248: Inside the HobbyScool Growth Flywheel: What’s Working, What’s Changing
If your business growth feels inconsistent or exhausting, it might be time to rethink the system behind it.
Over the past year, HobbyScool has grown faster than I expected. We've brought in tens of thousands of subscribers, hosted wildly successful summits, and built an incredibly engaged community.
And yet, heading into 2026, I knew something needed to shift.
In this behind-the-scenes episode, I'm walking you through how I applied the Creator’s Growth Flywheel to HobbyScool. What’s working, what feels heavy, and what we’re evolving in the new year.
It’s a real-world example of how to diagnose your business and create intentional, sustainable growth.
What You’ll Learn:
How HobbyScool is rethinking its Attract stage beyond summits
What’s working well in our Engage and Nurture strategies
Why we’re adding B2B verticals in 2026
How we’re evolving our revenue model beyond low-ticket offers
What the Retain stage revealed about growth bottlenecks
Why Advocacy is one of HobbyScool’s biggest strengths
A simple next step to diagnose your own business
If your business has felt confusing, heavy, or unpredictable lately, you're not alone and there’s a path forward. Tune in and let me show you how to map your own growth flywheel for 2026.
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TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Creator's MBA podcast, your go-to resource for mastering the art and science of digital product entrepreneurship. My name is Dr. Destini Copp, and I help business owners generate consistent revenue from their digital product business without the need to be glued to their desk, constantly live launching, or worrying about the social media algorithms.
I hope you enjoy our episode today.
Hi there and welcome back to the Creator's MBA podcast. I am Dr. Destini Copp. And today we're doing things a little differently. We have been deep inside the Creator's Growth Flywheel series, breaking down what has changed in 2025, why your business feels slower this year, and what each stage of the Growth Flywheel actually means for your business.
[00:01:00] Today, I want to take you behind the scenes of one of my brands, HobbyScool. HobbyScool has grown faster than I expected this year. We added tens of thousands of subscribers, built an incredibly engaged community on Skool, ran a lot of different summits, and watched thousands of makers join our workshops. And yet, even as I move into 2026, it became clear that it was time for a shift. So today I'm walking you through the HobbyScool Growth Flywheel: what is working, what feels a little heavy for me, what is changing, and what we are focusing on in 2026 and going forward. My hope is that by hearing how I diagnose and restructure my own business, it will help you see your business more clearly.
[00:02:00] Let's start with the Attract stage for HobbyScool. I would say that this stage for us is super strong. We run paid ads on Meta for every single one of our events and they convert very well. Also, speakers bring in their audiences and affiliates promote the events. So the reach for our events is huge. We easily bring in thousands, and sometimes tens of thousands, of new people with each summit. But here's what I noticed. Attract is working, but it's also a little narrow. It's heavily dependent on the event model. It spikes and then it settles down, and then it spikes again.
[00:03:00] Our events are incredible and we will absolutely continue them, but I wanted the Attract stage to become a little bit more stable, more predictable, and more diversified. So in 2026, we are exploring new Attract channels, not just B2C but B2B. This includes a corporate wellness program, loyalty programs through organizations like maybe AARP or senior centers, parks and rec departments, and really focusing on those HR leaders who want creative engagement activities for their employees. I would say this is a huge, big shift, but it was a necessary one for our long-term growth.
[00:04:00] Now let's move into the Engage stage. Again, this is one of the strongest stages in our HobbyScool Growth Flywheel. People come into our events, they're super excited. They jump into the Skool community, they might grab the VIP pass, they take the workshops, they post their projects. I would say the energy is incredible. They are definitely purchasing our VIP passes. We will continue to look at the data for those tripwire-type funnels and see if there's anything that we need to tweak there going forward, but it's not a major focus for us next year. It doesn't really need a lot of changes.
[00:05:00] Moving into the Nurture stage, I would say that stage is also very strong. I send out the Sunday newsletter every single week without fail. Our Skool community is active. People interact with each other, they share projects, they ask questions, they celebrate each other. This particular stage doesn't feel broken to me. I do want to deepen the Nurture stage a bit more by making the newsletter a true creative companion with more community spotlights, more behind-the-scenes, and a little bit more like creative challenges. Experts who are participating in our HobbyScool Craft & Create Club—a lot of them are volunteering to do a challenge, a free kind of challenge, in our community next year. So that's a win-win for the community, a win-win for the speaker or the expert, and it's certainly a win-win for us because it helps us improve that personal connection. Nurture is where those relationships grow and I want to keep that momentum going.
[00:06:00] Now let's move into the Retain stage. I would say this is a very important stage for us to focus on in 2026. Retention is good. People come into our world, they buy multiple VIP passes, they come to multiple summits. Some of them may join the Craft & Create Club. We definitely have some room for improvement there. They're sticking around, but this stage feels a little heavy to me. Not because people aren't buying again—it's because the offers we have are all low-cost and low-ticket. And low-ticket requires volume, and volume requires constant audience expansion. That constant expansion takes a toll. It is hard.
[00:07:00] So in 2026, I want to change the revenue mix. I want more mid-tier and higher-tier opportunities and new revenue streams that are not dependent on bringing 10,000 people in every single month to register for a summit. That's where our B2B expansion comes in—our corporate wellness workshops, loyalty program partnerships. If we can get into any L&D departments, senior centers wanting creative programming—all of those retain and revenue expansion pathways that aren't going to rely always on low-price, high-volume sales are definitely something I would say is the biggest strategic shift for HobbyScool in 2026.
[00:08:00] Moving on into the Advocacy stage, I would say again, this is a real strength for us. We get hundreds of testimonials for every single event. Speakers are sharing our events. Affiliates are promoting our events. Our attendees are inviting friends. People are posting in the Skool community without being asked. They're sharing projects on social media, they're tagging us. Advocacy is definitely happening naturally and it is embedded into the brand itself. This is not necessarily an area that needs fixing. It's something we need to continue to support—our speakers and our affiliates—and we will continue to nurture this stage by making sure they have really good shareable assets and easier ways for people to spread the word. But it is not a growth bottleneck for us today. I would say it is one of our biggest advantages.
[00:09:00] After reviewing all five stages, here's my conclusion and what I'm focused on in 2026. The core of the business model works. We have a very simple business model, but it is a strong one. This Growth Flywheel is definitely turning. People are discovering us, they are engaging with our offers and events, we are nurturing them, they are returning, and they are sharing.
What needs to expand is not the model itself—it comes down to the revenue mix and the type of customer we serve. B2C will always be the heart of HobbyScool—the makers, the crafters, the creative people. But 2026 is also the year I want to step into new verticals like corporate wellness, loyalty programs, senior communities, parks and rec, HR teams—large-scale partners who want creative engagement for the people they serve. That is the next evolution of the Growth Flywheel for HobbyScool. I'm not changing the system—I'm expanding it.
[00:10:00] I wanted to share this with you because this Growth Flywheel isn't just theory. I use it in my own businesses, in my personal brand, and in HobbyScool. I use it day in and day out. I look at the stages. I diagnose the stages. I study what is working. I study what isn't working. And I make decisions based on what the system is telling me.
If your business feels heavy, confusing, or inconsistent, there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with your business. There's nothing wrong with your niche. You may simply be relying on pieces that aren't connected together.
[00:11:00] Here's your next step. Take the free five-minute diagnostic with Sloan. She will show you the stage of the Creator's Growth Flywheel that is slowing you down and point you toward one of your biggest opportunities. Once you take it, reply to any of my emails with your stage and I’ll send you an excerpt from my Creator’s MBA Playbook to walk you through what your result means and what to focus on next.
Thank you so much for spending time with me in this series. I know the Growth Flywheel is a new concept to many of you, and I hope this was helpful. Thank you for being someone who cares about building a business with intention—one that grows predictably and serves people deeply.
[00:12:00] Stay tuned. Come Monday, I’ll have some strong Black Friday offers to help you look at the various stages of your Growth Flywheel and improve them.
Thanks for listening to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you love the show, I’d appreciate a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast platform. Have a great rest of your day and bye for now.