social media. And you may be a person that hates social media. Well, I'm going to say it's a necessary evil. If you are trying to teach classes of any sort. It's so easy and free to create a Facebook page for your business. Very simple and it may not. Garner you a ton of followers initially, but it will give you a little bit of authenticity and dare say, I can't believe I'm going to say it with Facebook, but a little bit of credibility. Once you have that Facebook page. Now, as things get more serious, it's important that you do have a website, but not at the beginning. You can use that Facebook page as you're getting your feet under you, as you're doing this. And also Instagram as well. One of the things that Facebook. Does is it allows you to create events so that you can pop them up on the page and have a listing of anything that you're offering. I know it's a challenging platform for a lot of people, for a lot of different reasons, but if you're just gained started by offering some sort of class. It's a great way to dip a toe in without having to spend a lot of money, getting a new website running and all of that together. A lot of the platforms now will have integrations so that you can easily run payments through them. You may decide you just want to have folks Venmo, you, you can totally do that. I don't know. I like the security of using the online payment system a lot. But I still use PayPal sometimes. So, I mean, give me half credit on that one. But they're platforms that I know are secure. And I really like that when I'm doing something of this nature. Those are my top five. Tips for getting out and getting started and doing a little something, something as you go. But I'm wanting to view a little bonus tip. Consider an online class now may not be right for you if you were teaching how to do. And I'm feeling very crafty right now. So that's where all of my options are heading. But if you're doing a really cool little embroidery kit or something, And everybody's going to show up and you're going to hand them and embroidery kit. I mean, come on. That's so much fun, but. One line classes. Are so different from five years ago when the pandemic had not yet started. But in one line class is different from a recorded class. I really love an online class that is live. I do. I love an online class says totally live that the instructor is able to take questions or respond. And especially if they can respond directly to me. I took a class. I think a year ago, my son said he wanted to make a cream puff sending clairs. Now I have taught cream puffs, headache. Many many, many times. I think I could do them. If I was in a coma, but I found in online class because I thought it would be a good medium for the two of us, rather than me trying to teach him, it would be the two of us doing something together. And we did a small class. It was on a Sunday morning. And when we had a question. We could unmute and ask it. It was fantastic. It was so much fun. And I will say I would turn to my son and go, just so you know, we should do that. Here. And then within a minute, the instructor would say, just so you know, we should do duct up here. Which was awesome. But we would turn our camera off. We turn it back on. When we were doing things, we were muted. So you can't hear any of us talking back and forth, but it was such a delightful experience. And I have to say. It really got me pumped and excited to teach online classes to people. I've been teaching them since may of 2020. Typically when I'm teaching a class. I'm teaching it to 12 to 20 attendees. Because you're going to have some that don't speak. They don't put their camera on. They don't engage this. Totally cool. That's thereby nothing against you on that. And then you're going to have some that leave the camera on the whole time. My favorite, you can see what's happening in their kitchen. And as an instructor, it's really easy for you to look and say, okay, Bob, I noticed that you just did X. That was really awesome because let me tell you when you're teaching. Just like when you were a kid, people want to know and want to get the love as much as they want to learn, who doesn't want to hear that they just did something and they were awesome for doing it. Every body. And just because it's online doesn't mean that you lose that. I think it really opens up your audience. And I like the comfort that it gives people of working in their own homes. In the kitchen that is so valuable because they're not coming to my cooking school, where I have every single thing that you could ever need right there in their kitchen, where three of their pots don't have lids. Okay, so I'm going to walk you through what our options there. So it allows you to still really connect with your students because I think that is. The most important part of teaching, any kind of class. I think it is that connection. And even when you're doing it online, if you decide to do an online component, Connection is so vital because everybody wants to be seen. So that's it. Those are my top five tips for starting to teach some form of recreational classes. Now, if this is something that's floating your boat, I would be delighted to do an episode for you where we can really dig in to a class where we can talk not just about a cooking class by of course, that is where my zone of genius is, but about doing an artsy Craftsy. Etsy thing or anything else you can let me know by go into the website, Empty Nest Kitchen dot com and drop me in line and telling me that you want more of this sort of thing. I love the teaching of classes and I think you I'm pretty sure you would be great at it. To whether it's fitness, arts and crafts. Something with painting furniture, what ever booed doesn't matter, but I'd love to hear from you and give you more information on this. So think about what you want to teach, think about what your zone of geniuses. Where you are most asked for help? Are you really good at playing a church supper? Well, you can teach people how to do that. Are you really good at making soap? You can teach people how to do that. Are you really good? At lane out a beautiful herb garden. You can teach people how to do that. So do it. That's all for me this week. And if you've got just a minute to leave a review, it would mean everything to me. Your reviews are so important and they help me get out in front of a few more people. So. Thank you so much for tuning in and as always, I'll see you in the kitchen.