How Masterminding and Community Can Grow Your Business with Abby Glassenberg

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Today we are joined by an incredible guest who is at the forefront of supporting craft and creative entrepreneurs – Abby Glassenberg.

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Summary:

Today we are joined by an incredible guest who is at the forefront of supporting craft and creative entrepreneurs – Abby Glassenberg, the co-founder and president of the Craft Industry Alliance. In our conversation, she shares the mission of the Craft Industry Alliance and how they support creative entrepreneurs, educational resources like webinars and mastermind groups that can help you grow your business, and the value of networking at trade shows like H+H Americas, and how to connect even if you can't attend a trade show in person. This conversation is packed with insightful advice and valuable resources that will help you streamline your business, connect with industry professionals, and make smarter decisions as a creative entrepreneur. So whether you're a quilt teacher, pattern designer, or craft business owner, this episode is filled with practical takeaways that you won't want to miss.

Just a heads up, this conversation was recorded live in front of members of the Academy for Virtual Teaching, which means our attendees had the chance to ask their own questions and get direct insights from Abby. If you'd love to be part of these interactive events, I invite you to join our free membership at academyforvirtualteaching.com. It also means we weren’t using studio microphones so the sound quality isn’t as great but the content was too good to miss.


Topics:

  • Some of the simplest tools and processes that Abby used to take her business virtual (before the pandemic happened!) that really set her and her team up for success

  • The importance of creating community with people/service providers who are in similar circumstances as you, who understand your needs and experience

  • How The Craft Industry Alliance and H+H Americas came to partner for shows here in the US and what it’s like to plan a show BTS


Episode Resources:


About Abby:

Abby Glassenberg is the co-founder of Craft Industry Alliance, an organization dedicated to providing business education, news coverage, and networking opportunities to professionals in the crafts industry. She began her journey as a sixth-grade social studies teacher and discovered the business side of crafting after starting her blog, While She Naps, in 2005. Over time, Abby wrote three books, dabbled in licensing and online teaching, and dove headfirst into building a supportive community for crafters and makers.


    Connect with Abby:


        Click here to read a raw transcript of this episode

        Lyric (00:03.022)

        friends. Hi. I hope you are doing well. Welcome here. We keep these interviews straight to an hour so we're not going to waste any time because people can come back and watch the recording later if they come late. So welcome my fellow art and quilt and craft and all kinds of amazing teachers and educators. Today I am so very excited to

        have with us, Abby Glassenberg from the Craft Industry Alliance. you know, actually, Abby, instead of me, I could go on and on about you for ages and all the amazing things you do. But I would like you to just go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell our friends that will watch this later and that are here now who you are and what you do.

        Abby

        Thank you so much, And I will say Lyric is on our board, which is amazing too. So she definitely knows all about us, but welcome. I'm Abby and I am the co-founder and president of Craft Industry Alliance. And we are the trade association for the crafts industry. So we primarily provide three different things. One of them is news coverage. So we are the B2B news outlet for the industry. We have a big pool of writers who

        write articles about everything going on. For example, right now, of course, the whole Joanne bankruptcy is happening. So we've been covering that, but we cover trends, we cover mergers, acquisitions, we cover profiles of interesting people and what they're doing, all kinds of news so that people who have a business in the crafts industry can stay informed and make smart decisions. The second piece is education. So much like this group,

        we offer ongoing professional development that's relevant to anyone in the craft industry. So we have a webinar every single month taught by an industry expert. For example, let's see, the January webinar was about bookkeeping habits for the new year. And our webinar in March is going to be about online teaching. And actually, Lyric is going to be a panelist in that webinar. So we have a webinar like that every month.

        Abby (02:29.778)

        and lots of downloadable resources. like pre-filled spreadsheets and sourcing lists and things like that that save you a lot of time. So that's the education piece. And then the final piece is networking. So ways to meet other people in the industry. And that might be quilters meeting quilters, but it also, we serve everybody. So it's not just quilting or knitting or sewing or crochet. It's all crafts.

        And it's all sizes of businesses. So we have micro businesses, teachers who just are working out of a spare bedroom, Etsy sellers. We also have lots of brick and mortar shops. So you have yarn shops and quilt shops and craft studios. And then we have manufacturers who make all the supplies, who make the glue and the thread and the batting for quilts and all of that kind of thing. So it's really all different kinds of businesses. And our feeling is really when we

        get together in the same space and have the opportunity to talk to each other, so much good comes from that, from collaborations, understanding one another's perspective, being able to meet the challenges that we all face. Because really at the end of the day, all of us are here to help people express themselves creatively, no matter what sort of position you're in in the industry.

        So that now working piece is really fun. And we have mastermind groups, a private Facebook group, we're the partner with a trade show, H &H Americas. So lots of ways to connect and meet one another. So that's what we do.

        It's been so interesting to follow you in the growth of you starting this whole thing to where it is now, because you're a crafter and a creator and a designer yourself. And that's where you started out. And then this thing grew and exploded into one of my most valuable resources. I go to the Craft Industry Alliance for

        Lyric (04:35.138)

        figuring out what's going on behind the scenes with big companies or understanding about a part of the industry, a part of the business that I don't have experience with with your journal articles. The webinars have been extremely useful to me. I mean, we're here on the platform that we are because I attended a Craft Industry Alliance webinar about membership platforms.

        I mean, everything is specifically useful and beneficial to all kinds of things in this industry. I've gone there like, I wanna get buttons made. Who should I go to instead of spending time researching online? I just go to the Craft Industry Alliance website and they have a list for that, right? Tell me Abby, with all these amazing things that you create,

        and that you and your team offer to people. Let's pull it back to kind of your individual experience and perspective. We are all here, people who have something to share with an audience and we are doing that teaching our skills through a screen. You have built an entire business based on, I mean, there is in-person stuff now with the Handcrafts and Hobbies.

        trade show and you've had booths at Quilt Market and different places, but you built this through online interaction. So how

        Can you tell me the simplest way that you started out? What were some of the simplest tools that you used and the things you built to begin what is now this giant empire of amazing resources for our industry?

        Abby (06:34.786)

        Yeah, great question. always say like, you know, COVID came and we were already all set up. Like we didn't have to scramble to do anything to go remote. We had everything set up because I, and I, when I say our, I'm referring to my co-founder, Kristin Link, who ran the blog. Some of you may remember if you're in the sewing world, it used to be called Sew Mama Sew back in the day.

        So we co-founded this organization together and then Kristin exited in 2019 due to personal reasons and I ended up becoming the sole owner. So that's the we, but anyway, our feeling was that there were trade associations in the crafts industry already, AFCI, TNNA, there were a bunch, even Quilt Market, not quite a trade association, but all of them offered

        essentially one thing which was an in-person trade show. And by becoming a member of the organization, what you really were getting was a ticket to the show. And that was sort of an older model. And our vision was to make a new model, which would be all online and accessible to everyone, which dovetails to your question, Lyric. So in order to do that, we didn't start out having a trade show at all. It was really all going to be virtual. And in fact,

        Kristin, at the time that we started, lived in Oregon. I live in Massachusetts and we only met each other, I think in total we met each other twice throughout the entire time. We spent 10 months building the website and then the three years that she was with the company, three and a half years she was with the company, throughout that entire time we met in person twice. So was very much a virtual experience. So we, at that time, and this was when we were building the website, it was 2014.

        and we launched in October of 2015. So some technology kind of has caught up since then, but initially, know, she and I met on Skype because that was the best way to meet as we were planning the website. But we started with Zoom. I feel like maybe we were kind of an early Zoom user because we started using Zoom, yeah, in October, November of 2015 to host webinars and meetings. So we have always had both the webinar format

        Abby (08:52.226)

        and the meeting format. We now have the large meeting format and the large webinar format, but you could just like pay to upgrade to have more people come in. But Zoom was really important to being able to host live events like this and have people participate in all different ways. So Zoom was one. The second one was Slack. We use Slack. We started with Slack probably six months in because my inbox was just swamped and I couldn't

        continue to get emails back and forth from Kristin and then from we ended up hiring people over time and have those also mixed in with all kinds of other emails. so Slack was a way to have all of that communication with the team sort of be housed in one spot. And it's great because it's also on your phone.

        and it's on your desktop and you get alerts. And so we have separate channels there for all the different aspects of the work that we do. And, you know, I guess there's visceral reaction when I hear the Slack tone. I'm like, you know, Pavlov, like what? I have to say Slack has been incredibly helpful. So Slack was really key and Zoom was really key. And then membership, you know, essentially we run a membership.

        There's a little bit of a visual

        Speaker 1 (10:02.498)

        What do I need to do, bud?

        Abby (10:13.802)

        site similar to your membership site. We use a different platform. So we're on WordPress and the membership software that we use on WordPress is called MemberPress, which allows you to basically have people log in and access content that's behind a paywall, essentially is what it does. And it allows you to charge a recurring membership fee to your members. And we've kind of customized it in a million different ways. have

        courses, have discounts, we have all sorts of things, we have a jobs board. So there's lots of plugins that you can get to sort of, you know, make it the way you want it to be. And that's an ever expanding and contracting situation because we had recently did a plugin audit and we had 71 plugins, which was too many. And so we got that down to 60 by going through and consolidating and deleting plugins that were inactive and

        you have to do that because if you don't, the site becomes increasingly fragile. And when updates happen, things break and it becomes really problematic because of course inevitably breaks right at the worst moment. So we do try to stay on top of keeping it as lean as possible and as updated as possible so that we're not.

        Yeah, running into those sorts of trouble. I would say those are kind of three of the most important ones. we have everything else is on Google Drive. just, you know, we have domain email addresses, which is important so that, you know, you're emailing my team, you're emailing at craftindustrialiance.org email addresses. And then, yeah, everything's in Google Drive. And I'm working on like a operations manual that connects all of the Google Drive folders.

        into one giant table of contents, which is an ongoing project. But it's good to have everything all in one place there.

        Lyric (12:18.348)

        It is there's something wonderful to be said about having an organizational structure like that when we're building our online courses or doing all those things. I know from experience what a huge mess everything can be with things stored in different places. So no matter where you were at my friends start now and organize the important things keep them in.

        an accessible place. The Google Drive is fantastic. I use different Google Drives with two of my different teams all the time. And we did the same thing. just this last year started clearing out several years worth of old content and information that was making it difficult and kind of just start fresh over the year with the things we

        Yeah, and I will say two things there. One is convention, conventional naming so that

        you have a way, naming conventions, a way to name things that's consistent throughout so that you can always find them. That's one piece. I love color coding. I color code everything in Google Drive. It's very rainbow, so it looks pretty. I like, I can know what everything is at a glance because I do a whole lot of color coding. And the other thing I will say that has been really, really helpful to us

        Because the reality is when you have a team, team members come and go for different reasons. Sometimes people have to leave and you have to hire somebody new is to develop standard operating procedures for different routine tasks that you do. So if you're every month, you're doing X just one time, the next time you have to do it, open a second document and write down what you did so that it's all there. And that way, let's say you can't do it because you're a six.

        Abby (14:10.554)

        or you just want to outsource that and, you know, delegate it to somebody else to do it, or you only do it once a quarter and every single time you forget how to do it, you're reminding yourself. So, I mean, there's some tasks, right, that we only do very rarely. And then every time you're like, what did I do last time? I can't remember. So even putting in a link to the helpful tutorial you had found on YouTube six months ago, now it's right there. So it just, I think standard operating procedures

        it takes an extra 20 minutes to write it down and you can always edit it and change it as you change your processes. having it there allows you to hire a VA or there's so many ways that you can allow your business to grow if you just write down what you're doing.

        Right. It's called building machine, having a system in place, right? We talk about when I name things, I do have naming conventions, but then I add on every single word I can think of to describe the thing that maybe a year from now I'll use to search for the things so I can find it. And also building those organizational systems. Now, a lot of us don't work with teams. A lot of us are, we're just a teacher.

        on our own, right? But these systems can still be incredibly useful. One of the things that I've been learning for the last six months is building those systems and putting them in place. And then this has been kind of blowing my mind. Keeping track of all the things you do, all the steps, and I've been using AI not to write content, but to

        become a virtual assistant. Like if you keep track of all the tasks that you do when you're creating your videos, when you're getting ready for a class, when you're packing, the more detail you write down and then you feed that into AI and ask it how it can help you be more efficient or how it can create an automation for you. Just, I cannot believe how much time saving it has been working on. I mean, it's like,

        Lyric (16:25.12)

        a tool that can be used for evil or good. I'm having so much fun with the good part. Tell me about some of the useful webinars that the CIA has available to its members. And then I don't want to forget, I also want to talk about the round tables that you have.

        That's true.

        Abby (16:48.386)

        Yeah, so just to go to the roundtables first, every month we host two. We used to host one, but we have a lot of members who have a day job or are a caretaker or live in Australia or New Zealand. And so as a result of that, we started offering a second roundtable every month that's at 8 p.m. Eastern so that we can kind of catch everybody and make sure everybody has a chance to attend the roundtables because they're not recorded.

        We come together very much like this and it's kind of a time to ask questions, to share a recent success, to ask for help with a challenge that you're facing. And what's so nice about it is that we have people from all different sectors and all different perspectives. And so, you you may be a teacher and you're gonna hear from somebody who

        is a show operator, you know, they hire teachers. So then they're gonna talk about the things that they're seeing out in the world and the challenges that they're facing. And that's so informative and helpful to understand, you know, that's the other side of the table that I hadn't thought about. So it's very nice to come together and it's 45 minutes, it's moderated, I moderate the daytime one.

        Mel Beach, who some of you might know, moderates the evening one now. And yeah, it's just lovely. So very motivating too, because of course, I was one of those people in college who had to do all my homework in the library because I would like look over at the other people and they're all like working and then I'd be like, I better do my work. So it's somehow being in that environment where you're like, this person just did their bookkeeping and this person, you you sort of are like, gosh, I better go.

        to desk and do some work today. So I find it to be very motivating to be in that group. So that's the round tables and they're not recorded because sometimes people are quite vulnerable and say, know, I didn't do my bookkeeping and now I'm in hot water, what should I do? Or, you know, I lost a ton of money on this product that came and it was defective, what are my next steps? You know, that kind of thing. And we don't want people to share that if they don't feel comfortable.

        Abby (19:05.496)

        We just try to host enough of them that if you miss one, you can come to the next one instead of recording them. Whereas our webinars are recorded. So you ask which ones are super effective. One of the ones that is my favorite is about pricing. It's by Leila Barker. It's called Tackling Your Product Pricing to Grow a Profitable Business. my gosh, she is so smart. And her tips around understanding pricing.

        not as just like a simple formula of like, well, this is how much you pay, double it, add in some money for yourself, blah, blah, blah. But no, looking at it and the market and what the market will withstand and what the pricing says about your product, like what messages it's sending, it was fascinating. And we have several members who immediately raised all of their prices after watching that webinar. So I think that one's great. Talking about like systems, we have another one. I think Holly,

        Did Holly Howard do something with you? I'm not remembering if she did or not, but she's amazing. So she did a webinar for us about systems, about how to develop systems for your business. Holly Howard, my gosh. I was like, so part of what she said was you should write a job description for yourself. Okay, that's the one's my to-do list I haven't done yet, but I'm going to do it. Write a job.

        I'm going to look down her

        Lyric (20:26.51)

        That is an amazing thing to do with ChatGPT. Like, go and talk to it and tell it everything about your business and have it ask you all kinds of questions. mean, ask me questions about if I was creating a job description and you can come up with pretty amazing things.

        That's how I'm going to get it done.

        Abby (20:46.67)

        Yeah, so she was like, you you should, yeah, basically like system making systems for your business. And I loved what she said and I thought it was super smart. We just did one with Kelly Morrison about how to start and grow an affiliate program for your business. So this is a great way, especially if you host online classes or you're selling patterns, you you have these customers, I'm sure, who are like such huge fan girls love what you're doing.

        And so turning those people into affiliates if they want to be where they can share with their audience and get a percentage of each sale. It's very motivating for them and they're your best word of mouth ambassadors. So she talks about how to set that up. Like what are the nuts and bolts of doing that? What are the recommended best practices? How much should the affiliate fee be? How to recruit affiliates, how to keep them? So, you know, I think that that one was super good.

        I'm going through here. We did one recently on sustainability, which was great. We do a craft trends report every December, which is always the most popular webinar of the year. So just talking about like, you know, not everybody's reactive to trends, but it's kind of interesting to know what they are, like what colors and motifs and even crafts themselves are going to be trending coming up. And then I'll just end with one last one, which is we just did one on

        Crisis PR. So essentially what to do if you have a social media crisis. How to stop that one negative comment from snowballing into a crisis. And it was with Molly McPherson. She's a crisis PR expert. And she didn't show any slides. She just talked and went through different scenarios. And she gave us a handout that is so useful. I have it on my desktop.

        And basically talking about people who complain or who are very outspoken and loud. What is it that they really want and how you can help them to get what they want so that they feel heard and seen and deescalate and really smart. So we've got

        Lyric (22:57.774)

        That one specifically sounds like there would be so many useful things to learn in with students in the classroom.

        Totally. Yep. Yeah. There's always I mean, I'm a teacher too. I have a master's degree in education. I taught middle school for years and and I still teach and you know, every learner is different. But there are often some a learner in your room who is very frustrated. That person who is just mad, upset. Sometimes they walk out of the room. I mean, people do get quite frustrated with themselves. They can't understand how to do something. They've messed things up.

        And that person can be pretty negative and kind of make a negative environment. I'm sure some of you have experienced this. Yeah, it's tricky to know, like, how do I bring everybody back and have that positive energy return and help this person who's clearly upset feel better in that, like, spur of the moment way. So, yeah, very useful.

        bit in the room.

        Lyric (23:48.248)

        And it's been teaching long enough.

        Lyric (24:06.786)

        Right. So what I love about this is it's like, for instance, here in the Academy, it's beautiful to have kind of this siloed space where we all have, we're all doing the same thing. We're all building online courses. So you have your community who really get you, but then bringing that into a larger space like the Craft Industry Alliance, where you have cross pollination with

        the different sizes of companies with the different kinds of crafts that people work in, with the different areas that people work in, designers and teachers and product manufacturers and all of the, and shop owners, all of the things really expands the possibilities. I have had so many amazing experiences talking across industries or across levels of companies

        getting ideas for my little interesting weird niche that nobody else has, right? Nobody else, whatever. But getting ideas from that exchange, from getting outside of our silo ideas. And I encourage teachers especially to work outside of these things. For instance, if you're working with

        if you're in contact with a large manufacturer company, who knows if they need somebody to be an ambassador? Who knows if you have an idea you're using one of their products in a way that they haven't actually thought about before? This mutually beneficial exchange is something that is so important to facilitate and the Craft Industry Alliance is one of the

        main places in our ocean that we swim in where the currents bring us all together.

        Abby (26:10.444)

        Yeah, no, that's totally true. And so often, mean, brands are in their own silo as well. And so they're so appreciative of finding

        people who are passionate about their product and who are using it in new and creative ways and I mean wanting to feature you to do more co-marketing with you to promote you I mean it helps them and they yeah they don't know where to look either you know they often come to me saying like how do I find people you know where do I look so you would be surprised how valuable it is that you've mastered this particular technique or use of this particular note

        or whatever it might be and have come up with all these creative ways that they didn't anticipate to help people use it.

        So the roundtables you hold are an excellent way to do that. had small group mastermindings, you have topic meetings. Like I found somebody to work on marketing with me at one of those small business sub meetings. It was a lot

        They're called niche networking. Yeah. You know, it's funny, like hiring people. So like even just as a contractor, you know, to do different tasks for you. Often it's hard to sort of vet people to find someone who really understands the craft industry. A lot of times people, they kind of talk down to you. They don't get that it's really a business.

        Abby (27:42.83)

        They don't understand online business or online teaching. There's so many things about it that are specific in niche. And so what's nice about our membership is there are people who are service providers who are members. So they are bookkeepers and graphic designers and photographers and photo stylists and developers, people who code.

        and do web design and branding and all that stuff, but they've had a whole slew of clients who are also quilters or who are also knitters or they're a quilter themselves and they're also in their day job. This is where they learned these other skills. So I think those people are the best and they're hard to find. Cause I mean, if you just do a Google search, I need a graphic designer who knows what's gonna come up, but getting that recommendation of somebody who really gets it is, I mean, that's so valuable.

        Having experience with graphic designers who don't know anything about the crafting industry. I mean, if you want to see, mean, just for you, do you guys remember the Charmin commercial where they have them like quilting with knitting needles kind of things? That's what happens if you get somebody who doesn't understand your specific thing. And, you know, the places that the Craft Industry Alliance facilitates those connections, the Facebook group, the

        meetups the thing. I would like to hear about your initial involvement. How did you and the Hand Crafts and Hobbies company get together? H &H is one of the largest craft industry shows in the world in Cologne, Germany. And they are brand new. I think this will be year four?

        Yeah, you got it.

        Lyric (29:35.618)

        But you were part of introducing that. How did that happen?

        Yeah, good question. So like I said earlier, we were a trade association with No Trade Show, which was intentional. And different people had suggested different ways to have in-person.

        gatherings along the way when we first began the first few years. And I knew it needed to be B2B, meaning business to business, not something that was going to be focused on consumers because we are a trade association. We really serve businesses. So it needed to be B2B. And I also knew that I didn't want to be the one who had to put on the show myself because it's

        really expensive and it's

        really hard to do and it's just not something that I understand how to do well. So those are sort of the limitations. And I knew about H &H Cologne, which is a very beautiful, more fiber focused show in Germany, as you said. And it's funny, the way that it works in Germany is the trade show. So H &H Cologne, that company that runs the show owns the convention center.

        Abby (30:43.554)

        which is really different from the way it works here. So they have this convention center and they own the convention center in Germany. Anyway, their company is called Cologne Messe and they run over 80 trade shows all over the world. So H &H clones one and it's in the crafts industry, more fiber focused. And you know, it's a place where Gooderman thread and all these different companies come together. And in Germany, they have a very rich tradition of trade shows. So

        The company set aside a big budget to go to the show. Everyone has hard walls, meaning no pipe and drape. It's like really nice, big booths. They have charcuterie in the booth. They have champagne and espresso and they entertain. It's a whole different set up. And the show is huge and there's fashion shows all throughout the day with like a runway and models. It's a big deal.

        So, but that show is just one of their 80 shows. So they have shows in home and garden, tires, gaming, food, I mean, you name it. And they're in India, in China, they have a whole team in China, they're in South America, all over the world. So we're like a tiny little drop, H &H Cologne was just like a tiny little drop in that huge bucket. And they just celebrated their 100th year in business. So they really know what they're doing.

        So anyway, I knew about H &H Cologne and they wanted to enter the US market. They didn't have any shows in the US. And so they're very collaborative in Germany. They always partner with the trade association, which I love that they're so like open to those kinds of collaborations. And so they reached out to us and said, this is what we would like to do. Will you be the partner? And it was perfect because it's B2B and I don't have to

        put on the show.

        Abby (32:37.592)

        These folks know what they're doing. so I was like, I mean, I wasn't like on board immediately because I am risk averse, I was like, this does sound like a good fit for us. So what we do for that show is we plan the education. So like I said, I was a teacher. I love education. I love teaching. I've been hiring teachers for 10 years, almost 10 years now to teach B2B classes for us. So I feel like I know, you know, who's out there.

        and I'm always looking at new people as well. So that felt really comfortable. So we plan all of the main stage panel discussions that take place right on the show floor on the stage, business classes that are like in separate classrooms throughout the three days of the show. We plan a whole day of education the day before the show opens, which is now called HNHU University, very exciting day long conference. That's the day before we plan all the keynote speakers and the state of the industry.

        all that stuff, all the education that takes place at the show. And then the second thing that we do is market. So we have a large membership and even larger email lists. And so we encourage when booth sales open, exhibitor sales open, people to get a booth. We have a booth discount to offer them as members. And then once tickets go on sale, we encourage people to buy a ticket. If you're a member, you get a free ticket.

        to be able to come to the show. So that's kind of the role that we play. In all honesty, it ends up being a whole lot of other stuff, but.

        That ends up going on.

        Abby (34:14.67)

        because, you know, anyway, it's interesting to sort of plan and build something that's coming from the ground up. But the show's really big now. It's grown every year. think prior to COVID, there was a lot of talk and I engaged in it myself about trade shows maybe becoming obsolete. know, the attendance of many trade shows was declining and maybe we didn't need them. You know, you can find everything online. But I think COVID really showed us that that wasn't true.

        anymore.

        Abby (34:43.15)

        And this show started coming out of COVID and has only grown year after year. And I think people, when they're there, are very upbeat and the vibe is very grateful to be in the same room as everybody together. So I don't know if you experienced that lyric, but.

        That was one of the really interesting things. I've gone to quilt market off and on for a long time. the feeling at H &H, the first year, it wasn't really quilters at all. They concentrated on the stringy bits, is what I call them. The embroiderers and all of those things. And they've added in a lot.

        Again, it's grown kind of like doubled the second year and so much more the next year. But it was exactly that. It was the feeling there that was collaborative. So this month's theme in the Academy is talking about collaboration and your whole business is about collaboration. And what happened at H &H? And I was there for the Academy, right?

        because my audience is larger than quilters. So I wasn't necessarily thinking of like a quilty frame of mind. But talking to people in so many different areas of the industry, and it was literally the most, let me see how I can help your business experience I've ever had. Strangers, new friends, people would come and you would chat with them and they would say,

        you need to talk to this person, you two need to get together because I think they and you should do a thing together. And they had no stake in it. I got no feeling of, my gosh, that person's doing the same thing I do. I have to out-compete them. I had people come up to me who do the same thing I do and sort of niche neighbors. And the first thing was, how can we work together? And it was...

        Lyric (37:01.398)

        a business building beautiful experience, right? So one of the things that teachers deal with all the time, Abby, I'm sure you know, is that, you know, we might teach a thing and, you know, it's very rare that we have something entirely unique and original that nobody's ever done before. In fact, there's often 12 other people teaching the exact same thing we are, you know, same flavor, same

        same meal, we're just putting on a different plate in a different kitchen, because it's us, right? And that can feel like, no, there's not enough room for me. But in our industry, I have experienced and here we encourage and really work hard to build that collaborative mindset where there really is enough.

        for everybody to go around. And when you're open to working with somebody else, it's amazing how much everybody kind of grows and throwing all the ideas in the pot, stirs them up and you get something that no one single one of you would have imagined, right?

        Yeah, no, that's 100 % true. And I think that other thing is that, you know, business is really built on relationship.

        and relationships happen one at a time. And it takes a long time to build that network of relationships. And one of the most efficient ways to do that is by attending an in-person event. Because when you're there in person, it's as though, you know, you have a thousand Zoom calls and you can just do them all at once instead of being on Zoom. So you can just go from booth to booth, person to person.

        Abby (38:52.652)

        And in three days, you've expanded the number of relationships that you have a hundredfold. And it's also those serendipitous moments when, as you were saying, I'm talking to you and I'm like, my gosh, Sarah is right here. Let me just introduce you to her. And it just happens to be that she was walking by at that same moment. And it becomes this wonderful new relationship for you. And that's really hard to do virtually. It can be done, but it's much more challenging.

        And I just think there's something to be said for the efficiency of a trade show because you get all your business done for the year in three days. So it's kind of an amazing experience. It's very tiring. So wear some comfy shoes. That's one thing I'll say.

        And bring more than one.

        You're two different comfy shoes because after one whole day in those first ones, you're like, I can't wear them again tomorrow. I need something different.

        Yeah, that is so true So if any of you out there are listening and are thinking what I'm just a teacher I just I just teach my thing to my students, you know, what what would I gain from going to a trade show you won't know until you try and It is the

        Lyric (40:10.914)

        biggest stirring of ideas pot you can imagine. You will find partnerships and collaborations and all kinds of things. At H &H this year, the Academy is hosting another meetup.

        intentionally working that during that time to put people who are looking for something with people who are looking for a thing, right? So we'll have anybody who is working with video content creation, we are going to have mechanisms for matchmaking. We had some really cool matches made last year. For instance,

        Really?

        Lyric (40:50.568)

        a new company who has a pattern making system for garment sewing. And I was just like, hey, these guys are looking for this thing. Who does this thing? And there's like four or five people going like this. And they were talking long after our meetup was over. there are, mean, just, it is amazing when you open yourself up to collaborations and ideas that you didn't know existed before.

        That's totally true. And if you can come to the show, either not this year or just you're never going to be able to come in for that. And there's many people for whom that's the case for health reasons or caretaking reasons, financial reasons. There's a lot of reasons why somebody just can't make it to Chicago for a show. And we totally understand that. So the other piece of it is if you can't do that, there's lots of ways. And our goal is to really make it possible for you to connect.

        online, all year round, on your own time. So, you know, if that means that it's at eight o'clock at night on a Tuesday, can be at eight o'clock at night on a Tuesday so that you can access recordings and even live events that take place on your own time. Because it is possible that, you know, there are people who can never do that. That's just not going to work for them. And in fact, teaching virtually, they're doing that virtually for a reason, which is to say that that is what works for them.

        at this time in space in their lives. So we totally get that and don't want to feel discouraged that if you can't attend a show that you can't make this work because that's absolutely not true.

        Well, that's what the Craft Industry Alliance facilitates in their virtual space. And H &H also creates virtual spaces for these things to happen. They also have on a pretty regular basis educational webinars and ways for people to connect. And again, that's such a beauty. The in-person trade show is fantastic, but...

        Lyric (42:48.162)

        this miraculous technology that we're all using to meet with each other. I mean, we as teachers can reach students far outside of our geographical area who we could never reach and they can never reach us. And it builds a better world with what we're doing.

        That's absolutely true. And there's also advantages of it. mean, people are in their home space with their own supplies and materials. They're comfortable. So there's pieces of it that are actually better, not just being able to access teachers and students that are far away, but also just accessing them in a different way where they're in a different mind space too. It can be really helpful.

        Exactly, exactly. Abby, thank you so much for this interview.

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