Owning Your Art: Contracts, Copyrights, and Creative Control with Sam Hunter
Haley Hatcher 
Sam holds an MFA in Fiber Arts and blends this classic training with her sense of play.
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Summary:
Sam Hunter is not only an incredible quilt pattern designer and educator, but also a fierce advocate for creative entrepreneurs, fair pricing, and owning your work. I’m thrilled to welcome her on the show today. As the founder of The Revolutionary Craft Business Podcast, where she dives into the real challenges of the craft industry and shares practical advice for makers who want to build sustainable businesses. She’s a podcast veteran and has so many great things to share. When you tune in, you will hear many of the common challenges owning a business and how to move through them in order to build it up from a hobby to your full time income. Sam is full of wisdom, wit, and straight-up truth bombs, and she’s not afraid to tell it like it is when it comes to the realities of making a living in the craft industry. Whether you’re just starting out with video or looking to level up your online teaching, you are going to get so much value from this conversation.
Topics:
Evaluating the pros and cons of hosting all of your own content with your own website and brand or utilizing an online teaching platform
The importance of contracts, what to look for when reading over them and how to ensure you and your intellectual property is protected
Why Sam has chosen to build her business on YouTube and how it help her leans into being “rabidly anti-perfectionistic”
Podcasts as a secondary form of education and why Sam decided to start hers and how she plans to monetize it
Being deeply committed to what you create while also charging a fair price to create sustainability in your business
Episode Resources:
About Sam:
She started sewing when she was seven, and started quilting in her 20’s. She's British by birth, and now lives in Portland, Oregon, USA. She has been heard mixing her accents sometimes! She holds an MFA in Fiber Arts and blends this classic training with her sense of play. She believes that everyone has innate artistic talent that can be developed with a little work and guidance, and wants to help you find yours.
Connect with Sam:
Click here to read a raw transcript of this episode
Lyric Kinard (00:01.464)
Hello, Sam. It is always such a delight and a pleasure to see you anytime I get to talk to you. It makes me happy. So welcome to the podcast.
Sam (00:11.012)
Thank you so much, Lyric. And likewise, I feel that we end up having these just wonderful conversations that I always feel so enriched by. And yeah, good to see you today.
Lyric Kinard (00:23.542)
Yeah, hope you're doing well. I am grateful that you have agreed to come on to this podcast where we talk to all kinds of creatives in all the creative arts who want to create video to teach online somehow, whether they do YouTube channels or online classes. And you have been around in that space.
for a long time and it's been so much fun to watch the different avenues and the different platforms and the different ways you have gotten the amazing skills and patterns and education that you have to offer to your students. So why don't you give us a quick background of what you do and what you have to offer to your students.
Sam (01:15.994)
Hunters Design Studio is my pattern design business and I started it 14 years ago. And like everybody else, I've been teaching at the local cold store and teaching other people's patterns at the local cold store, which gives you lot of insight into how you think a pattern should be written.
Whenever we see new pattern designers and you know, they say, what do I need to know about pattern design? I'm like, go make 20, 50 patterns from different makers and you'll find out what you like and you'll find out, you know, what kind of writing style you think is clear or works for you, you know, or drawing style. And then I wasn't really one much for video until we hit the pandemic. I...
Lyric Kinard (02:06.061)
Mm-hmm.
Sam (02:09.016)
had at one point been under contract to Craftsy to do a video of my fabric dyeing workshop. Craftsy had a new round of angel funding. And you know, when you take other people's money, you're beholden to what they want out of you. And what got cut was me, what I was teaching, they were going back to core classes at Craftsy. So my contract got.
dissolved. And I got paid out of my contract, actually, we were within a certain time, I actually got paid out of the contract. It was just the first time I bought an Apple computer, I had always been a Windows computer person. And when you change from one platform to the other, you have to change all your software. And it's kind of a financial load to go from one platform to the other. But getting paid out of my craftsy contract actually afforded me all of those things. So yeah, in the pandemic, I started recording video, but it was just me like, you know, we're all solo when we do it.
And I would say that my, you know, the hallmark of any of my videos is that they're pretty real and they're pretty shaggy. And I goof up and I keep on going. And if I saw it wrong, I rip in front of you and talk you through it. And I try to talk to people like they're standing next to me. I don't, feel like I've never had and probably never will have this high level of studio polish that I know that I would achieve if somebody else was recording my stuff.
But I'm actually happy with where I've landed in terms of just being me and authentic about it. Yeah.
Lyric Kinard (03:46.07)
Right? That is such an important point because so many people who are thinking of getting into creating online education and whether it's on-demand workshops or whatever think that they have to be Hollywood level and they have to look gorgeous and they have to be all, but it's not about us at all, right? Why do your students still come to you? It's because they want the gift that you have to offer of the education.
Sam (04:05.286)
heck no.
Sam (04:08.974)
No, it's not.
Sam (04:14.362)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think their first interaction with us is because they desire the content that we offered. You know, they've looked at all of their content offering offerings to them and they go, oh, wow. Okay. Well, lyrics talking about it in a way that seems to make sense to me. So I'm going to go take lyrics class, but you take lyrics second class because you like how lyric teaches. Right. And I think that letting
Lyric Kinard (04:16.013)
It's not about us.
Sam (04:42.006)
our glorious selves out of the house is a really important way to create the connections that create community, which is how we navigate the sterility of the digital world, right?
Lyric Kinard (04:56.629)
Right, we're looking for authenticity. And you can tell when there's an act being put on, or especially in the age of AI, right? We want real people and having real life, super imperfect, know, here's the way I stumble all over my words and I don't care. That makes the authentic connection, it makes us real.
Sam (04:59.382)
connection,
Sam (05:05.656)
Okay. Right. Yeah.
Sam (05:17.699)
gosh. Yeah.
Sam (05:22.434)
Yeah. So yeah, all my first video education, which I did because I had been hired to teach at Cultures Affair at Sisters in Oregon, Valerie Wells' gig. I had been hired to teach there and then we had a pandemic and they canceled the entire gig. Next year they came back and said, hey, would you consider putting those classes together on video? So I recorded them all and they did it virtually. And then I took all of those recordings and I went through
Lyric Kinard (05:31.501)
Hmm.
Sam (05:51.77)
putting them on my own website and after a couple of years of trying to manage the overhead of that, chose to put them with CNT Creative Spark.
Lyric Kinard (05:59.662)
Let's talk through that process a little bit because you have a WordPress website and hosting your own courses on your own website gives you all the control, but it also, what else does it give you?
Sam (06:05.22)
IT
Sam (06:10.796)
Yes, and all the profit. All the, well, it's all the control and all of the profit. You know, if they're spending $20 on something, I get all of the $20 less the bank fees. I'm not splitting that with an overhead corporation, but on WordPress, took in installing LearnDash, which is a whole learning plugin. LearnDash requires a larger commitment of
Lyric Kinard (06:17.985)
Mm-hmm.
Sam (06:39.994)
hosting, like I had to go from shared, know, underneath the hood. When you engage hosting services, you can be on a shared server or you can be on a virtual private server or your own private server. And I had to go to a virtual private server. So I had, it cost me a lot more in my hosting. And then there was the LearnDash fees. All the plugins have fees. And can I just say everything on WordPress went up 30 % last year.
Every single plugin went up 30%. What had been 100 bucks is now 129. And then I also had to Vimeo behind it because Vimeo was the video platform that was sitting underneath LearnDash. That had a yearly cost. And it was quite a lot of overhead. And I would say marketing, my stuff, is probably one of my weaker links. I'm not known as much for video education. And so I was...
Lyric Kinard (07:10.571)
Hmm
Lyric Kinard (07:30.519)
Mm-hmm.
Sam (07:35.092)
Laying out all of this money and not doing the marketing work that would honor that expense And I am a CNT author my book was published with them under the I Can remember the imprint. It's the modern imprint anyway stash books stash I think yes and so I have a great relationship with CNT and they came out with creative spark and unlike
places like Craftsy, other learning platforms where you lose your rights to your videos or getting out of your contract isn't as good or your profit is based on actual watched minutes. Creative Spark is very, very simple. They transferred my existing customers over. If I want off the platform, it takes 60 days. We split the profits and the rights. I never lose my rights.
Lyric Kinard (08:30.508)
Right?
Sam (08:33.286)
And a lot of people when Craftsy went belly up or went through its various different sales, kept losing rights at a level that made me extraordinarily cautious about who was going to get to own my stuff. And in the end, was it was actually a blessing that Craftsy kicked me out of my contract because now I have my hand dying video on Creative Spark my way, my copyright, and no one can reuse that content without my permission.
Lyric Kinard (09:02.444)
Right.
Sam (09:02.798)
And it can't be reused in, there's always a clause in the contract that's like an impurportuity clause that says, you know, we couldn't use this anyway, we feel like it forever. And people would find their patterns in magazines they hadn't, you know, they hadn't committed to other people doing the editing and then you end up with the, you know, the phone calls when something's not right. So yeah, it made better sense for me to go to Creative Spark in that direction.
Lyric Kinard (09:20.076)
Right?
Lyric Kinard (09:31.32)
Yeah. So Creative Spark is an online platform for, they have quilting classes and craft classes and art classes, just, it's a very, very broad variety of things. And it's not been around for very long. It's post COVID. And they are one of the very few platforms that will host a bunch of different artists classes. There's, you know, there's Skillshare and Udemy and all different kinds, but
Sam (09:47.768)
Yes.
Sam (09:59.79)
Thank
Lyric Kinard (10:00.727)
they own your contract or content. And I think it's so important for an individual artist and creator to keep intellectual property rights under your own umbrella. I learned the hard way too. I had a book that I was extremely happy to have published, but then I had other ideas I wanted to go along with the book and they had right of first refusal, like,
Basically anything that would compete with the book I couldn't do and so I couldn't do them. And then they did the same thing like Craftsy, like they were bought and bought and bought and bought. And I had a very difficult time getting the rights to my book back. I did eventually, but if you start out owning your own things, you can do whatever you want with them.
Sam (10:32.512)
huh.
Sam (10:39.034)
Mm-hmm.
Sam (10:46.767)
Yeah.
Sam (10:50.692)
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, with the book publishers, mean, I when I went into my publishing contract, I said I wasn't comfortable with CNT owning the rights to my book and it was non-negotiable with them. And one of the points that they made, and I suppose if I sat in their chair with their hat on my head, I can see that that point was very valid, is that if they own the copyright, then they can defend the copyright.
Whereas defending copyright is a lot larger of a job for small business. You know, I've got a couple of people, I have actually trademarked Quilt Talk, which is the name of my book. And I've had people use it on podcasts and YouTube channels and these things. And what a lot of people don't realize about trademarking is you can trademark a phrase or whatever, but if you don't defend it, if you don't go out of your way to defend it, when it comes time for renewal, they won't let you have it back.
Lyric Kinard (11:24.091)
sure.
Sam (11:49.018)
And I've got a couple of people who are using my trademark and I've asked them to quit and they've basically said, stuff it. Yeah, prove it legally. To prove it legally would cost me about a thousand dollars for a trademark attorney to do their work. You know, and so here are my potentially, you know, and I think what surprises me is to have a colleague in the industry tell me to basically shove it.
Lyric Kinard (11:57.826)
Come at me.
Lyric Kinard (12:03.617)
Mm-hmm.
Lyric Kinard (12:18.071)
Mm-mm.
Sam (12:18.402)
I can't we all trying to help each other out here anyway. But I have to prove that I've tried to defend it, you know, and that it's a really big job for a solo entrepreneur. So
Lyric Kinard (12:21.133)
Yeah.
Lyric Kinard (12:24.802)
Right.
Yeah, for sure. Well, I don't regret having my book with the publisher for the two years. It was after it when it was bought, the company was bought, it went out of print and they weren't selling it anymore. But they still owned my intellectual property rights. So you as the artist, as the creator need to figure out where that balance. I think the way that you've worked with Creative Spark
Sam (12:31.864)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Sam (12:40.912)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Lyric Kinard (12:54.891)
is perfect because you keep your intellectual property rights, but they take over all the parts that you don't have time to or interest in doing, the marketing and the managing, and they're the ones who get the customer emails where they can't log in.
Sam (13:03.18)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Sam (13:10.282)
Yeah, and I have found their customer service to be really, really excellent and they get me involved when they need to. And I feel very supported by them when we are collectively trying to solve a customer's issue. I feel like we're both on the same page about how important it is to be responsive to a customer and help them out as much as possible, which I like because that's part of what I'm trying to do as well. I mean, up to a point.
Lyric Kinard (13:14.903)
Mm-hmm.
Lyric Kinard (13:27.586)
Right.
Sam (13:37.562)
You know, we can't, I cannot be on the phone making the quote with you. I just cannot. But you know, yeah. And I also think when it does come to protecting one's rights, one of the things that's super important to understand is like some of this early craftsy stuff, we didn't see social media coming. We didn't see shorts, reels, video.
Lyric Kinard (13:38.294)
Yeah, sure.
Yeah
Sam (14:04.546)
ways to turn our pattern into video content, class content. So when you've given up in perpetuity rights, you don't see what you could have given up because we don't know where the evolution is going.
Lyric Kinard (14:18.751)
Right, exactly. Craftsy approached me like in their very starting days. And I don't think I was even thinking about intellectual property rights in as much as I looked at the contract. And it was me being required to answer questions in perpetuity for as long as they were in business and that. And at the time I was teaching online for another business. But my courses were time delimited.
Sam (14:23.631)
Yeah.
Lyric Kinard (14:47.265)
the time that I had to spend with the students would last for two or three months at a time. And with my circumstances at the time, that was all I could do, right? So, man, read contracts and realize that when you're signing the contract, you can negotiate everything.
Sam (15:05.626)
Absolutely every point is negotiable Absolutely Yeah, the car. I mean a well-written contract protects all people Okay, and if people don't want to give you a contract That says a lot about them But read it get smart people to read it with you It's worth a couple hundred bucks to have a contract lawyer. Take a look at it. I mean truly Because you're gonna leave money on the table if you don't know what you're doing, which I know I did with my first book contract
Lyric Kinard (15:07.787)
Right? You can ask for things.
Lyric Kinard (15:14.709)
Exactly.
Lyric Kinard (15:34.284)
Hehe.
Sam (15:36.238)
And, you know, I just think that the contract delineates an agreement so that if you have to disagree, we've got a rule book for it. And I think that's very, very important. And I think we're, the craft industry, which has been mostly, most of us come into this because we were avid hobbyists. We were committed hobbyists.
Lyric Kinard (15:45.921)
Right.
Lyric Kinard (16:01.228)
Mm-hmm.
Sam (16:04.034)
And at some point we decided we'll give this business thing a go. And oftentimes you can bootstrap in so you don't, you can get into being a purveyor in the craft industry with all the things you already have. Like you already have a sewing machine, you already have a computer, you already have a stash of yarn or fabric or whatever that is. So the entry is quite low, okay? Which means that you keep trying not to spend or invest.
Lyric Kinard (16:25.151)
Mm-hmm. That's one of the beauties of it.
Sam (16:32.598)
in this beginning of your business, okay? So if we are going to go beyond this nice group of women that makes cool stuff that'll help you out and it's okay, we're nice women, we can do this on a handshake. If we're going to legitimize ourselves as business women, we need to embrace the contract.
Lyric Kinard (16:56.013)
Right, and investing in what you need. That's one of, it is like a two-sided thing. I love that people can get into this business at a low level without having to find angel investors and things like, you can start filming an online class with your phone, right?
Sam (17:10.265)
Yes.
Sam (17:15.596)
Yeah, we all of the video that we do here, we don't we do it all on iPhones.
Lyric Kinard (17:20.587)
Right? And it's enough. It is absolutely enough. And they don't have to be Hollywood produced or any of that. But then also remember that you're a professional business person.
Sam (17:22.574)
It's enough.
Sam (17:33.794)
Yeah. Well, when it comes to the Hollywood production idea, mean, number one, you know, I'm a woman of that. I'm a woman of that age, right?
Lyric Kinard (17:44.109)
We are not digital natives, no.
Sam (17:47.61)
No. You know, am I svelte? No. Do I have gray hair? Yes, I like to say, you know, the white is the truth and the rest is art in my hair. And I don't have barrel waves, artfully ripped jeans and 2.4 golden retrievers. I don't have the look. But what I have is all of what I am, honestly.
Lyric Kinard (18:00.46)
Yeah
Sam (18:16.674)
And I'm a little tired of social media really trying to market a perfection to me that is absolutely unattainable for anybody. And it's exhausting me. I don't like how it makes me feel. I don't like how it makes me feel down about myself. And so I am feeling rabidly anti-perfectionistic in how I create what I'm doing.
Lyric Kinard (18:25.751)
night.
Lyric Kinard (18:38.901)
Hahaha
Lyric Kinard (18:43.021)
Well, that's another reason to do one of the things that you've done and work on YouTube instead of scrolling kind of social media. tell us what you do on YouTube and how it affects your business. is, why are you on YouTube?
Sam (18:55.107)
Yeah.
Sam (19:03.426)
The very first YouTube video that I posted, a friend of mine, was this before the pandemic? Yeah, it all before the pandemic. A friend of mine said, how do you baste a quilt over a table? And she, you know, and I hauled a table outside and set up a camera and was like, hi, Kath, this is how I do it. And I posted it on YouTube so she had access to it.
And then my next video a couple of years later was how do you based a large quilt over a small table? And for the longest time that was my YouTube video like six years of it and I have a virtual assistant who's much more Technologically capable savvy interested She loves a technological challenge where I'm just like love of God just tell me what to do and all
I'll do it. Oftentimes she comes up with our video ideas and we'll just spend a day together. And it's like, how do you want me to do this? What do you want me to talk about? And then she gets the B-roll that she wants. She gets the angles that she wants because the poor thing had to like edit all of my pandemic stuff, which was done by me in the way that I thought was right. And then she'd like, well, didn't you get a photo of that? And I'm like, well, no, but I can't go back and get it now because I already assembled the quilt because I
Lyric Kinard (20:00.693)
Hahaha
Sam (20:28.538)
Basically assembled it on camera, so I didn't have any backup And I didn't have the quilt in 17 different unfinished states. I just had the one So she has driven a lot of it and when we started doing little videos for each pattern like what do you need to know about this pattern? If you're buy this pattern, what do you need to know about it? And then we started doing little bits and pieces like how I get a quarter inch seam How you sew strips without stretching them?
Lyric Kinard (20:32.289)
Mm-hmm.
Lyric Kinard (20:36.429)
Step outs, yeah.
Sam (20:57.25)
little videos that went with a couple of patterns. I've got a couple of patterns that cut diagonal strips in a really specific way that's very easy, but it doesn't, it isn't always apparent by the way it's Works better to talk people through it. So those, and then she was the one that noticed that we were approaching the magic combination of watch hours and subscribers.
Lyric Kinard (21:08.873)
It works better to just see it.
Lyric Kinard (21:22.541)
Mm-hmm.
Sam (21:23.226)
Then she started saying we should do video about this and we should do video about that We should do video about this and let's try one of these and one of the ones that she did is she? Still can't believe she got me to do this She hauled me off to IKEA and turned a camera on me as I walked around IKEA talking about how I would use different things in IKEA in my studio and my creative practice I know yeah me and IKEA and a nightmare
Lyric Kinard (21:34.669)
haha
Lyric Kinard (21:45.505)
fun and a nightmare and how fun and a nightmare.
Sam (21:51.714)
you know, when you don't have to get permission and you know, there's a part of me is like, I am so not this hi, I'm on camera at IKEA person. you know, I goofball, we tried to pronounce the words. You know, I was happy when we found cookies because that's what I am genuinely in IKEA. Hard to get out of there without cookies. And we ended up with one video that went viral.
Lyric Kinard (22:07.031)
Mm-hmm.
Lyric Kinard (22:18.411)
Nice, nice.
Sam (22:20.124)
And when it went viral, took us over the monetizing thresholds.
Lyric Kinard (22:24.621)
Very nice. And what do you think YouTube does for your business? What do you get out of the effort that you put into it, you and your assistant?
Sam (22:35.098)
well to start with, the passive income is wonderful because the passive income often pays her.
Lyric Kinard (22:45.273)
nice. Maybe I should start actually working on my YouTube channel.
Sam (22:46.212)
Yeah.
you know, there's ways to, there's ways to do it. And I would honestly tell people that I am honestly an accidental YouTuber. I mean, there was, there was no concerted, let me go take it. Like when I decided to do my podcast, I took Pat Flynn's podcasting course, which I thought was really valuable and thought I would get some information before I go and launch this thing and then have to spend half my life researching how to do it.
Lyric Kinard (22:53.645)
Mm-hmm.
Lyric Kinard (23:00.141)
Mm-hmm
Sam (23:17.63)
or have somebody else tell me where at least half the pitfalls were before I fell into them. YouTube, I've just kind of like muddled along and errands had a lot more strategies than I have my assistant and I feel very, very accidental about it. And I wonder often if that's why it works because on some of these viral videos, some of the commentary that I got was
my gosh, you seem like a person that I could actually talk to. Could you give me a recommendation for a sewing machine? And so we went to our local sewing machine store and we shot an afternoon of video there talking about how do you pick sewing machine? So sometimes the questions create the content, but for someone to say, you seem genuine and I really want to know more about you. I was recently at Quilt Con.
And I had a couple people come up to me and say, your voice is really distinctive. We love listening to you on YouTube and we love listening to your podcast because we love your voice. And we know that you're going to talk about interesting things when we hear your voice. So when we heard you over the curtains in Quilt Show, we had to come around and find you. So it's like, this is very, very accidental. There's like no strategy in this at all. Well, other than Erin figuring things out and going, okay, we could be a little strategic about these things.
Lyric Kinard (24:29.453)
How sweet.
Lyric Kinard (24:35.477)
Yeah, but it's getting you... She's strategic. She is strategic. That's fantastic.
Sam (24:41.954)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I certainly had no goal to become a YouTuber. But then when you start looking at what is accomplishable on YouTube and here's just an example. My VA has a couple of boys that are in Cub Scouts that actually know they're Boy Scouts out there heading for Eagle Scouts. And one of them loves to watch a YouTube channel of this guy that goes camping in Alaska.
He goes, outdoor camping in Alaska. All of his videos are about this. And her son said to her, how much money do think he makes on these videos? And so she looked at his watch numbers and went into the back end of my world and did fancy math and came out. And what she ended up figuring out was that this video probably made this guy 100 grand. OK, let's not leave that on the table, friends.
Lyric Kinard (25:31.671)
Nice.
No, no, but also, and also, not but, but and, the recognition that you're getting on YouTube pulls people back into your paid content, right? Those people recognized and heard your voice had a real relationship with you. And let's face it, people buy stories as much as they buy a product and they buy feelings.
Sam (25:47.822)
Yes.
Sam (25:59.416)
Yes. Yeah.
Lyric Kinard (26:03.743)
and relationships more than the thing. And you've built that. And then it turns around. mean, even outside of the money you're making on YouTube itself, it brings it back to your patterns and your book and the other things that you offer.
Sam (26:21.07)
Yes, yeah, makes me a trusted place for a thing. They're like, I need to make a quote for a thing. I like Sam, let me go see what she's got that could fit the brief, right? And that works also. And it's lovely that the monetization, your eyeballs on my YouTube channel, the advertisers actually pay for that. But my podcast is launched on Substack.
And at some point, we're gonna start putting my podcast content, part paid, part not paid. So you're gonna get some of it for free and some of it will only be available to you if you subscribe to the podcast for just a few dollars. Like the Patreon model where a few dollars of your support enables us to make a lot more stuff for you. So that's really cool too. And I would say that I'm...
Lyric Kinard (26:56.706)
Mm-hmm.
Sam (27:18.97)
not all I'm. And if people have a really hard time believing this about me, I can get really tied up and shy. I am not a naturally extroverted person. I have to put my face on and go out the door. And sometimes when I have over people, I get really awkward. And the awkwardness often appears in a very prickly demeanor. And all it is is me being I'm like over people.
Lyric Kinard (27:47.649)
Done.
Sam (27:48.354)
and having a shy moment. And I know that I was just all sorts of don't bother me, but that's exactly what, you know, happens. So one of the things about video is it enables me to be me in the way that I can do it the best way. I wouldn't do very well doing lives or like live ask me anythings or all of that kind of stuff because I would eventually overwhelm. And when I overwhelm, I'm nobody's friend.
Lyric Kinard (28:16.877)
I love hearing this. I really love hearing this because every person, every creator is unique in the way they deal with the world and there is a way to make it work for every one of us, right? And I'm like, I'm the opposite. I get wired being with people and just feed off the energy and I get more and more and more, you know, so lives put me the opposite. And there's room for
Sam (28:28.942)
Yeah.
Lyric Kinard (28:46.103)
Both of this. I would love you to talk about why you started a podcast because that's another form of education, even if it isn't video. Although, you record video and put that up on your YouTube channel with your podcast? Yeah.
Sam (28:56.492)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Sam (29:02.334)
Yeah, well, yeah, the entire pod is recorded in video, we do little snips. We do YouTube shorts of it, we do one minute reels of it, you know, which are just really promo things. At some point, we do want to release that content behind the paywall. We just haven't figured all the parts out yet. Because there's always there's always new technological frontiers to get through.
Lyric Kinard (29:14.336)
Right, right.
Lyric Kinard (29:21.388)
Hmm.
Lyric Kinard (29:32.333)
Yeah, that's one of the fun things about technology. We were talking about earlier, we couldn't have imagined what we've got now.
Sam (29:32.887)
So.
Yeah. Yeah. Who could have imagined? And I, I know that I appreciate video interviews. And so my podcast is called Revcraft Biz or How to Own a Revolutionary Craft Business. 10, 12 years ago, Maddie Crete, our wonderful badass quilter, she's the badass quilter society. She gave me, yep, there it is.
Lyric Kinard (30:03.457)
Go mad.
Sam (30:06.25)
she is wonderful. She had an event at a quilt market. I was in contract with CNT, which is how I remember the timing of it on my book. I was in the shoot. I had not yet published and I had had a ranty moment at one point that had made me write a post on my website, which still there it's called. are so worth it. And Maddie gave me the floor to talk about how women in business need to charge.
We need to charge for the work we make. Women in craft need to charge. I mean, if you feel that you can't charge, at least give them the invoice for the full cost and show them the discount. And I've always been a warrior for women in our industry to have better opportunities, to be better paid. And in the last dozen years, especially coming out of the pandemic and noticing my own burnout after the pandemic.
that we get to run our businesses in a way that there's something of us left over. Because oftentimes being a solopreneur, I mean, I have a tagline on my email that says, am the chief everything officer. And I am, I do all the things. The things that I have had to learn to run a business just blow my mind. And so I'm really interested in how do we make a better industry in craft for women to thrive in? And...
I know how I feel about it, but I also know that I can get like really stuffed up one way thinking about doing things. It's like Sam thinks it should go this way. And then I end up feeling very black and white about it. But when I start talking to my colleagues, I see all the shades of gray and I wanted to write a book knowing that I needed to experience all these shades of gray. I can't say I loved writing the book that I've written. love my book, but
process was a little eye opening and candidly the profits aren't as strong. can self publish, again, can self publish and get more of the money or you can leave it to a publishing house that carries some of lifting for you and you get a lot less of the money. And I wasn't sure I wanted to go through that process again in a way where I felt that my ability to have final say in how my product looked was given over to other people. Now, not again, CNT made my book beautiful.
Lyric Kinard (32:05.805)
Hmm.
Lyric Kinard (32:24.493)
Right.
Sam (32:28.166)
It was more beautiful than I could ever have imagined. But I wasn't sure I wanted to go through that process again. And I knew I needed to have the conversations. And it was like, well, what if I have the conversations on a podcast? I love having conversations with my business friends. I mean, you and I have had so many of them, Lyric. So I started recording these, and I am as happy as a pig in mud doing this. Absolutely perfect.
Lyric Kinard (32:44.471)
Night.
Lyric Kinard (32:51.149)
It's perfect for you.
Sam (32:54.338)
I love having the conversations. talk about business. We talk about business structure. We talk about how do you get to the creative process.
I've talked to people who have very, very creative businesses. Like I got to talk to Jenny Robinson, who made the QuiltCon winner last year, the best of show last year. I recently talked to Laura Shaw, whose quilt got censored out of AQS shows, but the censorship turned into a huge, wonderful thing. She got collected by a museum. She came and talked to me about the process of making the quilt and how she feels about these things that affect us in our industry. So it's not, it is...
Lyric Kinard (33:20.087)
Mmm.
Lyric Kinard (33:31.586)
Right.
Sam (33:32.804)
primarily aimed at business people. But here's the thing, someone said to me, it's too small a niche. You're just trying to talk to business people in quilting. But here's the thing, I think that our customers really want to know what goes on behind the green curtain. They want to know what makes us tick. In today's age, we're making far more purchasing decisions about are these people in a similar lane to us philosophically, politically?
in terms of how we experience our faith. And so I think the podcasts do, in my case, do go beyond just my biz pals. Okay, and that's what I was hearing at QuiltCon is regular folk are enjoying finding out about what goes on behind, well, in my case, it's an orange curtain here at Hunter Design Studio, because that's my favorite color.
Lyric Kinard (34:12.802)
Right?
Lyric Kinard (34:23.081)
Hahaha
Lyric Kinard (34:27.085)
I know so many people and this is all my kids and I are so deep in this hole of we want to know all the things behind like how a movie is made. Like I am so much more interested in the behind the scenes things most often than the movie itself, right? But when are it's part of the story.
Sam (34:40.249)
Yeah.
Sam (34:48.951)
Absolutely.
Lyric Kinard (34:51.989)
When our customers, when our audience, when the people we serve understand all of the things around it, it makes it a deeper and richer experience for them.
Sam (35:03.706)
I think so. And also, again, because a lot of us have come into this hobbyists, a lot of these businesses have been built in the hobbyist lane, we were giving a lot of stuff away for free, which we shouldn't have been. I think that some of these conversations in a public arena are letting our purchasing public know that we are deeply committed to creating what we create. And that, in turn, requires compensation.
Lyric Kinard (35:34.028)
night.
Sam (35:34.808)
that their expectation of us being hobbyists who have some other kind of income behind them, like women making pin money, and that we just dabble in it, and because we like making art, we should just give it away. I'm trying to cut through all of that as well in the consumer's perception of what we're up to. We have significant investments in what we're doing. mean...
You and I, before we even got recording today, we were comparing microphones and headphones and camera equipment and all of the things that make even creating my somewhat shaggy podcasts at least sound decent. Right.
Lyric Kinard (36:16.437)
Right? Absolutely. There is, and it's not only the investment financially in all the things around it, but you and I were talking about the balance of leaving ourselves some peace, right? We put so much effort and so much heart and so much soul and time, so much, so much, so much time into creating these things that
Sam (36:31.47)
Yes.
Lyric Kinard (36:46.539)
You know, we're not the highest paid industry. We should absolutely charge what we're worth. And where was I going with this? At the same time, we serve our people, right? We do this thing in this industry because we love what we do and we want the people we serve to have better, happier, more creative lives.
Sam (37:03.354)
Yes.
Sam (37:15.631)
Yes.
Lyric Kinard (37:16.374)
Otherwise we'd go off and be bankers.
Sam (37:18.678)
Exactly exactly. I mean one person who was a little frustrated with the the hiccups in technology that made getting a download really hard at one point and said to me in an email, know, you're just trying to screw me over and You know, I really wanted to say to her man If I was gonna screw you over I'd be going for more than $13 I Mean I'd be coming for your retirement accounts at this point I think
God, you said something there and I hooked onto it and poof, it derailed. Serving my people. Yeah. Yeah. There it was. One of my beloved professors, Frank Sardisco, he is now no longer with us. He was a drawing professor. He used to always say, we are the people that make the world beautiful enough to live in.
Lyric Kinard (37:53.336)
Serving our people, doing what we love because we want them to be better and happier and more creative.
Sam (38:14.778)
And he felt that that was a calling and a responsibility. And I feel like people could look at our business, so you just make quilt patterns and quilt patterns are just like what. But we are holding in that quilt pattern or in our video education of how to make a quilt, we are holding someone's investment. We are holding someone's time. I you can make more money, but it's really hard to make more time.
and we are holding their enjoyment of their artistic voice in our hands. And I don't think any of us take that casually at all.
Lyric Kinard (38:53.631)
Absolutely. That's what a teacher's heart is all about, right? We all create the things that we love to do, and we love it so much that we want other people to love it. And especially in times when the world is falling apart and when life is difficult for other people, sometimes we look at our creative hobbies or the art that we create as unimportant and as frivolous. And there's so many.
dire, dire things that need attention. And at the same time, the example that comes to my mind is, do you remember the cellist of Sarajevo? During the civil war, when there were snipers out on the street shooting everyday people all the time, there was an artist, a musician who would risk his life, go sit.
in the open, wide open, and he would play his music. And he was, I don't remember what piece it was, but he would play something for every person shot. And that image sticks with us. And one of the most famous wartime images is Guernica, right? And art can speak when other things can't.
Sam (40:08.41)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Sam (40:16.921)
Yes.
Sam (40:22.82)
Cannot, yes. It's a language. Yeah.
Lyric Kinard (40:24.165)
And even if it's just a hobby, even if you're just knitting socks, right? That is a moment of peace and joy and bringing something good into the world that wasn't there before. And we as teachers, we know how to do that ourselves, but we are amplifying that peace and that joy exponentially when we teach it to others, when we share the skill and the joy.
Sam (40:37.614)
Yeah.
Sam (40:53.434)
Yeah.
Lyric Kinard (40:53.677)
I don't think it's frivolous, I think it's vital.
Sam (40:56.174)
Vital, absolutely. And we're in part facilitators for other people to love on their people. I mean, for, I don't know, I I've bought a lot of quilt patterns that I haven't actually made, but just say that 20 % of our patterns actually turn into physical products. And you look at the numbers of things that you sold and you go, well, there's a few thousand people out there that have a fabric hug wrapped around them because
Somebody bought my pattern.
Lyric Kinard (41:28.557)
Or a knit baby cap or a crocheted shawl or just the things of our hands that we make are again, they're things that make the world a better place. They just do.
Sam (41:30.158)
And what could, like, a beanie or some socks, or, yeah, the things of our hands.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And if you look at every time there's a natural disaster, you know, I sent a box of quilts off to help some of the people that lost their homes in the Southern California fires recently. I sent. I sent food and quilts to the Carolinas after the hurricane, because that's what I could do. It's like, you know, I don't I don't have a million dollars to put in a kitty for something like that.
Lyric Kinard (42:03.501)
Mm-hmm.
Sam (42:12.014)
But I can quilt. Okay?
Lyric Kinard (42:14.061)
Yeah, you know, it's the the soft crafts, especially is such a giving community. You know, the in the arts and all the different places, people, people do a lot of things, but it feels like in the soft crafts, it's a it's a nurturing and giving environment. That's absolutely right. I have never been to a quilt guild in my traveling in the last, what, 18 years that
Sam (42:20.932)
Mm-hmm.
Sam (42:27.449)
Yeah.
Sam (42:30.756)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Lyric Kinard (42:44.395)
wasn't doing some sort of community work, right? And that happens all over the place. So teachers, yay! Business people in our industry, yay! We are amplifying, are making, you know, it's good to make money. I mean, we need to be supported in what we do, but we are doing something real, right? It almost feels more real sometimes than things like the stock market.
Sam (42:52.494)
Yeah. Hey.
Sam (43:02.334)
yeah. there's nothing sported about it at all. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Lyric Kinard (43:14.167)
things that might make money, but are they actually making the world a better place? So good for us. Yay, let's give ourselves, all of you out there listening, give yourself a pat on the back. You are amazing. Sam, this has been delightful and amazing. And let's wrap up with some fun questions that can be entirely off topic if you want to. What's the last thing you made?
Sam (43:25.112)
Hat on the back, yeah.
Sam (43:37.914)
Sure, free it.
Sam (43:44.548)
Breakfast. Breakfast. No, actually the last thing I made was a cup of something called mud water. So it's like chocolate and reishi mushrooms. you know, that was that was a sort of a chewy cup of hot drink this morning. I got up early because I was running a Zoom call for a bunch of colleagues where we co-work together. So that was the last thing I mean. The last physical thing I sewed on yesterday, I was at my guild's
Lyric Kinard (43:45.941)
What was it? Was it good?
Lyric Kinard (44:03.862)
Nice.
Lyric Kinard (44:08.673)
Nice.
Sam (44:13.57)
Charity sewing event day one of our local stores sponsors as we just you just show up my friend Cath Hall Absolutely Queen of how to do this. She comes with a project idea the machines are there you sit down you sew a couple blocks and I did some paper piece trees For this quilt that was the last thing I stitched on paper piece
Lyric Kinard (44:20.557)
Hehe.
Lyric Kinard (44:33.229)
Sweet. Something easy, something simple and put together. What is one item on your bucket list? I'm not gonna say which bucket list or for what. Go crazy.
Sam (44:50.542)
Bucket list. I run retreats in Europe, currently in France and London. I would love to add another country to that. I thought it might be Italy, but I'm not finding my helpers. Shout out to Mr. Rogers. I always look for your helpers. But I think I might have found a helper to help me develop something in Ireland.
Lyric Kinard (44:54.145)
You do.
Lyric Kinard (45:11.819)
Amazing. All right, universe, the world is out there. Sam needs her helper to go to Italy and or Ireland.
Sam (45:18.35)
I need my helper in Ireland to help me bring a textile tour to Ireland.
Lyric Kinard (45:22.357)
Yeah, I've heard such amazing good things about your tours. So look those up. Sam, where can we find you?
Sam (45:25.53)
Mm-hmm.
Sam (45:29.688)
Hunter's Design with an S in middle. Hunter's Design Studio. If you can't remember that mouthful, just literally type into Google Sam Hunter Quilt and you'll get it. Embroidered Journey is the tours. Revcraftbiz.com is the podcast.
Lyric Kinard (45:43.629)
It's fantastic podcast to all of those.
Sam (45:46.356)
and Instagram hunters DS. figured hunters design studio was too many things to type. So Hunter SDS.
Lyric Kinard (45:51.091)
I'm
All right, all right friends, go look up Sam and support her business and all of you, know, keep doing what you're doing, keep moving forward, take the next step. It doesn't have to be a huge step, take a baby step, the first tiny action in the direction that you want to go because what you're doing is important and you make the world a better place.
Sam (46:15.276)
Absolutely. It is. We're making the world a more beautiful place to live in.
Lyric Kinard (46:21.805)
All right. Thanks, Sam.
Categories: : Podcast