Sassy good luck!

Defy, congrats! I'm so glad you have people signing up!

Good luck with your demo this weekend!

Hi everyone,

I've just been reading this thread - its full of great tips so thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts. I've actually just become a WMI and will hopefully teach my first class in November, assuming I can get some sign ups for it. Still waiting for my kit to arrive - not sure exactly what'll be in it.

I'll be teaching at the Michaels store in Barrie, Ontario and am really looking forward to it. Am also attending the 3 day Beyond the Basics training seminar in Toronto the first weekend of November - anyone else going from here?

Anyway, just wanted to say hi and will send a request off to join the WMI forum. It'll be great to bounce ideas off all you experts as i get to grips with everything.

Hope all the other WMI newbies are doing well.

Congrats and Welcome to the WMI world.

I just found this thread (I've been away from cake central for a bit, life gets crazy busy). I love that there is so much support for the WMIs now a days. I was a WMI at a Michaels in Nevada about 3 years ago. Loved working in the Michaels, and the demos were paid. Got lucky to have full classes each month.

The one thing I tell people about teaching Wilton is that, the people who are there, want to be there. It's not like teaching high school (which is what I do right now) where the "kids" can be un-receptive and look at it as a chore. The students in the Wilton classes LOVE being there, and they love it when you're learning with them. There were items when I first started teaching Wilton that I knew how to do "my way", but the students and I learned together how to do it the "Wilton Way".

I also found that my students wanted to learn beyond what Wilton had to teach them. So I taught all of the Wilton lessons just as they were, and then the last 10 minutes of the class, during clean up, we had a "Q&A session" where they could ask me questions, if I knew the answer, I'd relate what I knew, and if I didn't know it, I'd promise to find the answer by the next class. They loved that.

Enjoy being a WMI!! I just filled out my interest form again to get back into the swing of things as a WMI in the city we're moving to. So I hope to teach some more this spring. Good Luck and have fun with it!

Not to be a downer, but you will still encounter a few people along the way that you have to wonder why they signed up. People will come in late every week, unprepared, with missing items and so on. You will also deal with a great many different personalities.

Difficult students do exist. Thankfully though, they are usually few and far between. And you'll learn the best ways to deal with them.

I'm so glad this thread got bumped! I have had zero free time lately and haven't been on here at all.

Well, my first month is done. Without getting too far into it, there have been a lot of problems with the cashiers not registering people properly, and then they somehow blame me for it. At the beginning of all of this, one cashier in particular who didn't know how to use the book didn't see the 40 copies of first night supply lists and was telling students that they'll just have to call me to see what they need, since I can't be bothered to supply them, and if he was her, he wouldn't even spend his money on a class ran by somebody like that. Oy. The office manager wasn't really on my side at first either, but we've been getting along a lot better in the last week or so.

They have a new manager who came from a different store that ran a VERY tight ship, and he's pushing like crazy to have things running more smoothly for me.

I'm ready to start the next class and file all of the "growing pains" from this month away. The thing that bothers me about the cashiers talking smack is that I have no idea how many people they have said that to. How many students could I have had that took the cashier at their word and never contacted me? Aside from that, I loved all of my students! I think all but 4 of them were mother/daughter pairs, which I thought was awesome. For my basics class next month, I have an entire family of 4 who is signing up!

As much as I loved the classes when I took them, I have to say being an instructor is considerably more fun

Cashiers will always be a challenge. Especially around this time of year when they hire alot of seasonal help. I have people that have been at the store for years and still don't 'know' the correct information. I've pretty much told them to give my number out and have people call me if they have questions, that way I can give them the right information.

Hopefully now that they have a WMI there again, they will get on board. If you leave your cake at the store after class, you can always let that cranky cashier know if they don't sign up students they don't get cake.

Last month was the first month that every student coming into Decorating Basics got the supply list ahead of time. I have them in the sign up book, behind the sign up sheet, attached with a binder clip and a note on the sign up sheet that says to give it to them.

There will be headaches with the store and employees, but after a while I have learned to do with what I can, complain to the manager when I need to, and then to just let the rest of it go and not totally stress myself out.

Yesterday was the last day of my first Decorating Basics course, and with the exception of the Class Certificates, which I think might have been my fault, there were not a lot of faults.

I had one student that told me I was a great teacher, which made me feel really good.

Hopefully by January, I'll have it down.