Conversations with Rachel Meadows

Today we’d like to introduce you to Rachel Meadows

Hi Rachel, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
When I started, I had no real direction or goal apart from a desire to travel and see the world. In 2019, with the support of my boyfriend (now husband) I traveled solo to Costa Rica to study Spanish and complete a Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) Certification. I had always wanted to travel, and my family honestly didn’t have the means, so I had to find a way to do so on my own.

Once I gained that certificate, I started teaching English online via a company called VIPKID, which was based in China. In this way, I would be able to travel and earn money daily to fund that. My plan was to start in Spain, in order to study Spanish, and eventually see all the neighboring countries.

This was an awesome and eye opening experience for me, and I really enjoyed my studies at a Spanish academy in Seville, Spain. However, around that time I lost two members of my family, and after a while decided to return to KC until things in the family had settled down a bit.

Well, life happens as we all know, and when Covid erupted I was lucky to already be back in my hometown, and earning my income entirely online. I know that many other digital nomads were stranded abroad during that time, and I was blessed.

During Covid, the company I was contracting through and relying on for all my income had to close due to new restrictions in China at that time which prevented foreigners from working via the Internet throughout all of China.

My husband and I had just gotten married the year prior in 2020, and I was effectively out of work without notice. So I looked into other options for contracting to teach English online and found an incredible site called Preply. Preply, unlike VIPKID, was not exclusive to just one country, but has reach all over the world.

Since 2022, I’ve been supplementing my income from Preply with teaching my own digital art classes through an amazing company called Outschool, an online education platform exclusively for kids (globally today; though at that time, I believe it was mainly U.S. students).

Art has always been more than a hobby to me throughout my life. I even took a semester in the Illustration program at KCAI, but due to life events ended up dropping out and eventually completed my bachelor’s degree online. By designing my own art classes and teaching them via Outschool, my world has been completely opened up to creating art again.

My positive experience teaching art with Outschool has brought me many truly wonderful clients, and made my income (combined between the two platforms) more than I have ever earned annually in my entire life. For which I am super grateful!

It has also inspired me to begin offering my Live and Self Paced art classes on my very own website, completely independent of any third-party platforms. Draw Along With Me is more than just my passion project, at this point it’s all I’d like to be doing, and I look forward to the day when most of my income is earned via my own website.

Each year has been a new learning curve, a new hustle, and a new theme, so I believe that 2025 will be all about getting my brand, Draw Along With Me, to be known and out there.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has absolutely not been a smooth road. It has come with many challenges, including losing all my clients of two years when the VIPKID platform had to shut down due to new government restrictions.

At that point I had to completely start over, and realized that I shouldn’t have all my eggs in one basket as an independent contractor… This of course led to me diversifying my income by offering art classes for kids online.

There were many struggles along the way. Over the years, my working hours have been all over the place to accommodate clients abroad, and I spent almost two years with VIPKID working from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. nightly.

When I had to transition to a new platform, it was honestly a blessing in disguise and I was grateful to find that there were clients from various countries around the world with a significantly better time difference in comparison to my previous work. However, it wasn’t the steady and high number of clients that I had become accustomed to, and I had to adapt and find alternative ways to supplement my income.

With Draw Along With Me, I am constantly learning new things. Apart from learning to plan art tutorials, I’ve had to learn to film and edit videos, create my own Squarespace website, learn about SEO (still working on that one), and start marketing as I’m a business of one person.

I wear the hat of scheduler, corresponder, creative, editor, producer, director, and so on… I’m sure you all hear that all the time due to the nature of these interviews.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I specialize in digital art lessons using the Procreate app for iPad, including illustration and animation. Recently, after much trial, error, and if I’m honest, frustration, I taught myself the new software program, Procreate Dreams, in order to help students use this popular new app to learn to edit videos and create animations. Additionally, I offer guided realistic people and animal drawing / sketching classes (students can use digital or traditional materials for this).

I absolutely love what I do, and I’m most proud of my ability to be patient, to learn, to adapt, and to overcome almost all technical challenges my students face with these apps. I believe that anyone can draw with proper instruction, and art is essential for emotional regulation and self expression.

It’s an honor to help my students, many of whom are 6 – 8 years old, though some are up to 18 years old, create something they love all on their own. Being that I’m an online teacher, whatever they create is something they made entirely with their own hands–not a little bit theirs and a little bit their teacher’s. It’s all theirs, and I think their joy and pride in themselves is the most rewarding and beautiful thing about my job.

Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
Yes! I think one of the biggest hurdles for my self employment journey, beyond finding clients themselves via various platforms, was TAXES. I cannot stress enough how important it is to educate yourself on this. At this point in my career, I sincerely set aside between 35-40% of my income for state and federal taxes.

Another point I’d like to stress is also about finances…when you’ve got incredible seasons with this, when your income is stellar and you’re feeling like a rock star–SAVE. The reason being that, if you enter a field like mine, regardless of culture or country, there are always lulls. This year surprisingly, January was a fantastic month, while August has been slow.

Being aware of and planning wisely for the ups and downs of self employment income will sincerely help your overall mental health and self worth. It’s Back to School season, and most of us online teachers are looking forward to and preparing for another “Up” in this field.

I will also say this, I had help–it was just me and my husband, but he supported and encouraged me to do this–even when it wasn’t good for our life and seriously hurt our budget. It was really hard, but we got by and I have to say that I attribute much of my success in this to his standing by me and supporting me through the most difficult “Downs” in this journey.

Another point I’d like to make is to not be scared! I know that’s what everyone who doesn’t do this says, but as someone who has done it I can say that when I finally went all in I saw more success and growth than I ever had.

The final point is to prioritize self care, I had many times where I didn’t give myself a single day off and it was purely exhausting. Honestly, it is a bit of a hit at first financially, but you become better at everything you do with even just a single day of rest–no joke!

Pricing:

• Private 1:1 Classes on My Website: $25 – 65.
• Self Paced Classes on My Website: $10 – 45.
• Group Classes on Outschool: $15 – 20 per on-going, weekly class.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://drawalongwithme.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/draw.along.with.me
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@drawalongwithme
• Other: https://outschool.com/teachers/RachelM_DrawAlongWithMe