SPI 445: Courses, Community, and Courage—How Sam and Joe Built a Successful Online Business with Mum

445 SPI 445: Courses, Community, and Courage—How Sam and Joe Built a Successful Online Business with Mum

Pat Flynn:
In this episode of the Smart Passive Income Podcast, I’m excited to introduce to you two brothers, Sam and Joe, both students of mine who are absolutely crushing it in a niche that honestly, is really surprising that anybody could do this well online in that niche. Niche, niche, I interchange these. But these guys, they’re from England, so I got to go niche today. Textileartist.org. Textile art. Do you even know what that is? That’s art using fabric, and thread, and string, and making these cool creations. And who knew that this kind of business could do so well online? And it couldn’t have happened to a better family, to be honest.

Pat:
And what’s really cool is they have a story about how they did this for their mom and how they got the whole family involved. And it’s one to pay attention to. An amazing success story. And it really just shows that with enough experimentation—because some of their first ideas completely bombed, didn’t work—but, we’ll see how they landed on textileartist.org, what they’ve done to monetize it, and how they took that monetization strategy to a completely new level, to a point where I’m baffled. And you’re going to have to listen and pay attention to see just how successful things are going for them right now. It’s amazing. You’re going to love it. Sweet story to go behind it. Here we go.

Announcer:
Welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, where it’s all about working hard now so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he still gets nervous before hitting record, Pat Flynn.

Pat:
What’s up, you all. Welcome, and thank you so much for joining me today in session 445 of the Smart Passive Income Podcast. My name is Pat Flynn here to help you make more money, save more time, and help more people too. And this is one of those episodes that I know once you listen all the way through, it’s going to be a classic. Like episode 122 with Shane and Jocelyn Sams, two people, two success stories within a family that continue to get talked about today.

Pat:
And Shane and Jocelyn have become favorites here. And Sam and Joe will become favorites here too. We’re going to hear their story about how they built their business for their mom, and together are crushing the textile artist world. Staying very genuine, but taking it by storm. Here we go. Sam and Joe, welcome to the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Thank you both for joining me today.

Sam Pitcher:
Thank you so much for inviting us.

Joe Pitcher:
Yeah. I can’t believe we’re here, to be honest. Slightly surreal. You’ve accompanied me on many, many a car journey. We’ve been listening to your podcast, I think pretty much since day one. So it’s amazing to be here, and as I say, slightly surreal.

Pat:
That’s amazing. Well, I’m excited because I know there’s a lot of people who are listening to the show and are hoping to come on the show one day. And I love to feature success stories who come from previous podcast listeners. And now you guys have this amazing business, your mom is involved, and I want to unpack how this all really started. But Sam, why don’t you give us a little bit, we’ll start with you, of an origin story of how you got to the business that you have today.

Sam:
Well actually, funnily enough, just going down from what Joe was talking about there, I think it was in the summer of 2011-ish, I think, and I would get these phone calls from Joe sometimes in the morning on his drive to work, and then sometimes again in the evening, which would be, “Dude, you’ve got to listen to this podcast, and with the SPI.” Along the same sort of time as we were listening to SPI and getting all these ideas about creating a business, we were trying all these different, crazy ideas.

Sam:
And along the same time, our mum, who had come back to create now, after like a 30-year break away, had started to build this real reputation as a textile artist within the UK textile-art world. And so we were going to see all these amazing artists, and see all this great artwork, and Mum’s exhibitions; but, it still hadn’t really occurred to us that this was something that we could do as a business, that it’s something that would work in the online space, because textile art is very much seen as something that’s very much offline. There’s a lot of in-person workshops, there’s a lot of in-person exhibitions, and a lot of in-person events.

Pat:
Almost like it wouldn’t be the same if it was online, like the art doesn’t speak the same, the experiences don’t match up like they do in-person?

Sam:
Well, yeah, because it’s a really kind of tactile medium, and there’s a real belief that you have to see it in the flesh, which it is true. But what the second best thing is, if you can’t get to see it in the flesh, to see it online is a great replacement for that. We realized that it was massively underserved online. And so I remember ringing my mum up going, “Mum, look, I think all this stuff that we’ve been learning about could really work for your arts. I think you should make a textile art website.”

Sam:
Bearing in mind mom was close to 60 at that time, she was like, “I wouldn’t know where to begin. And you guys have been learning about this stuff, so why don’t you do it?” After that, we asked Mum to get in touch with a handful of her friends, artists that she knew, sent out a bunch of questions. And actually, again, we watched a video of yours that was like, make a WordPress site in 15 minutes or something along those lines. And that’s how we made the first version of the website. And hit publish and that was it, really.

Pat:
That’s crazy. Can you explain for everybody listening, Joe, I’ll go to you, what is exactly textile art? And I know this is something that your mom was very involved with much of her life, and now to bring it online—I think we want to provide context for what exactly that is if you can.

Joe:
Sure. I mean, I think the easiest definition is a comparison, really. If you think of a painter uses paint and canvas to create their art, and a sculptor uses clay and their hands, a textile artist is using fabric and threads to create textile art in its simplest form. Everyone knows the Mona Lisa. And if you can imagine that painting made with fabric and thread rather than paint, you’re getting somewhere close to what a piece of textile art would be.

Joe:
But I think what I’d like to add is that one of the issues when you’re trying to describe textile art, which I probably should say is known as fiber art in the US and in lots of other parts of the world too, but one of the issues is that it encompasses a really wide and very eclectic range of techniques, and processes, and mediums.

Joe:
There are artists making beautifully intricate, miniature stitched work. And then there are artists creating huge installations on the side of buildings. Lots of textile artists are also working in mixed media, like Mum, who creates many figurative work, but does incorporate paint, and pencil, and lots of different things into her art. And so that’s how I would define textile art.

Pat:
Great. So Textileartist.org is the website. And you go there, it’s a blog. There’s a lot of articles about certain artists and a lot of this artwork you can see that we’re talking about. And I also see you have something called the Stitch Club and online courses. And this is a real business. And I definitely want to dive into that.

Pat:
But Joe, maybe you can continue on Sam’s story about the start of all this. You set up this blog, what were some of the first things you did? And I’d love to help the audience gauge, when did this actually start to take off or even seem like it was possible, that this could turn into something more than just another one of those things we start and just experiment with and maybe move on from?

Joe:
Well, I think it’s been a long road. As Sam said, it was back in 2011, that the seed of the idea was born, really. And then from there, we’ve tried lots of different things. I think it’s fair to say it took us a while to know who the site was for. And I think we spent a lot of time at the beginning with that kind of naive notion of, “build it and they will come.” And of course, a lot of the early things that we did, we built and they didn’t come. I think to begin with, we thought the site was for people who admired textile art and possibly wanted to buy textile art. So we even talked about making an online gallery where you could purchase artwork from different artists.

Joe:
And then I think we made a few misguided assumptions along the way and we imposed our own goals, I think on our audience that we wanted to take what was essentially a passion of Mum’s and now a passion of ours and turn that into a business. And I think we assumed that the people who were creating art or making art wanted to turn their passion into a business as well. And the truth is although we … Well, I should make a distinction. There are some amazing professional artists that we work with, who absolutely are making a living from their art. The majority of our community are actually people who just love the process of making textile art and what that gives them. And so along the way, we’ve taken all of these different paths.

Joe:
And eventually, a few years ago, we took the plunge and decided we were going to make our first online course once we’d got to know our audience a bit and knew that actually, they would look to learn from someone like Mum who is very passionate, very skilled. And to give them the opportunity to share in her expertise was something that we felt that we should facilitate. And so that’s when we started developing the first online course with Mum.

Pat:
That’s great. Thank you for that. Sam, can you speak to, how did you eventually find out who your audience was? Was there any specific thing or method or a strategy that you did to finally discover who your audience was? Because that’s obviously the most important thing before you create anything to sell, it’s just who are they? How did you find out who they were eventually?

Sam:
As we were making these products, I think we made a little step further along the line of to find out more about the audience. But actually, it’s funny you should say that again because it brings it back to an episode of SPI that we listened to with Ryan Levesque, I think. And it was a revelation to us to survey the audience. I think we’d spent like six months making this really beautiful eBook. After we realized that they wanted to learn more about the processes of making art, we’d spent all this time making this eBook.

Sam:
And again, it was a relative success, but it really wasn’t ever going to make a business selling these books that were taking such a long time to produce. And I think at the end of that, we were like, oh, we know we want to make this online course, but we sent out these surveys and we started to get back this more detailed descriptions about all the audience’s struggles and their hopes, I guess, and dreams. And obviously, we also started to have phone conversations with them, which again, deepened our relationships with our audience. And I think that was really the key for us to find out more about who our audience were or who the people in the community were.

Pat:
That’s huge. And a big shout out again to Ryan Levesque, author of the book Ask, which I can’t remember what episode number that was, but reading that book was a big revelation for me and my businesses as well. And it just makes sense when you think about it now. It’s like, oh yeah, ask what they want. But we don’t do that often. I don’t know why. But then this is what I’ve been trying to teach in Will It Fly? And my other courses and such. So thank you for mentioning that.

Pat:
And phone conversations, I mean, what a beautiful way to literally have a direct connection with who it is you’re serving. And you can think about them when you are creating. It’s not just a made-up avatar anymore. They have names, they have real struggles and challenges, and you can consider them when you are creating. Joe, when it came to, okay, we have this idea now for an online course, how did you know what the course was going to be about? And tell me the creation of it and what that was like?

Joe:
Well, we took our lead again from Mum and her work, but also from what we learned from the survey. So I think myself and Sam were definitely, as I mentioned, the facilitators of this conversation between Mum and the community. And we discovered that lots of the community were doing lots of different workshops and lots of different techniques, and some of them … Now, there are people at different stages of their creative journey within our community, and I think we’ll go onto this hopefully later, but the Stitch Club, I think serves a different set of people.

Joe:
But the courses, I think what we’ve learned was there were these people who were, as I say, trying out lots of different techniques, engaging in lots of different processes, but actually struggling to find their own visual vocabulary, their own pathway through creating textile art that felt really personal to them and could express their own voice. And Mum having worked tirelessly over the last few years at this point to find her own voice and develop her own voice was pretty much an expert in this area, in using quite simple traditional hand-stitched techniques in a really inventive way.

Joe:
So the first course, Exploring Texture and Pattern, is all about that, really. It’s all about taking a handful of simple traditional techniques and using them to express yourself creatively in a really contemporary interesting way.

Pat:
What was the price point of that course when you launched it? Do you remember?

Joe:
I think the first time we launched it, it was 250 pounds. I’m not sure what that translates to in dollars.

Pat:
So it’s not one of these cheapo $27 things. It’s a high value, but it’s what your mum has learned and what she has created and everything within her put into this for others. And they’re saving themselves time. And that’s very valuable. I’m curious, Sam, in terms of how your mom is involved in all this, how responsive was she when you were like, “We’re going to do an online course. We need you to film these videos.” How was she? Because she’s being a little bit older, a lot of people of that age aren’t really receptive to, oh, I don’t want to get behind the camera and the technology stuff, like can’t you just write about it or something? How did she reply to this idea?

Sam:
I think she was pretty enthusiastic about it. To be honest with you. I think that she didn’t fully understand how it would work, but I think she trusted us and went along for the ride really, I think.

Pat:
That’s so cool. I love that. And I wish I could meet her at some point because for those of you listening, Joe and Sam are in my Accelerator Program and we talk quite a bit about their journey and their process and their business moving forward. And they’ve just done so many amazing things. And we’re going to unpack more of that in just a minute. But I still want to go to this first online course.

Pat:
So Sam, tell me what it was like after the course was created, Mum’s videos, you figure out the tech for how to sell this thing. It’s very difficult sometimes for us online creators to sell for the first time, especially after giving away information for free and for providing value for a long time. And I know you had these eBooks and such as well, but this is a significant price point. How was the response? How were your feelings? I want to know what that day was like for you when you launched that. And how? What was the marketing behind it?

Sam:
I mean, it was a really long drawn out process. So I think by the end, we were just like, right, we’ve got to get this done. We’ve got to get it finished. So it was actually quite high pressure, I think. Had we thought about it too much at the time, I think we probably would have procrastinated even longer about getting it out there. I think we definitely felt uncomfortable selling, to begin with. Once we’d seen the value and the impact, I think—the online course was really the first time we’d seen this kind of real impact within the audience that we could have this kind of positive, even to some points, life changing for some of the students on the course—. So I think once we’d learnt the value and what Mum’s teaching and what the actual creative challenges within the course could do for people, I think we became a lot more comfortable with it. But it was an exciting time definitely. And actually, we couldn’t believe the response. It was one of those times as well where we also saw the first real, I think-

Pat:
Significant earnings coming in?

Sam:
Significant earnings. But also, the response of the audience as well or the community was something we hadn’t felt before. We’d really, I think hit upon something that really served a significant benefit to people in our community.

Pat:
That’s cool. Joe, can you, or are you able to share how well it did and also perhaps a little bit more detail on how it was promoted to the audience that you had built?

Joe:
Sure. I mean, just picking up on what Sam said, I think at that point, because we’d given so much away for free for years, which I think is significant, people were actually saying to us, thank God you’ve released this product. We want to give back. We want to get involved. So I think that’s one thing. But I think going back to your question, the way that we promoted the course to begin with is that we followed the Jeff Walker PLF launch style. So we released these three videos and a sales video. And Mum was teaching in these videos and leading the community up to the course and in terms of what the course was offering.

Joe:
Sort of teasing that in a way with these exercises that were related to the course and getting people into the mindset of doing a lot with a little, as I said, using these handful of techniques to really find your artistic creative voice. We had dabbled with that technique for selling before because we had worked with a couple of artists as affiliates prior to that, but this was the first time that I think we did it really well. I think this launch of this course with Mum, I felt like we knew the audience pretty well by this point. So we could speak to them exactly where they were at, I think, which meant that the first time we released it, I think we got about 400 students join that course the first time, which was absolutely crazy.

Pat:
So what was the reaction from Mum with the success of the course?

Joe:
I just don’t think she could believe it, really. I don’t think she could believe that it was happening. And also, what was crazy was … I mean, since then, since before the pandemic, Mum was flying around all over the world teaching workshops and giving talks, but I don’t think she’d ever felt like she’d reached as many people because we had students in Australia, students in America, and students in Europe, and I think she found all of that very, very exciting. And I mean, she loves the conversations she has with the students. She loves that personal interaction and giving feedback. So I think she was really in her element having these conversations online with people that she’d never met, but who felt like they knew her.

Pat:
That’s really cool. So Sam, I want to ask you about, okay, after this initial launch, was it a launch that had an end date to it and closed and then you worked with those students, or was it a course that was open for good at that point?

Sam:
So for founding members of that or founding students for Exploring Texture and Pattern, we actually did lifetime access to the course so they would get updates. Anytime that we did a new release or a new version, they would get that update. But I think we did a week-long cart open period and then we closed the cart. And then generally, I think students tend to finish the course within two to three months, but we can have students that keep coming back every time we do a new version of that.

Sam:
Because one of the things that we’ve learned about textile art and the benefits for people beyond creative fulfillment is that there’s also this kind of meditative quality to it where people talk about it as a form of self care. And so it is the sort of thing that people can keep coming back to and redoing the exercises time and time again. After that, I think we did another launch maybe six months afterwards, and we would give one year’s membership to all subsequent students.

Pat:
Cool. And then how long were you going this six months sequence? Because this was the only big product that you had and it was open, let people in, close, and then open again and let people in, and close. And I know from my own experience, that kind of business model, although it works, it’s tough to not see new income come in for that long. And then it puts even more pressure on the next launch. And I know that it gets in a lot of people’s heads, oh, I hope this next one’s going to be better. What if this one flops and that one was a flash in the pan? It can get kind of crazy. How long were you going in that sequence? And did you ever start to either doubt or feel struggle during that time of re-releasing, re-opening, re-closing?

Sam:
I mean, as amazing as it is to have such a great launch for us, when you’re waiting six months at a time for then more income to come in, actually, it makes it feel like every single launch is really make or break for the business because if you have a failure and it doesn’t do as well as you intend or you’d like to, then you’re waiting, it could be a year before you see any of the significant income come in. So we were always trying to think to ourselves, how can we make this into a slightly more sustainable model that isn’t make or break every single time?

Sam:
We did make the launches every single time, it was stressful, but really fortunate enough that people in our audience and within the community were really responsive to what we were doing. So actually, every time we did a launch, we were still accepting in 200 to 300 new students at a time. It’s a brilliant feeling obviously to have people that you know you’re making a significant impact on in their lives. But at the same time, it was quite stressful in the lead-up always to it.

Pat:
Joe, were there any conversations between you? And by the way, are you and Sam front-facing on the blog or is it just Mum and you’re behind the scenes? Do you guys show up, are you in the courses? How much are both of you involved?

Joe:
Well, in that first version of the course, we were very involved. We were very much the face of the business with Mum because I think one of the things that people relate to is the story and the fact that we’re a family. And also, it’s important to us that we are supporting Mum. That she’s not out there on her own. That we are helping her every step of the way because although she’s brilliant at what she does, lots of the technical aspects and the other parts of the business, myself and Sam are perhaps slightly more equipped to handle that stuff.

Joe:
But also, as I say, I think that Mum’s story and the way that she came back to textile because, I don’t know whether we’ve mentioned this, but Mum went away from textile for a long time. So she learned to stitch when she was a girl and then studied textile art and fashion at college. But then through running a business and raising a family, she went away from that and came back to it years later. And I think the audience really relates to that story. And the fact that me and Sam were there to support Mum during that time.

Pat:
In regards to having six months in between each of these launches and having each launch feel so serious, what kinds of discussions were you guys having to help fix this? Were you attempting to potentially put this on Evergreen at any point or come up with other products? Joe, can you speak to the kinds of discussions you had to help solve that problem?

Joe:
Yeah. I mean, we did experiment with an Evergreen version of the course, but I think going back to an earlier point, one of the reasons that first launch of the course and even the subsequent launches within the community, the internal launches, one of the reasons that they worked well was that the audience already trusted us, already knew us, already felt like they could relate to us and our story, and knew that what we were offering was … Myself and Sam worked really hard to go above and beyond even with the free stuff. Sometimes we tend too much towards perfectionism, but we’re trying our best to always over-deliver. So I think because of that, those internal launches worked well because they felt like they knew us.

Joe:
What didn’t work for us or what we didn’t find for the Evergreen was quite successful was that we were trying to appeal to new people. So we were advertising on Facebook, lead magnet, getting them into a sequence, and then trying to sell them the course. And we experimented with different lengths of sequence before we sold to them, but it just never really … I mean, we did sell some of them. We’ve had some students go through the Evergreen course who have absolutely loved the courses as well, but it never made the same impact. And so it never made the business sustainable. It never meant that we could have this kind of sustainable month-on-month income.

Pat:
And it’s cool that you tried it because this is what everybody says to do. Oh, you have this ongoing internal launch every so often, let’s make it Evergreen. Let’s make it passive. And as you’ll find, sometimes it just isn’t going to work out based on who your audience is and the style and all that stuff. So this is kind of where Sam and I started to get to know each other in this timeline. And Sam, you joined the Accelerator Program, and you came to San Diego, and you got to meet some of the other students, and we were throwing around a lot of ideas. And after one of the retreats, you went back home.

Pat:
And then all of a sudden, I hear that you’re thinking of starting this membership community and I’m like, oh, okay. That’s great. And then fast forward, just literally just a month or two later, here it is. I want to know what gave you the idea or what inspired you to go down this route. And then we’ll definitely talk about results and how it worked out or not in a moment, but where did this idea for the membership community come from? It is a great solution, but it’s not for everybody either. So tell us a little bit about the origin of that idea.

Sam:
Well, during the retreat with the Accelerator Group, it was mentioned that potentially, a good solution could be a membership. But I think we were a little bit resistant towards this idea because we knew how much work it was to create an online course, or certainly for us, the first course I think took us over a year to make, the second course that we’ve produced, I think again was about an eight month period. And I just thought to myself, oh my God, I’m not sure I can cope with doing something as big on a monthly basis. So I think I was thinking of it in a kind of perhaps the wrong terms.

Sam:
But anyway, so after that, Joe and I met up and we did this huge planning session right at the beginning of this year. And we were all set to do more launches of our two courses. We’d planned to do a launch every three months. And so actually, it was during that period that all the lock downs came into place. And actually, I’d flown to London to do this planning session with Joe, and I’ve recently moved to Denmark, and Denmark was closing its borders the day that I came back. And so it was like, well, what’s going on? Everybody was uncertain about what was happening, and so we were like, it doesn’t really feel right to be doing this course launch that we’d planned. It’s quite a significant investment for people.

Sam:
A lot of people were being furloughed or even losing their income. People in our audience were in the vulnerable category. So a lot of people would have been self-isolating, they wouldn’t have the people around them that they’d normally have. So we felt compelled to really do something to help out and try and encourage people to stay at home, and to try and encourage people to have a creative outlet during this period. And so we decided to do a seven-week free challenge. In fact, initially, it was actually only a five-week challenge where we got in touch with five different artists. We asked Mum to do the first one.

Sam:
In fact, because it was one of those things that we felt that people needed right now in that moment, we didn’t have time to procrastinate, we didn’t have time to strive for perfection, all the usual kind of pitfalls that we fell into. And so within two weeks, we had these series of creative challenges. We asked an artist to come in and teach a challenge during the week. And then at the end of the week, they would do a Q&A session with everyone. And I think it’s fair to say that those challenges were the most popular things we’ve ever done and really changed the game a little bit for how we were thinking about things.

Sam:
I mean, I should say that also, during that five-week period, we were getting emails saying, can you keep this going? It’s been a real lifeline during this difficult period and this period of uncertainty. And also, people really appreciated the community aspect. So we decided to extend it for another two weeks. But when obviously you’re giving everything away for free, it wasn’t just obviously the people in the community who’ve been affected, we also have artists in our community who making a living as an artist, they would have lost all of their income from in-person workshops and exhibitions that they had planned. So we were paying the artists as well, as well as our team and what have you.

Sam:
So it was a significant cost to the business to run this free challenge. So we were like, we can’t actually keep this going without it having serious impact on the business itself. And even still, even up until the fifth week, we were still thinking, right, okay. After this, we’ll do a course launch. But then I think it just—which seems ridiculous. I don’t know why we weren’t thinking, let’s just make this into a product because we were getting emails from people like, don’t stop this, we’ll pay for this.

Pat:
They are literally telling you what to do.

Joe:
Exactly.

Sam:
Yeah.

Pat:
Number one, where was this challenge hosted, and how many people took part in it? Joe, we can switch to you.

Joe:
So during the free challenges, we hosted it fully on Facebook. But because there are members of the community who don’t want to be on Facebook, we also posted the workshop videos and we also made a workbook to go along with videos. We posted that on our site.

Pat:
Jeez, all for free.

Joe:
All for free. So, that didn’t obviously have the community aspect going alongside it, but the Facebook group, I think eventually, we had over 20,000 people.

Pat:
20,000?

Joe:
I know. It’s absolutely bonkers. 20,000 people in that group. And a big portion of those people were active and were posting. I mean, when we released that first challenge, I remember within hours of posting the video, images popping up of the work that people had made in response to this challenge, and it just seemed to blow up overnight. I think it really was crazy. And week on week, more and more engagement, which was really exciting. And also, new people who’ve never heard of textileartist.org, never heard of perhaps even some of the artists, even though the artists that we engage were well known and very prolific, they were being introduced to new artists and new techniques, which I think really inspired them and piqued their interest. So, that was crazy that we had that many people taking part.

Pat:
How did you get people who didn’t know about you to find you? You obviously sent messages to your existing audience, but how did people find you who didn’t know you?

Joe:
Honestly, most of it was word of mouth. I mean, I think towards the end, when we finally saw what was staring us in the face and thought this should be a product, we should make this into part of the business, I think eventually, then we started to run some ads to try and get people to engage with the free challenges. But that was very late in the day.

Pat:
Because you kind of had a sense of where it was going to go, potentially. Joe, we’ll continue with you on this. Where was your head at this point? What is the product?

Joe:
Well, I mean, we did something. We did this epic kind of planning session at the beginning of the year, and it’s painful to change course. We were so set on this kind of, we wanted to do this re-release of the course and we’d got this plan for the year. So I think we were resisting it really up until very late in the day. And then I remember, I think Sam said to me, “Are we just crazy? Should this not be what we’re doing next?” And it was like a light bulb. Of course, this should be what we’re doing next.

Joe:
So at that point, we started to plan a kind of new and improved version of the free challenges that would become a kind of a membership program. And we turned it around really quickly, which again, is pretty uncomfortable for me and Sam because we do like to take our time and we do like things to be polished and ready before anyone sees them. So it was a challenge and at times stressful, but so rewarding in terms of the reaction to Stitch Club.

Pat:
Stitch Club is the name of the membership. Sam, how much was the membership when you launched it?

Sam:
The founding member offer, which is 22 Great British pounds. And I think that’s about $27 US.

Pat:
And it’s per month.

Sam:
Yes.

Pat:
Per month. Okay. I mean, when you extrapolate that, I mean, that’s over $300 a year to be a part of. So it’s very much along the same lines as the costs of your other products when it’s broken down in that way yearly. But tell me about the launch of this thing, Sam, because I know that you and I were very much involved as this was happening. And like Joe was saying, it’s like you went very quickly with this and there were some mistakes made or things that you wish you could have done differently. Tell me about the launch and how you got the word out there, and perhaps some things that you wish you would have done differently.

Sam:
I mean, it’s all a bit of a blur because we turned it around so quickly. And I have to say that we’re very grateful and quite fortunate to have people in our community that are really open and they’re really giving and they really care for one another. And so I think that the stitch challenge that we run, it taught us that it was possible. We kind of set up systems.

Sam:
Big shout out to Charlotte on our team who helps us put together the systems in place to contact the artist, to get them on board and record their videos and get them ready for the Q&A’s at the end of the week. So the actual creation of the product side, actually, we wanted to move it from Facebook which was the only I think was the most significant change from the free challenge to the Stitch Club membership.

Pat:
What did you go with?

Sam:
Well, this is probably one of the things that I wish we’d have taken our time a little bit more in choosing the software. We initially have set up with tribe.so, but the capabilities of some of the things are not quite where we want them to be. And so I think literally, a week after that, I found out about Circle.so, and they’re offering things that I think are really important for what we want to do in terms of engagement within the community and then helping the conversations that people are having around the creations that they’re making.

Sam:
So for example, I think Circle.so are about to release an iOS app and an Android app soon to follow afterwards. And I think that one of the things that we’ve found is that a lot of people in our audience, they like to use their iPad, they like to use their iPhone or the smartphone to engage with community. And it’s obviously it’s so painful to move from one software to another. It’s a difficult process, but I think ultimately, it’s the right decision for us. I think had we slowed down a little bit, we may have been able to make those more … been more thoughtful about that.

Pat:
I mean, you did definitely take somewhat of a ready, fire, aim approach with some of the things, but truth is you created and you were able to continue this thing that people were actually asking for. And I love what you said earlier about the justification of the price. A lot of people who have memberships and businesses often forget to think about the fact that they need to charge in order to continue to serve the audience that they have. And it’s very much apparent that people even wanted to pay you for the continuation of this. So to house this now in a membership community with a monthly fee or an annual fee, Joe, can you tell us how did the launch go and anything you would have done differently?

Joe:
Yeah, sure. I mean, it was the craziest few days. We opened registration for five days, and because of the ready, fire, aim approach, we didn’t have time to overthink the launch or create a three video series or any of that stuff. So we did an email sequence, an information page, and a very short video with myself and Sam and the artists that we’d already engaged to be part of Stitch Club talking about what Stitch Club was. And that first day, it was crazy. The first day and obviously the last day are always the big days. But we ended up with about 2,500 members at the end of that week.

Pat:
Oh my God.

Joe:
I know. Yeah, founding members. And at that point, I mean, that was amazing. And we were thrilled obviously that we had this, which transferred this community from the free time just into Stitch Club and people were so excited and passionate about it. But also, and the flip side of that is that 2,500 people is a lot, and there was a slight feeling of pressure around that and maybe slightly being overwhelmed. But thank goodness we do have this amazing team of people working with us. And actually, during that time, we upped the amount of people who were working with us and the people who were working with us started working with us more.

Joe:
And then there’s Charlotte, who’s our content and community manager, we just couldn’t have done any of this without her. It was essential that we had that support. And she said to me one day, we got to 10:00 p.m. at night and she said, “I haven’t actually eaten today,” because she’d been sat at her computer [crosstalk 00:43:18]. But none of us had. [inaudible 00:43:21]. It was crazy. It was stressful but exhilarating and amazing and extremely rewarding.

Joe:
And I think in terms of what we would have done differently, I mean, I don’t think we would have taken a different … I don’t think personally, we would have slowed down because we were giving the community what they were asking for in that moment. And I think if we’d have slowed down, the momentum of the free challenges might have fallen off somewhat. And I think people were ready and enthusiastic to do this at this moment. But I think there are things we could have done differently. I think possibly, we might have done a small founding membership just to begin with, just to try things out.

Joe:
I mean, I have to say, things have gone pretty well even beyond the launch. There has been a lot of learning along the way, and each week we’re still trying to pare down our systems and make sure they’re working really well so that the actual process of running Stitch Club becomes somewhat, not automated because it always is going to need human interaction and we would never want to take that away because that’s essential and part of what makes it special, but just streamlined and working a bit more like clockwork. And I think we’re getting there now.

Pat:
That’s great. Sam, what’s been one of the most surprising things that you’ve discovered now that this community has come together? I know you’ve done online courses for a long time. Now that you have this community, what’s a really cool thing that has been happening or has happened as a result of bringing these people together in this way.

Sam:
I think something that’s really cool that’s happened is just to see the amount of amazing artwork that’s being produced by the members. And to see them spark ideas from each other, not only are the other students learning from each other, the workshop leaders are also learning from the students. I was speaking to one of our workshop leaders, Cas Holmes, who’s a really well respected artist within the textile art world.

Sam:
She teaches all over the world, and she’s had several bestselling published books on the subject, and she was telling me she’s been learning from the students. Some ideas have been sparked for her for new projects. And I think she’s even going to mention the membership and the free challenge in her new book as well. So just to see this thriving creative space, I think has been a really rewarding experience for us.

Pat:
That’s what a community is. It’s not just you guys talking to your audience and your audience talking back to you. It’s everybody talking to each other. That’s a community. It’s communication. And it’s really cool to see that happening already just in the young life of the membership.

Pat:
And now, they’re going to share it, more people are going to come in, this cycle is going to happen. Well done. I really love that. It’s almost getting to that point if it isn’t already, it’s like, hey, if you’re into textile art, you have to be a part of this community. It’s like every everybody’s there. So go and be there. That’s really cool.

Pat:
And to finish off, Joe, you had mentioned quite a bit earlier about the fact that you’ve discovered also, since this community has come about, that the community is in fact for a different kind of person, then those who normally pick up your online courses. And can you speak to what you’ve learned about the customer base from membership versus course?

Joe:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah. I mean, I think because the course is very in-depth and there is, as we discovered, a big transformation for a lot of the people who take the courses in terms of especially creative confidence, but also in terms of self care, and some of the people who start the courses began as hobbyists and end up as exhibiting artists, we’ve had those cases, which has been amazing, and I think Stitch Club is a slightly different realm in that I think there are things in Stitch Club for people at all stages of their creative journey.

Joe:
But what is wonderful about it is if you’ve never picked up a needle and thread in your life, this gives you a chance to try different ways of making art with fabric and thread, essentially, and at times, lots of the artists that we’ve had have been doing wonderful things with mixed media and sculptural work as well. But it gives you a taste of all of these different … As I was talking about at the beginning, what makes a textile exciting, which is the range and the variety that it covers.

Joe:
And I think there is a real want for that amongst the community. People really want to be able to try lots of things before then perhaps editing down to find their own voice. So I think that what we’re working towards is that the natural journey of our community member is Stitch Club first, and then perhaps leading them eventually into going more in depth with one of Mum’s courses.

Pat:
I love it. And thinking about the entire customer journey and the lifetime of that person with you is so important. And now, you have more options. You don’t just have the one course anymore, you have multiple entry points, multiple offerings, and a complete journey. And you’re adding even more to it over time, which is really fantastic. First of all, just congratulations to you both. And I’m so proud of both of you. And hello to Mum for me, and congrats to her as well. It’s been really fun to be in the passenger seat as you guys have been creating.

Pat:
And I’m so thankful that you both came on today to share this story with us and some of the components of what you’ve done. I’m going to ask one final question, and the question is, I want you to think back to the time when you guys were just experimenting with different kinds of business ideas and remembering what it was like to be in that phase of just, I don’t know if this is going to work, let’s try this, let’s try that. What advice would you give yourself back then now knowing what you know now?

Sam:
So what we’d probably do differently in hindsight is we’d probably streamline the offer that we gave. I mean, we took the format of the free challenge that we did and replicated that, which was a workshop every week, then with the Q&A at the end of the week. But what we found is that I think we’re like three months or couple of months into the membership now, and after a while, it can actually lead to a little bit of fatigue, this every single week being expected to participate in a workshop.

Sam:
And in fact, I feel like some people, once they feel like they are getting behind on something, it’s almost a reason for them to leave the membership as well because they feel like maybe even though the material’s great, they’re not getting as much value from it. So we decided to change the format slightly to extend the workshops to every two weeks, meaning that they have a little bit more time for creative play, a little bit more time to get involved in the workshop, and it also means that … Actually, in the second week, we’ve added a further development video for those that do want to go deeper and do want to explore more.

Sam:
So hopefully, we’ve come up with a solution that’s adding value to the format. But we actually signed up to Stu McLaren‘s Tribe workshop, but after we’d launched the community. And one of the first things you learn in Tribe is that the main reason people leave a membership is not that they don’t have enough content, it’s that they get too much content. So I think that’s something that we’ve learned. And in this case, definitely, less would have been more. And I think even probably, to go back and do it again, we’d probably start with just one workshop a month.

Pat:
That’s really smart. And in fact, we are in SPI Pro really working hard to make sure people don’t have that sense of overwhelm. And we are stacking a lot of events in every month. There’s events every week happening, but we’re trying to really paint the picture of, you don’t have to go to all of them. In fact, you probably shouldn’t. Go to the ones that make sense for you and you can see which ones are coming up that you could plan for.

Pat:
And that’s obviously very different than a lot of other communities that are like, you come in here and this is the things that you have to do. And there’s so much of it. And plus there’s content and courses in some of them, it’s just like, I’m not making progress, I’m falling behind, I’m not cut out for this. And I like how you are reframing that and setting that expectation. Especially with new members, you have a little bit more flexibility as well. I don’t know how deep you went into, hey guys, you’re new here, we’re new at this, we’re going to maybe make some changes. Was that a part of the picture at all, Sam, or is that something you would do differently also?

Sam:
No. I mean, from day one with, we kind of said we’re building this community together. We want this to work for people who’ve given us the trust and become a founding member. I mean, and a lot of the reason that we’ve changed the format is because of the feedback that we’ve been getting. I guess for anyone who’s listening at home who’s thinking of starting a business, I would say that you don’t have to have this perfect, fully formed, crystal clear idea of what your business will become, to make a start and to start building an audience around a subject that you’re passionate about.

Sam:
I think this year has taught us more than before that it’s always an ever evolving and ever changing animal, really, especially with the community that we started this year. I think that the online membership should I say, I think that’s really proven that that’s true. And I think that probably when you do start to see some interest and you do start to find those people that are passionate about the same things that you’re passionate about, I would really pay attention to what they’re saying and get to know them, try to speak to them, and find out what their objectives and their goals are within that niche, and really try and do everything in your power to help them achieve those goals.

Pat:
Love it. Thank you, Sam, for that. Appreciate that. So was that eBook that took six to eight months to write versus the …

Joe:
But it was a great eBook.

Pat:
Versus a membership that took, I don’t know, five weeks and look at it now with thousands of people. Just, congratulations to you both. Wonderful. And again, thank you both so much for being here. Textileartist.org is the place to go. Thank you, Joe, and thank you, Sam, for your time today.

Joe:
Thanks, Pat. It’s been fun. Thank you.

Sam:
Thank you so much.

Pat:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Sam and Joe from textileartist.org. And I got to give props to my man, Sam, who was so … Honestly, I’m just going to be upfront with you. He was very nervous about this. And he is a student of mine in my Accelerator Program, and very much wanted to provide value here for you so much so that he came to me after and said, “Pat, I think I could give better answers to your audience for you. I really want to help them out because this stuff changed our lives and my family’s life. And I want to change the lives of those who are listening too.” So big ups to Sam, and of course, his brother, Joe, their mom, just all the inspiration. I appreciate you both so much. Textileartist.org. Check them out.

Pat:
Thank you so much for listening all the way through. I appreciate you. And this is what it’s about. It’s about spotlighting each other, inspiring each other. This is what this community is about. Speaking of community, if you haven’t checked out SPIpro yet, you should, because Sam and Joe are in it as well as several other committed entrepreneurs at all levels of business. Feel free to check it out at smartpassiveincome.com/pro because that’s our own membership community that we’ve talked about here on the show too. And it’s growing and we’re learning from Sam and Joe and they’re learning from us and we’re all just here to share with each other. And that’s what we do there too.

Pat:
So smartpassiveincome.com/pro. Thank you so much for being here. Please subscribe if you haven’t already, and thanks in advance for all the amazing reviews that are going to come in, and of course, thanks for all the ones that have. I’m so grateful for you, your time, and your attention. And I look forward to continuing to pay it forward next week for you. Cheers, take care, and as always, #TeamFlynn for the win. Peace out.

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