How I Integrate My Business & Language Learning

It’s been a tremendous process of trial & error, but I’ve finally found a way to integrate my business & language learning in a way that not only saves me time, but actually improves my abilities in each of these areas. While I’ll be sharing what I do, it’s important that you consider it as an example of how to find your own style of balancing work & studying because each person works & learns differently & what works for one will not necessarily work for another. With that in mind, though, I learned to work & study the way I do from my teachers & role models. I personalized what I learned from multiple sources to create my own style, & that’s exactly what I encourage you to do 🥰

My Business Content

I used to think of my business content - videos, photos, writing - as a sample of my work, so I created instructional content because I’m a teacher. Then I realized, I don’t personally use this type of content as a learner, so why the heck am I creating it to attract people to my content if it’s not my style?

I wasn’t doing anything wrong creating it. In fact, it was only by creating that content that I knew how to make that I discovered my own style - that and investing thousands of dollars into teachers to help me learn the business side of running a business (I already knew how to teach when I started this, but what I didn’t know was anything about sales or business in general). So I addressed the areas where I was lacking, got the support I needed & started experimenting.

I lucked out with my coach & got an amazing lady who not only taught me about business, but how to really understand myself & build a business around my values & what I truly enjoy - plus some awesome design skills!

YouTube, Instagram, & My Website

I started out by following all the “rules” of content creation for these platform because, well, I really didn’t know where else to start. I made instructional videos on Spanish & language. I created Instagram posts with an alternating grid pattern of photos & “value posts” with quotes I though of. I created “how to” blog content & other posts that went along with my videos.

And I’m glad I did all this even though it’s not my style because it was only through this process of experimentation that I discovered my style & the confidence show it.

Recently, I’ve gotten back into my blog because I want more people like you visiting my website 😉, & I’ve figured out a way to do it that not only integrates it into my other content, but improves it & ties into my language learning.

I realized through creating my Linguist Dojo course that I am able to produce much more concise & higher end videos when I write the lesson first. While I won’t be writing lessons for each of my YouTube videos because (1) that’s no longer the style of my channel & (2) it takes me hundreds of hours to create the content for my course, I thought, what if I create a blog post before filming my YouTube videos?

It’s not the same activity book & slide presentation as my course, but it is nice to have an introduction to the content that’ll be in my YouTube video & as a resource for people who would rather skim a page instead of watching an entire video - although, you’ll miss out if you only do one or the other because I go deeper into the topic I’m sharing in the video format 🙃.

So I write my blog post - just like this one - then I film & edit my YouTube video & take photos for Instagram while I’ve got my camera out for YouTube. All my content is themed for the week, so it flows together seamlessly 😊

How Does Language Learning Fit In?

In case you didn’t already guess it, language fits naturally into everything I do because I’m either using language to communicate my ideas, like right now, or I’m studying a language & using what I learn from that process to inform my content creation. Take my posts last week about how I’m learning Mandarin Chinese for example. I’m learning a new language & learning more about the process of learning another language which improves my ability to teach this process. Plus, I create content around it reflecting on my process & sharing my strategies & resources, so other can learn from it as well & so that I can improve & learn from my own process by reflecting on it through the content creation process. It’s an endless cycle of learning & creation 🥰

I learn as much as I can from my own process, but there’s so much more to be learned from other perspectives. What are your thoughts on content integration & learning language this way? 🙃