Virtual Quilting Summits: Andi in the Hot Seat!

In this episode of Quilting on the Side, Tori interviews her co-host Andi about her experiences participating in four virtual quilting summits this year (2025). They discuss the rise of virtual summits in the quilting community, the benefits of collaboration, and the importance of audience engagement. Andi shares insights on preparing for a summit, the importance of follow-up strategies, and the role of lead magnets in building an email list. The conversation emphasizes the value of data collection and marketing strategies to maximize the impact of summits on business growth.

Don’t miss an episode! Like, comment, and subscribe for more quilting stories, tips, and industry insights.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Virtual Summits in Quilting
04:15 The Benefits of Collaboration and Community
07:03 Choosing to Participate in Summits
10:01 Testing Ideas Through Summits
12:48 Engagement and Audience Building
15:38 Impact on Business and Sales
18:20 Follow-Up Strategies After Summits
21:24 Preparing for a Summit
24:10 Marketing and Promotion Strategies
27:02 Interacting with Summit Organizers
30:16 Final Thoughts on Summit Participation

See previous Episodes on summits:

"My Summit Story" 

Listen to Tabatha's Interview Here! (Mentioned in this podcast)

Subscribe to Andi's YouTube! CLICK HERE

Want More Quilting Business Content?
🔗 Support us on Patreon for exclusive perks
🔗 Grab Tori’s new book, Workshops Unleashed
📌 Follow us on Instagram

Co-Hosts:

Tori McElwain @heytori.tech

Andi Stanfield @truebluequilts

Transcript

Tori McElwain (00:03.68)
Welcome back to another episode of Quilting on the Side. So we have a special treat today. This is Tori and I'm going to be interviewing my co-host, the one and only, the one that you love is Andy. Now Andy participated in four summits this year in 2025. So I wanted to put her in the hot seat to find out how they all went. So Andy.

Let's kick off with which summits did you participate in and when were they?

Andi (00:37.612)
Yeah, I really feel like this idea of virtual summits, it has gotten so popular in the last couple years. It kind of trickled down from other...

online spaces and has really hit the quilting world. And it's a fantastic idea. We all love the idea of teaching online because then our students are just in their sewing space and they have all their own resources right at hand. There's, you know, none of this pack up and travel. And the virtual summit idea, bringing a lot of different instructors around a single theme is wonderful from the idea of a joint venture.

It's the cross pollination. You get to share your audience. Your audience gets to learn a variety of techniques. They get to be exposed to new and different quilting instructors. And I really feel like everyone that has been a part of the various summits really subscribes to that viewpoint that a rising tide lifts all of us. And so

the more we can share and collaborate, the better the whole community and industry will be. So I'm really thankful for that spirit behind all of the summits. So the ones I participated in were Quilted, the virtual summit, which was hosted by Tabatha, who we interviewed several seasons ago and I got to meet in person and it just, they have a very well run.

summit. All of these are well run. There's some technical bits behind the scene, but the communication is good. They provide social media resources and marketing materials. So from that aspect, it's wonderful. And my basic role was to prepare my presentation, which I did as a video tutorial, similar to a lot of my YouTube stuff. So it felt very comfortable for me.

Andi (02:45.292)
And then I just submit that to the summit organizers ahead of time. And then it's just that game of staying on top of the marketing the few weeks in advance, being available the day and time your presentation goes live and then just following up as you hopefully get the orders rolling in afterwards and the community building aspect as people download your freebie, which tends to be

the big draw of the presentation is to offer that lead magnet, offer that pattern or that tip sheet, and then just continue to engage with your audience. So as I said, I was in part of Quilted and that happened in February and September of 2025. I participated in the Tour de Fabrique in July.

of 2025 and I was also part of the Quilters Life Summit in October. So especially with September and October being so close together, I was a little bit concerned that I was overwhelming my audience and so that we can get into how that affected everything. there's another one, you know, going on like just within a few days of our recording this.

Tori McElwain (04:01.824)
Yeah, please.

Andi (04:12.492)
which was Quilters Paradise. So Quilters out there may start hearing about these events. you know, that's, that's, guess my biggest worry is that we're overwhelming our audience with this, you know, continual back to back to back and, you know, buy the all access pass and it's a great deal. Well, do you always have a great deal if it's always offered?

Tori McElwain (04:39.716)
think there's a, I think there is still a lot of room for summits. As you said, they are a great opportunity to learn a lot of new things all at once and be introduced to a lot of different teachers, especially for those that can only learn online. So if you're in a rural area, if you have some kind of maybe disability or even time requirements where it's like, you know, if you're a busy mom who works, you're gonna have very little limited time to actually go and learn a hobby like quilting.

So I think there is definitely a market there. I actually saw a lot of excitement in this October in the Facebook groups that I'm a part of, the Quilting Facebook groups, they were actually talking about summits and I haven't actually seen that before. So I think that it's not brand new anymore, but it's something that people are talking about. And I know that the numbers keep rising and attended. So some of the summits that you entered.

because I have clients that also were in some of the summits that you were in. So they kind of talked to me a little bit behind the scenes and some of them were a little bigger, some of them a little smaller and they all have this great way of building each other up. And one of the main benefits is, you know, joining that community, but also building your list and being able to introduce what you offer to new people. So one question I did want to ask before we get into like the marketing and stuff and how your how everything turned out with each summit, I want to ask you what made you say yes to being a part

of honestly I'd love to hear about each and every summit. So what made you want to say yes?

Andi (06:05.325)
Yeah. Well, like I said, I'm big into collaborations. If you give me an opportunity to talk about quilting, I'm going to jump on it. you know, meeting Tabitha in person and hearing about her summit.

having that personal connection, you know, I want to be a part of things. I want to help her make it a good event. I feel like I can give a professional polished presentation about my quilting topics and it get you know, it's it's definitely a symbiotic relationship. I feel like I can add value to her community and I'm definitely interested in growing my community. So that give and take is really

interesting and beneficial, I think. So that's, you know, the main draw, bottom line business minded perspective is, you know, how can we reach more people and make our offer? So that's really what I took from that. And definitely having the personal connection with Tabitha for Quilted and with Dara for the Quilters Life Summit, I felt was a great benefit.

I had heard wonderful things about Bea Byrne who runs the Tour de Fabrique in July and she was a guest on the Craft to Career podcast and so I heard a little bit about her business model and her goals and structure of the Summit before I joined. So having that professional polished event really makes it easy to say yes.

Tori McElwain (07:57.93)
Excellent, okay. So I also...

darn it, I had a thought and then it ran away.

Andi (08:06.797)
So one of the challenges with being a part of multiple summits is not repeating the same offer and the same content because they do have non-compete clauses. And so I was very mindful of targeting my presentation in a different way for each of those summits. And

you know, luckily I have a lot of content out there. I have two books on two different topics, so it's easy to funnel people to those different techniques.

Tori McElwain (08:42.228)
Yes. You know, what do you think about using a summit as a way to, and this idea came from one of my clients. So she used the summit as a way to kind of test new ideas. She had a few directions she wanted to go with this coming year and she couldn't quite narrow it down. So instead with the summit, she kind of used that as an opportunity to be like, Hey, let me test this one out for the summit. Let me test this one out for a second one. There's only the two. She didn't do four like you.

Andi (09:08.235)
Yeah

Tori McElwain (09:08.628)
But she had these two different ideas. So she went ahead and did like a little snippet here and a little snippet there. And then she was able to see how many people liked what she offered and which direction she could go. So do you think as someone who's participated in one that that might be a fun way to kind of test ideas?

Andi (09:23.499)
Yeah, I definitely think that getting that immediate feedback from a summit because you have the internal communication with the audience when your presentation goes live. And I did notice a difference between the engagement in the comment section of several of the summits. So that was interesting data to collect.

you know, definitely the the numbers of downloads and email list building aspects of it gives you some good information as well. So yeah, there's a lot of data points that you can collect from being a part of a summit.

Tori McElwain (10:09.822)
I love data. like, how many people clicked through? How many people joined your list? How many people bought from you? How many unsubscribes did you get? And then you really get an idea of what kind of quality of audience they're able to get for these summits and whether or not the next time around, if it's going to be good for your business. So love collecting data. One question I had for you was, and I don't want to pit any summits against each other, because like I said,

Andi (10:25.623)
Yeah.

Tori McElwain (10:33.176)
Everybody's results are going to vary. are smaller, some are bigger. It just kind of depends on who you join, how they are able to get the word out. But with your experience particularly, which audience or which one built your audience the best?

Andi (10:49.075)
I, you know, it's one of those cases of diminishing returns because it, you know, I never, I saw a huge jump with the first summit. Obviously it was new and, you know, that grew my audience the most. And then I had, you know, still a decent showing a little bit less for the second one. And then pretty even.

minimal for the fall summit. So I don't know, you know, there's so many factors we could try to justify those results. It could be that fall is just a busier time. People are focused more on holiday prep, whereas early in the year,

they are more focused on self-development, which is kind of where I think these summits fall. If you're learning new quilt techniques, you want to expand your skills. You may not, you know, you're more in production mode in the fall getting those holiday gifts out. So.

Tori McElwain (11:54.144)
for.

Andi (11:55.912)
Yeah, it just, you know, I can, I can find a lot of different justifications for those results. I think overall, and this is, you know, this is a personal self-reflection critique for True Blue Quilts is that I have always struggled with growing my audience, my email list. You know, I stay pretty steady. I'm a good, consistent...

person, but I never get that continual growth of hundreds of new subscribers. So, you know, take that for what it will. And I need to pause for one second because we're about to have a cat fight, both of them.

Tori McElwain (12:43.328)
That's funny.

Andi (12:47.701)
is to have to keep them separated.

Okay.

Tori McElwain (12:52.724)
I think that's really fair to talk about and it's also always has to do with what you're offering as well and who's in the room and like if They're overwhelmed with the amount of people I think that's something to keep in mind because I did join one of these summits and I wasn't able to watch anything because every time I got the Notification it was 15 minutes before it started and I sit there and I'm like wait I could go do this for 15 minutes and then I'll come back and I never came back so I missed out on so much at the summit that I wanted to see because I was

Andi (13:16.395)
Mm-hmm.

Tori McElwain (13:20.968)
I was kind of overwhelmed with the with how many people, how many notifications I was getting about it, how many emails, because I was I was able to sign up for what I wanted to watch. But I wanted to watch so many of them. And I ran out of time before like all the stuff went away, which is great. That's I think that is a great marketing thing is that they put urgency in there. So it's like, OK, you get to watch everything for.

a price or for free up to this point. And then after that, you pay for what you call that all access pass, which is, think, did every single one have an all access pass? Yes. So I think that is excellent because it drives, it drives revenue for the participants. It drives urgency for the participants or for the, the audience participants. And it allows people to find new teachers.

Andi (13:53.931)
Yes, yeah they did.

Andi (14:06.122)
Mm-hmm.

Tori McElwain (14:11.23)
see what they're interested in. And then if they really wanna hang on to these lessons, they have an affordable way to do so. I think the whole model of it is really smart. that, but me as a quilter who's super busy, who only quilts like a couple of times a month, I was like, no, I ran out of time. So next time this stuff comes around, I'm planning to be much more active. So that's part, that might be part of the, that's of course my audience, as me as an audience member critique. I think.

Andi (14:35.487)
Yeah, yeah. We did have a variety of timeframes, which I thought was really interesting because one of the summits was like a three day availability kind of thing. Like you said, with, you know, the videos expired after 24 hours for the free access. So you had to stay on top and really block off the time to, to watch it. Another summit offered like a full week.

of free access before things got, you know, behind the paywall. And the Tour de Fabrique was actually a month-long event. And that's a pretty heavy lift for the hostess to continually be available and pushing this. you know, as a full-time quilt business owner, the someday factor, you know, I'm hoping here to transition my side hustle.

it can be your focus for that long. you know, just interesting different models that went along with that. Having the longer time frame for the Tour de Fabrique in the summer allowed me to offer a quilt along and that was a good way to stay engaged with people that

event had a much more robust comment section and message board structure. So that's an additional software cost, I'm sure, that you have to have a platform that will support that interaction. But I really think that was added value for

that type of event not you know, yes, it fall down fell under the umbrella of a Summit but it was more an online event. So it had a much longer time frame than the other ones.

Tori McElwain (16:35.54)
I want to process this information, I need to like keep talking. my God, that's so interesting. Okay. So let me ask you.

Andi (16:41.751)
that we need.

Tori McElwain (16:46.1)
would, how did it impact your business? So were you able to get money through the door after these events?

Andi (16:55.701)
Yeah, and that goes back to the diminishing results. The first one was really awesome. I, you know, blew myself out of the water in terms of product sales for my little bit different ruler. For the fall summits, I tried to push my books and the... I'm losing track of which one was which, but one of them...

didn't sell many books at all. The other one had a few. So, you know, in terms of results there and the sales of the all access paths were about even for those. The one of the summits was really great as a self motivator because I was able to take the quilt along.

videos that I did privately and turn those into an evergreen course. you know, trying to work smarter, not harder on that.

Tori McElwain (17:59.782)
Yes, I love that. That's the second conversation I've had today where somebody has taken that advice where they're doing something for one thing and then using it in their business or something else. That's amazing. I also want to talk with that thread. When you're doing a summit, I would think about how you're going to follow up from the presentation. So if you're presenting on a subject that you have nothing to sell for, that's not going to turn revenue as well as if you have something that's very aligned.

with what you offer. Andy has two books. So that's something that she can take a section of that book and create a video on that, a topic on that. And then that could easily translate to what's in her book and how she can follow up with that audience. So that is also something to keep in mind, especially if you take that idea we talked about earlier and want to introduce something new. You also want to think about if this does pop off, if this is something that everybody gets excited about.

How can you follow up from it so that you are building your business? So that is something to keep in mind. So it sounds like there is some good and some bad results with it. Yeah, I would say that. So there are some good and some bad that went along with the summit, some lessons that you've taken away from them. So do you have some advice for how to follow up after a summit for those that want to join one?

Andi (19:08.269)
you

Andi (19:20.949)
Yeah, I would definitely say take Tori's advice, everybody, and plan those emails. We have an older podcast episode about launches and the email sequence and really plan two or three emails to send out in those following weeks that

can build that can, you know, say, you know, re reintroduce the topic. Hey, as I talked about in this summit, I love half rectangle triangles. That's Andy's thing. So here are some new ways. Here's what I'm working on currently that feature that same technique. And if you want to learn more, you know, come

watch me on my weekly YouTube live when I'm actually sewing these half rectangle triangle blocks. So keep that in mind. I always think, and this is one of those things where I need to take my own advice. If you sit down and do it now, then your future self is free of a lot of that worry because I am getting in my own way with trying to predict

someone else's emotion about what I'm offering. It's not my responsibility how they take the offer up or not. My responsibility is to put the offer out there because I'm sure there are some people curious about how to make half rectangle triangles and you can see some of them in the quilt behind me. So I need to be teaching that so that these people can explore this

you know, wonderful unit in their quilts and, you know, beyond that, you know, someone else can take responsibility for that. But I just, you know, want to put the knowledge out there and I have to stop being afraid of, I'm, you know, mentioning it too much. No, McDonald's doesn't care that they're on every other ad.

Tori McElwain (21:12.34)
Yes!

Tori McElwain (21:24.87)
Nope. And any they don't know there is a party of Hashtag Half Rectangle Triangles if you don't invite them to the party. Well, what's happening? And what they can do with that. I think that's a fun way to think about marketing after a summit is to be like, hey, there's more. Come play with me. Like, because that's what we do is cool. There's we experiment, we play, we have fun, we're creative. And it can be a sort of like creative party invitation. It doesn't have to be by my thing. It doesn't have to feel that way.

Andi (21:32.359)
Right? Yep. Yep.

Tori McElwain (21:54.708)
But yeah, that advice of scheduling ahead of time is so important because I'm the same way, believe it or not, I chicken out during a launch. like, no, I just scheduled eight emails to follow this one up. And like, I had five people unsubscribe from the first one. What am I doing? But having those scheduled ahead of time, I can close my computer. I can walk away. I can work on my launch quilt, which is what I did last time. I just showed a bunch of, I trompacked together with.

a background fabric and I just focused on doing something else and let the emails run. And at the end, I actually had a profit coming through the door. So it's, one of those things that you can get out of your own way by scheduling ahead of time when you're excited. Like maybe right after you do the video, you know, it's really cool and you can kind of jump in and do those emails because you're excited about what you've just created. And then like Andy said, get out of your own way. That way you can't chicken out. You have emails to follow up and you can see that return in, in your business.

really important.

Andi (22:51.393)
Yeah.

Yeah. And it really, it helps carry that momentum. You know, we, we've talked about the roller coaster and you know, you go in waves or phases or seasons, however you want to listen to it. So when you're in that, you know, development and growth phase, you need to plan ahead so that there's something to harvest on the other end. And yeah, like you said, when you're excited and happy about something, you just schedule it all out. And then I always, you know,

I heard something really, really cool. And it was that you can talk to yourself. You don't always have to listen. So think about that for a minute. You are listening to those voices in your head. And if you're listening to that negative doubting aspect of things, that's going to impact. But

If you are talking to yourself about how great this is, what a wonderful offer, what a smart business woman you are, that's gonna have a different result. So go ahead and talk to yourself. It really reminded me of the power of mantras and that positive thinking. So I'm trying to talk to myself about these smart, strategic email sequences, business tactics that I can take to grow

in the future rather than listening to that scaredy cat who gets nervous and doesn't hit send. So I just wanted to share a little bit about my mindset of the difference between talking and listening.

Tori McElwain (24:36.672)
Definitely, I think that's really great to point out. Really valuable.

Tori McElwain (24:44.656)
I have another question here, I saw it and then.

Tori McElwain (24:52.736)
How would you, what's your best tip to prepare for a summit? Cause you talked a little bit about how the summit went. So you record something ahead of time and then you're live on the day of, but do you have anything else that you want to add to advice on prepping for a summit?

Andi (25:09.065)
Yeah, I would say, and I've mentioned this to some other folks, because it came from my business mentor, Nicole Walters, stay ready so you don't have to get ready. So if you've got several topics, if you've gone down a rabbit hole and discovered, you know, this great stuff and you've got a slide show of your favorite quilts featuring a certain design,

wrap that package all up and outline it. Go ahead, even if there's no invitation on the horizon to present the topic, go ahead and make the slide presentation, make the lead magnet that goes along with it and have it on the shelf. Because then when these, you all of a sudden see that, this summit's coming up and the presentation.

you know, proposal is due next week, hey, I've got something ready and I'm not going to be stressed out. And some of the deadlines are getting earlier and earlier. Like if there are spring summits, people want all the materials before the holidays. So there's like a three month

gap or you know six weeks that you need to have stuff ahead of time and So it just it's all in that early preparation. So spend some time think about some different ways that you can present your core Offer like I've said my thing is half rectangle triangles. Well, I don't I've taught a certain block several times so I need to teach

different blocks that all come back to that same core topic of half rectangle triangles and then I can drive that to my sampler course. I can drive that to my book. You know you have a variety of offers. spend some time brainstorming all the different ways that you could present one topic.

Tori McElwain (27:18.698)
That's really great advice. I'm over here thinking about, so I have the DMMC. Like, how can I create a quick presentation? Maybe I can join a business summit. So another question I had was, how did you interact with the organizer? Where like, there are live calls, is this all via email? Like, how did the coordination go with organizers?

Andi (27:26.763)
Yep, yep.

Andi (27:38.538)
Yeah, most of it.

obviously is done via email with, you know, reminders of deadlines and stuff. Most people take advantage of Google drives where you can just upload your presentation and you have a folder of marketing materials. So that comes out ahead of time. So that's really nice. We did have several presenter calls where we got to meet and chat with other quilt business owners. So that network

is always a great feature. And then I want to pivot a little bit and talk about the marketing efforts that the organizers did because that was such a key piece and I saw it improve with the later summits. It was mainly just having the Instagram, Facebook post stuff for the early summits but then as the year went on people started

taking advantage of video, which is my love. So we did collaborative events for my YouTube lives. People would come on. We did Instagram lives where the hostess and one of the presenters would interact in the weeks and days leading up to the summit. Doing some blended reels where everybody shared a clip and it was like passing from one part of the screen to another.

And those are always fun and engaging and easy to share when one person posts and then obviously you can promote it to your audience. So some really creative ways to show up and talk about the summits.

Tori McElwain (29:24.5)
So that was actually my next question. So I'm really glad you dived into that. And I know that with one of the, least one, and there may have been more, I didn't know from behind the scenes, but I did hear that there are email requirements as well. Like you need to email your list a certain amount. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Andi (29:40.094)
Yeah, I and here I will admit and I apologize to all the organizers if I didn't send out all the emails, you know, it's just like I said mindset mindset problems here. It's usually the three I want to say at least three because you have, you know, the the week before the day before the day of

you know, at a bare minimum. Most of us were doing more than that and then, you know, social media posts within a same aspect of it. And

Yeah, I don't...

I don't know how that impacts, know, more is better it seems, but.

Tori McElwain (30:35.968)
Well, as you mentioned, like McDonald's doesn't care how many ads it takes, how many times you see a McDonald's ad, like they need to get the word out there because you're right, like people need to see something several times, up to like, studies have shown like seven, eight, nine, 10, like quite a few repetitions before they'll actually commit to join. Cause it is a free event. They can get that access fast, but it is a free event. But what you have to think about is they're trading their time, their energy and their personal information, their email.

Andi (30:55.115)
Mm-hmm.

Tori McElwain (31:03.648)
in order to join these summits. So in order to actually join them, a lot of people will need that repetition, I almost said reputation, that repetition in order to trust it and to join it. Now, if they have a lot of trust in you, if you have an audience that you email regularly, they may have a lot of trust in you and see a free event, like, I'm just gonna join this, because Andy said it's awesome. And you're gonna trust Andy. But for the most part, you're gonna need to email them several times. Now I'm hearing, and just to kind of,

Andi (31:10.945)
Yep.

Tori McElwain (31:31.742)
kind of put everything together here. I'm hearing that if I want to join the summit, what I should have ready to like save myself heartaches and headaches is a video presentation within probably 15 to 30 minutes, maybe two. So I kept one in the air and then I need to have a follow-up offer to make sure that I can turn this into a profitable endeavor. I need to be emailing my list regularly.

And I need some sort of social media presence. So whether that's on a YouTube, on Instagram. And I do know that they pushed Instagram a little bit because that's where some of the hosts really like to show up. So I would suggest as a marketer, honestly, taking a little size set there of YouTube and Instagram, just a little presence on one and then your main presence on the other. That's what I would suggest, just so that you have your bases covered if you are wanting to do a summit.

Is there anything else? So I've got a presentation. I've got a follow up offer. I've got

Hold up, don't tell me. Emails, emailing my list regularly and then I have a social media platform. Do you think they need anything else to be prepared for a summit?

Andi (32:32.843)
Got your emails.

Andi (32:41.677)
No, I would just and it kind of it dovetails with the presentation and the offer is get your lead magnet in there because you're gonna want something free and something paid so you definitely want to include that. now I'm gonna take a detour a little bit into some of the back end stuff because

There are several ways to do those lead magnets and you could just have, you know, the download link, you know, it goes to a, you know, a Google page that anybody can see and they can just view it there. Or you can put it in your shop for free, but they still have to like run through the purchase steps on

Tori McElwain (33:34.305)
Just to clarify, when you say Google Form, you mean they go sign up to get a link to that Google Form.

Andi (33:41.518)
No, that's no, no, no, that's what I'm saying. That's why you have to make sure you are doing it correctly, because some people just put free stuff out there. Like they'll have a page on their website that has all the information. So you bypass the email. And so that's where you have to. Right. Yeah, exactly.

Tori McElwain (33:50.218)
right?

Tori McElwain (33:53.994)
We don't want to

Tori McElwain (33:57.536)
You want to talk through the email, right? That's what you're saying. I just think I'm very clear for audience because I have that question a lot about lead balance. Like, do I just put the link to the Google Doc? No, you put a link to the landing page where they put in their name and their email and then you send them the link to the Google Doc through that email that they gave you. That's how you get the email and that's how they get the lead balance. Okay, so go ahead. You can also have it in the shop.

Andi (34:21.249)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that was the thing. And it was like you could, you you put it in your shop on sale, you could put or use a coupon code to to or just make it free. I'm leaning towards the idea of the coupon code because then you know what what traffic is coming from the summit versus somebody who just stumbled on, you know, was looking through your shop for all the free stuff.

know, because that's, and I just have to put a shout out there for any anybody that's listening that sometimes it's a little disheartening as a shop owner to get this, you know, order that's all five zero dollar items, you know, maybe you could grab all the free stuff plus one paid pattern and support those designers.

Tori McElwain (35:15.454)
Yes.

Alright, let me see, I think I had one more to ask you.

Tori McElwain (35:29.098)
wanted to say, okay, I wanted to ask you this as a just kind of in general, now that it's been well, the last one was pretty soon. But now it's been a few months. What did this experience teach you about showing up as a business owner in the quilting industry?

Andi (35:45.838)
I definitely think it boosts your status as a professional because you are a presenter, you have that credential now that you've been a member, you know, a presenter at, and now you can list all these platforms. And having that event title is nice, you know, as seen on

quilted the virtual summit as seen on Tour de Fabrique. You know, that is a little more recognized than, yeah, she has a YouTube channel. You know, a little more formal experience there. So that's great.

Tori McElwain (36:29.184)
authority.

Andi (36:36.453)
it you know it definitely even though it was small it is growing my email list and that just gives me a foundation to you know expand upon especially if you include some of that each one reach one aspect to tell tell a friend kind of you know get that word of mouth chain working and you know you have to tell people what actions you want them to take so

it may seem cliche, but if you put at the bottom of your email, share this email with a friend that would enjoy this content and just keep those reminders going out there. yeah, overall I am very happy with things and some of these, I definitely know the customers are returning because people that buy one pattern

the next summit they may buy the ruler, the next summit they may buy the book, the next summit, hopefully they buy the course. So the funnel is working.

Tori McElwain (37:42.608)
Excellent. So last question before we wrap up and if I want to ask you if our listener was thinking of Joining a summit and listening to this episode, of course What would what would be the one thing you want them to take away from this episode?

Andi (37:59.614)
I would say that you want to get as much knowledge as you can. You know, we've talked about the doing the preparation. Don't don't let it scare you, but just, you know, go in with a realistic idea. This is not, you know, I can just whip this up in an hour and, you know, have all sorts of

money rolling in. it's going to be some work, but you know that's what we're here for. We're no strangers to hard work and we reap the rewards.

Tori McElwain (38:38.688)
So I will say with that piece of advice, knowing that you put so much effort in social media, can you imagine putting in a couple of good hours into a summit and growing exponentially versus all those hours spread out with all your time spent on social media? Like the trade-off there is exponential.

Andi (39:00.853)
Yeah, yeah. So I'm looking forward to participating in additional different summits throughout the coming years. I think it is a good alternative, like you said, for for people that can't get to some of the major shows. They may have budgetary

physical limitations, you know, there's all sorts of reasons why it's preferable to stay home and so and this gives everybody a way to connect and do that.

Tori McElwain (39:34.346)
I want to say a big thank you to Andy for being on the hot seat today and being interviewed rather than being the interviewee. So thank you, Andy, for all your feedback, your experience that you shared, and the stories that you shared.

Andi (39:42.029)
Turn the tables.

Andi (39:49.365)
Yeah, and I would just like to remind our listeners that we continue these kind of hot seat conversations, questions, and answers in our Patreon community. So join at the paid level and you get access to our monthly Q &A's. We hope to see you there soon.

Tori McElwain (40:07.232)
It's only $15 a month and we actually if you're listening to this on the day it comes out We have one that week on the 13th November 13th

Andi (40:16.203)
Yep, Thursday.

Tori McElwain (40:18.41)
Yep, the second Thursday of every month. Thank you, Andy.