Today, Mary Kate is one of the top teachers on Skillshare, enrolling nearly 50,000 students in her hand-lettering classes and exceeding a six-figure annual income. It’s hard to believe that just two years ago, she didn’t think she could teach.

“My first thought was who am I to teach?” Mary Kate McDevitt tells us. It took Mary Kate six months to finally abandon that initial concern and decide to teach a Skillshare class in the fall of 2013. At the time, she was a freelance designer based out of Brooklyn, and though she was by no means famous (yet), her unique hand-lettering style had caught the attention of some very loyal fans, including the Skillshare team. Today, Mary Kate is one of the top teachers on Skillshare and an icon within the graphic design community. With a six-figure annual income from her Skillshare classes, almost 50,000 students, and plans to teach a class at her own alma mater next spring, it’s safe to say she answered her own question.

Despite having never formally taught before creating her first Skillshare class, Mary Kate was always a teacher at heart. “I had previously done a bunch of workshops in Portland,” she explains, “and I always had such a great time engaging and sharing with people. Eventually I realized I could do the same thing every day, with a lot more people, by teaching on Skillshare.” Overcoming her original nerves around teaching was challenging at first –”It took a while for me to even be able to watch my own class”, she recalls — but she made it work; Mary Kate’s first class, The First Steps of Hand-Lettering: Concept to Sketch, enrolled 28,000 students, making it the top Skillshare class of 2014.

Mary Kate’s success didn’t stop there. As her first class became more popular, she decided to create three more classes to continue engaging her students and growing her following. The success she’s found through teaching on Skillshare has changed Mary Kate’s life in more ways than one. Financially, 50,000 student enrollments has meant a supplemental annual income to the tune of over $100k, which in turn helped her to make a down payment on a new home in Philadelphia, where she just opened a new studio this past spring. Career-wise, her immense following on Skillshare has opened new doors in terms of speaking and freelance opportunities, and helped turn Mary Kate McDevitt into a household name in the graphic design world. But to Mary Kate, the biggest, most important change has come from the actual experience of teaching: “Feeling comfortable with teaching, realizing people are connecting with my process, and then seeing how they take it and start their own careers — that’s the best part,” she tells us.

Today, it’s no secret that Mary Kate is a great teacher; in fact, her own alma mater, the Tyler School of Art, recently asked her to come teach as a guest professor, and she’ll be joining the faculty next spring. On Skillshare, the level of engagement from her students speaks for itself. Altogether, those students have created over 1,300 projects in her classes.

“Feeling comfortable with teaching, realizing people are connecting with my process, and then seeing how they take it and start their own careers — that’s the best part.”

The truly special part, however, is what comes after those projects. We tracked down one of Mary Kate’s biggest fans, graphic designer and long-time student Lesley Zellers, who was excited to describe her experience with Mary Kate’s classes. A project that Lesley completed for Mary Kate’s first class ended up launching her career as a hand-letterer; that particular design has sold thousands of prints in her Etsy shop and was even picked up by her local West Elm store. So naturally when Lesley learned that Mary Kate was visiting her own hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma to give a talk, she made sure to attend. When she introduced herself to Mary Kate afterwards and told her about her project’s amazing success, she was delighted to learn that Mary Kate already knew all about it. “She had actually seen my print in a store, and recognized it as my project. That was one of those magical moments that seems too good to be true,” Lesley tells us. Lesley credits Mary Kate with arming her with the confidence she needed to move forward in her career — more so than the years she spent in graphic design school.

When asked about her success as a Skillshare teacher, Mary Kate responds modestly, “I don’t know how this happened.” However with thousands of students just like Lesley Zellers, whose lives and careers have changed as a result of her teaching, it’s not hard to understand exactly how.

At Skillshare, we believe anyone can teach. Yes, that includes you! Follow in Mary Kate’s footsteps and sign up to teach a class of your own today.

Originally published at blog.skillshare.com.

How Teaching 50,000 Students Changed Mary Kate McDevitt’s Life was originally published in Teacher Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There’s something extremely powerful about learning from great mentors. Jack Zerby, founder of Flavors.me and Goodsie, former Director of Design at Vimeo, and father of three, attributes the time he spent at the design studio Pentagram as the major turning point in his career. “To be around people who really understand the craft of design — to work with some of the smartest people I’ve ever met, like Paula Scher and Lisa Strausfeld, made me realize just how much I still had to learn,” Jack explains. Although he had studied design in school, working on projects with real-world professionals was the experience he needed to grow into a great designer. So when he first learned about Skillshare, Jack was eager to get involved and inspire the next generation of creative entrepreneurs.

With an incredibly busy professional life and a growing family, time management was an initial concern for Jack when deciding whether to teach on Skillshare. Once he realized the online platform made it possible for him to work on his own schedule, he found that he could reach out and create a community around his own skills, becoming a mentor in the spirit of his own teachers.

As Jack tells us, “My first class didn’t take me months to put together. It was an hour here, an hour there, and it turned out great! The feedback was awesome. The community was even more awesome. And then one day I noticed I had 5,000 followers. I was like ‘what’!”

Since Jack created his first class, teaching on Skillshare has proven to be even more enriching, both personally and professionally, than he’d imagined. He’s perfected his time management process — “outlining is key,” he tells us — and now has four classes published. He has a continuously growing, engaged following within the Skillshare community. “For me, the audience and the quality of people that I’ve encountered on Skillshare — what they’re doing, what projects they’ve worked on, what companies they’ve started — those connections have been invaluable. More valuable than money,” Jack reflects. Several of Jack’s students have reached out to him personally to thank him and share stories of their professional success as a direct result of his classes.

“For me, the audience and the quality of people that I’ve encountered on Skillshare — what they’re doing, what projects they’ve worked on, what companies they’ve started — those connections have been invaluable. More valuable than money.”

Jack published his latest class, Mastering Microcopy: Writing Tiny Words for Huge UX Impact, last month, and he already has more in the works. Follow him to stay up-to-date with his upcoming curriculum, and check out these tips and learnings from his experience to teach a class of your own!

1. Plan ahead. Crafting a coherent outline ahead of time makes the process much smoother and time-efficient when it comes time to film. This outline template is a great place to start.
2. Keep the class short and concise to keep students engaged. As Jack put it, “It’s not always easy, but it’s important. Just ask my wife — I can blab forever!” Check out this article from our Teacher Handbook for more advice on structuring your class in an engaging way.
3. Keep in touch with your students. Staying engaged with your followers is a great way to boost project creation, give your students the best possible experience, and grow your following. This section of our Teacher Handbook shares several resources to help you do just that!

Teacher Spotlight: Why Jack Zerby Makes (A Little) Time to Teach was originally published in Teacher Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“It was in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy that my passion became serious,” Daniel Lewis, the talented street photographer also known by his online pseudonym “ItsForGotham”, tells us. At the time, Daniel felt torn between his creative ambitions and the reality of everyday life; he was working a day job in customer service and had been unable to complete his college education due to financial issues.

“I wanted to share what I was seeing all around me. And I saw all these photographers who didn’t have fancy cameras or expensive equipment. I realized you didn’t need that to produce great photos. It’s about the art.” He decided to quit his job and pursue his dream full-time by documenting his surroundings from behind the lens of his iPhone 5. “My parents thought I was crazy,” Daniel recalls. He hasn’t looked back since.

“It was in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy that my passion became serious…My parents thought I was crazy.”

By the Spring of 2015, Daniel had experienced a tremendous level of success through his art, but something was still missing. For Daniel, connecting and engaging with the community has always been a priority– it’s no coincidence he chose the name “It’s For Gotham”–but he hadn’t yet discovered the perfect way to give back. It was this desire to connect to his community as a mentor that brought Daniel to Skillshare. He published his first class, Synesthesia in Photography, in early March 2015 and immediately felt a relationship forming with his followers that he had yet to experience on any other platform. At first, this caught Daniel off guard.

“When I first saw my students joking about stuff from class,” Daniel explains, “that’s when I realized they were really listening to what I had to say and reacting to it. They really cared. It surprised me.” This level of engagement was both exciting and challenging; having never taught or shared his skills in such an open forum, Daniel realized he needed to adapt. He learned to keep up with his students by providing feedback on their projects–he often reaches out to students personally to thank them for exceptional work– and of course listening to their feedback in return; “I now like to always keep a two-way conversation going,” he tells us.

“When I first saw my students joking about stuff from class… that’s when I realized they were really listening to what I had to say and reacting to it. They really cared. It surprised me.”

Today, Daniel is one of the most loved teachers on the Skillshare platform, which he describes as “a community built on community.” He will continue to share his passion and skills with the Skillshare community through his second class, focusing on photo editing, which is set to publish later this week.

Stay up-to-date with Daniel’s Skillshare classes here.

For ItsForGotham, It’s for the Community was originally published in Teacher Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

From Skillshare Student to Brand Owner:

Mathew Kieser’s Story

Jeff Staple, Founder and Creative Director of Staple Design and Reed Space, teaches two classes on Skillshare to over 8,000 students. Jeff has spent his 20-year career building his brand around positive social change from the ground up.

For Jeff, his Skillshare classes are a way for him to give back by sharing his knowledge. “I’m so glad Skillshare developed this platform so that people like me can contribute,” Jeff says. “I have a responsibility to elevate the culture and build a climate where there’s actually a landscape for my students to do real business and have their brands seen.”

In Jeff’s class A Staple of Branding, 700 students have posted their aspiring fashion brands, logos and lookbooks as projects. Jeff also invited the top ten brands in his class — representing 4 continents — to a full-day workshop in NYC.

Mathew Kieser, the creator of Sol-Sol, was one of these students. “Coming to New York with my bag of samples to show Jeff Staple Sol-Sol was absolutely incredible, and meeting Jeff was surreal”.

Since taking Jeff’s class and coming to New York, Sol-Sol has gotten increased exposure on a global stage, including a booth at the Agenda NYC tradeshow and being featured on top fashion websites like HypeBeast. “Its just really inspiring, to pay $15 for Skillshare, and have it be the best money I’ve ever spent in my life”.

From Skillshare Class to Popular Brand: Mathew Kaiser’s Story was originally published in Teacher Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Teaching on Skillshare has given Jake Bartlett the credibility and financial stability to support the freelance career he’s always wanted.

Jake Bartlett had never heard of Skillshare when his wife stumbled on a class. Intrigued, she started enrolling in classes, hoping to build her own career as photographer, and was surprised to find that many of the teachers were everyday artists.

She told Jake about Skillshare right away. Caught up in his day job and client work, Jake was struggling to build a freelance career and take on more artistic projects. He wanted to start growing a personal brand that would leverage his freelance work, but wasn’t sure where to start.

“I always thought I would love teaching, but never saw it as financially realistic,” recalls Jake. “When I discovered Skillshare, it was a unique opportunity I never thought I’d find — in person or online.”

Two years later, that opportunity is paying off big for Jake. He now teaches over 4,000 students in 3 classes while building his personal brand and receiving monthly royalties through Skillshare’s Partner Program.

“Since launching my first class, my online presence has exploded. My first year teaching, I began getting more and more emails from people all over the world asking if I was available to do professional work.”

It was exactly the kind of projects he had been hoping for. His Skillshare classes were increasing his exposure online, getting his work in front of new eyes. Impressed, his students shared his work with their friends and colleagues. Fellow animators were thrilled to hire someone with such robust knowledge. And, Jake’s own confidence continued to grow. In January 2015, Jake struck out on his own full time.

“The income Skillshare provides has given me the opportunity to support my family by doing something that I love. As a freelance artist, I’ll never have all of my eggs in one basket, but Skillshare offers a unique way for me to build income and exposure over time.”

This year, Jake will launch a number of large and small classes, all aimed at different levels of animators and motion graphics artists to help increase their mastery of After Effects.

“My favorite part of teaching is always hearing student reviews. Knowing that I’m helping so many other people become better artists? That’s an amazing reward.”

Enroll in Jake’s classes here.

How Jake Made Teaching on Skillshare into a Freelancing Career was originally published in Teacher Stories on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.