193 How Do I Start Teaching Development Online?

How do I create my own developer channel? How do I create content on YouTube or TikTok to train people to be a software developer? How do I grow my audience and start earning an income from it? These are the questions we will answer in today's episode of Dev Questions.  

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Dev Questions Podcast with Tim Corey. Join us each episode as we tackle the questions you are asking about a career in software development, understanding the industry, and new technology. If you're just starting out or you want to grow stronger as a developer, this is the place to get your questions answered. Now, here's your host, expert developer and online educator, Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_02 0:25

How do I start teaching software development online? This is a question that I have a lot to talk about. So let's tackle it in today's episode of Dev Questions. Now, I'm going to broaden this question just a bit. Let's talk about how to start teaching software development, not just online, but how to start teaching software development. And the reason I'm going to broaden that is that this is the way to learn the topic better. So when you're learning software development, the way to learn it even better is to teach it. Now, obviously, when you're first starting to learn something, it's not really the time to start teaching it. But as you get a little further along, it can be. Now, I have seen some people who are learning and teaching as they go. They learn a topic and they say, this is what I learned. And that can be really good too. But for the most part, it's as you get to the mid-level and even senior developer type levels that you start thinking about teaching, or you should. In fact, I would say that every developer should start teaching by the time they're a mid-level developer. They should start teaching. And by the time they're a senior developer, they should be doing it consistently. Now, before you panic and think, Tim, are you asking all of us to become YouTubers? I'm never doing that. It's not what I'm saying. Because documentation is teaching. Documentation is saying, here's how to do something. But don't worry, I'm not just saying, oh, you should learn a document. You should, but it's more than that. There's also blogging or doing videos like I do or speaking at conferences. But there's also mentorship and luncheon learns and you know, helping interns and just helping your fellow employee. So there's lots of different ways to teach. And it's important that you learn to do that. Okay? Don't shy away from teaching. Don't say, I'm a developer, not a teacher. Because the way to become a very, very good developer is to teach the topic. Okay, so it's important. Like I said, as you increase in your level of seniority, you should do it more. It will make you a better developer. It will also help the next person get to that same point where you're at. Okay, now here's some tips. First of all, start before you're qualified. Yes, you're gonna start and you're gonna teach something and it's gonna be wrong. That's okay. Because that's how you start to learn too. You may share something that you believe is right, and you share that, and somebody says, No, that's wrong. You didn't realize this. And then you learn something. And you get to grow in that, which is why I recommend that you share in a small circle first. When you're first learning how to teach, learning how to communicate to other people, start with something small, a small circle, not YouTube, not TikTok, not an external blog. Don't start there. Start small. Share with a few people. And then the next important part is get feedback. And if you say, Tim, I'm too terrified to get feedback, well, you're definitely not ready to put on YouTube or TikTok, right? Okay, so start with a small group. It's important because when you get feedback, you're gonna learn what you didn't know. People are gonna say, either that was really helpful and you're gonna help somebody, which is kind of awesome, or they're gonna say, hey, you missed this part. Hey, that's not how you do that. And then you learn by exposing the things that you were wrong about, your assumptions that were incorrect, or the code patterns you use that might not be how you should do them, or how people at your company do them. By doing that, you're going to grow. But you're also going to grow at learning how to take feedback. Because learning how to accept feedback is really important. Knowing how to learn that you're not perfect at something, which none of us are, and yet not making it a personal thing. Meaning, if someone says, Tim, you did this wrong, I may have. And if I did, that's a mistake I made or a misunderstanding I had, but that doesn't affect who I am. Okay, there's a difference. And learning how to differentiate that in small groups with people you trust first is really helpful. Learn to build that slowly. It's important, again, that everyone go through this process as they go up the level of developer. Now, once you've done it in a small group and you've done it consistently and you've gotten feedback and you've learned from that, you've grown, you keep going, then expand your circle. Maybe add more people from your team, or maybe add more friends, or even share with a small user group. If you're looking to speak in public, one of the things that you can do is some user groups have 10-minute trainings or five-minute lightning trainings. Do one of those where there's 10 people in the room. And you know what? You get feedback. Say, hey, how was that? Let me know what I can do to improve and then improve. Don't just ignore the feedback, don't just discount it. Okay. So once you've gotten through that a few times and expand your circle and you're comfortable teaching, and this is important, people are understanding what you're teaching. Meaning you can be a brilliant person. But if you can't communicate that in a way people can understand, then you're not teaching. Okay. Just because you are brilliant and just because you are right doesn't mean you're teaching. So learn how to communicate in ways people understand. And once you do that, then you can start thinking about reaching a wider audience and doing something in public. So here's some best practices I have for teaching in public, such as on a YouTube channel, a blog, et cetera. And again, these are things that I do and have done. So here's some things that I have learned. Start small. All right. You want to be consistent, and that's point number two. Be consistent. But start small is number one. Meaning don't think about, well, I'm going to put out, let's just use YouTube as an example because you're here. Let's not say I'm going to do a video a day. Don't start there. Start at once a week or less. Maybe it's once every two weeks, maybe it's once every month. Pick something and make sure it's small. You can always do more, but I recommend you keep that small schedule first. So pick a small schedule and then consistently do that. Consistently do once a week. All right? But for the first three months, do it in private. Meaning, if you're going to record YouTube videos, record a video, and let's just say you're going to choose Wednesdays. Every Wednesday I'll release a video at noon. Okay? Then have a video that you upload to YouTube, you prepare, you put all the all the description and the title and all the rest on there and get it done by Wednesday at noon and mark it as private. And do that every Wednesday for three months. Okay? Don't release any of the public. All right. Now, once you've hit three months of doing that consistently, here's what's going to happen. You're going to do it consistently, and you're going to do more than you thought you would, like you're going to do like once a day for the first week. And then you're going to get distracted and you know, you're going to do something else, and you you don't really come back to it for two weeks. This is why you see a whole lot of blogs that say, hey, I'm going to blog now, and it's the last blog post in four years. Because they wanted to, and they started in public and got distracted. Okay? So do it for three months in private. If you reach that three-month period where you've done it for three months in private, now you have a three-month buffer. Release the first video, and then the next video don't release until the next week. And keep that schedule. And then continue to do at least one per week. But release them on that weekly schedule. If you find you have a buffer of, say, more than three months, maybe six months, then may you go, you know what? I'll release two a week. But don't do it until you have at least three months in private done. Okay. Don't try to don't over-promise and underdeliver. Underpromise, over-deliver. Okay. Number four, be okay with not being perfect. I am not perfect. In fact, right now my voice is shot. I had a cold. It's, you know, I this is right before I have to actually release this video. Um, I'm just trying to get it out to you, but it's okay. It's not perfect. The audio isn't perfect. The fact that you know my voice cracks and pops a little bit, it's it is what it is. You know what? I would rather get something out to you and be consistent than try to wait for the perfect moment, which might not come until it's too late. Okay? So be okay with not being perfect. Number five, learn to take feedback and find value in harsh comments. This is hard. And it's why you've already practiced it, hopefully, in your smaller areas with people who are maybe more friendly towards you. But learning to take feedback and learning to have the idea that, you know what, people are gonna say some things that might even attack me. But I need to take what I can out of that feedback and still grow. Okay? Don't allow them to attack your character or you as a person. And don't take that into yourself and be take it personally. But you know what? Even in some horrible comments, I have found some things that I'm like, you know what? Yeah, I could do that better. It was the person put it in the worst possible way, and they they made the worst possible accusations against me. But there was something there that I could take and improve on. Sometimes there's not. And just, you know what? Let it go. But see if you can not just throw everything out when there might be something of value in that feedback. It's hard, but you can do it. Now, there's one overall key, and this is beyond all the stuff we talked about already. There's one overall key that has worked well for me. And I think it's one that is important because it changes how you do things. You don't have to have this key, you don't have to do this. But for me, I have found that it is what has made, first of all, me successful, but also has made it better for me. And that is don't do training, don't do public training, don't do YouTube or TikTok or whatever. Don't do it for the money or the fame. That's a way to burn yourself out. Because what'll happen is you'll always be chasing something, you'll always be falling short of something. You're never gonna be famous enough, you're never gonna get the in enough money. My YouTube income is pitifully small compared to what I put out there. If if I was chasing after the money, that would not be something that would be happy or pleasant. It would burn me out. I'd be doing way more videos, and I'd be doing things that were lesser quality in order to try and just attract viral fame. And it would be not pleasant for me, not really pleasant for you necessarily, and it would just be chasing after dollars. Don't do that. Do it because you love helping others. Because when you do that, it'll energize you. You see, I succeed with every video. I have success with every video I put out. It might not reach 50,000 people, it might not reach 100,000 people. I don't have videos that go over a million views in a month. Like, I don't have that. And you know, I could do things that would attract more people, but it would just be for you know, trying to, you know, bring in clicks. It wouldn't be to help people. But if I do these things to help people, well, I do that every video. Every video, someone's like, you know what, that was important for me to hear. That's awesome. That's energizing. And because that's the reason I do it, it doesn't burn me out to do these things. I've been doing this for years, and I intend to keep doing it for years, but not because I'm chasing after the next dollar or the next follower. I'm doing it because I can help people. Okay? And if you do that, that will greatly improve your ability to train, and others will see that as well. All right. Sorry for the voice, I'm losing it, but thanks for listening. And as always, I am Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Deaf Questions. Tim is committed to making it easier for you to become a developer. If you would like to help make more content like this possible, please like, subscribe, rate, and share Deaf Questions. You can also send your questions to questions at IamTimcorey.com. Until next time, remember, you are too smart and your time too valuable to waste it making all the mistakes Tim did. When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to imtimcore.com and enroll in a course.