282: The Month I Didn't Touch a Single Thing
The event we are running this month is the first one I did not touch. Not the funnels, not the products inside them, none of it. My team handled everything.
In this episode Steph asks what is actually under the hood at HobbyScool. How we find speakers, who the three humans are, and what changed when Claude and the MCP connectors came into the workflow. This is the systems half of the conversation we started in the funnel episode.
In This Episode
- The repeatable monthly system a whole year gets planned against
- How we source speakers, and why their email list growth is the whole pitch
- Three people, and what each of them actually owns
- What the Kit connector replaced, and how much time it gave back
- Why the marketing calendar comes before any AI question
Resources mentioned
- The B2C brand we spend the episode on: HobbyScool
- Where I teach this AI and connector setup: The Creator's MBA AI Mastermind
If the connector workflow is the part you want, building it with your own tools is what we do together in the mastermind.
See the AI Mastermind →Episode Transcript
00:00Hey, Destini. I am so glad to be here with you for this interview. We are going to talk about the engine for HobbyScool, everything happening behind the scenes to power this company you have built. Can you first explain how all of it works together?
I know we talked about it in the previous episode with the funnel, but if you could briefly touch on the different types of offers you have for HobbyScool, because you have the events, the membership, the store. There is a lot going into it, so let's set the stage before we dive into the behind the scenes.
For those of you listening who are not familiar with HobbyScool, it is my B2C brand where we run online learning virtual summits every single month in all types of fun hobbies. We have a calendar that I put together generally the summer before. The calendar we are working on in 2026, I put together in August 2025, and that is what we use to plan out our entire year.
01:00Every single month I have a very specific repeatable system, and that is going to be important for this conversation. That repeatable system is what allows me to get this rinse and repeat revenue in my business, and also to systemize it.
Tell us, what is the system? Walk us through the promo first, because I know it is very repeatable every month. Explain how that part works.
My system, like I said, is that every single month we do an online learning virtual summit. I generally do them the third week. Let's say we are doing three days, so generally Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday is our event. Three weeks prior to that we start promoting it.
I like to start with the organic promotion first, me promoting it, and then the speakers and affiliates jump in. After that has warmed up our Pixel and everything, I start the Facebook ads around two weeks before the event.
02:00So that is basically three weeks of revenue coming into the business. And then the fourth week I like to do some type of promotion for our Craft and Create Club membership. We might do a challenge in the Skool community and promote that offer to get people in there.
We do other things throughout the month. We might do a flash sale. We have a Shopify store with digital products. But that is generally the majority of the revenue coming in. We do some one-off things here and there if we get a sponsor for one of our events. We might do some newsletter sponsorships, but those are a minimal piece of our revenue, a small slice of that pie.
03:00The majority of the revenue comes in through these events and from our membership.
We could have a conversation about systems, AI, and repeatability for hours, so I want to break this into a couple of buckets so we do not go on too many tangents. The first is speakers, because this business literally runs on speakers coming in and sharing so that you can promote these events. Can you explain how that process works? What it means to line up all of these speakers, how far in advance you do it. Share all the details.
I would say this is where we put the majority of our effort in this business, because it is such a huge part of our business model. I love us to go out and find all of this unique talent.
One of our core values with HobbyScool is that I love to help newer creators get started and build their audience. That is one of our core values. So we are always on the lookout for very creative people who want to share their genius with the world.
04:00I have a team that helps me find speakers. We do a little AI there. AI will go out to YouTube or Instagram, the various places where these creative geniuses are hanging out, and find people who might be a good fit for our events.
Once we identify somebody, we reach out. A real person reaches out, maybe DMs them if they can reach them that way. If they can find their email address, they reach out and say, here is our event schedule, here is a little more about HobbyScool and what we do, are you interested?
05:00One of the things I knew from the beginning, from speaking at these events myself, is that a major focus of mine needed to be helping them grow their audience and their email list. So in our events we place a major focus on making sure they are getting a ton of exposure.
I think that right there has helped us, because we have speakers who come back for multiple events and share different things, or come back every single year for a certain event. Two of our popular events coming up are the Art of Handmade and the Elves Workshop Summit, and we have speakers who said last year, I want to be in this again, put my name down, go ahead and pencil me in.
06:00So that is basically it. We put a lot of time, energy, and focus into the speaker relationship, because it is so important to us.
It is such a testament to the systems you have built, the support you provide, and the experience you give, that people want to keep coming back time and time again. Not only speakers, but your attendees too.
If I were listening to this not knowing you, I would assume you have a team of 50 people helping you. So how many people do you actually have? How many humans do you have behind the scenes helping you, and what do they specifically focus on?
I have three people on my team. I have my full-time VA, and then two part-time people, although one of them sometimes works full time depending on the time of month. She does the HobbyScool help desk.
07:00The week of our events she is definitely working a full 40 hours. And then I have somebody who works basically four hours a day, and he helps me with finding speakers for my personal brand, Creator's MBA. So just for HobbyScool, I have my VA who helps me on both brands, and the part-time to full-time person depending on the time of the month. She focuses on finding HobbyScool speakers and she does basically all of my customer support for the help desk.
And how much are you doing on average per month?
That is a very interesting question, because over the past few years I placed a lot of my focus on HobbyScool, building it up, getting my rinse and repeat system set up, getting all of our AI systems set up.
08:00That has helped us tremendously. I would say that in the recent couple of months I have been completely hands-off from HobbyScool. The event we are running this month is actually the one I did not have to touch at all. I did not have to touch any funnel information, or set up the funnels, or put together the products for the funnels, or do any of that.
My team handled everything. That was the first time that had happened, and I think that was largely due to AI. With all the changes with Claude and all the skills, that has helped us tremendously. I have seen a huge uptick in everything we have been able to get done.
09:00So I attribute a lot of that to the AI. It was really amazing. I thought, okay, I have built this engine and it can run without me. As some people might know, eventually my goal is to sell HobbyScool. I have been looking at the numbers, and I might be able to do this next year or early 2028. We will see how it all rolls out. But I do feel like I have been able to set up a brand that is truly sellable.
That was the next piece I wanted to talk about, because since you are selling this brand, you have to set it up to be sellable. You have to get to the point where you can literally walk away. If you sold it tomorrow, they could hire team members to replace your existing team members. You can give them the skills you have created for AI, and it can essentially run without you. That was the goal from the beginning.
10:00But how has AI changed it specifically? We talk about AI all the time, and we talk about automation all the time, and we both love it. But specifically for HobbyScool, what were the things you were doing manually even a couple of months ago, or that were taking more time than you wanted, that are different now that AI is in the mix?
I do think Claude has changed what we have done, plus a lot of the MCP connectors have helped us tremendously. The connector with Kit, the connector with HTML Pub and Leadpages. That has made such a huge difference, because we can build things in Claude and it will automatically put all of the broadcast emails for our affiliates, our speakers, and our attendees into Kit, and we do not have to do anything.
11:00The only thing we have to do is go in there and say, does this look right, are there any errors, and hit schedule. That used to take so much time, even earlier this year before all of that was available to us. So the MCP connectors and Claude and the AI skills we can tailor to what we are working on. If we are putting together emails for affiliates, it is all done for us. I would say that has been the biggest change for us.
Absolutely. And for those listening who are unfamiliar with MCP or connectors or Claude, essentially what Destini is talking about is that you have your AI tool, Claude or ChatGPT or whichever one you are using, and it can connect to your other tools.
12:00In this example she is talking about connecting it to Kit, her email provider. So she sends a message in Claude to write an email, and it is going to write the email, take that information, put it in Kit, and then schedule it. So all the team has to do is go in and say, schedule to send on this date. It is incredible.
It is amazing. And it will even put in the description what date to send it on and who it needs to go to. You do not even have to think about it. Oh yes, this goes out on July 17th at 9:00 a.m., because that is when the event is.
And I think the most important part of this, and I do not know if this is something you are planning to do, is that it frees up so much mental baggage for you and your team to think of new and fun and creative things to do in the company. Is that what you are using your free time for now with HobbyScool specifically, or do you have team members doing anything different? Or are you just treating this as, we are automating this, and then we can focus on other things in your B2B brand?
13:00That is really where I have turned my attention, focusing on my B2B brand. I am doing five events this year just in that. So I am really trying to get the same systems I set up for HobbyScool into my personal brand.
And in terms of creative things, I hope we are always looking at ways we can improve. I told my team this morning, before you leave today, tell me what is working, tell me what is not working, and where we can improve. I try to do that on a regular basis, just to get them thinking. If anything is not working the way it should, if they are getting feedback or questions from speakers, or something is not clear, we always need to be thinking about where we need to improve.
14:00That is so incredibly important at all times, but now with AI especially it frees up so much bandwidth that you can actually focus on those improvements. We have talked about a lot today, and I do not want to overwhelm everybody listening, but before we wrap up, is there anything else specific to this engine you have created that you want to touch on?
We talked a lot about it in the last episode in terms of how it all fits together. I would just say that with AI and all the systems we have put in place, for anybody out there who is overwhelmed or thinking, I do not know what to do here, I would start with your marketing calendar.
I always recommend people have their marketing calendar outlined at a minimum for the next three months, because that will help you plan ahead and figure out what you need to be working on.
15:00Whether it is a flash sale, or participating in an event. Even if you are speaking at somebody else's summit, that is part of your marketing calendar. You need to get ready for that, because people are going to be coming into your world and you need to be taking care of them.
So map out what you are going to be doing and promoting over the next three months, and then figure out how AI can help you do it better or faster. I would say our conversion rates have absolutely gone up, because we are getting help from Claude with our copy and our design that I did not have in the past.
I do not consider myself a copywriter, and I certainly do not consider myself a designer. But I have been looking at some of our pages, like our registration page and our sales page, and thinking, that is pretty good. I could not pay somebody $5,000 to do it better than this.
16:00I just want you to know that you have all the tools at your fingertips to do this. You can do this. I feel like in today's age with AI, it is putting us on par with companies that have millions of dollars in their marketing budget. I feel like I can compete with them. My stuff is that good.
I completely agree with that. It has completely shattered all the preconceived notions we have had about what it takes to run a successful company. Like I said, we could continue talking about AI and automation and tech for so long.
We need to get you on the podcast, Steph, to go into all the AI automation stuff.
One thing I will say about that, for those who do not know me or are not familiar with my story, my background is not in tech and not in AI. I went to college for art. I have a graphic design degree. I taught myself everything. So if I can do it, if I can teach myself all of this, you can too.
17:00It is literally just a matter of wanting to learn how to do it, and there is no better time than now, because it is so fun and it saves you so much time and it makes you so much money. So definitely dive into this while you can. Thank you, Destini. This was so great.
Thanks for coming on and chatting with me, and I am definitely going to have you on the podcast and we are going to talk about automations.
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