My Guest this episode in Marie-Louise O'neil and she discussed how she used her experience and knowledge to create online learning and build a community.

Marie-Louise is equipped with a breadth of design knowledge and more than 16 years’ industry experience. I studiedpackaging and branding at university. Since then I've created everything from logo design, social mediatemplates and website design in the digital space, to printed brochures, adverts, banners and packaging.

Marie-Louise LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/marielouiseoneill/

Marie-Louise Website - lovelyevolution.co.uk

Transcript

Scott: [00:00:00 ] hello and welcome to the latest edition of how might we on this episode, my guest is. Marie Louise. And we're going to be talking today about how might we convert our knowledge into online learning. So welcome hello and welcome to the latest edition of how might we would you like to Marie Louis? . Would you like to introduce yourself?

Marie-Louise: Yeah.

Hi, thank you. So yeah, I'm Marie-Louise from lovely Evolution and I specialize in branding, design and CANVA so a little bit about my business. I do design one to one's branding, so creating logos in layman's terms, and also I train people on how to learn, how to [00:01:00 ] design and create within Canva.

And I have a sort of working strap line that I sometimes use from crap creations to competent in CANVA so that that's me in a nutshell,

Scott: I quite liked that strap line and it's also, I spent hours working and then just got nowhere very fast. So so it's interesting to say, so you start helping people to do it.

So it'd be interesting to talk about your journey from obviously working one-to-one with people to realizing that or identifying that you can actually generate some learning content to help people become better at it themselves rather than you being doing it.

Marie-Louise: Yeah, well, it was a bit of a happy accident because I discovered CAMBA back in 2017 another client of mine said, have you heard about this thing?

And I had to look at it and thought it would work really well as part of my workflow, how I worked with my clients because it's all very well good [00:02:00 ] creating a fancy pants logo, and then what do they do with it? And I work with a lot of small businesses and I want to rather than be like, oh, well you have to come to me for every single little tiny change.

Where possible. I like to enable my clients to be able to either do it themselves or work with the VA. You know, certainly in the context of say social media where things are very fast paced. So I don't have the time to sort of do it in Photoshop and change it every time they want. And you and you post and certainly Photoshop and you know, whether this, or.

Yeah, professional design programs can be a bit clunky and a bit difficult and overwhelming to learn for, you know, the average person. So I was using it as part of working with my clients. And I was having more and more people going, well, I want to learn how to do it, you know, can you, can you teach me?

So I did a couple of free CANVA workshops for my local library in north Hampton. As part of being a [00:03:00 ] guest expert at the business and IP center North Hampton share. And and I was like, oh, well, there's something in there. So then I ran my first paid for workshop two years ago, it came up on Timehop quite nicely Facebook, yesterday, or the day before I was like, oh wow.

I hired a buffet as well. You know, it was like real people. And I thought that was great, but running an in-person event, you know, and one-off workshops are their own special beast. And I thought, well, you know, we're, we're already living in this sort of more global, international way. I was already doing a few bits and bobs on zoom.

And I really wanted to move my training online. So in January of 2020, I set up an online monthly membership where reserving training you know, like a 13, 30 to 40 minute training on a particular canvas tool or [00:04:00 ] like template and really breaking it down in my own kind of unique way of just telling you as it is, there was no kind of like trying to be perfect.

I wanted that audience participation, so they were kind of live events, but they. So I've got this fun curve, like a year and a half worth of training that I then went on to repurpose and I'm kind of relaunched as a group membership so that I could have a bit more flow to how people were being trained.

And so yeah, so it's, it's been a bit of an evolution for me because I rebranded myself planning to, you know, specialize in logo, rebrands and all of that. But in the meantime, I was getting really known for Canva. Hashtag CANVA girl and stuff like that. I didn't coin that way. And and I was like, well, there's something in it.

You know, not very many people. Certainly at the designers that I know locally that I was networking with really had [00:05:00 ] embraced CANVA like I did. So it was a really nice and fairly unique at the time combination of my years and years of design experience. You know, I'm a trained designer combining that with a really easy to use tool like CANVA.

And so it's been a really great combination. And for me, it's not, I feel that my training is not just about here's, how to use CANVA, you know, like it's, there's loads of there's loads of stuff on YouTube and stuff out there. You know, free resources for me, it's about trying to impart what I've learned. I'm really helping my clients to really develop that design eye.

So when I'm showing them something, I'm not just going well, you know, there is the tool aspect and features of it. That's part of it, but it's also about, you know, well, you need to consider lining things up and making sure there's a bit of negative space here, you know, is there balance to visit the, the design [00:06:00 ] and you know, is there a focus?

So I'm really trying to help them to hopefully understand what comes well, to me is second nature because I've been doing it so long, but it's not something that as a non-designer you would know automatically, and even using these great Canva templates, you know, necessarily understanding once you change things, if you change them too much, that you can't.

Water down the impact of the design or, you know, it's so it's no longer looking so great.

Scott: Okay. So you found this interesting, the journey you've gone through. So, so you went online before COVID

Marie-Louise: I was ahead of the game. Yes. And it was, it was part of my strategy even before then. I kind of come full circle really because I had been the summer.

So I guess, what was it about August time of 2019? I'd gone on a three-day workshop about [00:07:00 ] how to create an online course. And it was, it was also about the kind of marketing of it, landing pages, what kind of things you're training on. And so I sort of started working on that, but I just didn't like sitting in front of a camera, prerecording, all this training.

I didn't have that magic though. I have. When I even like one-to-one, you know, having a chat like this, but also, you know, working in a design context or training someone going, here's how you do this, whether it's one or a group. And so I kind of put down the idea of being an online course and that's where the membership kind of came into play.

And then I came sort of, as I said, full circle of going well, I've got this bank of prerecorded stuff, you know, it's, it was recorded live, but this is great content. How can I repurpose it and repackage it? So I've then kind of ended up with this hybrid model where there is stuff that people can watch on B play and, you know, [00:08:00 ] prerecorded, but also there's that group support so that I could get my fix of seeing people and helping them, you know, helping them have that aha moment.

So it works really well.

Scott: So do you think because of the stuff you were talking about it, it's not just about understanding how to use Canva. That's important to you, but it's about people gaining now, what do you call it? More of a designer eye, so to speak. So do you find that being with people and letting them play around with it and giving them feedback and working with them directly helps develop that.

Marie-Louise: Yes, because the way I give feedback, like, because you, what I discovered was that, you know, people will go away and try and do something. And when, you know, people have different levels of experience and confidence in using some form of new tech, you know, some people thought it work where they're like afraid to do anything, you know, trying to do something on [00:09:00 ] zoom, you know, like, how do I share my screen is, is really challenging for them because they're not used to it once they've done it a few times, then it's a bit easier and they can work out and it's fine.

And the same is a tool with canvas. Some people really take to it like a duck to water and others really struggled to do really simple things. So there's an element of, they've got so kind of practice with it and it's, you know, watching some training, whether it's mine or someone else's and break it down in