This Week in my Business April 17, 2026
Your body needs time to rest, Bea!
Top Three Wins This Week
Built a bot/GPT for ChatGPT and listed it on Etsy (but paid subscribers to this newsletter get it free)
Attended a Meet the Teacher event and got two bookings while there
Recognized that I was NOT WELL and cancelled a class - but also realize I should have acted sooner.
Beabyrne.com Business
Craftcation was last week and it went really well. I taught my “Totes to Baskets” class for the first time, learned loads from that, and am now offering it live on May 12th! Details here. After all, we all have too many totes. Transform one into a basket and store the rest in it! Easy sewing machine workshop.
Although it did go well, I don’t plan to return to Craftcation as a teacher again. It’s fine when you’re starting out and haven’t yet realized that “exposure” is a pseudonym for “naive faith in humanity”, but otherwise the money is tiny ($200 and a conference ticket for teaching three 2-hour workshops for 15-20 attendees each [equivalent to less than half of my usual teaching rate] plus the time to prep, when the hotel is an additional $180/night for 4 nights and there’s a 6h drive each way) and the exposure has never got me a booking anywhere else. Plus I’m glad I didn’t take UV Resin kits this year to sell in the shop. There were Craftcation branded “craft kits” for uv resin and many other things which was a bit cringy since Amazon is known to mimic any product that sells well, and I sold a ton of kits there last year. There were other signs of the event evolving to be more commercial which I don’t criticise but which remind me of that transition from “we’re crazy entrepreneurs” to “we’re maximizing profit” that I’ve seen in two of the companies I’ve worked for. It’s hard not to notice that you’re being profited off.
Event bookings for the summer continue to come in. If you have a team building event in mind or a party - let me know! A few Saturdays remain unbooked.
Selling the candles I’d made at Craftcation was a negatory. There was another person selling them there with this AMAZING cat related candle concept and honestly I would have bought all of hers if I’d sold more of mine. And at least one other person selling candles. As a result, creative candles are in my store now! This was actually a really good lesson. I’d made those candles to sell at Craftcation, not because I make and sell candles, or like making and selling candles, but because I noticed no one was selling candles last year. I’m not a product person. I don’t need to try and be one.
About that Bot - it helps you work out what your next workshop should be about and then how you should structure it, market it, position it and so on. Needs a free version of ChatGPT to work but then is genuinely super useful. Paid subscribers get free access, $9 on Etsy to the rest of you, which coincidentally is the same as the cost of a month’s subscription!
I am teaching at the Quilter’s Life summit next week! Cathedral Window blocks hooray! Click here for more info. I have been horribly disorganized about promoting it.
Globalquiltconnection.com Business
The Sampler Box is now live and available to purchase for the All Star Sampler Platter (and already selling well). If you quilt you want to get yourself a pass or get your Guild to sign up the whole membership.
Have set up Facebook ads for the event and also fiddled with some Reddit ad targeting. The joy of having set up my Data Studio dashboard is that I can now keep an eye on traffic and adjust budgets accordingly.
Goddamn Zenler continues to be a bain of my existence (it’s the platform I currently use for my websites). I finally published the post about all the issues I’ve encountered and already have a new one to add. If you were considering it…don’t.1
H&H printing is all ordered and design of our cubicle is done.
Personal
Craftcation was good but also hard work. My partner came with me and so I was 24/7 peopling, even though he doesn’t really count as “a person”. I listened to this podcast episode on Tuesday while feeling myself getting sick and realized I really should have taken a day off when I got back, to spend time staring at the ceiling by myself.
Charlotte had a cat sitter while I was away and that went really well. She has barely left my side since I got back, which of course I love.
As I’ve got older I’ve definitely noticed that you need to take time to recover when you’re sick. Otherwise it will last twice as long. Last night I had an event that would have paid me $300 but I had to cancel. Could I have taken a load of cold & flu meds and made it through? Yes. Would I have given my cold to some of the people there, even if I wore a mask? Probably. Could I have gone to bed at 8pm and be feeling very slightly better today if I’d done it? No.
The catalytic converter on my friend’s car is now fixed and I am about 2 weeks away from owning my own first ever car. These things are so freakin expensive and having missed last night’s workshop, well… If you like what I do, do me a favor and buy me a coffee.
What were your wins this week? I hope you had a good one.
Bea
Links & Info
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My workshops & lectures for quilt guilds are here
My workshops for everyone else are here
1-1 sewing lessons - book here (in person or via zoom)
These are my on demand workshops that you can sign up for right now!
This is my store. Many a random thing plus a number of freebies.
This is where I’m teaching in the next month or so.
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I recall an advert pre-internet for British Telecom (BT) that I saw on a poster in an actual english post office circa 1992. It said that when someone is happy with a service they tell 3 people, but if they are unhappy they tell 12. Or something like that. Zenler were unwise enough to send me an email this week offering a chance to win a gift certificate if I left a review on G2, which you can bet I did. Incentivizing me to complain was hardly necessary but if I win I’ll get a “F*ck Zenler” t-shirt.