Marked by the arrival of Bumbershoot, music will invade Seattle full-force this Labor Day weekend. With artists such as T.I., Keyshia Cole, Death Cab for Cutie, to Stone Temple Pilots (the reunion!), there’s going to be quite a mix of musicians and bands.

But little do most people know, just how far the festival has come since it’s humble beginnings back in 1971.  In addition to music, the festival now extends a broad reach into the arts through comedy shows, dance performances, visual arts, theater and film.

Bumbershoot is a staple of summer here in Seattle. It’s also a launching pad for thousands of local artists and performers. And as a yearly festival goer myself, it has been great to see an increase in artistic diversity over the last couple years.

Local teachers / schools performing at Bumbershoot:

• Drawing Jam - Gage Academy of Art
• Dance Split Bill - Northwest Professional Dance Project
• Interrupted Pri’si’zh’en, Lacrymosa, & Nine Sinatra Songs - Pacific Northwest Ballet
• Sex in Seattle - Richard Hugo House
• Northwest All-Stars - The Paul Green School of Rock

In particular, if you want to see Richard Hugo House’s resident troupe “Sex in Seattle,” or learn to draw by checking out Gage Academy’s “Drawing Jam,” each are always a breath of fresh air.

So, if you’re not too busy grilling steaks this weekend, drop by Bumbershoot and listen to some great music and hopefully support some local teachers and schools by catching a show.

Fliers in the local coffee shop are great. Getting folks to chat about you to their friends – even better. But once you’ve got that loyal following, how do you keep them coming back?

Starting an e-newsletter is a great way to keep your current students engaged, remind your past students to come back and to give potential students an easy way to learn more about the services you offer.

by Ada Community Library

Baby Steps to Get Started:

If you’re just sending out a few dozen mails (<50) you can start small by keeping a list of e-mail addresses in your personal e-mail program (Outlook, G-mail, etc.). Send out occasional notes to this group with a listing of your new classes, events or promotional offers (i.e. bring a friend to class and you get in free).

Even with this super simple approach, here are a few “must do’s” for good e-mail etiquette:

1. Always BCC (blind carbon copy) all the members of your e-mail list. That way you won’t inadvertently be sharing your students’ e-mail addresses with the rest of the folks on your list.
2. Note, if you’re sending to a large group, break your mailing list up into smaller groups because having a lot of e–mails in the BBC field might cause your mails to be marked as spam.
3. Include a footer or signature at the bottom of our mails that has your complete contact information and a note akin to this: “You’re receiving this update because you’ve taken classes from me in the past or expressed interest in my work. Please feel free to pass this onto others, or contact me if you’d like to be removed from this list.”
4. If folks ask to be removed, always remove them before your next mail.

A More Professional Approach:

Though sending e-mails or e-newsletters from your personal e-mail account may sound easier, if you’re going to get serious about marketing to your students via e-mail, save yourself a lot of time and pain by finding a good e-mail management tool to do your heavy lifting for you.

The benefits of a professional e-mail tool are huge, especially if you have or want an e-mail list of 100+ people. It might take a bit of tinkering to get comfortable with the new technology, but once you are, you’ll probably be happy that you went this route.

A good e-newsletter tool will help you manage your lists (adding, deleting or grouping various e-mails), give you spiffy templates to use and make sure that your e-mails get through spam guards. Most also offer reporting tools so you can see how many of your mails get open etc.

Which to Choose?

There is an abundance of e-mail tools out there (here’s another great overview and this blog is regularly updated with good ideas), so you can be picky as you do your investigations. Pricing for most tools is based on how many e-mails you send per month, so you can certainly find something that fits your budget. There are free options and some for as little as $15/month, but of course you can spend a lot more than that if you want. Also, almost all of the recommendations below offer free trials, so be sure to ask.

A Few Recommendations:

• Dada Mail: a free software program with a web interface (i.e. you must be online to use it)
• Topica: Offers both a free service as well as paid subscription models from $50+/month
• Mail bomber: A basic but flexible tool for managing subscription-based mailing lists
• Emma: Send good looking e-mails without messing with html
• Electric Embers NPO Groups: Similar to Yahoo Groups
• JangoMail: Allows you to send e-mails through their management tool right from your own desktop e-mail client (like Yahoo Mail, gmail or Outlook
• Campaign Monitor: This is intended for folks who can build their own HTML e-mails (b/c they don’t provide any templates) and includes solid reporting tools

Stay tuned for Part Two: How to build your e-mail list.

If you have suggestions about how you’ve used e-newsletters or e-mail to build your business, let us know!

With labor day fast approaching this weekend, many of us will be firing up the barbecue one last time and what better way to say goodbye to summer than with a perfect juicy steak.

Steaks can vary in price from a couple dollars to hundreds of dollars. We are here to help educate you on finding and preparing the perfect steak without breaking the bank. When selecting the perfect steak the two most important factors are the cut and grade. The most common cuts are:

Rib eye - Great tasting but not as tender as some of the other cuts of meat

New York strip - Very tasty and tender

Fillet mignon - Is the leanest and most tender cut but does not have as much flavor

The next thing to look for is grade. Grade is determined by the age of the cow and the marbling. The more marbling a steak has the juicer and more flavorful it will be. Be sure to select meats that are between 1″ to 1.5″ thick and that the meat is a bright red color while the fat is a creamy white. The USDA grades meat as prime, choice, and select with prime being at the top and choice at the bottom. Choice cuts are the most affordable steaks for grilling and can easily be found at grocery stores, while only 3% of all beef is graded as prime and can only be found in restaurants and select butchers.

Now that we have selected the perfect steak lets prepare the steak and hit the grill!

• Coat both sides of the steak with sea salt and coarse ground pepper.
• Heat up your gas barbecue grill on high for 10 minutes. We want to get the barbecue nice and hot so when the steaks hit the grill they will start forming a crispy layer to lock in all the juices.
• Move the heat down to a medium high and put your steaks on the grill. Close the lid and as tempting as it might be, don’t touch the steaks!
• After 5 to 6 minutes flip the steaks. Remember to use tongs to flip the steaks, forks will puncture the meat and let all the juices out.
• After another 5 to 6 minutes for a medium rare steak remove the steaks and place on a plate. Let the steaks sit for 5 minutes allowing all the juices to redistribute.

Photo: roland | Steak

I hope you are able to enjoy this labor day weekend with good friends and good food, but if you find that you want to expand your culinary repertoire I would recommend checking out some of these fine cooking classes that are offered through TeachStreet:

• Basic Grilling by Barry CB Martin
• Winter Grilling by Blue Ribbon Cooking Culinary
• Hands on: Grilling with Dad - A Father’s Day Special by In Good Taste

Ernest Hemingway brought the Spanish Civil War to life in “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” Edward R. Murrow delivered reports on World War II. In short, every generation has had devoted men and women willing to make personal sacrifices in the name of journalism.

At TeachStreet, we don’t have a newsroom, nor do we have a printing press. We do, however, have a blog. So the other day, armed with an RSS feed, a video camera and an unrelenting desire to surface the best classes Seattle has to offer, I took one for the team. With our resident videographer, Kyleen (married to this guy) I went to the proverbial front lines: pole dancing class.

Although I didn’t sit in on class, Kyleen did, and she was kind enough to get some footage. Afterwords I popped in and spoke with Krisha, the owner of Pole for the Soul, a dance studio over in Ballard, and got to hear from some of her long time students about their pole dancing experiences.

Pole Dancing Class from TeachStreet CDT on Vimeo.

As it did for me, I’m sure the video will change your perception of pole dancing classes. After all, they’re not for men. They’re not about seedy night clubs and elicit sex acts. They’re for women. And they’re about female bonding, gaining self confidence, and having fun.

…and yes, I’m pretty sure a Purple Heart and a Pultizer are each on their way!

Remember being a kid and getting to go to the front of the plane?

Atop the lofty perch of old age, I remember this well. And just as Friday morning garbage pickups made me want to be a garbageman, field trips to the cockpit always made me want to be a pilot.

The headsets, the controls, looking down from 30,000 feet… being a pilot is undeniably cool. As my parents can attest to, I, like many other kids, had an infatuation with flying, marked several years of F-14 wall posters, model planes, and re-watchings of “Top Gun.”

Sadly, I’m not sure what happened to my model planes, Maverick is a Scientologist and kids are no longer allowed in the cockpit, but there’s still hope for our next generation of pilots. Wings Aloft, a Seattle flight school based out of Boeing Field, has an affordable program geared at getting kids up in the air, so they can learn how to fly.

Discovery Flights for Kids

• 5-20 kids
• Integrated with the Museum of Flight
• 3 hrs long
• Costs $132

Wings Aloft also offers a host of classes for adults. They have a flight club (which does fun stuff like “Fly-ins” to Roche Harbor, Rosario, the Rogue River, etc), commercial pilot training programs, instrument training, and a smattering of other offerings, too.

The Wings Aloft Team

Flight Facts

• Statute Mile = 5,280 feet; Nautical Mile = 1 min of longitude.
• The Blue Angels have performed for over 427 million people.
• It costs $12,000 - 13,000/hour to fly in a Leer Jet.
• It costs $900 per hour to fly a Cesna 414.

Myth: Professional storytellers spend all their time researching and sharing stories.

Truth: Storytellers spend most of their time marketing themselves.

Lesson: Just about every small business owner, regardless of discipline, is also a full-time marketer.

—

After attending a recent puppet show and chatting with storyteller and professional puppeteer Penny Walter, I did a bit of digging into the business-side of storytelling. I wondered, for people who spend so much time creating, isn’t it hard to find time to market yourself?

In the most recent issue of The National Storytelling Network, I loved what guest editor K. Sean Buvala had to say on the subject of building a successful small business as a creative person. We just missed out on highlighting his “Storytelling Boot Camp” that took place last week in Arizona (read his recap here). So, to tide us over until next year, here are some quick tips about how to make your business a success!

Note: While the following quick tips were originally written for storytellers, they seem to be sage advice for any any teacher or educator who is building a businesses around selling their craft — be that soap-making, singing or anything in between.

Top 3 Tools to Market Your Biz:

1. Get great business cards
   
2. Develop an awesome online presence
3. Postcards, postcards, postcards

Art from the cover of NSN’s “Storytelling Magazine” by illustrator Gina Perry

Ok, so… in case you need a bit more detail, here’s some expanded thoughts on the tools above:

1. Business Cards - Get them.

• These are often your client or student’s first impression, so spend some time on them; make them shine. They should be full-color (but try to keep the text to one or two colors max, otherwise it tends to be hard to read.)
• Always, always, always include your pertinent info: Name, Phone, E-mail, Web site, and Title (titles can sassy if you like: “Professional Puppeteer and Ambassador to the Woodland Fairies”).
• Also, please don’t print business cards at home. Yes, it’s cheap… but they look that way too.

A few places to get biz cards:

• Fedex Kinko’s actually does a pretty good job, especially if you “absolutely MUST have a new set of cards in the next 3 hours”, but can sometimes be pricey.
• Moo.com is great for unique cards with lots of different fronts/backs. Especially good option for folks with lots of pics already on Flickr.
• 4 over 4 printing (TeachStreet got our biz cards printed here and they turned out pretty swell!)
• Go local. You might find a local crafts person or letterpress whiz who does screen printing or embossing. Maybe they’ll give you business cards in trade for a show or two?

MiniCards from Moo are adorable.

2. Getting yourself on the web = Great idea!

• Remember, even if making the leap into the world of technology seems beyond your creative talents, I will guarantee that the internet is where your potential customers will be looking to find performers and educators. Business cards are great, but you can only reach “hundreds” of people that way. The internet will expose you and your talents to thousands!
• List yourself on directories. Recommended directories for storytellers are: www.storynet.org and www.storyteller.net.
• Get yourself a web site. Of course (prepare for shameless plug for TeachStreet), even if you’re not ready to commit time, energy and $$$ it takes to build your own site, creating a profile on a site like www.teachstreet.com is a great place to start. It’ll help make sure that people find you when they search for your name online or even when they search for “storytelling” or “puppeteering” in your area. Best of all, it’s free. Contact us if you need help getting started.

3. The Power of the Postcard

• A postcard mailing is the cheapest and easiest way to do physical mailings to your clients or students (both past and present). Interestingly, the creator of the lovely art above, Gina Perry, agrees.
• Use postcards to update your fans and followers (and the newbies in your neighborhood) about upcoming classes or events, to invite them to a show, to provide them with a discount (i.e. “20% off if you remind me you got this post-card”) or just to stay “top of mind”.
• Again, you could print these at home, but you’ll probably be better off with something like this: My PostCard Printing, Uprinting, or Modern Postcard.

One final thought to wrap things up… The “business” side of your business doesn’t have to be bothersome, boring or tedious. Find a bit of joy in remembering that that you’re earning money doing what you love!

If you have other great tips about how you’ve marketed yourself or grown your business, we’d love to hear about it! Add comments to this post or just contact us directly.

Last week I had the unusually wonderful opportunity to reconnect with a dear family friend, Penny Walter. Unusual, because not everyone you meet is a professional puppeteer. And wonderful, because not every puppeteer you meet will break out her puppets after dinner and give you a full show, complete with traveling theater stage and sound track.

Penny with one of the stars of her shows, Robin!

In a word, it was fantastic!

And, it was unexpectedly educational. Even though Penny’s forte is with the 3-6 year old crowd, her witty characters, charming plot lines, silly songs, and lots of audience participation were enough to keep an audience of five adults (who often take themselves too seriously) happy as clams.

It became quite obvious that although Penny is a professional at having fun, that there’s more than just creative spirit going into her trade. She’s also a writer, an actress, a singer, a teacher and a small business owner. I was blown-away-impressed. Moreover, Penny’s use of the magic of puppetry to translate stories of friendship and morality was obviously more effective than a stern talking to from a grown up ever could be.

Penny has her Masters degree in Education, and her thesis was on using puppetry in early childhood education. She saw how puppets could help even the most “precocious” children learn new things. After a few years in the classroom, she realized that her true calling as a storyteller and puppeteer offered her even more rewards than being a full time teacher.

After four years as the Storytime Lady at the Portland Children’s Museum, Penny’s Puppet Productions recently struck out on its own. Now, Penny and her array of more than 40 shows (all written and performed by Penny herself) are in high demand from community organizations, festivals, libraries and even parents who want a more educational birthday party option than Whack-a-Mole at Chucky Cheese.

Penny performs just about every day of the week at various libraries and other institutions in the Portland area, and just had her first show at the Seattle Children’s Museum last week. She also offers puppetry workshops and seminars for folks of all ages!

Check her out online at her website www.pennypuppets.com or on her TeachStreet profile.

Penny and her cohorts, represent a modern take on an ancient art. Puppetry and story telling have a long history as tools for youth education. For a recent example, think of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood or Sesame Street, or for something with a little more history, note the ancient oral traditions of Homer. Both are examples of how storytellers have aided in the education of entire cultures and generations.

p.s. Is it true that PBS is no longer showing Mister Roger’s Neighborhood? Tell me it’s not. (Photo by simonk)

If you haven’t been to a puppet show recently, I highly recommend you getting yourself to one in the near future. Take your 4-year old niece or neighbor if you need an excuse, but I can promise you that you might just get a bigger kick out of it than they do!

To learn more about puppeteering and storytelling, I recommend: Portland Puppet Power, Mudeye Puppet Company, Portland Story Theater, and the Portland Storytellers Guild.

And in Seattle, please check out: Seattle Storytellers Guild, the Thistle Theater, and the Northwest Puppet Theater.

Photo: shajahanmoidin | “BEIJING OLYMPICS”

Are your faces glued to your television sets watching the Olympics in Beijing?  I know mine is, especially when they pretty much show it on every channel these days.  I can’t get enough of watching sports that I usually wouldn’t watch outside of the Olympics.  It’s exciting watching young athletes doing incredible stunts in gymnastics, our US Women’s Sabre team sweeping the medals for the individual fencing competitions, and even Melanie Roach (Bonney Lake native) competing in weight lifting.  It’s been great watching the games, but don’t you ever wonder to yourself, “If only I took that beginners gymnastics class, or fencing class when I was younger — I would be in Beijing!”

Well, you’re in luck!  Although it’s already late for Beijing, you have a full 4 years to prepare for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.  If you want to hit the ground running for your Olympic campaign in London, check out the following list for classes in your area:

Best Classes for 2012 Olympics Preparation (Seattle, WA):

• Fencing classes with Salle Auriol
• Gymnastic classes with Seattle Gymnastics Academy
• Archery classes with Steve Coleman
• Team Rowing classes with Lake Union Crew
• Tae Kwon Do classes with Alki Tae Kwon Do

Best Classes for 2012 Olympics Preparation (Portland, OR):

• Fencing classes with Salle Trois Armes
  
• Gymnastic classes with Westside Dance Gymnastics
  
• Archery classes with Archers Afield
• Team Rowing classes with Rose City Rowing Club
  
• Tae Kwon Do classes with Pacific Rim Martial Arts
  

Here at TeachStreet, we really love building the website and building the community, but learning new things - that puts us over the moon! And meeting teachers who make a difference in students’ lives, being able to experience their wealth of knowledge and gift for sharing their passion with others, reminds us daily of the great potential for a strong community of lifelong learners. We thought, why keep all this rich stuff to ourselves? Why not share with you some of these awesome experiences?

Annie the intern and our resident data whiz and talented videographer, Harold, went to Bothell, WA last week to check out Horse Haven at Bear Creek. Not only do they rehabilitate horses, they also have a wealth of classes based on the idea of Natural Horsemanship. Plus, they’re adding some really exciting classes this fall, including one we sampled on our trip.

Robyn Smith, the facilities director and teacher has teamed up with Dawn Spiegelberg of Bodywise BodyWork to bring you a class focused on working with horses to find proper body alignment for all pursuits. Especially for those of us hunched over keyboards typing furiously away at blog posts, this class was incredibly enlightening, and in less than an hour, it changed my perspective on everything from how I sit at work to how to more effectively ride my bicycle.

Both Robyn and Dawn come from completely different backgrounds, but compliment each other with their incredible knowledge of horses and the human body and their holistic approach to day to day life. Improving the body and spirit of not just the human, but the horses they are working with as well. Horse Haven at Bear Creek is a very special place, and we hope you get a chance to check it out!

TeachStreet TV: Horseback Riding - Bothell, WA from TeachStreet CDT on Vimeo.

We taped this interview with Portland’s KATU AM Northwest a few days after launch, and it then aired several times since — mom’s so proud!