Convertkit's 2024 Craft + Commerce Recap

that we learned at Craft and Commerce and all of our key takeaways. So just give us a little bit and okay, we're live on one. Here we go. Live on both of them. We're good to go. Sweet. Okay, Amanda, Craft and Commerce. What were your top, what was your top takeaway? Let's start there and then work back.

Oof. Oh my gosh. Top takeaway. I mean, I would say Then the soundbite that would probably be great here is the phrase enjoyment is efficiency. And Ali Abdaal said this in, um, a small group I was part of, and then also in his like main stage talk. And he was not the originator of this phrase, but he really brought it forward and talked about how he's really put an emphasis, uh, on that very thing in his team. And just like, we don't have to do everything by the book and to— these are my words— like game the algorithm and optimize for views. Like Let's optimize for fun and make sure that we're actually enjoying what we're doing. I mean, we're all very familiar with like creator burnout and just giving and giving and giving and giving and giving because we feel like we're supposed to and we should. So I have this note on my desk that says stop shoulding on yourself. And so I think that was sort of like the key takeaway is stop doing what others are telling you to do or you feel like you should do because this person does it or that person does it or that's going to optimize for views, likes, engagement, and social media growth, or whatever the case may be. And make sure that at its core, what you're doing is you're enjoying it and having fun and cultivating an environment, even if it's just you or you and a VA or you and a team, where work is a really great, safe, and fun and enjoyable place to be. And as it turns out, that's also when we do our best, most productive work. So it's kind of this virtuous cycle of creativity and play and fun and enjoyment rather than the vicious cycle of content creation optimized for the algorithm burnout. So I thought that was very interesting.

Yeah. Yeah. I loved his little session. That was like such a, like just heartwarming to be like, oh, there's more to this than just like content, the content cycle of like produce, produce, produce. So yeah, I loved his like inspirational little session. Was there anything that you learned or found surprising in the creator space that you learned at Craft and Commerce?

You know, obviously we were there as like the operational experts, like we're the ones running these businesses. And so the talks that were given and stuff like that, they were all really, really excellent, but they were not necessarily new findings for us. And so what I thought to be Or I'll point out a couple things I thought were really, really interesting. Um, I had not met Bonnie Christine before. She's a surface pattern designer turned like creator CEO, and I was just blown away. I heard her speak 2 times. She is so— she's like bursting with integrity and, and goodness and just effusive kindness, and I was just blown away by that. And she is successful, so she has stayed grounded, and she seems like an unbelievably good leader. She gets her hands dirty in the business. She's not just like, you do it, I'm only gonna make content, you know, like the antithesis of that. She, she seemed like a leader who leads by example, uh, and so I was just blown away by kind of the vibe that she gives off, her stage presence, what she was able to communicate, and just her absolute, like, genuineness. Is that a word? I don't know. Um, Cody Sanchez, uh, her main stage talk was incredible. I mean, She has done some amazing things in the creative economy. I have mad respect for her. Got to spend a lot of time with Zalie Barkley. Man, I love Zalie so much. She's been on the Level Up Creators podcast. She is a camera confidence coach. If you don't follow her, stop what you're doing and follow her right now. Kind of a similar vibe on the front of just like effusive integrity. And her husband was there too. And he was super cool to hang out with and loved basketball. So I had someone to talk basketball with, which was great. We had a great time with Mighty Networks. Gina Bianchini was there and Jane, their SVP of marketing, and a couple other of their team members. They were just incredibly kind people, which I think is a huge reflection of like Gina's leadership. She's a co-founder at Mighty Networks. Gina's talk was amazing about kind of the future of AI and community and bringing community online back to real life. Like we kind of, it's sort of this interesting social dynamic now, how we like start relationships online and then not so much on person. Like in person, we don't start them in person. Sometimes we'll meet in person, obviously dating apps and all that kind of stuff. But like they're— the AI technology that they're leveraging on Mighty Networks is really, really helpful in helping people do in-person meetups and meet people that are like-minded and things like that. So I think that's cool. Tim Grahl was there. Shout out to Tim Grahl. He is a member of Creator School, CEO of Storygrid. They help people write Um, leave their, leave their legacy through, uh, fiction books, which I thought was super cool. John Mies was there. Um, he did a great job, had a book launch called, um, oh man, I'm gonna botch it, John. I'm so sorry. Service Sales as Service or something like that. It's something like, we'll put the link in, in the, in the chat here. But, uh, he was just absolutely incredibly kind guy, super, super smart, does a great job with high-ticket programs. For authors and thought leaders in particular. Chanel Basilio, if y'all don't follow her and you have an email newsletter, which you probably do if you're watching this, and if you don't, you should. She does— she basically reverses— reverse engineers how creators have grown their newsletter following and puts out some really, really fascinating content. So props to her for that. And yeah, I just had a great time with other partners. Met Brian Feroldi. I know he's Huge on LinkedIn, like 150,000 followers. So that was fun to meet him in person. Super nice, kind, genuine guy. Shout out to Tom Gibson, the whole team over at Showit and Interact Quiz. I thought that was a very interesting company, super cool from an engagement standpoint. So y'all check out that company if you haven't already. And others that I'm inadvertently missing, but I thought from a an experience perspective. The in-person networking connections and solidifying relationships that have started online was what was most valuable. But the soundbite that I came in— I came away with again was what I shared a moment ago: enjoyment is efficiency. So that's my—

Yeah, I think like it's, it's interesting, like going to the conference and realizing there's people who are like, I want to be a creator, but I haven't taken the leap yet to like I have millions of people that follow me and I'm an expert in my field and like just the mixture of all of that. And so like, if you're watching this and you're like, I don't know if I necessarily would be like a creator, but I'm a thought leader and that like, don't ever like miss out on those networking opportunities and like getting connected with the right people from the beginning is like such a huge help. I think what I was reminded of, even as you were talking about Bonnie, is that social media has given like women especially, but all kinds of people, like the opportunity to grow businesses and be like these crazy business people that maybe in like the traditional sense would've never had that opportunity to like get to that level. And I just think that it's so crazy that we have like handfuls of people that are like, oh, like maybe they didn't go to college or maybe they didn't even finish high school and yet they're running these massive like social media accounts. accounts and have become like these amazing business people. So like, just be inspired like that. It's, it's just, it's just crazy that social media has afforded like crazy opportunity for maybe even marginalized people. So I was, I'm always inspired by that. And you ran a workshop. Do you want to give us just like a quick 2-minute synopsis on your workshop?

Yeah, I basically introduced the bowtie funnel to the creator economy. Like, we're all familiar with that, like, Funnel, it's like top of funnel sources, middle of funnel, bottom of funnel, and then make a purchase and then the funnel is over. But if you turn that on its side and think about customer acquisition as what was the whole upright funnel, and then the middle of the bowtie funnel is just that first purchase. And you think about a product ladder from there and you have fewer people on the left side of the funnel that actually come through to the right side. But the deal is they're spending more and more and more money with you because you have this amazing product ladder and you are solving pervasive painful problems. Over and over and over again. Like you're continuously providing value. You have recurring revenue products and services that you're offering. And so yeah, I think we'll have the probably recording available maybe as a lead magnet or something like that. I don't know. We've already have it up in Creator School, of course. My mom, my mom, she was the first, she was on it, listened to it right away. Appreciate that. Yeah, that was quick takeaway was like, here's how to view your business. And pretty much every part of a creator business fits on a bowtie funnel because once you have your product ladder in place, obviously you're continuously optimizing But you can look at your whole business within this bowtie funnel. So I'll be putting out like a lot more content on that front because that really resonated with folks. Um, but yeah, the workshop was how to think and act like a top CEO. So you have to know how to understand and view your business in order to do that. And we talked about how to make strategic decisions and mental models and quantitative metrics, all sorts of stuff like that. It was, it was dense.

Yeah, a lot of good things happened at Craft and Commerce, and it was an amazing experience. It was my first time going and Level Up Creator School's first time going, and so it's just really cool to connect with all these people. Amanda, do you have any parting shot for us?

Go do things in person. Meet people in person. If you're only meeting them online, you can really, really further those relationships, and not just for business purposes, but just for life and human purposes. We know that content creation can be a really, really lonely process. And so knowing that there's other people sort of in the trenches with you and making new connections with them and coming out of your studio to meet humans in person and learn new things, eat great food, hang out in a cool town, that was great.

Yeah, awesome. Well, thank you guys for joining us. It is always a pleasure and we are always honored that you spend time with us here on our lives. So drop any of your questions, comments, Anything that maybe you learned at Craft and Commerce that you didn't hear us already mention, and we will connect with you there.

Oh, hold on. I do have one more thing. Sorry. Did you already hit off?

No, I didn't.

Okay, awesome. I got to meet Amanda Gitts. We just announced this huge partnership with her on Tuesday. And so that was absolutely incredible. She is an incredible human being, single mom, 3 lovely kiddos, and we are working to take her from $10K MRR to $50K MRR by the end of this year. And so I think that post had a lot of reach, which is great. So hopefully y'all are all following along on that journey, but we are super pumped to come alongside Amanda and help. Speaking of, like Aaron was talking about, like creator economy has just like completely blown open opportunities for people who maybe have not had equity in a business or are not going to make the multi-hundred thousand dollar executive salary in order to save for retirement, much less like generational wealth. And so we are going for not only like massive financial stability and security and abundance for Amanda Goetz. But we're working toward like a generational wealth, you know, kind of laying the foundation for, for that. And so it's going to be an absolutely incredible project where you're working in public. And so you'll get to see like everything under the hood with how we do consulting at Level Up Creators and the types of things that we're teaching in Creator School. We're just gonna kind of pull back the veil and show you what it's like. It's not just going to be Uh, the pretty and shiny things that mostly like appear on social media, but it's going to be how, how to assess your business, how to make decisions, the tools that you need to do it, the money it actually takes to get there, all the considerations and things like that. So definitely follow along on that journey. We're putting out multiple times a week update on social media. We'll be putting out like newsletter editions, webinars, podcast episodes, uh, and everything. It's going to be a very, very interesting experiment and we will be extracting sort of like key actionable takeaways for you at every step of the way. So we don't expect you to like deduce and reverse engineer, how does this apply to my business? We will actually tell you for sure. But follow along, follow Amanda. We will drop Amanda's LinkedIn profile link here so that you can follow. Yeah, we're super excited. So thanks for joining us on the journey. And sorry, Erin, back to you.

No, that's totally okay. I'm like, oh, get Amanda, get— I'm trying to get on LinkedIn. Hold on, give me 5 seconds and I'll drop it in because we do have some people on live. So I want to make sure I get everything over to them. Amanda is amazing. We're getting some comments.

Yes, Amanda is super amazing. She's a wonderful, wonderful human. I have my cheat sheet pulled up over here, like the speaker page on ConvertKit. Amanda, I'm sure she'll— I bet she'll speak next year, maybe about this project. Oh, we should do like a co-workshop. Okay.

Yeah, that'd be awesome. Call it The Amanda Show or Amanda

Squared or something like that. I don't

know.

Um, there's a lot of, there's so many special and fun directions we could take this, but we'll see.

I stole that joke from Natalie.

So. The Amanda Show. That would just be absolutely amazing. Um, but yeah, so we're excited about that partnership. So thank you for, for dropping that in, Erin. Appreciate it.

Yep. Okay, sweet. Anything else? Are we missing anything? Have I forgotten anything?

Probably missed some things, but we're gonna— we can leave it at that. Put a pin in it.

They're saying, no, I meant Amanda Northcutt is amazing.

Thank you. Amanda Goetz is also amazing, to be really, really clear. Very amazing person.

Awesome. Well, thank you guys for following along, and we will see you next time.

Thanks.

See you, Rose.