Lesson: So What Now? 

Now you have made it to the end of this class, the first thing I implore you to do, is to go back and start it all over again — with a fresh mind, perhaps open to new ideas. What you put into this class is honestly what you will get out of it. We find the first time students work through this class and material, they start to get a good understanding of the processes and tools, the second time their inner creativity starts to crackle, the third and fourth time! Well, now you’re really starting to fire up! Actually doing, rather than just understanding, the exercises is really key.

The skills and ideas in this school will serve you for life. We have designed your workbook as both a reference for the main ideas in this school, so that you won’t forget key points once your membership is up – but also as your creative and business plan. Please print out a few spare copies to help you work through future ideas project and ideas, and keep your notes somewhere safe so that you can always reference them.

Right now, go back to the start. See you back here for us to wrap you up properly and send you on your way once you have gone through the material a few more times.

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Lesson: Courageous Failures  

To Ponder: “‘But what if I make a mistake?’ Will asked. Gilan threw back his head and laughed. ‘A mistake? One mistake? You should be so lucky. You’ll make dozens! I made four or five on my first day alone! Of course you’ll make mistakes. Just don’t make any of them twice. If you do mess things up, don’t try to hide it. Don’t try to rationalize it. Recognise it and admit it and learn from it. We never stop learning, none of us.’” — John Flanagan

I want to pass on two incredibly important tools for you to carry with you forever more. Both these tools have become my guiding compass as I navigate creativity, business and life often without support.

The first, is learning to embrace failure as a tool. Your secret weapon is failure. It’s your opportunity to learn something from your mistakes (you’ll make them), or fix something that isn’t working. I make mistakes every day, but I try and learn from them, or solve the problem.

Failing at something you’ve tried your best at, or making a mistake leaves you feeling really worthless and is a pretty painful experience. By channelling the experience into something positive, it can not only help you move past the encounter quicker, it might just be what you need to uncover something great – like a change in your direction, or picking up a skill or attitude you might really need, or becoming a great source of motivation.

Let me give you an example.

Captains Rest is a humble little seaside shack in Tasmania that has become a global icon over the span of a few short years. It was the catalyst for The Hosting Masterclass, and the success of so many students in that school became the catalyst for this one. In general, we have incredible guests and such an incredible community online across all our offerings, but every now and then, perhaps once a year, I would come across someone that we just couldn’t seem to please, and not just that, I would receive severe and personal criticism to the point of online bullying for the properties, the classes and myself as a person.

I agonised over it for such a long time. If I couldn’t make every single person on the internet love my work and be happy, who was I to teach others if I couldn’t obtain perfection! It seems silly even typing this now, but I know each of you reading this has felt the painful pang of criticism at some point in their life. I looked high and low for answers, continued to do my best and make everyone happy where I could – but I finally found the advice I needed to change how I felt about the situation and provide the perspective, and learning, where failing in this instance ended up helping me greatly.

A conversation with a friend who teaches meditation pointed out, “But Sarah, you could sit in your room for the rest of your life with the curtains drawn, and you would be criticised for that! Criticism from others is a part of the human experience – it wouldn’t matter what you were doing, or how well you did it – it is part of life. In public business life, in your private life or otherwise.”

The advice put my experience into perspective to expect criticism as a part of life, not as a failure in what I was doing, take on feedback where it is due – some of it is really valuable and helped me better the experience I could offer for guests and students, and where it isn’t, understand that some people’s experience is a reflection of their inner world, and life is a tough place for most of us. It helped me put boundaries finally in place by letting my team help me with social media DMs and emails, it helped me learn where to communicate, where to never start any sort of communication, and where conversation was valuable.

When anyone fails, it falls somewhere on the spectrum below.

• Take the blame. Deviance: An individual chooses to violate a prescribed practice or process.

• Try not to sweat it, mistakes are made. Task Challenge: An individual faces a task too complex or difficult to be executed reliably at his/her level of current understanding.

• You should be praised. Exploratory Testing: An individual is trying to expand knowledge and investigate possibility with good intention which leads to an undesired result.

Learning where your failure falls on this spectrum often will help you find some emotional comfort with it. Learning from it and/or fixing the issue is the second step to continue to grow. I’ll leave you with one final thought to ponder on the issue.

 “Fail often in order to succeed sooner.”

— IDEO

Lesson: Courageous Decisions  

From here on in, or whenever your 15 weeks come to an end, you will be left to navigate your projects mostly on your own. Your community is always here to support you, and we do offer further one-on-one help if need be, but life and our work will constantly and consistently be made up of decisions you will need to make on your own, so I want to offer a tool to help you.

It’s called the decision making matrix, and it’s for you to use when you are left to make a tough decision in your work, both creatively or practically. Let’s look at how it goes.

• Step One: Write down your idea or decision that needs to be made.

• Step Two: Answer this. Will this help or hinder what I’m trying to achieve.

• Step Three: Answer this. Does this idea or decision help or hinder the story I am trying to tell.

• Step Four: Answer this. What sort of complexity does this add to my project.

• Step Five: Your outcome based on the answers above.

Let me give you an example if I am using the matrix to help guide a purchase when renovating my home.

• Step One: “Should spend an extra $3000 having custom brass handles made for my kitchen, or are the lovely brass hand foraged ones I found online sufficient.”

• Step Two: “I’m trying to achieve my kitchen renovation on my budget, so probably hinder.”

• Step Three: “Both options equally convey the story I’m trying to tell with using brass”.

• Step Four: “Incredible complexity, it’s costly and timely, and there is a risk that what I expect won’t turn up.”

• Step Five: “I’m going with the off-the-shelf brass handles, they are lovely and equally help me convert what I am aiming to with my story and styling to match!”

Let’s look at another example you might use if you are here working on your business.

• Step One: “I’m trying to figure out if now is the time to invest in an additional studio or retail space for my work and products.”

• Step Two: “I’m trying to achieve more sales, which are mostly online in this day and age.”

• Step Three: “It would help if I found the perfect stone barn with wooden floors, as an alternative I could perhaps set up a room in my home or back shed styled to look like a storefront that I can shoot product in for my Instagram.”

• Step Four: “Incredible complexity, it’s costly, timely to set up and actually staff for customers coming in – and I’m not sure about the return on my business right now.”

• Step Five: “Right now, a dedicated and styled home option would be the wisest step forward. If my online turnover grows more than three times what it is now, perhaps a retail store and dedicated studio would be worthwhile re-visiting.”

Can you see how ordered and logical thinking can help you make decisions in a courageous way? It gives you evidence to base your conclusion on, and let you move forward with all the confidence you need – on to the next bloody decision!

 “Sometimes, making the wrong choice is better than making no choice. You have the courage to go forward, that is rare. A person who stands at the fork, unable to pick, will never get anywhere.”

― Terry Goodkind, Wizard’s First Rule

Lesson: The Courage To Continue

My final lesson, before we get to the housekeeping of sending you on your way, is what I have learnt from watching so many of you on your journeys over my years of being a teacher. We have a chapter of Graduate Stories for you to read, so that you can be guided from those on your path as to where to pay attention and their tips of what has really helped them along the way, but I think my perspective of observing what really successful graduates seem to have in common might be valuable to you.

Firstly, successful graduates understand the power of this community. They use our hashtag on posts they are really proud of, which is #poss and also follow it, so that they can interact with other like-minded students, and form genuine and supportive friendships along the way. Never underestimate the power of this community. We regularly pass the hashtag and students’ work along to magazines who approach us for stories worldwide. Connections made within the community are incredibly powerful at promoting and supporting each other’s businesses, and helping solve emotional and creative challenges. If you’ve found this class via our other, The Hosting Masterclass, you’ve had a first hand seat to the power of what our students have achieved as a group.

Secondly, successful students faithfully follow the guidance outlined in this school, even when it seems tough or illogical. This class and its work was born out of tried and true success. Not only mine but replicated by 1000s of others following these guidelines. When things don’t seem to be working out, remember the lessons and ideas taught here and you will most likely find an area you have skimmed over or not yet quite mastered.

And lastly, successful students are determined. Creative work is scary, life is scary! Those that make it work forge forward because they are brave and determined and wish to live their dreams rather than sit on the side-line while the years thunder by. I want to leave you on this note, and get on with some housekeeping. But first let me share with you my favourite set of words for whenever I come up against something scary.

Resources: Supplier Directory

From your dashboard or by clicking here you are able to access all the suppliers and products I can wholeheartedly recommend, including class-only discounts for our graduates where we are able to secure them. Please keep discount codes private, suppliers can see who are students of ours, and who are not.

Resources: Hosted Home Owners

This class is an advanced class in Styling & Storytelling; if you are planning to also open a space for guests, such as a Hosted Home or an Airbnb, we strongly recommend you enrol in our sister school, The Hosting Masterclass, which is a dedicated school covering all the aspects we don’t teach here.

Having a beautiful space is only about 1/10 of what you need to know and do to have that iconic & successful home all of our Hosting Masterclass students have. We offer a discount if you wish to continue your studies, so please get in touch with us below to enquire and enrol.

Resources: Toolkit

Here’s a list of digital and physical tools I could not function without.

Squarespace. Most of you taking this class will need a website. It brings an air of professionalism to everything you are doing. The good news is, you can make your own – most of my students have, and its easier than you think. Start here to teach yourself in a few hours at most.

Upwork. Need a hand doing almost anything? Logos, presentations, legal contracts, copywriting, video editing, social media marketing, publishing, websites or admin? You can hire a freelancer anywhere in the world with this platform for any budget.

Camera. I personally use The FujiFilm X-T1 and have done for about 7 years now. I love it so much, I have no intention or reason to upgrade. If you had to choose one lens to pair with it, I would go with this one. You will also need a tripod, and I recommend the Manfrotto range, and like the lightweight travel options unless you are going to be firmly studio based – they are surprisingly heavy pieces of equipment!

Adobe Lightroom. If you are getting serious about taking your own images, and decide to invest in a camera, Lightroom will become your staple software for editing your images.

Continued Learning. Learning never should stop, these are two go-to portals to continue your education, and teach yourself almost anything. Masterclass is an excellent platform and Creative Live is my choice for learning anything with a more technical aspect such as photo editing or videography.

And finally, treat yourself to a World Of Interiors subscription. For inspiration that is timeless and trendless. If you really want to indulge, I can also recommend Milk Magazine out of France.

And, Finally.

A huge congratulations for finishing this class. It’s a mammoth amount of work to complete it properly, and fully immerse yourself in its teachings and lessons. From so many years, teaching so many others, I know you have all you need to go forth with knowledge and wisdom and tackle your dreams, whatever they may be. A little faith and determination is all that’s needed, and although I wish it were possible, that’s going to have to come from you.

And, lastly, I just want to thank you for trusting me. I know every one of you who had the courage to push the “enrol” button did so with a certain leap of faith, believing what’s in this class was for you. I am thankful that our paths crossed, we will be forever intertwined and for that I am also grateful.

Friends never say goodbye, they say “see you soon!”. So, see you soon, please keep in touch and let us know of all the good things that come your way.

Sarah Andrews. XOX.

10. Homework

• Read & Watch Negativity Bias. The comments on the article are also really beneficial to read.

• Do: Follow the #thehostingmasterclass and #principlesofstyle hashtags, explore them to select 3 fellow students you feel aligned with, to follow and engage with in a way that feels natural to you. Building your tribe will become such a critical part of your creative lives moving forward.