Behind the Scenes of One of the Largest Online Quilting Communities with Bea Byrne

Lyric Kinard (00:01.168) Hello friends, I am so happy to have you here with us again and especially happy to have Bee Beren here with us. Bee is an online Quilt and Learn Summit creator. She's a quilter, online teacher, in-person teacher herself, and just really fascinating to talk to and learn from. You are going to love what she... can tell us about her business model. It's a little bit different than a lot of us do. So B, tell us how you got into creative teaching, how and why you're doing what you're doing now. Bea Byrne (00:40.158) First of all, thank you for such a fulsome intro. That was amazing. I need to hire you for pep talks on a daily basis. yeah, I run the Quilt and Learn online summits and I got into it from a purely selfish desire to have an event like this. I had, it was three years ago and I'd been attending the Making Zen online events, which are actually just about to, as we record this, the next one is about to happen. And these are a lot around mindfulness. It's an Australian woman, I believe, although now if she's from New Zealand, I'm going to get hate mail, but she's from that part of the world and she's very into mindfulness and kind of slow stitching and does a lot of embroidery and handwork. And she had, I think at the time, something like eight teachers that had come together. to do this mini summit over the course of a few days. And I absolutely loved it. It was during the pandemic, you know, very, we were all very mindful and slow stitching at that point. And I looked around for something similar in quilting and was surprised that I couldn't see anything. And I now realize there were a few events going on, but I just wasn't aware of them. And I'm one of those people where if... I want to do something, like organize it myself and get a group of people together to do it. And that group of people turned into seven, more than seven and a half thousand people. And the first Quilt and Learn event was born back in January 2004, 2024, sorry. Yeah, so I did it very much not knowing what the response would be. The response was phenomenal. The one the following July had an even larger audience and I'm continuing to do them every six months, but I have a very kind of experimental approach to them. So I'm always changing things and trying new things and seeing how I can make them better for everyone. I have this philosophy, don't be a dick. And if anybody saw me at QuiltCon, you'll have known that I was Bea Byrne (02:52.126) carrying a bag that was made for me in a swap by the Quilted Acorn and it says don't be a dick on it and so I do view these events as a genuine partnership between myself, the teachers, the sponsors and I want all of us to be as successful as possible as a result of them. Lyric Kinard (03:10.34) Describe what it actually is. It's an online event. What happens? Bea Byrne (03:15.982) Yeah, so the format is different for the event that I'm about to run in July, the Tour de Fabrique, but generally what will happen is that there will be a period like three days to a week where attendees will have access to a series of workshops. Generally speaking, the workshops go live at a portion each day and are then available for 24 hours. So depending on where you are in the world, you might... you know, only spot them 12 hours before they go off again, but you've at least got a chance to view everything for free. So that's the general model is a kind of freemium model. So basic entry is free. And then for either extended access to the classes, like six months or a year or sometimes lifetime access, you would pay for what's often called a VIP ticket. And then that VIP ticket might also include whole load of bonuses from all of the teachers which they contribute to the event or it might involve something which I'm doing this time for the tour of fabric is a pattern bundle for example where you would buy I don't know $300 worth of patterns for $30 and get this amazing array of patterns from designers you might not have come across before. Lyric Kinard (04:35.332) and they're all, the workshops are not live, right? They are prerecorded. Bea Byrne (04:39.178) No, they are exactly. very much people need to make high quality video with good audio and very clear pictures. And then I always use closed captions and apply closed captions to the video because I think it's so essential that these events are accessible. And I know that there are times when I put on closed captions and my hearing's perfectly fine and it's just useful to have them sometimes. certainly for people who have hearing difficulties or anything else, then yeah, I just see it as an essential part of the thing. So yes, it's pre-recorded workshops. I do, for my events, then intersperse live events during the days that it's running, and I'll put those at different times to ensure that we can hit people in different time zones and everyone can get access. And then of course, the recordings of those then go into the summit and become another workshop for people to watch. And those will generally be panel discussions where we might be talking about sustainability and quilting or the latest tools and notions or something like that. And it can be quite funny what comes up because you just never know. And of course the audience can ask questions as well. Lyric Kinard (05:53.721) So if you're a participant, you can sign up for free and each day you get access to a certain number of prerecorded workshops and you can attend a live Zoom summit. And then at the end of each day on the free level, those workshops go away and you watch the ones on the next one. But then you have the opportunity to pay and up a level so that you can keep those workshops. Bea Byrne (06:06.712) Mm-hmm. Bea Byrne (06:14.89) right. Lyric Kinard (06:23.063) and get bonuses. Bea Byrne (06:23.372) That is exactly right, yes. And I get a lot of feedback from people about how the free workshops should be available for longer. And my initial response was, well, then you wouldn't pay for the upgrade and someone's got to pay for this platform that I'm running it on, which I'm sure we'll get onto. But in fact, for the Torda Fabric in July, the workshops are actually going to be available for the full five weeks. Lyric Kinard (06:36.848) pretty. Bea Byrne (06:50.254) of the event. So this is a different approach. I don't want anyone to feel rushed. You can then pay for extended access for another six months, but that's not the main aim. The main main aim is that everybody gets a chance to watch everything and so that the teachers get maximum exposure. So I was responding to user feedback or attendee feedback, but also thought that this was a win-win, although it does risk. Lyric Kinard (06:53.328) Hmm. Bea Byrne (07:18.592) on the income side. So sometimes my experiments can be a little bit risky. Lyric Kinard (07:22.372) Right, and you do it all yourself. You throw it all together. Bea Byrne (07:25.518) I do, I do. It's kind of bonkers. I did hire a virtual assistant. Yes, about six months ago. And actually I just wrote a blog post about this. If anyone is thinking of doing it, over on my, my sub step blog. But it's been quite an adventure. The first one didn't work out, but I'm using a company called Time Etc to hire them through. And the second one is great. And then just this week, Lyric Kinard (07:32.536) good for you. Bea Byrne (07:54.726) I hired someone to help with the sponsorship side of things because I know you are an extrovert, you love going out there and meeting people and talking to them and everything and I am a total introvert and would... Yeah, it is physically painful to cold call or cold email and asking people for money. think I had a lot of childhood hangups from having grown up in a... Lyric Kinard (08:09.072) So it's painful. Mm-hmm. Bea Byrne (08:22.03) a home where there wasn't a lot of spare money. It's just all painful all round. so yes, I've hired a wonderful woman called Megan who is getting started today in fact. Lyric Kinard (08:34.404) good for you. That's fantastic. I participated in one, I don't remember which year and which time, but it was really fascinating as a teacher to see how it works behind the scenes. Let's talk first before we get into how it works for the teachers. What's in it for you? What's in it for them? We know the value that you're providing to the viewers, the people who get to come and see all this content. Bea Byrne (08:57.998) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (09:03.78) What has been your journey with the tech side of things? This is not just building one on-demand or live Zoom class. This is a lot of moving parts. Can you tell us a little bit about the platforms that you've used, what you're doing now, a little bit about what might have not worked and what is working for you now? Bea Byrne (09:25.07) Absolutely. So I am now on a complete hodgepodge of different tools because I haven't found a summit platform that has worked perfectly for me. I did a lot of research in the beginning, of course, and it is possible to run summits on WordPress websites, but... Lyric Kinard (09:32.58) Yes. Bea Byrne (09:49.495) unless you've done a lot of work on the infrastructure, if you get more than a couple of hundred people visiting your site at once, the site's going to crash. And I've heard horror stories about people doing this. Lyric Kinard (09:56.92) Mm-hmm. Yeah, you really have to upgrade your server capacity a lot in order to get that to work. Bea Byrne (10:04.458) Absolutely, absolutely, because it's this surge in viewers, not just the total number. And then I had heard of people doing it on Facebook. But then I'd also heard a horror story of a woman who was hosting a summit on Facebook. And then she got locked out by Facebook on the morning it was supposed to start. And it took two weeks for her to get back in, by which time, of course, her audience had all gone away. So that was a nightmare. Exactly. And I'm not. Lyric Kinard (10:29.88) Yeah, you don't own Facebook. Bea Byrne (10:33.742) a Facebook fan in any case and only use it for groups that I kind of feel like I have to be in for business. So I settled on Kajabi, which isn't designed for summits, but has been increasingly being used for them and did a lot of research about the different tools that might work with it and what comes out the box and so on. And it is not a cheap tool. So I was on the monthly plan to begin with because I didn't know how this was going to go and wasn't really thinking like business planning like you should at the beginning. And it was expensive and it was a big watch of the income went on the platform itself. I did discover very early on that some of the tools that they had didn't actually work very well. Lyric Kinard (11:05.369) Right. Bea Byrne (11:24.494) So the checkouts, for example, was very basic and it did work, but you couldn't do upsells or downsells at the time. They have added a little bit of that functionality now, but it wasn't perfect. And then also a huge problem at the first event was that their affiliate tracking barely worked at all. And this is something which I find fascinating and I occasionally go on deep dives for this, but You see companies like Apple talking about how they protect customers' privacy and they block tracking and all that sort of thing. And what people often don't realise is that all that blocking, tracking, protecting, privacy thing, that blocks all the affiliate marketing links that teachers make use of to earn income from events. And so it's awkward because you know from the beginning that not all the clicks... that someone gets from advertising an event to their mailing list are gonna register. And that's kind of a fact and you're just, you can't do anything about it. But Kajabi, was way worse than that. And I was getting like 10 % of the clicks that should have been tracking showing up. So I ended up pivoting with my whole don't be a dick thing. I just said, okay, I'm gonna give. Lyric Kinard (12:35.833) Ouch. Bea Byrne (12:43.628) the all the teachers, I'm going to assume that you would have contributed like 50 % of the attendees and just give you affiliate income based on how many clicks it had registered and just share out proportionally like that. So it wasn't ideal, but at least the teachers were able to still earn income from the event. And of course, they're also getting signups to their email newsletter lists as well from people downloading. any freebies or especially any VIP downloads for that event. And they were things like free patterns or little mini workshops that people were happy to contribute in return for their share of the affiliate income. There's various tools I've added on for things. I'm a big proponent of ThriveCart. Lyric Kinard (13:28.698) Right. Bea Byrne (13:38.56) I think that it's very useful for the upsells and downsells again. And then there's all sorts of little widgets and things that I will add to jazz up different pages or to make social content more visible. yeah, but Kajabi is my main thing and it has an email marketing tool within it. which is pretty robust. And so just from that first event, my email list grew to more than 5,000 from about 50. So, you know, this was pretty colossal growth. Yes. And so now it's up at 11 and a half thousand and there'll be another increase after the next event I run in July. And so now I, in a kind of inoffensive way, Lyric Kinard (14:14.726) That's a pretty steep growth curve. Bea Byrne (14:33.528) have also been looking at more ways to monetize that mailing list and to kind of lean into things like affiliate marketing. Like for example with the Making Zen event that's happening next week, I genuinely bought my own VIP pass the minute I got the first email advertising the event because I know from past history like how high quality the event is and I have zero. qualms about handing over my, I don't know what it was, $69 or something. But, and I'm confident sharing that event with my list because I know that it's going to be really good quality. Lyric Kinard (15:14.542) Right. can affiliate marketing can be, we should have a whole podcast episode on that at some time, but let's, let's get into it just a little bit now. And I'm with you on the tech stack being like, wouldn't it be nice if there was just one thing that could do all the things that we needed it to, right? Bea Byrne (15:22.007) Yeah. Bea Byrne (15:35.662) Yes, I know. Lyric Kinard (15:36.71) There isn't, there isn't. So sometimes the tech stack gets just out of control. I am living in the out of control space right now. Bea Byrne (15:46.104) Well, you've gone big on AI as well. And I was, I was just using your AI content generation tool before this, because I was listening to one of your podcast episodes about AI and it is such a fascinating space. But anyway, sorry, you were about to ask a question. Lyric Kinard (15:51.64) All fantastic. Lyric Kinard (16:00.174) No, I love that we're talking and I'm so excited. Did you love it? Did you love the tool? Yeah. Bea Byrne (16:06.562) I did, yeah, I was really impressed. I spent not very long talking to ChatGPT and I've, have used, I went to the Craftcation Conference, which happens in Ventura every April, and did a couple of sessions with the marketing director of Design Bundles, which is a website where you can download like a direct to fabric transfer files and AI files and things like that for, Lyric Kinard (16:14.181) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (16:18.658) Mm-hmm. Right? Bea Byrne (16:35.766) illustrations and cry cut machines and so on. And she was fascinating and she was talking about how to train chat GPT to be your marketing director. And so I'd already done some basic generation with chat GPT and some discussion of hooks and captions and so on. But your tool, it like you spend very little time relatively speaking, like, and you can talk to it rather than having to type. Lyric Kinard (16:44.528) night. Lyric Kinard (16:53.71) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (17:01.914) Mm-hmm. Bea Byrne (17:02.894) give it your answer to the questions that are the prompts on the screen. And it gave me very relevant information, suggestions for promotional videos. And I'm 100 % gonna be sharing these with my virtual assistant and creating this content now. Lyric Kinard (17:19.964) that's fantastic. Yeah, it's trained to provide a customer centric journey for every. It's a it's a for those of you haven't heard about it. It's a chat GPT tool that you use on your own chat GPT account. You can find it at Academy for Virtual Teaching Dotcom and. Bea Byrne (17:25.646) Mmm. Lyric Kinard (17:38.403) It walks you through your product, your technique, whatever it is that you want to promote and all the questions it needs about your customer, about their paying point and then spits out fully formed plans, titles, tags, descriptions, all SEO optimized and bullet point, talkie points and ideas for what to film. So I'm so glad you like it. Let's go back to you though. I guess it's new, so I'm so excited about this thing. Bea Byrne (18:00.951) Yes. Bea Byrne (18:05.027) Yeah. Lyric Kinard (18:07.21) As a teacher coming in to, it's a lot of work to create a 40 minute, one hour, I don't remember how long you wanted your pre-recorded videos to be and then hand them over to your people to watch for free. That might be content that I get paid for elsewhere. Walk me through the benefits for a teacher who's coming in to work with you on your summit. Bea Byrne (18:13.5) boy, yes. Bea Byrne (18:23.342) Mm-hmm. Bea Byrne (18:35.278) Absolutely. Well, first of all, we have a contract and you are leasing me the recording for six months. I am not, you're not giving it to me for life. You are going to be able to monetize this afterwards. So I feel, I felt that was important to begin with because a lot of summits will give lifetime access. And I felt, you know, from my own perspective as a teacher, I just felt. That seems a bit unfair. also looking at the statistics of how many people access these things and when they access it after, know, pretty much all accesses stopped after six months. so lifetime access sounds amazing, but also you don't know if the platform's even going to be around in another five years. So it doesn't really mean that much. So this is why I went with six months and I actively encourage the teachers to know when that six months is up and when they can start using this content. even as a lead magnet on their own sites for social. Lyric Kinard (19:36.336) They can use it as a lead magnet or if it's long enough, they could have it as an on-demand class on their own site. Bea Byrne (19:42.954) Absolutely. And some people do also take like the introduction of a workshop series that they've already created and use that as their workshop in the event. And then they can say to people, and here's a coupon for 20 % off the rest of this series. And off they go. And then they're immediately like exposing people to an upsell as well. I'm, I used to... Lyric Kinard (20:00.784) for all the rest of it. Bea Byrne (20:09.996) When the first event started, I did a bit more kind of coaching of teachers on the opportunities that were there. But now I do kind of leave it to the teachers to be aware of these things themselves. And of course, there's organizations like yours that are great at helping teachers discover these opportunities as well. So the teacher retains ownership of the material and can use it later. So that's the first thing. Second thing is I always encourage them to have a free download. Now, in exchange for that download, someone needs to enter their email address on the teacher's own website in their own email marketing tool, wherever it is. Like people use Flowdesk or, well, I can't remember all the others, but anyway, that's the one that springs to mind. Whichever one you use, they've often got a built-in kind of... Lyric Kinard (20:57.72) Yeah, whatever marketing tool you have. Lyric Kinard (21:04.804) lead magnet funnel. Bea Byrne (21:04.854) lead magnet page. Exactly. And I always encourage teachers and I say to them the better the free download, the more people are going to sign up for it. Now, quilters are very savvy and they will not automatically give you their email address on the off chance that something's going to be good. They don't, they get a lot of emails already, they get a lot of newsletters, you have to make it worth their while. And then of course your newsletter that follows on afterwards has to make it worth their while to to stay engaged with you. And so it kind of keeps everyone on their toes, me included. But yes, so there's a free download and that is how, that's the only way that teachers get the email addresses of attendees. There are so many legal restrictions on sharing marketing information, especially in Europe, that I do not want to get into that whole legal mire that is sharing this information. Lyric Kinard (21:55.577) Bea Byrne (22:02.338) I actually, was amazed. I took part in a summit as a teacher myself just last month because like you said, I wanted the experience of being a teacher rather than hosting the whole thing. And it was fascinating. But the host did actually give me all the emails of everyone who had watched my workshop, which is a big chunk of work because you have to export all that individually and then share it individually. And so I got... I got something like 350 people signing up for the download. And then it was something more like 1300 that had actually watched the workshop. So it was a huge increase. I was really happy with the 350, you know, that was fine. But it was a huge increase. But I did kind of gulp when I saw it because I just kind of thought to myself, well, she must be confident that she has. this covered and if there are any legal comebacks I'm going to be able to say that she gave me, she told me that this was okay and I'm just kind of, I'm not mailing them yet, I'm going to kind of gradually do it. Yeah. Lyric Kinard (23:10.682) Right, and there are ethical ways to invite people into your email list. You can contact them and say, you attend, you watch this thing, I invite you to opt in to my email newsletter. None of us, no matter where we get all of that, should start spamming the people who come onto our list. It won't make you any friends. Bea Byrne (23:23.936) Mm-hmm. Bea Byrne (23:32.35) No, no, and I am, it won't make you any friends. People will unsubscribe in droves. And yeah, it just, just dulls your reputation and makes you into someone who's just out for what they can get, which I don't, I don't think anyone, well, very few people within the quilting community feel like that. I feel like everyone's always, you know, there's this phrase, a rising tide lifts all boats. And I feel like everyone's always trying to lift everyone else up, but most people. But yeah, I make it very clear. I only email my list twice a month and various other things. but wait, what were we talking about? Sorry, I've gone completely off topic. They leave me work. Lyric Kinard (24:10.96) Teachers, so the teachers lease you their work, they create a video that they can monetize later, they get access to the emails of the people who sign up for their freebie, what else is a benefit? Bea Byrne (24:23.338) Exactly. So something that went down really well in my last event, which I'm going to be doing again, is these mini trunk shows. So teachers could take part in live events. They just had quarter of an hour each. So it's a fraction of the time you'd normally have talking to a guild. But of course, your audience is potentially thousands of people. And I know one of the teachers gave me this amazing quote saying that this had become one of her main kind of booking generation tools taking part in these summits because she got exactly it is it's a meet the teacher event and actual guild members can then recommend these people to the the booking people so that's another so there's a lot of exposure and people people kind of a very glib about exposure and make out that like some people don't feel it has really any value but i think if you can Lyric Kinard (24:53.37) to meet the teacher. Bea Byrne (25:17.15) yourself across in a positive way then it certainly can't do any harm. Very. Yeah. No. Lyric Kinard (25:21.786) And it needs to be a very targeted audience. mean, general exposure means nothing, but if it's the people who are going to hire you and you work it right, it can work. Let's go to affiliate marketing. sure. Bea Byrne (25:31.406) Absolutely. Yes, can I just go to one extra benefit for the teachers is like I was mentioning, they can sometimes use like an intro or a unit from a bigger workshop. So I'm always encouraging people to have something that people can then invest in. like when they sign up on their email list, you can have an upsell just signing up on the email list for the free hander. You know, by the way, I teach a whole series of courses on using denim. And you know, you can sign up for it today for this magical price and so on. So there's, yeah, I feel like there's lots of ongoing sales and then teachers can also sell kits for the workshops that they're teaching. Although I have to be honest, the sales of those have been very small, like one digit in most cases. So probably not a huge income. Lyric Kinard (26:04.922) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (26:24.502) But so teach, the thing we haven't talked about yet is that you give each teacher an affiliate link and if they market and people on their, in their audience sign up using that link, it tracks sort of if it works for you. It tracks and when those people purchase an upgrade VIP pass, the teacher gets a percentage of that, right? Bea Byrne (26:31.438) Mm. Bea Byrne (26:43.883) Exactly. Bea Byrne (26:51.956) Exactly. And so this is part of the reason why I chose Thrivecart as the payment processor is because they have a really robust affiliate program. I know, right? So I'm a huge fan of Liz Wilcox, who's an email marketing guru. And she also was on Survivor in the last season, if you're into that kind of thing, randomly. She's like a Survivor mega fan, but she uses Thrivecart. Lyric Kinard (27:02.266) Yay, you found something that works. Lyric Kinard (27:15.622) Okay. Bea Byrne (27:21.748) for her affiliate program and she's an expert in email marketing so I figured that if she was using it that was like a big commendation for it and indeed it has worked really well for me and I'm going to use it next time so it's much more accurate tracking clicks and people as well that they what they couldn't do on Kajabi they couldn't see people that had signed up for the free event through their clicks but on ThriveCut you can see Lyric Kinard (27:48.518) Mm. Bea Byrne (27:50.382) Every click is recorded basically. So whether they are clicking to sign up for free and then upgrading that will still track as a payment to the teacher. Whether they're signing up later to buy the pattern bundle that will still track to the teacher or they're buying the pass to extend the amount of time they can watch the workshops or that will still track to the teacher. So I give 30 percent because like I say I'm running it as a partnership and I Lyric Kinard (28:10.724) What percentage do you give to the teachers? Bea Byrne (28:19.138) would love to give more, but as I said, Kajabi is an expensive platform and it takes months of work to put these things together. Lyric Kinard (28:25.882) I don't think people have any idea how much work goes on behind the scenes. It is insane, right? Bea Byrne (28:31.296) Months and months of work, yeah. is, especially during the time when the summit is going, is particularly exciting. So I did have my heart in my mouth when I committed to a five week event, but it's not gonna be as intense because the workshops are available the whole time and I'm not gonna be doing live events every day, which I was with the old events. Lyric Kinard (28:54.426) Right, so it's not gonna be five weeks of 24-7 for you this time. think that's unsustainable, unsustainable. And you do a summit every six months. Bea Byrne (28:56.846) No, no, no, no. I know that would be bonkers. Definitely. Bea Byrne (29:06.05) That's right. Yes. So Quilt & Learn is the name I launched after the July summit in 2024 because I'd initially called the events Quilt 2024, which is very catchy, but hadn't quite occurred to me that if this was a success, that name wasn't going to last very long. Lyric Kinard (29:27.078) You have to change it anytime you use people, people, anytime you use a date or a time delimited thing in any video and any website, you're going to have to do it over and over and over again, right? So you would have to change the website name. You would have to change all the advertising graphics. Bea Byrne (29:41.035) Absolutely. Bea Byrne (29:45.632) Yeah. And, and especially now that, you know, when you have to have the same email send address as your domain name, in order for you to get your emails, the most deliverable, then you know, this, this is big thing to be changing that all the time. So obviously that wasn't going to happen. So Quilt and Learn is the brand that I decided to launch. And the Tour de Fabrique, I wasn't intending to have like a secondary brand name, but it's just so catchy. Lyric Kinard (30:15.303) It's fun. Bea Byrne (30:15.502) The idea came to me because I don't know why and I cannot explain it but the Tour de France, the cycling event that happens every year, I looked it up, it's the fourth most watched global sporting event and the first one's soccer and things. I don't know. Lyric Kinard (30:31.312) What is it about it? Like, I don't watch sports, but I'm one of those statistics. I love the Tour de France. Bea Byrne (30:38.678) Right! Me too! And I don't watch sports either, I couldn't care less generally, but the Tour de France I find fascinating. I think it's because it seems genuinely competitive and things can change. It's not just watching someone going around a track a hundred times and hoping they crash. And it's in France, which is always bonus in such beautiful countryside. But anyway, so I was watching it last year and I was thinking about the Tour de Fyber, which is a knitting and spinning. Lyric Kinard (30:55.62) and it's in France. Bea Byrne (31:08.352) event which has been running for at least 10 years I should think and I was thinking there must be a quilting one just like I'd been thinking when I watched the quilting making zen summit back in 2023 and I googled and there wasn't and I was amazed and I thought well there must be copyright issues and there weren't and and I was like well I guess this is my summer event then yeah so it's now it's officially quilt and learns tour de fabric Lyric Kinard (31:30.864) Grab it up. Bea Byrne (31:37.422) but that's a bit of a mouthful, so I'm just talking about the tour de fap. Lyric Kinard (31:41.063) Excellent, excellent. If somebody is a teacher and they want to apply to work with you, how would they do that? What does that timeline look like? And I know you're coming right up on this year's Tour de Fabrique, so it will be, I'm sure, after that, right? Bea Byrne (31:46.958) Mmm. Bea Byrne (31:59.797) It will, and in fact, I haven't yet finalized when the next event is going to be. I'm thinking beginning of February because I did it at the beginning of January this year and people, you know, we had the new administration, we had a COVID, we had family Christmas-ing stuff and so on. It was just not the right time to do it. So I definitely want to move it a bit later. But yes, the best thing to do is to go to quiltandlearn.com slash teachers. And there's all sorts of information there. Now the information there is actually for the teachers in the current event. So I need to update it because it's talking about signing up for the Tour de Fabrique at the moment. But there is a little sign up form which you can fill out and register interest of becoming a teacher at any time. And then I tend to contact the teachers three to four months before the registration opens. So the registration opens four weeks before the actual event starts each time. and ask them to confirm that they'd like to be involved, what their workshop is that they'd like to teach, make sure that that doesn't clash with any of the other workshops that are being taught or what I wanted to teach which is what normally happens. And then I start sending them a series of forms to fill out which capture all the information succinctly and I've got another special tool that I use for that that does all that wonderfully. And yeah, and things start to go from there. So just at the moment, we are, I think it's something like 48 days, what is that, like eight weeks or something, maths, but anyway, out from the event. And I'm about to send the teachers the second one of these forms, which is going to capture the actual workshop recording, which needs to be done a month before the event goes live and various links and things like that. So, but yes, signing up. Lyric Kinard (33:47.408) Right. Bea Byrne (33:51.786) on the website, the quiltandlearn.com website. I also will put a note just in my general newsletter saying that I'm currently looking for teachers. And it's surprising how difficult sometimes it is to find teachers because they kind of, think, and I hate to say this, but I think this has been a female thing, a woman thing historically. Women don't tend to put themselves forward. for things as much as men do. So I get a disproportional number of men coming forward to teach often and not enough women. So I would definitely encourage people to sign up for these things. It doesn't commit you to anything. It just means that you're on the email list for when stuff is happening. Lyric Kinard (34:37.976) What kind of courses are you looking for? Do you have a flavor to it or do you have a broad range of the kinds of quilting classes that you offer? Bea Byrne (34:47.822) Do you know, was just, last night I was looking at someone's pattern bundle that they're running in July, coincidentally, later in the month, and they have a Christmas theme to it. And it's kind of a Christmas stocking fillers with the impression I got from this pattern bundle, which is a great idea. I don't theme the events because I figured that there are so many people with so many different interests. And one of the great things about these events is that you can discover not just new teachers and new designers, but also new techniques or new ways of doing things that you've been doing for the last 20 years. And so I love the kind of great mix of things and I don't have any plans to change that in the future. What I will say is that I know from the feedback survey that I do after each event, 80 % of the attendees identify as intermediate quilters, which I thought was really interesting. It's like a high number of people. And of course there's like 10 % beginners, 10 % experts. So I tend to look for things that are pitched in the middle. So you don't need to spend time at the beginning going through like how to thread your machine and how to straighten your fabric and that kind of thing before cutting. yeah, that's the general area, but there's room for hand stitching, traditional techniques, chain piecing. The free motion quilting and quilting with rulers are always very popular. And I generally also have one or two kind of mindfulness or coaching based workshops as well, which Anne Cardoza was a big sponsor of the last event and she does amazing work. And in fact, if you go to the Quilt and Learn YouTube channel, there's a recording of a workshop with her where she live coaches someone on what's holding them back in their quilting. Lyric Kinard (36:16.134) huh. Bea Byrne (36:41.75) And it's really powerful. And we had such an amazing response to that live session. So it's interesting. I kind of think of it as quilting adjacent content. Yeah. Lyric Kinard (36:46.456) Interesting. Lyric Kinard (36:51.878) Right. How long did the videos need to be that the teachers need to pre-record and turn in? Bea Byrne (36:58.154) Right, so it's a 20 minute minimum up to an hour and 20 minutes really does pass very quickly and so you can do a 20 minute workshop about just like one little technique that you like doing. I recently I kept being shown the same sorts of videos on social media which was someone tucking the ends in on a strip of bias binding that they were sewing clothes to use as a strap or something. and was about how to end the end neatly. And you could do a 20 minute workshop on like three different ways to do that. And that would be it. And that's absolutely wonderful. And that would be prime stuff to then use on social media later or as a YouTube short or something. And so yeah, that's absolutely fine. But also if you want to go in depth on something, I recently recorded a workshop which will be part of the Quilt & Learn event on choosing colours without colour theory. Lyric Kinard (37:34.725) Mm-hmm. Bea Byrne (37:56.662) And so I kind of went deeper on these things, how to use various free online tools, and that took the whole hour to do. Lyric Kinard (38:04.678) So it can be 20 minutes really is super easy to record a technique or something on and you can go long if you want. So that's good to know. An hour sometimes can be a lot of pressure to fill a whole hour with teaching content. When it's pre-recorded, you're teaching the whole time so you don't have the extra filler time of the questions back and forth, right? Bea Byrne (38:13.902) Mm-hmm. Bea Byrne (38:30.904) Absolutely, and you can speed up part of the video and say I'm gonna do this now Or you can just help you to pause the video while they do that step and then start it again so Workshops that might usually be you know, a four-hour workshop can end up compressing down quite easily Lyric Kinard (38:35.256) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (38:40.898) Mm-hmm. Right. Lyric Kinard (38:51.62) Right. Let's go underneath a little bit. This is a monumental task that you've taken on to organize these. And hopefully it's gotten easier each time you've done it, maybe. But has it been financially rewarding for you? Is it worth putting in all of this time? Bea Byrne (38:56.078) Mm. Bea Byrne (39:13.976) So, yes and no. I think that if I was just doing it for the money, I probably would do things very differently. I would be much more commercial about it, much more single-minded, much more formulaic. Because my nature is to contribute to the community and it's so hard to convince people that you're being genuine when you say that you genuinely want this to be a success for both of you and you're not just in it for the money. But anyway. Lyric Kinard (39:25.072) huh. Lyric Kinard (39:40.911) Haha Bea Byrne (39:42.754) that is where I am. And so I'm so keen to contribute to the community. This is why I make it as accessible as possible. And like, for instance, making the workshops available for five weeks now instead of just 24 hours is a big risk. Right? Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. But then I'm kind of combining it with other ways to monetize, like going more in on the sponsorship, selling pens, you know, things like that. Lyric Kinard (39:56.037) It is, I'll be interested to see how that goes for you. Bea Byrne (40:09.39) So I'm, I am still, I have a formula that I'm happy with now, but I am still tweaking it and still trying different experiments. The first event was, you know, quite impressively profitable. And the events formed the main portion of my income last year, which was fortunate because I'm... self-employed and getting started. You your first year is often not a very profitable year. But I was able to make rent and so on. So, yeah, that was great. The next event, I experimented with doing a friend pass as well as a VIP pass. So friends had access to the content for two weeks instead of six months. And it was like half the price. And what I found Lyric Kinard (40:37.978) Great. Good for you. Bea Byrne (41:02.062) I don't know, I probably should keep this, this is probably like a trade secret or something. But basically, most of the people that would have bought VIP passes bought friend passes and my income was cut in half and I was like, ow, this is not really profitable at this time. So that was awkward. Lyric Kinard (41:14.266) Ouch. Lyric Kinard (41:18.574) You tried, you tried a thing. When you try a thing, you either get the result you needed or the lesson you needed to learn. And that was, that was a lesson you needed to learn. Bea Byrne (41:27.784) Right. Absolutely. And this is also, it was a great reminder that this is why people do A B tests. You don't have to tell your entire audience that there's a friend pass available. You can just tell 10 % and see what they do compared to the rest. And so I'm much more aware of that kind of thing now and poorer as a result. But I do enjoy doing them. I... Lyric Kinard (41:35.909) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (41:40.741) Hmm Lyric Kinard (41:46.448) Good point. Bea Byrne (41:56.334) I enjoy the content that comes along and I'm always amazed by the variety of workshops and teachers that we get. And I now am in a much better position. I was kind of throwing a lot of things at the wall last year to see what would work out. I'm now much more solid in my core offerings and getting better at things like affiliate marketing. I'm working on a series of workshops online. creating more creative business content as well, and kind of have a plan around how all that is gonna come together. So I now, I see the de France, Tour de France, the Tour de Fabrique, I shouldn't do that. I see the Tour de Fabrique as a big experiment because I see the potential for this event to be really big because the Tour de Fabrique is watched at the Tour de France. Lyric Kinard (42:38.886) Hahaha Bea Byrne (42:53.44) is watched internationally. And so this has really the potential to go global. At the moment, about 80 % of my attendees are USA or Canada, like North America, and only 20 % global. But I think we could increase that. We could start having Spanish translation or other languages translated. There are tools that will allow all of this. Lyric Kinard (43:13.156) Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Bea Byrne (43:15.854) And it could be a huge thing for global brands as well as more local ones to increase their reach. So I see this one as potentially, I hate to say it, but I have been thinking as that I would be okay if it was a loss leader rather than it being particularly profitable. And I say that kind of partly with my heart in my mouth thinking, I really hope it's not. I hope it is profitable. Lyric Kinard (43:33.477) You Lyric Kinard (43:41.158) if Right, but you're testing a system. You're trying something new out and kind of separating yourself from the absolute need to have a certain outcome helps you freely experiment and look more objectively at what's going on with your numbers, with the systems, with all the things you have in place. Bea Byrne (43:45.6) I know. Absolutely. Yeah. Bea Byrne (44:05.838) Absolutely. you know, you you have to build sponsor relationships as well. They don't just cough up the big money immediately without any proof of of reach and interaction and so on. that's also partly why I'm investing in someone to help with sponsorship at the moment is because I really want that to be done well this time. And of course, that adds to the cost of the event paying them to do that work. So, yeah, it's all. Lyric Kinard (44:12.676) or should I? Lyric Kinard (44:17.659) Right. Lyric Kinard (44:32.678) Mm-hmm. Bea Byrne (44:34.732) It's all on the table. Who knows what's going to happen. It is. I must say, I used to work for Shopify. So I was already involved in like e-commerce and growth marketing and things like that. And would always have a store as a kind of experiment to see how these things worked in real life. And it never really made any money. But when I got laid off in the big tech layoffs about two and a half years, three years ago now. Lyric Kinard (44:38.406) It's kind of fun to be an entrepreneur. Bea Byrne (45:02.752) It was a chance, it was this opportunity to go out on my own and do these experiments. And it's been risky because I don't have another income coming in. This is my, my sole gig. this and teaching of course. but, yeah, it's, it's been amazing. It's stressful sometimes, but it's been really interesting. Yeah. Lyric Kinard (45:22.224) For sure, it is interesting. As we wrap up, I want to also give you kudos when I worked with you. You were so insistent on inclusivity and finding diverse teachers. And so I want to reach out to any of you who might fit the not usual mold of quilt teachers and encourage you to work with Bea. She's a wonderful, wonderful person to work with. Bea Byrne (45:54.974) thank you, Larry. That's the kind of you. Thank you. I do genuinely, and I know by using the word genuinely, I seem ingenuous, but I do genuinely want these events to be successful for all of us, including the attendees. I'm not here to take your money and run. Lyric Kinard (46:09.316) Right. Lyric Kinard (46:13.114) Yeah, and keeping accessibility in mind at the forefront of all of this is also a beautiful thing. Where can people find you, Bea Byrne (46:22.751) maybe. So Quilt and Learn, that's a QuiltNLearn.com is my main event business. But my personal stuff is all under Bburn.com. And of course I've got two ridiculous names. now, so it's B-E-A-B-Y-R-N-E. And then on all social media, I'm Bburn Artist. Because unfortunately there's a successful Bburn out there already who had grabbed all the original handles. And I've just started on TikTok, which is hilarious because I am not the TikTok demographic, however many people try to convince me I am. But I figured, and I don't know why I didn't think about this sooner, and I hope all your audience knows about this as well, but if you're already creating reels and video content for YouTube and Facebook and Instagram, you just repost it on TikTok and that's it. So. Lyric Kinard (47:17.146) Yeah, one piece of content goes all the places. It's not extra work. As a final quick fun question before we say goodbye, and reminder everybody, all of those links will be in the show notes. So look them up, go visit Bebern's website and especially Quilt & Learn. Sign up for, if you're a quilter. Bea Byrne (47:21.952) Yeah, amazing. Bea Byrne (47:29.449) Mm-hmm. Lyric Kinard (47:42.273) sign up for the event. If you're teacher, sign up for the event anyway, and then also look and see how it works and imagine how you could benefit. mean, growing your email list is a huge benefit of this kind of thing. And you know, it's not hard to do. provided all kinds of graphics and things, so it wasn't hard to do affiliate marketing. Okay, back to the fun final question, B. What is the last thing you made? Bea Byrne (47:52.056) So, yeah. Bea Byrne (48:12.366) I, it's so corny, but I want to say a mess. don't know if you can, cause I was, I was thinking this is all about creatives on camera, right? Making money from video. need to get the lighting right. I've got all these disc lights like right in my face here. And I thought, I'm to know my background. And this table behind me is like a fake desk. It's normally piled about this high with papers and Lyric Kinard (48:15.846) Hahaha Lyric Kinard (48:22.421) yeah. Lyric Kinard (48:27.65) Hahaha Bea Byrne (48:39.182) books and mailing supplies and all sorts and so that is now in this huge pile on the floor next to me. Yeah. Lyric Kinard (48:47.91) You and me both, my desk, everything here. is a big, I sometimes keep a laundry basket next in my studio. And so if I have to clear stuff off, it just gets shoved into the laundry basket. Bea Byrne (48:55.506) that's a good idea. Bea Byrne (49:01.762) That's very cunning. Okay, yes, I might look into that. But yes. Lyric Kinard (49:05.4) Often it's just on the couch that's behind me and you just can't see it. Exactly. Bea Byrne (49:10.158) And that's why we angle our cameras as we do. Lyric Kinard (49:13.284) It's fantastic. I love it. I love that your authentic self is here because we all think messes and it's glorious. That's what our creative minds do, right? And then we organize it and sort it and bring out the beauty and the good and the joy and the creativity that we get to share with the world. Isn't that an amazing privilege that we have that we can share this? Bea Byrne (49:37.358) It absolutely is. And I was thinking recently about what's the thread that goes between all the different activities that I do to earn money. And it is this communicating a love of craft and enabling other people to make, whether it's a Shibori t-shirt, so this is another workshop I teach sometimes, or a UV resin necklace. I'm teaching back-to-back workshops of this later today. or a quilting workshop. You know, it's such a joy to me to be able to see people's faces light up or know that that is happening in their own homes as they watch videos. It's just pleasure beyond measure. Lyric Kinard (50:18.69) It is. Brings me such joy to hear a common heart between us. That's why we do this, right? All right, Bea, it has been so delightful to be able to talk to you and see you again. And thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your experiences so openly and honestly with our listeners. Bea Byrne (50:23.438) Absolutely. Bea Byrne (50:40.13) it's been a pleasure and I have loved listening to other episodes of your podcast and I see you have a 5.0 rating on Apple podcasts as well. So I'm honored to be now part of this series. Lyric Kinard (50:47.224) sweet. Lyric Kinard (50:53.125) Well, thank you, B. Take care, friends. Until next time.