Hobby To Hustle Podcast · Gemma Dillon & Candace Lam

Mid Year Round up | Ep. 29

·56 min·3 clips

Candice says she tripled workshops but sold three or four fewer tickets than last year.

1. Hobby to Hustle Podcast's Episode 29 is a mid-year roundup from Gemma and Candice about the first six months of their businesses. 2. Gemma and Candice host the show together, and they matter because both are business owners talking from their own creative work. 3. The episode asks what has changed in the last six months, what has gone well, and what has been stressful for each of them. 4. Candice says she moved around June 5 and that the move disrupted her business plan. 5. She says her first published quote-unquote animation is an introduction to Coco Island on Instagram, and she made a custom font for it. 6. Candice describes drawing each letter, putting the PNG files into Illustrator, creating a grid, importing SVG files into FontForge, and adjusting spacing. 7. She says the font project took a week to create and then about two more weeks of editing. 8. Gemma says her memberships changed because she closed doors to new members after a registration date and got more people into the group. 9. She explains that her teaching membership, Class to Course Method, helps calligraphers teach workshops and courses. 10. She also says her general business membership was renamed from Creative Biz Success Society to Pens to Profit Club. 11. Gemma says she hit 1,000 email subscribers and 500 YouTube subscribers. 12. She says those round numbers mattered more than Instagram followers because she works hard on email and sends many messages. 13. Candice says her business has been stagnant and that she has not updated Etsy in a long time. 14. She says she is now making digital listing images for jumbo vinyl stickers because real photos frustrate her when the lighting changes. 15. Candice says the changes in her makers' physical locations and her own lack of restocking also affected sales. 16. Gemma says she tripled the number of workshops in her diary but sold the same number of tickets, or three or four fewer, than last year. 17. She says that felt demoralizing, but a quiet summer led her to run Boost Your Bookings for private workshop bookings. 18. The episode sounds conversational and informal, with back-and-forth clarifications, self-corrections, and specific examples from their own businesses. 19. Creative business owners comparing memberships, workshops, and marketing. 20. Listeners wanting polished, high-level business theory without personal detail.

As heard by us

A candid mid-year check-in that turns stalled momentum into a practical reset.

Hobby To Hustle keeps the focus on a plainspoken mid-year reset. Gemma and Candice do not smooth over the rough parts. They talk about a move that knocked the plan off course, physical locations that hurt performance, spotty restocking, and the drag of staying busy without…

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Why you'd press play

You need a candid mid-year reset, not a polished success story.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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