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Class Queen SkillPop entrepreneur Haley Bohon provides an inside look at the fast success of her community classes / by Stephanie Trotter // photograph by John Davidson
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hat’s the latest trend in learning? What’s the easiest way to conquer a craft? How can you affordably hone a hobby? How have more than 13,000 people broadened their personal and professional skill set? If you answered “SkillPop” to all of the above, give yourself an A. These pop-up community classes started in Charlotte in 2015 with a simple hand-lettering class. They’ve since ballooned across Raleigh-Durham, Nashville, and here in Greenville, with instruction on everything from crochet basics and cookie decorating, to podcasting and branding essentials. SkillPop founder, 28-year-old Haley Bohon, is revolutionizing continuing education by ditching digital methods for an old-fashioned technique: a real teacher in front of eager students, inside a classroom as active as kindergartners on Skittles. SkillPop has grown so fast, Bohon is spending this spring meeting mentors to cast a vision for controlled growth and sustainable expansion. She sat down to chat between brainstorming sessions.
Pop Culture: Haley Bohon is the founder of SkillPop, which offers classes in a variety of subjects via a classroom or studio setting. Begun in Charlotte, SkillPop is now offered in Nashville, Raleigh-Durham, and Greenville, where Jeremy Elrod serves as Community Manager. For more information, visit SkillPop.com.
How does a mechanical engineer hatch the idea for popup classes on marketing tools and tapestry weaving? >> I had lived in Charlotte a few years and I was seeing a lot of my friends go to fitness and run clubs, yoga at breweries, and casual networking events. As a life-long learner, I struggled to find places to learn that were in a similar, unity setting. Everywhere I looked for a photography class, the best and easiest, and cheapest, options were all online. But you wanted to learn in person? >> Yes! I love to learn when there’s someone there with me and I can say, ‘Hey, can you come show me that again?’ I like to learn alongside other people. So, I started working on this idea. Learning is great to do in person. It doesn’t have to be digital, just because our whole world is going digital. You had a full-time job going into that first handlettering class. How long did you stay? >> I quit my job that day, or shortly thereafter. It was quickly very apparent this was going to be more than a sidehustle. My husband, Steve, and I self-funded with a very small amount of cash, and we’ve been bootstrap since the beginning. We doubled in 2017 over where we were in 2016.
“Learning is something that is not going away. Community is something that is not going away.” —Haley Bohon
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2/19/18 3:51 PM