Craft+Commerce lessons

What I learned from going to my first general business conference after attending 200+ publishing events in my career.

I just finished going back over my notes from Convertkit’s Craft+Commerce conference in Boise, and some of the things I learned there blew my mind. Other things were good refreshers on things I forgot.

I’ve never been to a general business conference before. All of my conference experience is in the publishing industry where there are only a couple business models, so it was eye opening to be around people running their businesses so many different ways.

I thought you might like to see my unedited top takeaways from the conference. These are pretty much unedited, except for taking out any curses and doodles.

1. Everyone is working too hard. Whether it was a three-figure or seven figure creator, the one thing I learned across the board was everyone in every part of the creator economy is working too hard. Most of them were working 12-16 hours a day. Even though I felt like a fraud only making $30k a month compared to a lot of people making $100k+/mo, I am so underleveraged with so much time affluence that it made me realize I’m in a better place than I thought going into the event. The only thing you can’t claw back is time.

2. Everyone is putting way too much pressure on themselves. Similarly, everyone I talked to was putting way too much pressure on themselves. This is hard because some pressures are real. If you have to meet payroll and you’re having cashflow issues, maybe you should feel some pressure, but if you’re feeling constant pressure, it’s probably time to reassess some things.

3. Stop solving problems for free. Multiple times over the conference people talked about how they were having problems monetizing their business, and it almost always came down to the fact that they solved too many problems for people for free, especially when they had products and offerings that were supposed to solve those problems. I felt that down to my bones, because I tend to do the same thing, then wonder when we have trouble filling our programs. The more you give, the less people need. Even moreso, the more you give, the more people expect.

4. The money-growth axis is real. The more present you are, and the more free advice you give away, the less money you make but the more you grow. Meanwhile, the less present you are, the more you make, but the less you grow. Everyone I met was struggling with this balance. I know it’s a line I’m always trying to walk and it’s exhausting. It’s okay to pull back and make people miss you.

5. Indie authors have more complex businesses than almost anyone else I met. I met a lot of creators at the conference, and even the most successful ones had relatively simple businesses. Most of them had a membership community, a course, and a mastermind. Many of them did 1:1 coaching and maybe had one book, but they weren’t delivering a dozen books with Shopify integrations and interfacing with retailers. Their tech stack was relatively basic and yet they were thriving. It forced me to reflect and realize that the biggest profit centers in my business have the simplest tech stack.

6. Most people seem to be making money with services, even though 90% of million dollar businesses are product based. Publishing is a product based business (books) so it was so interesting that almost everyone I met was in the service business. In general, most independent operators should probably start with services because you need far fewer customers to make a living. All my businesses are product based, but often I wonder if we should make services a bigger part of our businesses. I only have one service based client and they are what keeps my lights on, so maybe I should take on more of them.

7. Product diversification is both our biggest strength and greatest weakness. Most people I met had 1-3 products (if they had any products at all) and it was usually one book/membership, one course, and one mastermind. We have hundreds of products at Writer MBA, so many books, and we give a lot away. I think our diverse interests is one of the strengths, but I also think by diversifying the way we do, many of our products cannibalize each other, and then we have our own business that cannibalize Writer MBA. I did not meet anyone with a business as diversified as me, which is both good and bad. I think we have to pull back our offerings so we can better leverage the products we come out with and make them more valuable.

8. The bowtie funnel. I have never heard of this kind of funnel, and when I asked my marketing friends at the conference they hadn’t heard about it either. It’s a much better visualization of the sales funnel and value ladder than what I’ve traditionally taught, and I can’t wait to integrate it into my business teaching.

   

   courtesy of https://www.bazaarvoice.com/blog/the-bow-tie-funnel-a-guide-to-the-sales-and-marketing-funnel/

9. Serve people in transition, not just ones with a pain point. This is one I’m embarrassed was an aha moment for me. I’ve always done pain point selling and sold the transformation, but when I heard that we should be serving people in a transition because they are the ones most likely to pay to bring order to chaos it unlocked several threads I’ve been thinking about recently. I think we did a good job of this a couple years ago, but we’ve been much more “general publishing” focused recently, and we should get back to selling to people in transitions, and honing our messaging to better call out to them.

10. Create marketing for both head buyers and heart buyers. This is another thing I knew but forgot. Some people buy the mechanics of what you’re offering, and some people buy the transformation. I am helping _________ do _______________ so that they can _____________ is a very simple framework for crafting a mission statement that I learned at the event which can help you craft your heart message. Your head message can be something like learn how to ____________ in _____ lessons across _____ hours of content.

11. More isn’t better. Most of our courses have 40+ hours of content, and I learned that the optimal length is closer to 4-6 hours. Even though we think that more is more, the truth is that having too much content might be overwhelming our customers. If we can somehow get a powerful transformation in 2-4 hours, that might be better than having such a comprehensive content. Also, if we’re trying to upsell people into masterminds and conferences, leaving them something else to buy is good.

12. It turns out content isn’t very important to community. It’s helpful, yes, but the biggest predictor of a community’s success is whether somebody can form 3-5 bonds with other members quickly. This was something Facebook understood at the beginning and it turns out its still true. If you want to build a thriving community, worry less about content and more about helping members connect together. Community also isn’t about you. There’s a great article by Peter Yang about social vs. media apps that I think is relevant here. We all think we need to be media companies, but for community, you want to be a social company and embrace your inner Forest.

13. Ask people for their aha moment after each event, even a webinar, and every day of an event if it’s multi day. Another one I’m a bit embarrassed about not realizing earlier. We do ask for people’s aha moments, but we do it sporadically and we should do it at the end of every event. I’m also excited to try out Senja to help us get more testimonials. I have been integrating automations into my businesses this year, and I think we need something that will work in the background because we will just forget, even if we make an SOP for it.

14. Enjoyment is efficiency. I’ve been telling people to optimize for joy for a while now, so it was nice to see this in the final presentation. This is the secret to just about everything I do. I am always asking myself to search out the joy. You are just more productive when you enjoy what you do, and you spend more time doing it.

15. Articles should have no more than 3 main points and no more than 3 subpoints inside each main point. If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know I don’t do this bit. This article for instance has 10 points, but if you want to break through, multiple people, including one with 5 million+ followers, shared that you should only have 3-5 main points in anything you make, and no more than three subpoints underneath each point. As you can tell by this being the 15th point I’m making, this is still a work in progress.

16. If you do something more than three times, make an standard operating procedure for it. I learned about the “suck list” from

    Chelle Honiker
    , so I’ve been keeping a list to automate/delegate things I don’t like doing, but I’m not additionally writing SOPs for all my processes, and we should be doing it more. The longer I do this work, the more I forget how to do things. Even when I remember, I have to relearn it even to teach it to new hires.

17. Every conference should have 30 minute breaks between panels. I’ve been to a lot of events and 99% of them have 10 minute breaks between panels. Craft + Commerce was the first one I’ve been to that allowed for 30 minute breaks every 75-90 minutes and it was a luxury I wish every conference implemented. Those breaks allowed us to network, get drinks, go back to our rooms for a second, and recharge. They also had a really nice flow by having three keynotes back to back to back in the morning and afternoon in the same place. It allowed them to have a 30 minute break instead of three 10 minute ones.

I also wrote this post for paid subscribers about how to network at a conference. Since I just did this event, these are my best tactics that got me in front of all the sponsors and top level people.

How to network at a conference

So, what do you think?

• Do any of those resonate with you?

• Anything you would add?

Let me know in the comments.

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