Turn Your Skills into Professional Courses with Creative Spark
Haley Hatcher 
In this episode—I'm joined by Amy Barrett-Daffin, the head of C&T Publishing, and Sophie Scardaci, who runs Creative Spark, C&T's online learning...
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Summary:
If you've ever thought about working with a company to help market and sell your online craft workshops, then you are going to love today's guests. In this episode—I'm joined by Amy Barrett-Daffin, the head of C&T Publishing, and Sophie Scardaci, who runs Creative Spark, C&T's online learning platform. They are two of the most knowledgeable and generous business leaders in the craft and quilting world and they've built a platform that not only supports educators, but amplifies their reach and impact. In this episode, we're covering everything from how Creative Spark works with educators to turn their skills into professional courses to the different ways AI is changing the game for course creators. This interview provides a comprehensive roadmap for creative educators looking to expand their teaching online while maximizing their revenue potential. By leveraging C&T’s expertise, strategic marketing, and growing online community, instructors can take their teaching businesses to new heights.
Topics:
The benefits of evergreen courses (AKA on-demand classes) and how C&T supports its teachers with the equipment, marketing, packaging, sales, and community building
The different ways C&T is unique in their affiliate and marketing support as well as their revenue share and content ownership model so that it really serves their teachers
Email list strategies that don’t always include giving away your content for free and will cultivate an audience that is actually engaged
How C&T plans to connect instructors with brands for sponsored content and why this should be a top priority to grow your online presence and sales
How AI and automation can streamline the business side of teaching, making marketing and content creation easier (but also how to protect your ownership)
About Amy:
Amy Barrett-Daffin, is on the Quilts Inc. Advisory Board, the PubWest Board of Directors, and is a founding member of the Sewing & Quilting Strategic Summit. Amy is the Publisher of C&T Publishing and manages the day-to-day operations of the company.
About Sophie:
Sophie Scardaci began working at C&T Publishing in Sales and Marketing in 2019, where she is inspired daily by coworkers and authors. She is also a kraft-tex ambassador, creates original patterns, and can often be seen on C&T’s YouTube channel and Facebook Lives. For 8 years, Sophie ran a creative and vibrant yarn store, Bluebird Yarn, in quaint Sausalito, CA. This mom of two, lives in Concord,CA with her husband.
Connect with Amy and Sophie:
Click here to read a raw transcript of this episode
Speaker 3 (00:05.516)
Hey, it is so good to have everybody here. This is our first guest seminar in 2025 with the Academy, and we're starting off with such a good one. Amy and Sophia are two of my favorite people and run one of my favorite businesses that is something that supports the audience that we all love and serve. We as educators
bring joy and beauty and creativity into the lives of so many people. And CNT Publishing with Amy, Creative Spark, Sophia, I mean, they work together and both are under the same umbrella. But you exponentially amplify what we are able to offer and send that joy and that beauty out to so many more people.
So, and you do it in a way that also supports the educators and the writers and the teachers who are working so hard to build their skills in teaching. So let's start with you, Amy, and then Sophia. I would love each of you to introduce yourself and tell me about the business and what you do in your business and what you're here for. Yeah.
Yeah. So my name's Amy Barrett Daffin. A long time ago, I was Amy Marson. So in case people recognize one name versus the other, I did change my name for very good reasons. I got divorced. Thank you. But I've been running CNT publishing for 20. This is my 23rd year running it. I've been at CNT for 25 years. And during that time, I think I've done and overseen almost everything.
I oversee the creative acquisitions process. I manage sales and marketing. I oversee Creative Spark, like from the overview level. And then I work day to day. I spend more time with sales and marketing. And then I do get to make the decisions on what we publish that our amazing acquisitions editors bring in. And then I work with Sophie a lot on Creative Spark, where I co-host with her all of our live events.
Speaker 2 (02:26.572)
I make all of our product demo videos for CNT. If we have a non-authored product, I make the video. And I typically have to, it's a great way to actually, when we have a new product come out, I get it. And I'm like, if I can't explain it, then we need better instructions. So because I use our instructions to teach it. I also go to a lot of trade shows and consumer shows, and I teach our color tools, which I love. And I'm a self-taught color.
So my expert, I'm the in-house expert on color. At this point. And I think that's all I do. I do all of our IT and HR.
She's like her in-house.
Speaker 3 (03:02.411)
Own it. Just get
Speaker 1 (03:12.59)
Yeah, it's been a lot of it's been additional hats. Yes in here. Yes, which
Yeah, yeah, and I don't really like cats, but I them. And what do you do?
Well, first of all, Lyric, I'm going to replay that nice introduction. I felt like so good after that. Thank you for what nice words. I am Sophie Scardacci, Sophia either way. And I run Creative Spark, which is the online educational side to C &T, which launched in 2020. And so I've been there since the
beginning. So we're coming into year five, I guess, of it. And so it's gone through a lot of different things. We've added different aspects to it. So now what we have is evergreen content. We have live event content. And then we have kind of like hybrid parts of that, which are like kind of things that could end up being evergreen, but they also have like live elements like block of the month with stitch alongs.
which I saw somebody who's going to be doing one this year here. So yeah, it's been a ton of, I mean, for me personally, I've gotten to meet so many amazing creative people. I've way too many unfinished projects from starting so many after watching all the great classes. so, yeah, and I've learned a lot along the way and love to share.
Speaker 2 (04:43.37)
that today.
That's fantastic. Now we have an audience here of teachers who are working with virtual programming, building their skills or well established. We have all levels of people here. I would like you to go through some of the basic opportunities that you have one at a time or one content type.
at a time for this audience. Let's start with the on-demand courses that you host on Creative Spark.
Yeah, sure. Do you want to talk about that?
Yeah, I can start with that. I'm also known as evergreen y'all can call it what you want. but that could encompass also like a block of the month or drip content as well. Like it just depends on how you want it delivered. But in general for us, like we have, it's one of the ways people come in and start things. I think a great way to start if you're hesitant is to always put a lecture up. I feel like lectures are really like easy to sell in a way because people know exactly what to expect with that.
Speaker 1 (05:47.534)
And so those for us, all of our stuff's built on the Thinkific platform. We just have a very large type of account, one of like whatever the biggest account you can have is what we have. And so we get a lot of extra features with that. So you can add a community to your, yeah, your evergreen course or other things like that. And yeah.
Your course.
Speaker 3 (06:13.442)
work for the teachers? how do you work with teachers who are independent contractors, independent entities who have their own content? How do they, how do you serve them? How do the two of you work together?
So starting in 2024, actually, our book acquisitions became just general acquisitions, like they are acquiring also the classes. for people that are interested in putting in a new class, they would start actually with acquisitions. And then acquisitions kind of onboards them, gives them kind of the backbone information of what they're going to need, helps develop whatever their first course is going to be.
And then we also have our own how to make a course course so that you can also learn how it works for our platform. And then once the acquisitions has taken the person to the point of like making the videos, they then are passed over to me and a woman named Tristan and her and I work with people to get their finally the videos up on the platform. And then we
put together their landing page and their marketing package and start marketing.
So the teacher films and delivers their own content to you and then you package that and present it to the audience.
Speaker 1 (07:39.872)
exactly right. And there's a lot of hand holding. I just want to say that like we will give you feedback along the way. It is not like, you just need to know how to do it. In addition to the course, like Tristan or myself will give really specific feedback and also help with like advice on editing or all of that. Our goal always is if you can shoot great content to start with, then you don't need to edit it hardly at all. And that's what we would love to see because editing
things that are have a like dark and or weirdly like lots of mistakes. Those are hard. So if we can get yourself kind of clean and nice, it'll be easy peasy.
for you. Right. And they also provide a lot of tools as far as we have written out content besides how to make a course content. We recommend what kind of equipment to use. We recommend backgrounds and lighting and how to make sure, how to take a video from the top down, how to use multiple cameras. So we really do quite a bit of education along the way so that you're successful and your videos don't require a lot of editing.
Yeah, and one of the newer things we're doing is also creating the help of AI. I'm actually a big fan of AI. So is creating scripts for people for landing page videos to give them better ideas of like how to deliver their sales pitch for their course. I create lists of specific marketing photography we'll need ahead of time.
So having all that planned out so when you're in the midst of like filming and stuff, you can capture all that. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:20.546)
Right. Yeah, a lot of our content for that. I mean, that's why I love you guys. not. We teach all that stuff here too. Hi. I've been taking a bunch of workshops and the Academy will actually have an AI workshop for teachers specifically coming up probably in March.
Yeah
Speaker 2 (09:41.794)
Yeah.
I mean, I'm going to be, Amy knows this. I was a little bit of like really hesitant. if you're one of those people and then lyrics like, Hey, you should check this out. You should check it out. Like it is definitely, once you figure out how to use it, it can really help you. But I understand also the fear of it too. So.
Yes, we see both sides.
Yeah, it's a tool like everything else. If you use it correctly as a tool to do what it is you need it to do with your own content, then you're going to get amazing stuff. It's work at the beginning. It's a lot of work to make it happen. And then it saves so much time. If you go in and expect it to pull stuff from the general, whatever, you're going to get erased to the most generic, boring things you've ever seen.
One of the things I love about the way Creative Spark works with teachers is your ownership of copyright and the distribution of payment and everything that happens after the video is turned over. So tell us real quick, you are one of the only companies that I think really works well for teachers this way.
Speaker 2 (10:57.688)
Thank you. So when we started Creative Spark, we did it because several of we did a town hall with our authors during COVID and they said they were losing all their teaching gigs, especially to guilds. And so we said, well, we can launch an online learning platform in seven months, six months, which we did with eight instructors slash authors. And one of the things that was really important to me was a 50 50 revenue share.
is that it's an equal share. It's not treated like a royalty. So that was one big part. And then the other part was letting them own their content and us not owning their content because that felt like the right thing to do. And we really try to operate with a lot of integrity in how we work with instructors and authors. The other thing we were able to do as a book publisher is if you have a book with us and the book content ties into the video, we offer that
ebook for free as bonus content. But what ends up happening is the consumer who watches the video buys the print book. And so it's a really lovely synergistic way to work. And we really we put a lot of thought into that.
And we did get a lot of feedback from the OGs, I call them the original instructors, they didn't want their stuff on sale. We don't actually put things on sale, if you ever see that. the price is very, everything's very transparent, which makes it really easy for me, too, when I'm talking to people. I love that. And then the other thing that
I love too is like, in addition, it is a 50-50 revenue share, but we as Crave Spark and CNT, we assume all of the financial responsibilities of the processing fees and the site fees and all of that. So none of that comes out of the authors or the instructors 50%.
Speaker 2 (13:03.074)
Yeah. And we also, you know, once we get the video, we have over 200,000 consumer emails, which we market to plus on our social media. Plus, we also work with a company that has over a million consumer names that actually sells just ebooks. They sell and market ebooks, but we work with them and we advertise on their platform because crafts are huge for them. And so we have and we do a lot of paid advertising. We do both in print and online. So
We're not only are we delivering the content, we're also putting a lot of energy into marketing. Yeah. Yeah.
And any of us who have gone in on our own with this understand how huge of a job it is to do that marketing and to have that kind of audience built in with you all is well, well worth the 50 % of the income that you got. mean, it's, it is such, and the fact that you don't put it on sale, you still own your content. I've had experiences with handing over my contact
through a publisher and then being so limited in anything that I could do around that content. They would always say, no, you can't do that. I'll compete with my own content, but they own it, right? Yeah. is amazing. Let's move on to the next kind of event that you all work with.
The live events. So one of the things, yeah, so the live events a couple of years ago, I had this crazy idea. And since we're talking just to instructors, this is why I'm going to share this with you. I wouldn't share it with consumers. Is I wanted to build the creative spark email list. And I was trying to figure out how to do that.
Speaker 2 (14:52.014)
And the way that I did it was I decided that we would offer a live event. It would be a great price and it would have a coupon and that coupon would be an affiliate link. And so when Sophie and I first did it, I said, Hey, let's do a live event. And I think it was Pissing Palooza. And we got over 500 signups and all of a sudden Sophie and I were like, Oh crap.
We don't know what we're doing. We've got to figure this out as we go along because you know, do sell it and then we'll figure out how to do it. And then the other thing was we realized that those live events really not only are they list builders, but they're money makers. And the great thing for new instructors is you can do a live event. It's 45 minutes. You get paid a flat fee, which is pretty generous. I don't remember what it is right now.
We
Speaker 1 (15:48.76)
Well, it's kind of a very between 250 and 300, although there's new incentives this year. So we have some even additional money for it.
people. Yeah. So there's so you get a flat fee and then you also get this affiliate link and you can make between four and six dollars off of each person who buys a seat from you. So and it's live. So you don't have to pre-record anything. You do this live video and we sell the event up to the day of the event and then we stop selling it because we want to create a sense of urgency. We want people to feel like they have to buy it.
Or else it's not available and that has worked well for us. And now we're doing right now six live events a year, which is a lot. And we may not do six next year based on so please express.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I would say going forward, what I see us having is like some still larger events, I'm going to call those large events, and then what I'm going to call smaller events. So like more opportunity to have like the actual people be able to interact with the instructors kind of. And that goes along with some of the stitch alongs, maybe some kind of talk show type formats.
and some other community building. that's kind of one of the goals I would love to see is a little bit more community going forward.
Speaker 2 (17:13.112)
And then can I mention one more thing? So we have a book coming out called The Quilter's Color Guide. And it's a compilation of all the color experts that CNT has ever published. I think there's 10 of them. And so we're going to do three one-hour talk shows around that book. And sell it as a package along with the book. can get the three one-hour talk shows plus a copy of the book.
Very cool. I participated in one of your live events mostly because I wanted to see how they work behind the scenes. So I didn't actually do any marketing for you all, sorry. It was, recorded a thing in advance and sent it in. So your actual content is recorded, but then you're live there for your event.
that was in our event. That was not ours. It's okay. And there are
I presented, I remember now, I presented PowerPoint. You're right, you're right.
was like, that was a... Yeah, that's okay. You can present a PowerPoint, but there are events that it's all prerecorded. I also know there's a lot of events by the way, your people can do, everyone should do what feels right to you, right? But I know there's a lot of people doing these free events where you all are giving your content away and I don't get it. mean, maybe someone here will be like, I'll tell you why, but...
Speaker 1 (18:45.454)
I'm gonna mute, share it. Okay, I got it, I got got it. So yeah, I personally, stop giving your stuff away, people. That's just me.
One of the.
Speaker 3 (18:57.262)
So one of the one of the other things that I did just to see the one that I thinking of built my list by 1500 people. So that was that
Yes.
I do understand they're list builders.
And 100 % do list building if that's what's important to you. Just remember giving away your content, if it's recorded and put up forever, then it's up there free for everyone.
Sometimes it's not available for free forever. I'm just gonna say like I still
Speaker 3 (19:30.079)
I would never. It was it was a really limited amount of time.
I
Be careful what you're giving away. That's all I'd like to say. I'm surprised sometimes. It's even our some of our own people. I'm like, don't do that. But that's OK. You have to do you.
We agree there. that's why communities like this are fantastic. Because you don't know what you don't know until you're with a community of educators and hear these things that you're like, hadn't considered that. What other kind of events and content do you provide for teachers that they can participate in?
So we also have, like Sophie said, we're doing like Block of the Month and Drip Content, which I know Becky Goldsmith sort of led the charge on that. And she did a fabulous job.
Speaker 1 (20:21.76)
and Sanrasa's
Which is awesome. And then we talked about the talk shows like the one that I'm going to be doing and we had done one a couple years ago called color.
Creative happy hour. Yeah, and Lee Monroe did one called the cold in our four seasons of that Yeah, um, I think they're kind of cool and interesting. They usually like a lower price point So having a variety of price points can be really helpful
There's one that we didn't mention and this sort of gets into types of content, but we did something where we did just a binding video and it was really cheap. Wasn't it like $4.99? Yeah, we
Do have a bunch of inexpensive videos now we have a few free things We had more and then I told people to stop stop giving away for free So most of them charge like 499 for them to me. That's free like by the way, I'm gonna say that's free But I do think that you get people that are more Invested just a little bit like at 499 or whatever you want to charge a dollar
Speaker 3 (21:29.848)
But
Those technique videos, like taking something that constantly stumps people, but it's a small thing. Because we sold hundreds of this one, and we all looked at the numbers. We're like, what is going on? Yeah. Like it instantly took off because people are like, five bucks, I can do that. Price points and length. Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:44.642)
Like right away.
Speaker 1 (21:49.998)
There's variety of price points.
I have found that as well with lead magnets and things. Lead magnets are great to get a lead for your email list and such. I am currently offering only to my email list beginning of the year for Quilt Artists' Intentions Sending Goal Workshop kind of thing, but I'm charging for it.
I need price compared to the hours that I'm giving, but you give things away and people don't show up.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you say it has no value, mean, I don't, I mean, I don't, again, I'm not, I'm going to say like, and also if you're doing something online with like say zoom and you're going to have more than 500 or a hundred people say you're going to need to up your meeting size. So that's going to cost you money. So if you just have a bunch of people that signed up and they didn't pay anything, they really have no skin in it. Like, um, versus somebody who was like, Oh, I did pay something. Maybe I want to show up. Yeah.
Right, it's Yeah. One of the things I wanted to ask you about, unless you have other content, we will get the links so that you all can know where to contact CNT and Creative Spark in order to apply to these kind of things. I know you have used so many of our fabulous teachers here and it warms the little cockles in my heart.
Speaker 1 (23:06.719)
No, no,
Speaker 1 (23:25.326)
you
to see the interaction going on. One of the things I would love you to talk about is discussing, let's talk about videos in courses. Let's talk about some of the tips that you have, because I always love hearing other people tell me the same things I do, right? What kind of tips for making videos?
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (23:54.882)
do you have for teachers who are creating pre-recorded online content?
I think one of the things that I think you right away have to decide is how you want your video to be. some people do voiceover video. So they're going to shoot their content, then they're going to edit it down and re voice over it. And then some people like to talk on the camera. Now, obviously talking on the camera makes it a little harder in certain ways of editing down the timing of the content. Like you're going to have to split apart the audio if you want to.
try to trim it down or all of that. So I actually personally like the voiceover method, but other people that doesn't work for them. So you can find your own style for sure. I think that's a really good place to start. It's like how like experiment with a couple things. Experiment with editing, obviously for voicing over that actually requires some maybe more editing in certain ways. But then also let like it's kind of like this mixed bag.
So I think that's really great tip. Having a outline and a shot list is huge. And that goes, once you know how you're going to do it, if you're going to do a voiceover or whatever, it's making that really detailed shot list. we have templates. I'm sure you do too. But ours will even include, hey, do I need to take a marketing photo at this point? Is this where I need to like?
I have all my supplies laid out because I'm talking about supplies. Should I take a photo too? And some creative photos. So yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:36.65)
One thing that I think about is because I started off making all of our marketing and sort of instructional videos for our products is it takes me four to eight hours to prep to make a marketing video. To have, if I need models, if I need samples, I need to know what I'm teaching, and I need to make sure I have everything that I need. I compile it all together and then I bring it into the studio to shoot. But I think
to reiterate Sophie and the outline is you really need to know what you're going to say, what you're going to show, and what cameras you're going to use. Always have at least two cameras, maybe three for the social media posts that you're doing because you've got a straight on camera. You're doing overhead to show your hands doing the work. But then if you've got your phone set up, you can be shooting social media at the same time. You've just saved yourself.
a lot of time and energy.
Yeah, that's good. Can I give you guys a really cool thing that you can share? If you edit via CapCut, they will take, they will create AI created social media clips from your long content. Usually out of the six, three of them are garbage, but these are always like surprisingly really good.
That's good. I actually do use I use CapCut. That's so.
Speaker 2 (27:03.326)
I wouldn't know that because I don't edit the videos. I'm the talent.
I have a cap and then Tristan who's really our video. So he uses Premiere. I also have a final cut but not for work. But yeah, CapCut's great. Yeah. And there is a lot more AI stuff that you can create from that.
I'm really into storytelling too. So for that comes into marketing. if you are, even if you have to move your stuff around when you're shooting your video for a second, to capture a story looking photo, love that. So in terms of the like capturing video, Mike, like, you know, lighting, mics, here we have huge lights. obviously most people are not going to have, you, I turn the camera around, it's like here, I'm to, yeah, there we go.
It's almost five feet.
Like you can't even see the whole kit. That is a huge life.
Speaker 2 (27:58.83)
And that's just one. We have another one over here in front of me that's not as bright. And then we usually have two background lights that light up our background. So lighting is one of
And then also the quality or video will be better which means that it'll be better easier to edit. Yeah
Yeah, and then when you're thinking about video, one of the things is, are you teaching a project from start to finish, or are you teaching a technique? And if you're doing techniques, are you doing samples so that they see what the end game is if you're not doing a full project? And so I think that's something important. It goes along with the outline, but when you're teaching,
One of the things that we've run into when people are first time teachers is they may make a really long video, like an hour. And it's like, no one's going to watch that for an hour. It needs to be concise. It needs to be crisp. It needs to be clear and you need to move on. So I think that-
That hour I'd be excited about. I'm talking six hours. Like, let's just move away from an hour. That was like, if you have an hour, I'm okay with an hour, by the way.
Speaker 2 (29:14.542)
I've had people who've done six hours classes.
Speaker 3 (29:21.437)
I am you know what if you have six hours of content that means you have six courses well
Well, that's a little bit what I would say too. Yeah, so, you know, the other thing I'm really loving that we're that I we've done it for embroidery. Catherine has one she has a stitch library. So, so a lot of our embroidery people have stitch libraries, so that they don't have to reshoot that part of their course. And then Becky Goldsmith just did an applique mastery course. So like
I was gonna say
Speaker 1 (29:54.668)
She did every kind of applique possible. Now she could have made that lots of little courses for sure. But what her intention is that now going forward, when she has a project, she'll be like, hey, you need to learn to applique. You take applique mastery and it will cover everything. But then the actual course itself isn't necessarily all those techniques. And I think that's really a great way of using content where you don't have to re-show the same thing over and
Another thing, this is Becky is another great example, is Becky and I have become really good friends. And one time we were traveling and she said, I want to really grow my YouTube channel. And she said, what do I do? we were heading to Quilt Market. And I said, well, you should talk to all the different industry partners and ask if you can show their products on your videos because they'll tag you and you're demonstrating new product.
And I think the Aliso iron was the first one she did. it totally took off. she started doing these videos showing how to use these products the right way for quilting. that's a great way to grow your platform and a great way to form these relationships because I know for us, industry partners are huge part of our live events.
actually see them being a bigger part and I was I I got to go to Quilt Market for those I know saw some of you there but which was fun I get to go again.
She was invited back.
Speaker 1 (31:30.782)
I was invited back. But one of the things is I did get to have really good conversations with some industry partners and I'm really looking forward to actually sharing some of that with our instructors like, these people want to work with you. So I'm hoping to pass on some of those relationships to our instructors this year as well.
If you are going to H &H, the way, the Academy is having a meetup specifically to put creators with brands.
awesome.
Talk to some of the brands and make sure that they know about it as well. If you give us information, we're happy to share that.
I've got a couple that are really excited.
Speaker 3 (32:10.284)
Friday morning before the keynote. It's on the...
I will be there too. Yeah.
Another thing besides strategic partners is, you know, we've talked about multiple cameras. We've talked about good lighting, having an interesting and applicable background. I was working with a woman who was running for sitting counsel during COVID and she knew that we had creative spark. And so she said, could I have some of your time? I placed a gravel with her. So we met.
And I gave her like the makeup tips, the glasses tips, the background tips. And you know, and I said to her, whatever it is you're talking about, people need to see it. And so we made sure right over here where Sophie is that she had her big thing that she was running for office in every single video she did. So if you're talking about a specific quilt in your project, that would be behind you or a design wall or whatever, but don't have it be a big cluttery mess.
If I could turn my, I can turn my computer right now and I'm not going to show you the big cluttery mess right now. But that behind me. by the way, friends, all of my academy teachers, because these seminars are about other people, that's why intentionally keep it blank behind me. I want to not distract from that. absolutely right. Keep.
Speaker 3 (33:41.358)
Keep in mind what people are going to see in the entire frame. It's a really great idea to take a quick photo and look at all the corn, start with corners. Look at the corners of the photo. mean, there's often a plug or a pile of something there that you have had there for three years and don't notice anymore that's in the photo that you need to clear out. Excellent, excellent.
a really absurd tip, and we have had this through personal experience multiple times, and I think it's starting to dawn on Sophie what I'm going to say, is if you are hosting a live event, you need to have somebody besides yourself who's doing the talking, monitoring, if you're doing it this style where it's a meeting style, monitoring the other videos.
because we have had multiple naked people.
at home.
I mean, they're accidental. Accidental. don't know they're naked on camera, by the way.
Speaker 2 (34:45.313)
They put their phone in the bathroom and then they get out of the shower. And we're recording it for posterity. So it's something to make sure you have a friend who is monitoring the videos and who can hide those people's videos because it has happened in all the live events we've had. I think it's happened in more than half of them.
And then it looks like three.
OK, well, three. So make a public service announcement at the beginning. Please don't take your device into a private space. Turn off your camera.
You guys know as hosts you can do that.
It's actually not, it's more, yeah, no, we can hide them all, but it actually is more complicated. We actually, I don't mind seeing people's faces. I like to see who's there. I feel like that brings some of the community if I hit everyone. But yeah, we do have people hiding them, but we do have a set of monitors that we're watching.
Speaker 2 (35:30.44)
We love it.
Speaker 2 (35:44.386)
we do breakout rooms, we're we stay in the main room, but then we have breakout rooms. And that's and even the moderators in the breakout rooms, like, I was sitting out there once and I'm like,
Because you see different people to write screen, right?
So it was really, yeah, so just, it's a weird thing, but.
Cut butts, you know, it's gonna happen and one of the very early Zoom education for guilds that we did we made hilarious little video clips and we got one of our teachers to have her husband, you know in his underwear and shirt walk behind Just to show people how hilarious and come on people don't do this
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:28.332)
Yes, yes. we had that was at our last one, a man walking behind his wife and we were just like, just hide her camera.
you notice we have, Oh, you know, first of all, around diversity, thanks, Cookie. I actually reach out to a lot of people of different diverse backgrounds. And so part of it could be that they're not interested. I will just say that, like, I'm not, it's not ever like, for lack of us, I've...
In the beginning, I do more outreach. would say now mostly it's if people just come to us. So that's part of it. I mean, for live events, I would say I outreached for keynote to three different people that were non-Caucasian.
And so we do, we actually had a group for a year and a half, a diversity group to help us become more diverse. We have it in our hiring, but it's really about getting people who want to participate. And that's the biggest challenge, whether it's a scheduling issue or they don't think it's a good fit. To answer your question, how to apply to be part of Creative Spark,
and how do you submit a book proposal? They both work the same way now. And we have links on our website, which I know Lyric will share. And you go through this process, whether it's the book proposal or it's a course submission, with our editors. And they will work with you on coming up with a good plan and a good idea for the courses. Once they get to a certain point where it's pretty well formed, it goes to Sophie and her team.
Speaker 2 (38:17.454)
And then for the books, stays with the editors and it is voted on by the acquisitions team. And then we make sure works with our publishing plan and then we slot it in. Yeah. And it takes to do a book. Right now, we're slotting for, I think we're done with 26 and I think we're slotting for starting in 2027.
Yeah, but that just kind of shows you the length of time. Even when we do make changes to certain things, like it just takes a while for you to see that. That's what's great about the Creative Spark platform. It can be much faster. So Mel, I see asked about if our audience leans towards techniques or projects. OK, so that's a great question. I think technique sells better.
I would love to say it's project in fact specifically around quilts sadly some of our our project or classes that are very pattern specific don't always do as well as a technique class. So I think some of that could be like if it doesn't catch the right style of the person or whatever you know like that's not my jam then they they're not interested, the other thing I do think that happens a lot is if you're say selling the pattern.
There's a lot of people that are like, you know, I really don't need a class. I just want the pattern. Now I can't see how the sales of that pattern, especially if it's not a C &T pattern or we don't have a distribution contract arrangement with it. I can't see if our marketing of the course with the pattern affects just pattern sales. We have a bad class and
I do know that she got, like I do know sometimes that a lot of times our content makers will say like, I got a lot of orders for that pattern after we marketed the class with the pattern. So there were maybe people not interested in the class part, just the pattern. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:27.694)
Let's say technique, technique, technique.
Yeah, we did actually an event. This was years ago, was around the holidays. And it had all these different great, I thought it was awesome, like great projects. I mean, now I am a total like multi crafter. I want to try my hand at everything. So for me, it really appealed. And it just didn't sell as well. And I think because it was very project specific. Yeah.
want to make it really clear to everybody here that CNT and Creative Spark are not just in the quilting box. You all have all different kinds of crafts and needle arts and other things that you offer. for those of you who aren't quilters who are here, there is most definitely room for you with CNT.
Yeah. So when showing a technique, is it good to actually show sewing happening? I think if what you're showing is critical to the technique of how to do it, then yes, show the sewing. Don't show a long amount of sewing. Definitely speed it up. But if you're showing like how to get set up on the machine for success, like that perfect quarter inch, definitely show the machine. Show sewing a little piece, hold it up.
measure, show how it works. You know, anything that's going to set your students up for success is what you want to show.
Speaker 1 (41:58.348)
Yeah, I'm going to build on that. think also knowing your audience. So if you're like, if your class is really geared towards a more like advanced beginner or intermediate person, you probably don't need to sit and show how to perfect your quarter inch or maybe it's a very quick part of it because your assumption is that these people already know that. So I feel like finding that fine line is really interesting. I also would say around our events,
If you are applying for 2026, I'm always looking for intermediate to content. And it's one of the things that we get on our feedback. But I also understand it's kind of hard to like always know what your audience, like what their background information is, but we would be able to like communicate that like this, this presentation is really geared towards like, you know, somebody with confident, like quilting skills or beyond the basics or whatever.
Yeah.
So I think knowing that you don't need to start at square one every thing that you do at the end.
And one thing I did want to mention is we are doing a huge push as soon as our new website is done being built. We're not sure when that's going to be. We're hoping by sometime in March at this point. But we're combining CreativeSpark's sales on the same platform as CNT because there's a lot of issues with doing sales on CreativeSpark. If you're one person doing sales, it's easy to do, but they don't have
Speaker 2 (43:34.144)
a real shopping cart. And so we want to make it so that it's easier for our customers to find things. So we're combining the platforms on one site. Everything will continue to be delivered on the Thinkific platform, just not sold. But the cool thing about that is it allows us to do a lot more. Like Sophie said, say that you have a unique pattern and you want to do a course on Creative Spark.
but we don't make the pattern, we can sign a distribution arrangement and distribute the e-pattern for you. So we're trying to come up with lots of new and different ways. We're also setting up an affiliate program. So all of our courses will have affiliate links that people can promote, including the instructor. So it's a way for the instructors to make even more money on their courses because we're all about that.
You know, we're constantly evolving and coming up with new ideas and new ways of doing things. And this is just our most recent one.
I love all the things creative spark is cool. Are there other?
I think it'll be February.
Speaker 1 (44:43.394)
Yeah, any other questions?
I have one you mentioned earlier. Actually, I saw a hand up there. Who had a hand up? The other question I want to ask you that because this I'm deep down this rabbit hole right now. Tell me a couple of the things that you are using AI for to streamline your workflow to make life easier for you and what you do that, especially if it
yeah, you can ask.
Speaker 3 (45:13.528)
can apply to any of us. Wear all the hats, business people.
So I was sort of, we started an AI group early last year.
I wasn't part of it, by the way. I was probably way too, like.
No. Yeah, you know what?
No AI. So we started a group within the organization, one person from each department, and we started working on it. And one of the first things, and we've used ChatGPT, which we now have like an enterprise account for two people on our team. We use Adobe AI, which allows us to look at the PDFs and generate content from those, like the PDFs of the books.
Speaker 2 (45:53.964)
And then we also use Google Gemini AI. So we're using three different platforms. We're testing all of them for different reasons. Google Gemini, if you have a Google workspace, it stays in your own little bucket. It's never used for the large language learning models, which is how AI has been created. And so we've used it for creating marketing content.
especially on books and products that have been out for a while. And we do that either by asking ChatGPT or Google Gemini or the Adobe AI.
And I think what Amy's saying, she's bringing up something, and I'm going to just reiterate it in a little bit. Like we use ChatGPT Enterprise Edition because of the protection of the content you're putting in there. So if you're using free ChatGPT, just know it's learning off of your content and your content now could be essentially reused in a way in other people's stuff. So you have to be kind of aware of how AI works.
so yeah, that would be something just to be aware of. And I don't know about the next paid level, so I can't speak to that, but we use an enterprise version. Okay. So things I do with it, I make scripts. I'm, I'm loving the scripts and I do keep track of my prompts. So, I work on landing page copy, but I have very specific process of how I do it. Pinterest pin,
titles for the pins, Pinterest descriptions, emails, multiple different emails, different timing of emails. I'm using it for, okay, just like I asked the other day, like, hey, here's this event we're doing. And I was like, what are some fresh poll ideas or like interactive?
Speaker 1 (47:55.052)
story ideas and it was really cool. Like some of the stuff it came up with, it was just super concise and easy to find. Could we have created that? We could have, it would have us so much longer just to jump off of. naming things too. Becky Goldsmith said, I don't know what to name this pattern. And I stuck the picture in and I said, give me like 12 names of what you would call this quilt.
And they gave like a bunch of great names and then I sent them back to her and she was like, how did you do that so fast? And then I told her, yeah, that was kind of, go ahead, you what you're at.
So we use it to title our books. We will put the short description in and ask it. And it gives us a list of titles. You can say, me 10 titles, however many you need. If you are submitting to be a part of something like our live event, I was applying to be on a board. And it had a list of questions. And I put my resume, some cover letters.
Yes, there we go.
Speaker 2 (48:58.766)
And then I put it into chat GPT, the non private version, and I asked it to answer these list of questions and it filled out the whole thing for me. And what would have taken me probably a couple hours took me about 10 minutes of review before I put it together and sent it off.
I do though really review what I put, what comes out. think like you have to be really careful and then also realize like especially with quilting where they're like or whatever crafting like if there's specific things it doesn't understand. So that's really important. It also tends to love certain words which I will have a whole list of words I tell that can't use anymore.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (49:41.326)
It's an evolving process that you do. I do the same thing with titles. I usually come up with 20 to start with, title, subtitle, and I feed it a ton of information first, and then I rearrange it, copy the things I like, put it in, say, now build on these titles and give me 20. So I end up with an iteration of 80 before I find the one that I never would have thought of on my own. So a lot of times if you create foundation documents, if you...
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (50:10.53)
teach it who you are and what you are before. Like I uploaded, I have 15 years of newsletter essays I've written. I didn't upload them all. I uploaded a lot to teach it, to use my voice, right? And there's ways to organize it. know, it's whole thing. It's amazing what it can do. But again, it's a tool. You use it well, you learn how to use it well, and it will serve you well.
Yes, and I think really, you know, one of the fastest growing jobs right now are prompt writers, asking questions and saving those questions. And we have a prompt library where we save everything because it's like, you know, even things like write me a long description of our product, considering that I'm a marketing manager who's been doing this for 20 years. I'm an industry expert.
And I want the tone to be fun, but not silly. Like super, super detailed before you even ask the question. So you, it's really.
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1 (51:20.706)
Yeah, or you say, be silly and you end up with a script on a color fortune teller giving advice on color.
Which is what I did recently.
So yeah, I mean, I will come up with really like, and they came up with the most random cool to me. I'm quirky. like, I'm like, that's hilarious. Like we will go with them. So yeah.
There's a lot of stuff you could do. Another thing that I've been having fun, I'm a verbal processor. with chat GPT's advanced model, you can have, I have a chat called Jarvis that I opened in the mornings and I gave it a really cool accent. And it's my Butler. And every day I talk through ideas. I, and it's just entirely verbal. So, it has helped me like,
OK, out of all the things we talked about, summarize this, keep a list. What are some action items you can pull out? What are some things I need to know in order to complete those action items? Like having an actual virtual assistant that, as you build this chat, it gets to know you. it's been, I told it I have ADD. And it's been like, OK, did you do this and this? Let's keep this simple. Are you focused on this? Here's one thing.
Speaker 3 (52:42.57)
And it's been really, really amazing. So Jarvis, Roxanne, Jarvis is just ChatGPT. I just named the Chat Jarvis.
like specific chats you revisit and stuff like that so that
Right. So one more thing on that exact same line is if you're trying to figure out how to put together an outline or something like that, you literally can log into Google or Zoom and ask it to create the notes for what you're doing. It'll create all the notes. And then you can put that through an AI and say, summarize it, create a script, create the outline.
There's so many tools out there to make it easier than it has ever been before.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (53:36.982)
I've been using it for these videos. I'll take it and put the transcript in and just say, me a bullet point of what we talked about. And that's what goes up under the, and I used to take notes and type them all in and exactly three minutes.
Yeah. Notice Brenda asked a question though on how we handle communication with students for future classes. I'm not totally sure what that meant Brenda. I'm so sorry. Does somebody else know what that means?
Yes.
Speaker 3 (54:07.154)
You have a course that's evergreen and a student asked the question, how does the teacher answer that? That's what yeah.
Like how in the discussion. Okay, okay, just checking. Okay, yes, so the way the discuss, it's through the Thinkific platform, we enter your email on that's attached to your course. And when somebody asks a question, you get an email, and it actually has a link in the email for you to click on and then you reply, it will tell you like which like lesson it asked you in. like, there's also a little context, like, like if you're like, what are they talking about?
But you're like, they're asking it in this lesson. So that can be helpful. Honestly, people don't use the discussion rooms enough. Like we are constantly like asking people to. had one instructor who even made an additional video asking people to please ask her questions because she really wanted to interact with people. So that would be one of them.
In my experience since way before craftsy was even a thing, there's a lot of people who sign up who never even show up. That's okay. There's a lot of people who sign up and lurk. That's okay. As an evergreen on demand kind of teacher, you just get used to there's a small percentage of people who actually will interact with you. And as the class goes on, most of those questions get answered in the chat.
Yeah, yeah, and that's what's nice that they're there. Okay. I just want to really quickly I think what Kim was asking because I said we said to me about the distribution thing so we don't publish like individual patterns But if you had a class and you had a pattern we can distribute your pattern for you Because it's a connected to the class if that makes sense. Mm-hmm I just go I'm go to the to the boss lady and make sure so, okay
Speaker 2 (55:55.118)
Is that
Speaker 1 (56:00.526)
then Mel Beach, themes and when will they be up for 2026? Probably summer. I have some more planning to do. are you sticking? Yes. We're always seeking new instructors. thank you, Cookie. Love to have you. yeah. So, and I'll make sure again, like we give you the right links to lyrics so you can, but also
You're welcome to email me as even directly as well or Crave Spark email. I that would be PDF.
And then for the pattern
Yes, it would be PDF only. That's right. Yeah.
I feel it.
Speaker 1 (56:45.004)
Those are all good questions. Any other ones?
Those are great questions. Thank you so much.
and watching the chat. I think you guys have addressed everything as well. So you all can see just from listening to and seeing Amy and Sophia that they are kind, generous, intelligent business people. So we are so grateful that you are open to working with us and being here with us. So yes, of course, contact us.
always grateful you invite us.
Thank you so much, Lyric.
Speaker 1 (57:18.606)
Working with you and hopefully we see a lot of you at H &H or next year's quilt market or if you're in the Bay Area.
Lovely to be
You don't get out much.
yeah.
Isn't it lovely to be part of an industry that's collaborative and competitive and make that environment happen with the way we interact with each other, the way we're generous with each other, the way we work to serve our communities. If we keep that at the forefront of our mind all the time, we're business people and it's really nice to make an income and everything. That's important. But at the core of why we're doing it
Speaker 3 (58:01.41)
This way, it's because we love the people that we serve. We bring creativity and goodness into the lives of so many people. And working together to do that really does make the world a better place.
Yes, yes, I totally agree with you and Cookie is asking for how to contact us, but Lyric, I know you'll share that.
It is also you could cookie just creative spark at ctpub.com. Yeah.
Here we go. Yeah. But thank you so much for having us. We really love being here and you had a great time. Thank you Lyric and thank you all for hanging out with us today. It's really been wonderful.
It's been our pleasure. appreciate it so much. This recording will be up tomorrow. And I've got an email right now with a list of, can you send this link and this link, just to remind you to send it to me. And those links will all be in there along with the AI generated bullet point list we talked about. So look in the Academy under Campus Commons and you'll find this recording there by tomorrow. We love you all.
Speaker 2 (58:59.534)
Awesome.
Speaker 3 (59:11.02)
You're amazing. The things you make the world a better place. Teachers.
Same. Actually, we love all of your students because seriously, lot of, mean, really like, I love makers. So yeah, anytime I can help you all move your businesses forward, let me know. Yeah, definitely. like lyrics here for that too.
All right.
Bye!
Categories: : Podcast