Summit Prep Masterclass with Jamie Bright from Craft a Dream

In this episode of Quilting on the Side, hosts Andi and Tori interview Jamie Bright with Craft a Dream, a successful quilter and entrepreneur. Jamie shares her journey from starting quilting at a young age to building a thriving business in the quilting industry. She discusses the importance of marketing, collaborations, and organic growth strategies for quilters looking to turn their passion into a business. Jamie also provides valuable insights on how to effectively participate in summits and leverage them for business growth, emphasizing the need for alignment between presentations, freebies, and products. The conversation highlights the joy of quilting and the supportive community within the quilting world.

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Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Jamie Bright and Her Quilting Journey
07:34 Transitioning from Photography to Quilting Business
12:42 Marketing Tips for Quilters
17:41 The Power of Collaborations and Summits
24:40 Creating Effective Presentations for Summits
25:37 Effective Presentation Techniques
29:57 Maximizing Summit Engagement
33:52 Promoting Your Summit Effectively
36:59 Leveraging Affiliate Marketing
39:50 Building Relationships and Community
42:42 Creative Collaboration and Idea Sharing
48:00 Upcoming Events and Opportunities
49:21 Jamie Bright takeaways

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Co-Hosts:

Tori McElwain @heytori.tech & https://www.heytori.tech/

Andi Stanfield @truebluequilts & https://truebluequilts.com/ 

Transcript

Andi (00:06.008)
Welcome. We are so thrilled that you are joining us for today's episode of Quilting on the Side and we are very excited to get to know Jamie Bright. Welcome.

Jamie Bright (00:17.482)
Thanks for having me.

Andi (00:19.04)
Of course, yeah. Jamie, you are everywhere it seems. I see your luminary quilt all the time on social media. So if people are wondering, that is, think, your most well-known pattern at this point, correct? Yeah, yeah, that's great. So tell us how you got started quilting and what made you decide to turn it into a business.

Jamie Bright (00:33.142)
Yes. Yes.

Jamie Bright (00:41.42)
Well, I started quilting when I was 10 years old after my mom came home from visiting this old lady she had met and gushed about how she started quilting when she was a kid. And I was the first child who obviously wanted to earn my mother's love and show that I was good enough. So I'm like, I'm going to make a quilt because I had been, she had taught me to sew garments and things and she was, had a huge sewing room and just all sorts of fabric and stuff for me to use. And so I went into the scrap box.

And I found some fabric and I started doing these nine patch just simple blocks and I didn't know what I was doing and I was determined. So I kept going with it and it turned into a, it was a queen size quilt in the end from like two inch squares. That was just checkerboard, know, just simple. And it had holes in it from the beginning. I tied the thing. It it's not anything of high quality.

But when my mom saw that I was serious about this, then she started teaching me about seam allowance and all the different parts of quilting. And I just took off. So I made so many quilts from the age of 10 through about college when I got busy and too focused and I didn't have a machine set up. And then I got back into it after I started having kids, making baby quilts for them when I finally had a

place where could set up a machine without them having to touch it. So not right away when I had kids, but later on. around, I don't know, 2014, 2015 is kind of when that happened. And I got involved in Instagram. I was already running an online business, and so was on Facebook and all these places in the photography niche. I...

I really wanted to see what was out there for quilting. And so that was kind of like the early days when Instagram was actually a community builder and it was more social than it was media. And so I got involved in some mini quilt swaps and I got to know Alison Glass and then a bunch of quilters who are super well known now who we are all just, you know, doing our thing. And she was doing fabric and I loved rainbow.

Jamie Bright (02:49.122)
fabrics and I was kind of at that point where I'm like, this isn't just a childish thing. I can actually embrace this and make it mine and not feel bad about it. And so I think I bought like everything, Alice in Glass put out for a couple of years and got to know her a little bit. And she saw my luminary quilt, which was when I was just playing. I was playing around with some scraps I had from one of the mini swaps because they were just so pretty and I didn't want to like waste the little end pieces.

this thing I was doing and so I started sewing together in different ways and was this is kind of fun and so I came up with this luminary thing more because of play. It was creativity, it was play and I started getting like like tons of people commenting on it and Allison reached out to me and she said, do you want to co-publish it? Like can I license the pattern from you and publish it as a paper thing and since I had the digital online business I'm like you can do the paper version, but I want to keep the digital rights and everything so

She licensed that from me in 2016. we kind of, I never really wanted to do a business in quilting originally, because I was doing it in the photography space and that was going very, very well. I, COVID totally destroyed that business. Like photographers couldn't work with their clients. I taught marketing and sales to photographers and how to help them get more clients. And so they couldn't, they weren't getting clients and didn't have money to pay for marketing. You know, like it was just this mess.

And so that business literally was destroyed pretty much within a three week period. Like overnight it lost 85 % of its income. And then over the next like two, three months, it went to literally zero, no matter how hard I tried. And so what I did then is I'm like, okay, I have to pivot and I didn't know what to do. So I kind of just spent some time doing some high ticket consulting and coaching. And I ran a mastermind for other online business owners. And I lived in that space for a few years because I knew it, but I didn't love it. And so.

It was paying the bills and you know teaching email marketing is very profitable because it works, but it's not my passion You know, it's like okay I have to send emails and even though I've done it lots of times and I know it really well it's not fun and I had a friend who had said well, why don't you why don't you try marketing your pattern your cool pattern? Because I had set up a business for that like on like a doing business as under my main business for online stuff

Jamie Bright (05:09.358)
So technically I had had a business, I started it in 2016 when Allison Glass connected with me and it'd get a couple sales a month. Because of Allison's traffic and people wanting the PDF version, she linked to my website. Otherwise I'm sure I would have gotten zero. And it was, I didn't even pay attention to it really. And so that's how the business technically started. But then about, was December of 2024, was the very end of the year and I had

I was checking my to-do list before signing off for the holidays. And I just thought, well, I'm done. I have this day off. I literally had an hour of stuff. And then I'm like, I can leave early. I'm like, huh, this friend who said, maybe you should try marketing your pattern. Let's just try that. Let's just throw up a funnel and do some ads at the time, because I have a lot of experience running paid ads. And let's just see what happens. And it worked. And I grew very, very fast. And

And I think it was about this time last year, February of last year. like, yeah, all right, let's just go all in with this because it's way more fun than email marketing. Like I didn't think that I could do this and make enough money to make it a full time career. And I support my kids. Like, I need to make money. I can't just have this on the side as a hobby, even though I did for almost 10 years. But when you market it, surprise, surprise, you get sales. So and then it took off last year and it's been great fun.

So that's my origin story into the quilting world.

Andi (06:39.682)
Yeah, that's awesome. Thanks so much for sharing. And it's so interesting that you have that background in marketing because I know I struggle with that a lot. And I'm sure other people that come into the business aspect because they love the quilting so much, they don't have that background and so they struggle a lot. what is like one or two quick tips for beginners and folks in

Tori McElwain (06:43.306)
That's really interesting.

Jamie Bright (07:01.473)
Mm-hmm.

Andi (07:09.464)
that marketing space.

Jamie Bright (07:11.35)
Yeah, so I wouldn't start by running paid ads, just to be clear. I mean, I had run literally hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of ads from my own, you know, I had a ton of experience. And what I see, I hate to talk about it, not because it doesn't work, because it absolutely can. But because if you don't know what you're doing, and you don't have any training on it, what happens is most people spend money, make nothing, and then they're like, ads don't work. And it's, they won't unless you have some idea of what to do.

And so I don't want people to be like, just go turn on a bunch of ads and then have them upset. But what you really need to start with is organic. Do you have something organic that's working? Because ads are an amplifier. And so that's one thing. Just a side note, I have to say that because I don't want people to be like, let's go do this and it'll blow everything up. But the other thing that works really well, and I've done this for all of the years, is actually collaborations.

And different, and that's a great way to get, test your organic stuff. And I know you talk a lot about collaborations on this podcast. It's part of why I was so excited that you invited me. But my, one of the biggest collaborations that I did in this last year was a summit. Now I helped co-host the Quilters Paradise Summit with Rebecca Bryan of Bryan House Quilts and Jared Romy, who's not in the quilting world, but has run summits for years and years and years in different niches. And he,

He was in my mastermind. He's somebody I've met in person and know really well and trust and respect. And actually, Rebecca Bryan, too. She was in my mastermind. And I've known her since way back in the 2016 days. And it's been really fun. So the three of us decided, well, let's do something in quilting together, because Becca and I know the quilting industry. have stuff. Becca's been around for, I think, at least a decade. I don't know how long she's been in here, but she's a delight. And Jared's like, yeah, I'll do all the back end stuff, which

Don't throw your own summit unless you know what you're doing, because there's so much work. But if you can get involved in one with somebody else doing the admin, they can be a really huge growth to your business. So I think the biggest thing is that with a summit, just like anything else, there's a right way to do things. And there's a way that's a total waste of your time and effort. And so I think a lot of it really depends on what you put into it. But there's lots of collaborations. I know there's like,

Jamie Bright (09:28.238)
collaborations with, you know, like my collaboration with Ellison Glass got me the majority of my sales for those nine years where I wasn't doing anything myself and fabric companies and you know, there's tons of collaborations available in the quilting world. So that's where I would focus on starting because they can really kickstart you in a big way if you do them well.

Tori McElwain (09:48.779)
Well, we had a few episodes with Andy sharing her perspective on being in the summit and I believe she was in yours, right? Yeah.

Jamie Bright (09:54.798)
you

You're going to be in my this one coming up. I don't think you were a lot for the first one we did last fall, but yes, we invited you.

Andi (09:58.5)
Yeah.

Tori McElwain (09:59.937)
Okay.

Andi (10:03.754)
No, I had some conflict with a couple other hostesses. yeah, you know, I agree. Summits are the way to go and it's exciting to see several of them recurring and they each have a different flavor. So it definitely is a testament to the broad spectrum of people in the quilting industry that we can support these various ventures. So yeah, it was a lot of fun.

Jamie Bright (10:08.235)
event. Yeah. yeah.

Jamie Bright (10:19.768)
Mm-hmm.

Jamie Bright (10:30.126)
Mm-hmm.

Jamie Bright (10:33.74)
Yeah, there it's, yeah, go ahead.

Tori McElwain (10:33.825)
So I would love, I was leading into a question there. was gonna ask. So we heard from Andy's point of view about being in a summit, but I'd love to hear your tips for anybody who wants to participate in a summit. Like how do they get ready for it?

Jamie Bright (10:50.134)
Yeah, all right. I have, I'm gonna try and stay focused, but I got a whole like little mini masterclass I can teach on this. So it really comes down to, you're gonna get a lot of exposure. So our Coulter's Paradise conference that we did last fall had over 36,000 people registered. And so there's a lot of people coming in the door. Now you don't just automatically get all of those as an email lead and you don't want to have all of those as an email lead because we all know that not

Every email is as valuable as others and a lot of people will use, you know, their junk email. I mean, we all have a real email that we only give to like stuff we really want and then junk emails for stuff we don't. And so generally when there's something given, like when they're signing up for something, unless they buy something, they may not be using their primary email address and it's not usually as valuable. Now not saying it isn't, but you want to get people who are like, yes, I want your thing or I want your freebie. So,

There's really a couple things you need to have in place before I would actually jump into doing a summit. And I know you kind of covered some of these in your episodes, but you should have something that you sell. And I actually recommend trying to promote your best seller in some ways. Now, I'm not saying you should do a big 30 minute commercial for your pattern or Andy, what are you going to be? Can I ask you? Can I get, can I use you as an example?

Andi (12:11.656)
of course. I am doing my half rectangle triangle workshop, which then leads to my little bit different ruler that helps people accurately make the units that they need for my little bit different blocks.

Jamie Bright (12:22.861)
Mm-hmm.

Jamie Bright (12:28.704)
So you have a ruler and you have a class that you could sell to them. Okay, so this is great So having something that you can sell is gonna help you actually make money from a summit obviously and not just get emails You do need to have an email list if you don't That's gonna you're not gonna get hardly any benefit from the summit and we did have a couple people who didn't have anything set up who are just like email me for this freebie and they just the the opportunity I imagine you're in front of 36,000 people

Or maybe there's 36,000 at a thing, and maybe even half of them or a third of them come and actually watch your presentation. And you have no way. You've just built this trust. You've given them this awesome thing, and you have no way to capture them. So if you don't have an email list, I'm sure Tori can help you get one of those set up and do all of that. So talk to her. And then ideally, you have a reason for them to join your email list, so a freebie or something that's related to what you do. So Andy, do you have something that you will be promoting as a freebie to get people on your email list?

Andi (13:24.268)
I do. offer my tip sheet. I tend to make some kind of, you know, PDF guide for whatever my workshop topic is because I do have several. I've been lecturing for several years and I have a couple different books. So depending on what topic I'm talking about, I direct a different lead magnet that's usually a PDF guide to the topic with some extra resources. And I can easily set that up with the

Jamie Bright (13:32.268)
Mm-hmm.

Jamie Bright (13:48.642)
Mm-hmm.

Andi (13:54.212)
email system that you mentioned.

Jamie Bright (13:56.748)
Right, right. So for this, you're probably using something that's half square triangle related, correct? Yeah, so you want to make sure that the freebie is aligned with what you're going to sell, because if those aren't aligned, it's you're going to have a disconnect and you might get the lead, but not the sale. If you want to get both, which is kind of like the ideal situation, you definitely want them to be aligned and be related to each other. So they're like, my gosh, I get this free. Ooh, and I could get these things if I want to go deeper. So that's kind of a really beautiful way to do it.

Andi (14:03.203)
Yes.

Jamie Bright (14:26.638)
and so some of the things you get out of doing a summit and I'll talk about how to to optimize these in a second, but part of why summits work so well for collaborations unlike like quilt things or you know, like I mean not saying that quilt pattern collaborations or things aren't helpful, but you have 20 to 40 minutes to build trust with people and let them get to know you and I think that's probably why they were so effective for me this last year is that

There's so much scam, fraud, AI junk out there and people don't really know who to trust anymore. And I really think moving forward, people will buy from those. I mean, it's always the people that you know, like and trust, but like that trust portion is only gonna become bigger and bigger. And so if they've taken the time to watch your presentation or even a part of your presentation and they're like, gosh, I really like Andy and what she's teaching is really helpful.

That's going to make them so much more likely to come and opt into your freebie and get on your email list and buy your stuff than if they just saw a random ad in their feed from Facebook, which nothing against Facebook ads, but it's just so much stronger. And I think that's also why YouTube is such a huge thing. And it's where I'm going to be focusing this upcoming year, launching a YouTube. People don't know who to trust anymore. so summits give you an opportunity to get in front of a large audience and build that trust.

Not to mention you get to raise your credibility with the other speakers who are involved. So if there's already well-known, well-respected, and well-trusted speakers in a summit that's speaking with you, you're speaking on stage with them, and that lifts your credibility as well. And so definitely can increase your credibility and trust. You can get email leads from it if your presentation is aligned with your email thing and anything you're selling. Sales, and it's not just from selling your stuff. I'll talk about the different ways you can get sales in a second.

But then confidence. One of the things that surprised me most was how many comments we got from speakers at the last one just saying, wow, that really boosted my confidence. Because many of them had never spoken on a stage with so many people. And it's not a physical stage. It's pre-recorded. It's not live. You do it in advance. But there is a Facebook group where people can interact with you. And some people got hundreds of comments on their presentation. And they're like, gosh, that was so confident. That built my confidence up. And some people got speaking invitations to speak at guilds.

Jamie Bright (16:47.258)
are always looking for more people to come and speak. And I know you have an episode all on that. I've listened to it, because I was like, how do we do this if I want to do this? But none of those things are guaranteed. So it takes intentionality. there's really three areas that you need to focus in on. And by the way, interrupt me at any point, because I will just keep going. So if you have questions, just let me know. Good. So the first place you get.

Andi (17:10.338)
We're loving it! Yeah! So much good stuff.

Tori McElwain (17:11.784)
Yeah, I love this.

Jamie Bright (17:15.598)
The first place you really want to focus is on your presentation and we'll talk about aligning that and then I'm going to use you Andy as a example. Second is the promotion and how you actually help promote the summit and how other people are promoting the summit. And then there's third I have like a bunch of optional little extras that most people don't do that can really boost the results that you're going to get from a summit and help you get a lot more I mean sales leads all the things. So

So with that in mind, when you're looking at your presentation, like I said, go with your best sellers that are already proven. So Andy, you've done the half square triangle stuff for, I've heard you talk about that for a long time, correct? Is that one of your best sellers, most popular things?

Andi (17:55.534)
Yeah, yeah. It is, it's really been the focus of my design interests and my quilting and my business over the last, gosh, going on three years now that I've really, you know, done half rectangle triangles, HRTs all the time.

Jamie Bright (18:18.092)
Yep, so it's going to reinforce that you are the person to go to for half square triangles, which is always great if you're niching down and wanting to be known for that. But also, if it's already sold to a bunch of people and you know that they like it and they find it helpful, it's more likely to get you better results in the summit than taking your brand new thing that's unproven. You don't know if people like or not. Because if something is sold to the people you've already reached who already know you, all you need to do is get in front of more people of the more quilters, not just random people, but more quilters.

And the likelihood of that selling is gonna be so much higher than something that isn't proven. So sometimes I see people doing new things. And I did this last time, I didn't do anything, and I'm doing this time actually too. I'm doing new things, and so I'm going against it. So you don't have to do that. But I also know that my goals with this are a little bit different than what most people have for goals coming into it. But if you're coming for sales in email leads specifically,

then you're gonna wanna take your best seller because I guarantee there's gonna be people there who haven't seen it. And if some of your people already come to this and see it and they're writing about how much they loved it, it's more likely to get other people who are like, oh, what's this thing not so good? I wanna go watch this presentation before it expires. And so it does build kind of some hype around it. So it's a really great focus.

Andi (19:33.602)
Yeah. One thought I had with that is that, as you said, for someone, if this is your very first summit, if teaching something you're already comfortable with is going to make the process a lot easier. So I would definitely reiterate that. Lean into your best sellers.

Jamie Bright (19:46.306)
Mm.

Jamie Bright (19:51.693)
Right?

Jamie Bright (19:57.47)
Absolutely and the only reason that I'm not leaning into my bestseller is because I'm a co-host I'm going to get the emails from this because that's part of my thing with it and I actually want to use this to test my new a presentation that is totally different and it's More about bringing more meaning into it So it's more of an emotional type of thing and so I'm not worried about if I get sales from this or not because I'll get sales from promoting it I'll talk about that in a second, but

I want to actually test on a large scale in a short amount of time. So if it fails, I don't care. So that's my intention. So you have to know your intention. If your intention is different, you want to test something, by all means, go for it. You just know that if it's not something that you've proven before, then it might not work. And then you might not get results, and you might be like, some of this suck. And that's not necessarily the case. It's just how it was used. So I definitely recommend knowing what your intention is.

Definitely using your bestseller if you're not sure if it's your first one because it will amplify the results you already have and there's something really neat too about when your patterns are amplified and all of a sudden a bunch of people start making them then other people start to see them and you get this snow snowball effect and like people start to know your pattern by name and they start recognizing it and posting it in groups and you're like, my gosh I'm getting this free marketing from the people who are actually making my pattern. And so that's another reason why picking your bestseller is good.

Then you want to pick your freebie like we kind of talked about the alignment making sure your freebie is aligned with that same topic and then Kind of backing up. So if you want sales and you want your email list So you pick your email list topic that are freebie that's going to be aligned with that So they're like, okay half square triangles. She's got this great guide. I've never done them before I want to try this. Let me jump in here And so then you back out one step more and say okay based on that what I want to sell

and what I would give free to get them on my email list, then what does my presentation need to be about that's going to make them want to get those things? So you want the alignment in all of those. So if I was gonna do the luminary quilt, I might do something where the freebie is like how to, I don't even know, I don't have a freebie for that because I just sell it straight up. Am I awful? I'm the only one who doesn't, like the summit, like presentations are my freebie, my list builder, because people can come and attend for free.

Jamie Bright (22:19.138)
But so that's about it. We'll use yours. like if you are, what's your half square triangle freebie?

Andi (22:26.446)
the tip sheet for making, and it's, you've been saying half square, it's half rectangle, triangles, Yeah.

Jamie Bright (22:28.706)
All right.

Jamie Bright (22:32.334)
I'm sorry, have frack tingle. my gosh, I'm so sorry. I knew that but I've been working with half square triangles and one of my quotes recently. So that's half rectangle, triangle. Thank you for correcting me. my gosh, half rectangle triangles and I know it because I was picturing them in my mind but so you're doing the half rectangle triangles. And so it's a tip sheet on how to do them better or is it a tutorial? What exactly is it?

Tori McElwain (22:35.937)
It's not that easy.

Andi (22:37.186)
Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Tori McElwain (22:40.961)
You'll able to,

Andi (22:47.374)
Yep, yep.

Andi (22:53.058)
Yeah. It's a basic guide for making the common alignment of the units to make any size HRT.

Jamie Bright (23:05.517)
nice, nice. And that I assume mentions your ruler, correct? And then you have your workshop so you can promote that. So that's all aligned. So what is your presentation about to get people to want to opt into that?

Andi (23:11.79)
Yes, yeah.

Andi (23:19.744)
The presentation walks, you know, obviously it gives an introduction to the unit and then I actually do a tutorial on a block that uses HRTs and then that block is also featured in the sampler that is the course that I promote in the workshop.

Jamie Bright (23:32.684)
Mm-hmm.

Jamie Bright (23:42.222)
So that's absolutely perfect and you've done it wonderfully because everything is aligned. It's not like you're talking about half square triangles and then doing half rectangle triangles where they're like, what? That would be confusion. So that's perfectly aligned and that's what, when people do that, when you have that straight alignment from presentation to opt-in to paid products, that's where you're gonna see the best results for that. So as you are,

Andi (23:49.059)
No.

Andi (23:54.061)
Ready?

Jamie Bright (24:09.806)
Making your presentation, there's a few key elements and you've probably already sent it in because they were due like a month ago. So, but here's some of the things that I try and add into my presentations when I have that alignment and that intention in the end. So one, mention your freebie at the start of your presentation because nobody starts a presentation in the middle, but they often drop off after the beginning at some point. It's, you know, I mean, some people will watch all the way to the end, but that's always a small minority of people.

So just say, the way, give your introduction. By the way, there's a free thing below that's directly related to this. If you want to go click the button and download that right now, you can do that. You can do it afterwards. But just mention it at the beginning. It doesn't have to be big. especially if it's related to your presentation, nobody is going to be upset that you're doing that. If they're like, hey, let me give you this ad and go buy this and whatever at the beginning, you're going to lose people. Because they're like, oh, she's just selling. But if you can do that, it's a helpful add-on.

they'll want to do it. So do that at the beginning if you can. Second, seed and mention the things that you're selling in your presentation as much as possible. Same with your freebie too. You don't have to like say you can get this here, you don't have to promote it, but if you're mentioning it like you know, so I'm going to use my half rectangle triangle ruler. Do you have a special name for it?

Andi (25:27.562)
It's called the little bit different ruler.

Jamie Bright (25:30.752)
So I'm going to use my little bit different ruler to make these half rectangle triangles, which I personally designed to make it easy to do these. And then you just keep going on and show them how do you, you're not like you can get it on my website, whatever, because they're smart enough to know that if you have this ruler that you designed that they should go look at your website and find it. They will find it on their own, right? So seed your stuff throughout your thing without it being like big and salesy. And then at the end, that's where you want to tell them, okay, if you like this,

you're sitting there thinking, gosh, I really want to try this, then here's how you can get it. So if you haven't downloaded the freebie, get that. You can also visit my website to get the ruler. And I have a full workshop. This is just one tiny piece of a bigger puzzle. So like everything you've done is in perfect alignment and absolutely a plus as far as I'm concerned there. And then the other thing I would mention is if you do travel and teach and want to get more guild things, mention that too. Because I know like,

significant, I pulled my audience my email list in the fall and I got like 700 people who replied and I think like 500 of them said they were in a guild or held a position in a guild and they're always looking for more teachers and so if they just watched your presentation and thought it was good it's a great way just to say by the way I do teach at guilds and things if you are looking for somebody I do travel you could it just it's a quick little seed and that for some people they'll be like my gosh I never thought about that you know because they're

seeing it online and you can just help them bridge that gap. Let's see, so and then the only other thing I would mention is the title of your presentation. Again, I did this really bad on mine and I want to also admit that when I was doing my presentation for this one coming up, I broke a lot of rules, somewhat on purpose, but also because I'm in Minnesota and it's been very difficult the last...

month here there's been a lot of instability and things going on and I was very distracted so I kind of went on like I just need to get something done I'm not going to worry and put as much time and intention as I normally do but I'm going to use it to test and so I just made that intention it was fine but generally your title you'll want to either speak to a problem that people have like or to something that they may want to do or try like you've never tried this or you know like you know I don't do you have a title for yours Andy do know what it is off the top of your head

Andi (27:50.314)
I don't because I'm actually planning a different talk. so that title is more. Yeah, exactly. It's like I'd have to.

Jamie Bright (27:56.664)
So it's messy. Totally, understand. So when you have your title, the main thing is you wanna, like when people are looking at a summit, they're not gonna watch every single presentation. So 36,000 people is awesome, but they don't have, most people don't have time to watch every single one all the way to the end. And so they're gonna pick the topics that are interesting to them or relevant to them. So part of this is saying, okay, based on what I wanna sell, maybe you're gonna be talking to, maybe it could be like from,

half square triangles to half rectangle triangles, how to bridge the gap or add more interest into your quilts or something along those lines.

Andi (28:30.915)
down.

In the past, I've used the concept of stretch. So I'll say stretch your blocks because like you said, that takes them from the half square to the half rectangle.

Jamie Bright (28:36.738)
Mm-hmm. Yes.

Jamie Bright (28:43.82)
Yes, so you can use whatever you like, but as long as you are using a title, because that's what they're going to judge you by. Like if they don't know you, and you're just another face on a website to them, they're going to look at that title. And so it's really important to think about who do I want to watch this that's most likely to get the most value out of it and want to keep moving on. So you definitely want it to be about half.

rectangle triangles, not half square triangles, which I almost said again. And so that they know coming in like, okay, I'm going to learn about this, and it's going to go from there. So. So that's the presentation part. Do you want me to just I'm just like, blah, blah, blah, getting it off. All right. Great. Great.

Andi (29:19.46)
Where sponges were absorbing it all, is so, great. Yeah, yeah, so.

Tori McElwain (29:26.523)
but we know that our audience have a lot of questions about this. So this is wonderful. Go ahead, Jamie.

Jamie Bright (29:31.246)
All right, so then once you've got your presentation set up, that'll do stuff during the summit. Now, I know summits all do things differently. We don't do ours live because we want, it's stressful. I mean, with the tech and with that many people, like it would be a huge extra anxiety to have to do something live and it's harder to get speakers that have to show up live at a specific time. So ours are all prerecorded well in advance. They have 48 hours to watch them for free.

before they come down off the website. And we do an encore as well, usually. So we'll do like one or two days right after the summit ends where they're all open again, where people can, because we want speakers to get results so that they want to speak again so that they bring their friends. We want like, Andy, I want you to get tons of email leads and thousands of dollars in sales. And it's not unheard of that we had some speakers get those results in that first, the first summit that we did. And so,

How that happens beyond just the presentation is promotion. So for summits, they are free for people to attend but they can upgrade they can pay a fee and I believe it's like $49 if they buy at the time of registration or 69 if they buy later on if they come back and say no I do want this so I could be wrong on that because I'm not the one setting all that part up so take that with a grain of salt, but that's what it was last time and So basically when people register they get it for free, but if they want to keep

access to the videos forever and we give them advanced access as well once they register if they buy them they can pay that 49 and get those recordings for free or not for free for that VIP ticket for as long as they want so they don't have to watch them on the days that they're released and we do try and make it really consumable for quilters so we try not to release more than like five or six on a day because we know you're not going to be able to watch 20 presentations and it doesn't serve the speakers

if they only have one day to watch 20 presentations or a really, really compressed, we want you to get the exposure. We literally want you to be seen, but we also want people to see these and say, gosh, these are so valuable. I want to have all of them. And for $69, even if they come back and do that, that's very reasonable. I I sell my workshop, one workshop for $50. So it's like lots of little talk.

Andi (31:36.45)
Yeah.

Andi (31:43.502)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, you're right. The value for that amount, you could buy one class for that, or you could have access to dozens of teachers for that same price. It's kind of a no-brainer.

Jamie Bright (31:58.294)
Yes, and so one of the things that we do is when you promote Andy with your affiliate link, so every speaker gets an affiliate link and if any quilters are watching this and you have an email list or social media following and you want to be an affiliate and promote it, you can do that even without being a speaker with our summit. So you can reach out to us, I'll give that info at the end on how you can reach out and contact us, but you can promote this and say hey, this is a free event. This is a free online event because it is. And then if they buy,

they then you get a percentage of the speaking fees. so I so I don't what we generally do with our summit is we take a lot of the money that is put that people use to purchases and we put that towards ads. So we that's how we get so many people like for this one coming up. We do a pre sale period where we run ads to test the pages and see which ones are going to convert fast and make sure everything's working well.

before we ask our affiliates to promote. So as we're recording this, tomorrow is the first day that affiliates can promote the speakers. Me, I'm an affiliate. I don't do the pre-stuff. That's done by one of my partners. But we already have 13,000 people registered because we can take that money from people buying and put them back into ads and make sure that we can do that. And that's one piece that I don't think a lot of Quilt Summit people are doing. They're relying just on the speakers to promote.

which can still bring in thousands of people and it's not bad, but it's part of how we get the big numbers that we get is we take the revenue and when we start with that, then we know that it's all working before you send your people to it, so they're not getting broken pages and this didn't work and we try and work all the bugs out before we go. So then once you as a speaker or as an affiliate, you have a link you can give to your people, say come register, and then you can do that via.

emails, you can do it on social posts. I do mention because people, if they know you and love you, they want to support you. So you can just say, hey, there is an option to upgrade and if you do, I get a percentage of that. So thank you in advance for, you know, for doing that because one, you have to disclose it by law. But two, people love, I get so many sales from people saying, I just bought it because I want to promote you or like support you. And it's like, thank you. I hope you actually like it and like want to do this. But

Jamie Bright (34:14.35)
Our coolters are a wonderful community that love to support us. And so it's a great way to do that. But even if not, you're giving your people something free that's highly valuable that they're going to be grateful for. So that's really great. And when you're promoting it, if you're a speaker, definitely talk about your specific topic. But also, don't just say, it's a free online conference. I like to point out in my emails or social posts specific other talks that

I think are gonna be really interesting to my audience. So like I know they're very interested in free motion quilting based on the surveys that I've done. I don't teach that, I don't do that, I'm a hand quilter. And so I love when I promoted last time, I'm like, hey, here's a free motion quilting thing. If you've been interested in this, here. Or, know, Andy's teaching half rectangle triangles, definitely check that out. I haven't done them. And I definitely am gonna be watching your presentation because I wanna learn them. I wanna branch out and learn new skills. And so when you can get specific.

then it's more likely to pique their interest and say, oh gosh, this really is going to be amazing, versus just like, it's online, you know, what's an online conference? You know, they don't necessarily know what they're going to learn. So that's another way to get more people to sign up with your link. And then encourage them to invite a friend. Like, don't do this alone. It's online, but we're a great community. So bring one of your friends. They can sign up too for free. And yeah, so that's.

Last time we did this, we had two speakers who made over $5,000 in affiliate commissions by promoting a free online conference to their people and then getting the upsell tickets. And the more everybody promotes this, the more people come to this conference. And so we did get a good number of registrations and quilters who came based on speakers who promoted through their affiliate link. I don't have the number in front of me, but it was substantial. And so

The more everyone promotes, the more everybody comes together and can get in front of more people. And I know some people don't think exposure is worth it. They hear like, I can't pay my bills with exposure. No, but if you're doing these tips, can get those affiliate commissions. You can get sales of your ruler and your workshop. And there's ways to get more of the buyers from the summit onto your list.

Jamie Bright (36:28.78)
And I say summit and online conference interchangeably. Publicly, we kind of say online conference because cultures don't know what summits are necessarily. So we tested that. And so we try and say online conference, but it's always been a summit in my mind. So that's same thing. So one of the things we do is we offer a VIP bundle that is part of this paid package. So it's not just the presentations, but you as a speaker has an opportunity to give one of your paid items.

a way to the people who purchase for free. Now you're probably saying, why would I want to give people something that I'm trying to sell? You know, why would I want to give that away for free? We had some people who didn't understand this and it does not, this is where you do not have to align it with your talk if you do not want to. So it's an opportunity to get exposure to something else that you sell that you wouldn't necessarily, so it's not taking away from the sales that you would be getting from this workshop or whatever else. But what happens is anybody who gets that

bundle, that VIP bundle, they paid at least $49, maybe $69, and you know that they're a buyer. So when they go to redeem your item in that bundle, you know that these are people who are willing to spend money on their quilting. So it's a higher level person to have on your email list than the non buyers. And that was one thing that I did track is I, for my last one, I didn't, because I didn't do the freebie, summit was my freebie, I had a buy this at the bottom and I just promoted a product.

Doesn't convert as well if you just promote a product instead of going from the email list to a product, just so everybody knows. But those people were excellent. And my VIP bundle people who downloaded that were also more likely to buy from me afterwards than just the people who signed up for something else. So the buyers, they're willing to spend money. Some people will never buy anything online, ever, no matter how much you want to, whatever. And that's fine. But we want those buyers for our email list. So that's another way that you can get buyers on your list.

and then schedule your promotions for right after the summit. So have a few emails written so that once people join your world, like once your talk goes live, you're like, hey, this was awesome. Hey, by the way, here's who I am and here's more. Like you can do a welcome sequence that promotes your stuff and gets them into your world. I made about $2,000 on the backend of the summit just from doing that, like a couple of, I think it was like two or three simple emails. It wasn't anything complex. I didn't have a lot of time at the moment and my life kind of blew up.

Jamie Bright (38:53.676)
And so was like doing this with the kids and whatever, and it still brought extra money in just from those people who signed up there and went from that. So if you're gonna launch something new, like that's a great time to launch something new or something separate, promote what you were doing again, but then say, by the way, there's also these other things. So, all right, I have talked to you, give me questions. There's so much, I could talk about this for hours, but there's just so many things you can do.

to get the most out of this and I want people to succeed and really just like thrive and see this as a huge, you know, takeoff point for them. So I get excited about it.

Tori McElwain (39:30.453)
I love that you came with notebook with like you were turning like people are going to absolutely love all of the information you just gave us and you said it was going to be a master class. mean you joked about it, but it was a master class that was excellent. So my thinking is okay. What am I going to do next? So I'm ready to sign up for the summit. I am ready to go in and watch everything and look for the pieces that you're talking about.

Jamie Bright (39:32.878)
I might've.

Andi (39:43.747)
Yeah.

Jamie Bright (39:50.222)
Mm-hmm.

Tori McElwain (39:55.499)
So I can see what other people are doing and how I can use it in my own business. So that's where I'm at right now. So I hope our listeners are there too, like, cause we can't sign up to be a speaker anymore, but you have another one coming up that we could. If we sign up for the free one now, or even the paid version, we get to see all the things you just discussed to apply it to our own stuff. And that's where I'm at right now. So Andy, what are you up to?

Jamie Bright (39:56.11)
Mm-hmm.

Jamie Bright (40:00.28)
Mm-hmm.

Jamie Bright (40:06.818)
Mm-hmm.

Jamie Bright (40:11.726)
Mm-hmm.

Yep. Well, that's great. know, Tori, too, you, I know you teach more of the marketing and business, and this is generally just quilters. mean, there will absolutely be people in our industry watching. We saw a lot of that for the one we did last fall. So it's not impossible, but you could do something like how to take better photos and video of your quilt for social media. And then you could, you know, like it so it could have a wider appeal.

But then you wouldn't get as much result maybe, maybe you would. mean, if you have, because with business and marketing, you can charge a lot more than a $15 pattern, you know, or whatever else on the backend for your marketing services. So you can say, you know, this is what I do with quilts, professional quilters, and I'm going to teach you how to make your quilts look the best so that, you know, people always want to get recognition. They look the best in the groups and they're going to look great on Instagram. And let me teach you some techniques for making better images and photos of your stuff. And then,

You could teach that, but also just see that this is what I do with my clients. And here's an example from another client who did this. It would be a very easy marketing piece that would also be very valuable for quilters who want to have, like maybe they want to do more quilt testing and they know they need to have good images and photos. You could serve kind of two people, but I don't know what your rates are or how much it would need to cost, like how much you would need to make to make it worth your time. But I imagine that you could find at least a few people who are like, yeah, I'm...

I'm a new pattern designer, I need to market this. So you could seed, you could add little side comments about what you do with your clients, but still teach all quilters. So you could do it, it's the most valuable when your target client is just a quilter. That isn't doing it professionally because that's the most of what we'll have. But you could absolutely potentially get full.

Andi (41:57.198)
Yeah.

Tori McElwain (42:02.463)
You're totally right. I didn't even consider that. But that is a great idea, especially the social media and the pictures part. okay. I want to think more about that,

Andi (42:08.846)
Yeah. See, so I want to just take a meta look and remind our listeners that this is the power of just chatting with other people is because you always have ideas for how other people can improve. It's harder to reflect on yourself, but you know, so just schedule a time with some other quilt business owners and just chat and you'll be amazed at what comes up. Jamie, thank you so much.

Jamie Bright (42:11.427)
Huh!

Jamie Bright (42:27.767)
It is.

Jamie Bright (42:33.45)
Yeah, don't you have a group for that too? Don't you have a Patreon where people can chat and do that together?

Tori McElwain (42:38.645)
We do! We've got a Patreon community. Look at Jamie like marketing for us.

Andi (42:38.859)
Absolutely.

Yep, yep, she's a pro. So we need to run into the rapid fire because I'm coming up on a timeline. So we always start off with what is a difficult colour for you to use in your projects? One of those less loved.

Jamie Bright (42:58.946)
Brown. Brown. my gosh, I can do any color but brown. Although the quilt I'm making right now has some browns in it. I'm stretching myself a little bit.

Andi (43:08.184)
Well, good, good, we love to hear that.

Tori McElwain (43:11.361)
So do you prefer yardage or pre-cuts?

Jamie Bright (43:14.154)
I like pre-cut bundles with lots of colors in them. I'm a huge fan of rainbow quilts. Pretty much everything I do tends to be rainbow. And I love yardage because you can do a lot with it, but I love to have the variety of fabrics to play with a lot more than just straight up yardage.

Andi (43:30.702)
Very, very good. Tell us about your favorite notion or tool that you use in your quilting.

Jamie Bright (43:37.932)
Yeah, this one is a surprise to me, but I got one of the wool mats, the wool ironing mats, and I thought it would be hokey. And I love the thing. It's it like gave my iron like double power. just that holding the heat underneath. And it just my seams are so much nicer and flatter, although I use steam a lot. And so if you use a wool mat, it will destroy whatever surfaces under them if you use steam. So I knew

going in that that was a potential. So I just use it on an old TV tray that I don't care about. But I love the thing. I have it next to my machine. I use it all the time. And I cannot believe how much I love it.

Andi (44:15.428)
Great tip.

Tori McElwain (44:17.249)
who is inspiring you right now. And it doesn't have to be anyone in the closing end of the

Jamie Bright (44:21.89)
Yeah, that's a hard one for me because I have a lot of people. My friend Amanda Bond, she is a Facebook, well, she's run Facebook ads and done Facebook content for years. And she's so strategic and process driven. And she's been talking a lot about the content, Facebook content monetization program, where you can actually make money posting your pictures, just posting on Facebook. And she is like a new mom. She doesn't have a lot of time.

And she is just going crazy. I won't swear, because I don't know where this goes. But she is doing very, very well, kicking butt, teaching content. And because she also knows the ad side, her theory is the best ads come from organic content that is already doing well, that you just amplify with ads. And so she's also a friend of mine. So we've been having lots of conversations, but I've been watching a lot of what she's doing.

Andi (44:56.567)
Yeah.

Andi (45:00.814)
Yes.

Jamie Bright (45:18.254)
online as well because she's talking a lot about that and I just got into that monetization program in December and I've made like $350 from it in two months without a lot of effort and so it's like oh this can actually make me some money too so another reason for you to teach people how to engaging photos and video Tory.

Andi (45:38.498)
Yeah, yeah, that's so smart. What is your favorite part of your business?

Tori McElwain (45:39.137)
Yeah.

Jamie Bright (45:45.846)
I think for me, it's that I get to make money doing something that I love and there's so little pressure when it's like under $100. Like I was doing high ticket coaching, like many thousands of dollars a year with my clients. And it was so much pressure to make sure that they were making that money back. And I just, I loved it because I love seeing people's businesses completely transform. But it was so stressful because it's just like, my gosh, they're paying me how much every month. now I like,

And so this, it's like, I get to work with quilters. We just get to play. And I don't have to worry about, know, if it's $15 and they hate it, like, it's not that big of a deal. It's not like they're losing lots of money. And so I think for me, the ease of it, but also it's such a passion and it's something I've done. It's my favorite art. I've done all of them. So it's my favorite one to do. And so the fact that I can actually make a living with pattern design and online workshops just blows my mind. It's just wonderful.

Tori McElwain (46:43.497)
And last one is how many quilts are in the room with you right now?

Jamie Bright (46:49.006)
Do you include mini quilts and unfinished or finished or what do want? Well, I would guess about eight finished quilts in this room, specifically lots more in other places, though I do gift most of my quilts. So I generally don't have, I don't have the problem that a lot of quilt designers do where they're like, what do I do with all my sample quilts? I'm like, give them away. But I have six kids. And so my kids are always like fighting for my quilts. And so it's, it's, there's always somebody I want to make a quilt for. that helps.

Tori McElwain (46:51.094)
So.

Andi (46:51.268)
You decide the parameters.

Andi (47:16.782)
Yeah, yeah, that's fantastic. Well, Jamie, thank you so much for spending time with us and giving us such a deep dive into your summits and how to make them work for quilters of all varieties, I would say. Before we go, tell people where they can find you and what's coming up.

Jamie Bright (47:36.268)
Yeah, so we do have the Quilters Paradise Summit coming up March 9th through 16th of 2026. So if you are watching this on time, Andy will put a link below her affiliate link so she can make some money promoting it. See, this is how it works. So go sign up through her affiliate link, definitely see what's going on there. And if you are interested in being a speaker, you can email Jared at masteryroot.com. He takes care of all the admin for that. And so he said you can put his email down there as well.

I also have a Instagram and Facebook, which side note are wonderful for organic growth right now if you're doing reels and video. So hire Tori to learn how to do that if you don't know how. But that's Craft a Dream on Facebook and then Jamie Bright Quilts on Instagram. And I also have a membership called the quilters play space where we do a monthly challenge every month where you don't have to make a full quilt or finish it. You can do as much as a little block, but it's really to foster your creativity.

And selfishly, it's to get me behind my machine every month because I'm going to do them too. And I was finding that I was spending more time behind my computer than behind my machine, which I wanted to change up. that's at crafteddream.com slash join place, join place space. There we go. We'll have the link down below. So that's where people can find me and follow me.

Andi (48:48.836)
Of course.

Tori McElwain (48:52.907)
Thank you so much for being here, Devi.

Jamie Bright (48:55.31)
Yeah, thanks for having me. It was really a joy.