Q&A 🙋🏻‍♀️Emma answers questions about Life & YouTube

Video Transcript
Section 1
Oh hey there this is Emma from mmmEnglish and today I’m going to be answering your questions about me! Yep… I’m a little hot under the collar already! Even without a collar on! You’ve all been asking me lots of questions about my interests and my life… Fair enough! We hang out together every week but I asked a few of you in my community here on YouTube to ask me some questions that you’re curious to hear my answers to. So, I’ve picked a few of them to answer today.

But of course, if you’ve got a question or maybe as I’m talking, you think you’ve got some other questions you want to ask me, then make sure you add them into the comments below. I think I’ll probably make another video like this soon.

Alright, so question number one is from Walid. He asks, “How did you begin your experience on YouTube? How was the idea born?”

And Vasanth also asked, “Why did I start my channel?”

I think I was quite flippant when I started the YouTube channel. At the time, I was working in a language school in Vietnam and I was teaching adults and they were coming to classes maybe two hours a week. And you know, so they were really frustrated with their progress. Of course, being in Vietnam, they couldn’t really practise English a whole lot outside of the classroom. So, I started creating these videos. I was trying at the time, I was experimenting, to make some videos that could kind of be like just hanging out with me.

If any of you have been right back to the start of my videos on the YouTube channel, you would know that I was doing a whole bunch of stuff, cooking food, teaching English by cooking and going to restaurants and chatting with people about food, eating food myself! So when I started, it was really about creating a different type of experience of learning English than in a classroom. And it was a lot of fun!

But it was a lot of work too! Like, it would take me hours and hours to film a video. I’d have the camera set up on one angle. Of course, it was just me. I didn’t have a team, a production team or anything, it was just me! So I would film and then move the camera to another angle and then bring it close to zoom in and check out what was happening! It was a lot of work!

Okay, so number two is from Marina, she asks, “Emma, what else do you do in your life besides YouTube?”

It’s true! I don’t ONLY do YouTube in my life! So, there are other things that I do get up to. I’m really into food. I don’t know if you’ve noticed already, I’ve mentioned it about six times but I love cooking, I love going out and eating, trying restaurants, going places with friends. I love cooking for people, mostly. If it was just me at home on my own one night, I would probably just cook a piece of toast but I love cooking for other people and I also really love travelling and you know doing adventurous, outdoor things.

But I also work a lot. Like, quite a lot. I work on my channel but I It supports women who are learning to speak English also work on another really special, amazing project. I spend most of my time working on that project. Now, you might have found something in your life like this, that lights you up. I literally leap out of bed every day because I’m so excited about getting to work.

The Ladies’ Project is an online community. It supports women who are learning to speak English and our focus is on helping women to overcome their fears of speaking, to support them as they take on new challenges with their English. So we help them to meet and connect with other women from different cultures around the world to help them to find speaking partners in a really safe supportive online environment.

So, even just conceiving and then creating and now managing a community like this has been the most challenging thing that I’ve ever done. I’ve had to acquire a whole bunch of new skills; solve so many problems that I just didn’t even know exist in the world and I’ve had to step up and manage a team as well. And incredibly, my fiance, Shah, has become my business partner through this whole process and we work on this amazing creation together every single day.

And I literally could not have come to the point where I’m at without him. We follow a program of conversations and
lessons every fortnight about really interesting and meaningful topics. We talk about family and relationships travel, culture and food – and our careers. We also talk about some of the challenges that women face and we help each other to overcome some of those challenges. It’s really English for the  real-world, ladies! And if you want to check it out if you want to have a look check out this link here or in the description. I’ll take you on a tour of what it’s like inside.

Alright on we go. Question number three, Tracy asked, “What’s the difference between teaching online and teaching in schools? Why is teaching online better?”

I don’t know whether it is better, Tracy. I think that there are reasons why I love teaching English online. I love that I can help and support a wide range of students, often students who, you know, may not ever have the chance to be in a classroom not even really be able to afford having regular classes every single week on this channel.

But one thing that I really, really miss about teaching in a classroom is about being physically surrounded by my students and you know, really getting to know them and understanding what some of their frustrations and challenges are and being able to make a significant impact on their lives and the way that they are learning English.

I guess the only other thing that I would mention is that online teaching gives me, in my personal life, quite a bit of flexibility. I travel a lot, I have family in different places so I’m constantly moving around. I mean, it really is a privilege to have a job where I can do that. I can take my work with me and I can do it from anywhere.

There are also some downsides to that as well just by the way, like I literally, you know, hardly ever have a day off. I’ve always got my work with me and it’s not really an excuse when you go on holidays to not work because I’ve got my computer, I’ve got my phone so the work-life balance side of things is not as perfect as, you know, the idea of flexibility sounds and working for yourself.

Okay Odette has asked, “Have you ever had self-doubt when you need to take another step? Do you ask yourself, ‘Can I really make this happen? What if I fail how do we overcome self-doubt?’“

My gosh this is such a good question! I have, I experience self-doubt daily. There, like I said, there have been some huge changes and challenges that have come up, you know, through running my own business, you know, starting The Ladies Project, running a YouTube channel, and you know, I’m constantly filled with self-doubt is by accepting that it’s there. I know that I’m always always going to be doubting myself. Accepting that it’s there and then moving forward regardless. So moving forward despite those feelings of self-doubt because what I’ve found in all of my experience of teaching, building a business, you know, working in an office, building a career, learning a language is that once you do something, once you try something only two things can happen.

One is that you surprise yourself and you feel like I really didn’t need to worry about that so much it wasn’t as bad as I thought. And the second thing is, if you mess up and make a mistake or you make a bad call, you do something wrong, all it does is show you what you shouldn’t do next time or how you can improve the next time and the next time feels a little easier because you’ve had that experience and you know what not to do.

So when it comes to self-doubt, I have it every day but my strategy, my personal strategy, is to recognise that it’s there but move on regardless.

Okay, so Rasha asked, “What inspires or motivates you?”

I think it might be a little cliche but it’s true that the determination of my students is what inspires me and a huge desire to help them I’m just constantly blown away and completely inspired by the challenges that you have to overcome to learn a language. I mean learning a language is hard, it takes a commitment that you put in over many, many, many, years and you know, the frustrations of not making progress and you know, difficulties that come up in your life, it really takes stamina to succeed to the point where you people are at and that’s what inspires me and anything that I can do to help you and support you on your journey is an actual blessing for me.

Number six, the question is, “Where do you live?”

So I am Australian, I think most of you know that though I live in Perth in the west of Australia and it’s a beautiful, beautiful city. I love living here. The weather is mostly glorious, the sky and the air is clear, sunny, most of the time and that really suits my lifestyle. But originally I’m from Melbourne in the east of Australia and that’s where all of my family is from and I’m often back there visiting them. I’ve got family in Brisbane, another city in Australia, so I’m moving around a fair bit. I’ve also got family in Malaysia and in Thailand and in the UK.

So like I said before, I really value the flexibility that I’ve created in my life through YouTube and through my online business and it allows me to spend time with the people that I really care about in my life and I think that’s a really special thing.

So, Nitin is asking, “What is your favourite book and author?”

One that really stands out for me is Shantaram by Geoffrey David Roberts and the reason why I love that book is it’s so vividly descriptive of every aspect in the book and I love just getting completely sucked into a book,

The other thing that I love about it is that it’s quite challenging because it really, I guess, asks you to think maybe a little differently about good and evil and right and wrong. It presents a guy who, you know, was in jail in Australia who escaped prison and fled to India and he started working for, you know, some of the gangs and got involved in drugs and stuff like that but he also set up a hospital in one of the biggest slums in Bombay and ran it himself and, you know, through all of that work and it was all free, completely free volunteering, you know, you struggle to sort of feel like is this guy good? Is he bad? And same with all the characters that he comes across in his life so it’s one of my or it is my absolute favourite. It comes out on top every time.

Yelizaveta asks, “How can I be a good English teacher like you?”

Thank you Yelizaveta, that’s a really sweet comment! My advice is to really try and find your own personality. Being comfortable and being sure in yourself allows you to really connect with other people. It’s okay to be passionate, it’s okay to absolutely love what you do, who you teach, what you teach. Don’t hide your passion for your work, everything should come through your lessons. Anyone can learn, anyone can learn how to teach something, how to transfer information from your mind into someone else’s, anyone can do that but the really successful teachers are the ones who show their personality and who capture your attention and who draw you into their world. And that’s what I think really inspiring teaching is all about.

I love this last one! Sudhir asks, “When will you meet Lucy from English with Lucy?”

I have! I have! We made a couple of videos together way back when our channels were small and we’d just started out and I happen to be visiting the UK for a couple of weeks so I called Lucy up or I messaged her and said “Why don’t we do it?” So we did but that was years ago!

Emma: Hi everyone! Welcome to another mmmEnglish video. I am here in London and I have just run into another lovely English teacher, YouTube English teacher, it’s Lucy!
Lucy: Hello I’m Lucy from English with Lucy and I also have an English Channel.
Emma: I’m sure that a lot of my viewers also actually subscribe to you so I’m sure they’ll be very excited to see us together!
Lucy: Yeah, surprise!

We have both come so far since then. We catch up every now and again and kind of chat about how our channels are going and what else we’re working on and I definitely, I agree, I think it’s time we probably do something together again soon. Hopefully next year! I’m going to be visiting the UK so fingers crossed we can line something up.

If you’ve got any ideas or suggestions for what that video could be, then make sure you drop them in the comments below and I’ll share it with Lucy!

So, this has been kind of fun! It’s been cool hanging out in my lounge room with you guys, I think I might have to do this a little more it’s much more comfortable than studio. If you have any other questions, maybe some of the answers that I gave today made you think: What! I’ve got ten more questions to ask you about that!

Then please add them into the comments below. I’ll probably try and make another video like this soon, answering some of your questions, helping you to learn a little bit more about me and my business and my channel and my passions and my hobbies. So if you’ve got any questions then do add them below.

Make sure you subscribe if you haven’t already, you really should have subscribed already, especially if you turn up to watch English lessons here every week just like these ones but thanks for joining me today and I will you next week. Bye for now!