Carina Gardner: A Creative Dynamo

In this episode, Susan welcomes Carina Gardner, a renowned fabric designer and CEO of multiple companies.  Carina, who has designed fabric for Riley Blake Designs, dies for Silhouette, host of the Make and Design Podcast, creater of Design Suite,  and is the founder of the University of Arts and Design, shares her journey and strategies for building a thriving creative business. 

The episode covers Carina's latest exciting project, her new office 'the barn,' and its role in her content creation and family life balance. Carina also delves into the significance of niche marketing, follower engagement, and the real metrics of success. She discusses her approach to content creation and her notable achievement of founding the University of Arts and Design, offering comprehensive design and business education. Carina emphasizes listening to her community, pivoting based on needs, and the importance of impactful time management. Packed with actionable advice and inspiring stories, this episode is a must-listen for aspiring creative entrepreneurs.

01:04 Introducing Carina Gardner

02:26 Balancing Family and Business

07:29 Content Creation Strategies

12:21 The Importance of Niche and SEO

18:48 Design Suite and University Programs

26:51 Building a Lasting Legacy

30:10 Final Thoughts and Farewell

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Transcript

0:48

Welcome to Season 5 of Measure Twice, Cut Once. This whole season is an exploration into behind the scenes of not just quilting, but building a creative business that truly lights you up. As someone who's navigated the exciting, sometimes bumpy world of turning a passion into a profession, I'm excited to pull back the curtain and share my own experiences. Some episodes will be just me. Diving deep into my personal journey, while others will feature guests who are also navigating the world of creative entrepreneurship, will explore the nitty gritty of building a creative business, the lessons learned and the unexpected challenges that come with transforming your craft. Into a thriving enterprise. And don't worry, I'm not leaving storytelling behind. Instead, I'll be weaving them into the conversations about what it takes to grow a business while staying true to your creative spirit. So whether you're dreaming of starting your own business, or you just love hearing about creative entrepreneurship, this season is for you.

Susan: 1:48

Carina Gardner is a well known fabric designer for Riley Blake Designs and a die cut designer for Silhouette and is the host of Make and Design Podcast. She teaches aspiring designers how to make the transition from crafter and hobbyist to profitable designer. She was the creative director of Carta Bella Scrapbook Papers. Her kids brand, Mini Lou, has sold products for Nordstrom, Peak Clothing, and 500 independent retailers and museums in the U. S. Her designs are also on dishware, jewelry, prints, clocks, sewing patterns, and holiday products. Carina has a PhD in design from the University of Minnesota and taught there for five years before starting her own design business. She's the CEO of the University of Arts and Design, and that university offers certificates and master's degree in the creative fields. Carina is also the CEO of Design Suite, a surface pattern and crafting design program that teaches designers how to create a business as they learn to design. Welcome Carina. Thanks for joining me on the podcast.

Carina: 2:48

I'm so happy to be here.

Susan: 2:50

We always have a good time chatting each other up. We seem to bounce ideas very well off of each other. So it's great to have you here. I hardly even know where to start. You have so many different things that you're doing, but I like to start by asking what's one really exciting thing that you're doing right now that's current.

Carina: 3:09

Oh my gosh. Actually, I'm going to tell you a very personal, exciting thing that I'm doing right now. And I'm not sure when this episode's coming out, so maybe you'll be able to see it on our YouTube channel, but in 2024 in January, we made the decision to build an office in my backyard. It's called the barn. And the reason it's so exciting is because we have really gotten into a lot of content creation, as takes up a lot of time and space and energy. And we decided to have a dedicated space for this. So the barn has multiple areas. We are working on. A cooking show, like a crafting in the kitchen show. We are working on more design elements, design shows, more crafting shows, just everything on YouTube. That is really exciting for us to dig into. So that's really exciting. And it really came out of the fact that we do, I do own three companies. I'm sorry. CEO of three companies. And we've just got a lot of things balancing out and I needed to pull away from my family life so that they, weren't entangled with podcasts happening every day and YouTube videos being made all the time and putting it into its own space.

Susan: 4:26

That sounds like the best of both worlds. Like I joke right now, my studio is in the basement, so I have a 17 step commute. Yours is not much more. It's probably about a 55 step commute, right? But there is that separation, and that's what I see you're reaching for.

Carina: 4:41

Yeah. I think with kids in particular, I still have little kids at home. I do have teenagers, but they have. Loud lives is what I'm going to say. They're in and out when the school day ends, when the school day starts. And I realized that I wasn't getting the most out of my time because I'd like to start earlier. Especially if I'm teaching a course at the university we have to have quiet film time and we need everything, like one of the things that we're doing with the barn is everything is soundproof. Everything was purchased with soundproofing in mind so that I could build new courses and. I hope write more books in this space.

Susan: 5:22

My head is just buzzing with ideas, but pursuing this one just a little bit further. Something that I'm finding in my business too, is when my business is in my home, that is a super easy commute, that 17 step commute, but also it does make it difficult to get away. So to turn off work when I want to go home. Is that one of your hopes is that the barn will provide a solution for that as well so that when you do in fact go home with your kids, you're all home, you're all mom.

Carina: 5:52

Yeah, I think it's actually one of the things I have been fighting with for the last 17 years of owning businesses. The whole point of getting into business for myself was to stay home with my very small children. And so I've been able to balance it by being at home with the children, but then running into the office in the evening or early morning to work well, as my kids have gotten older and they're at school part of the day, what I'm finding is that I've never turned it off. Because I was so used to hopping around my kitchen and in my bedroom to run my businesses, that now I actually do have the time and space, but I'm not turning it off at night. I will hop into the office, send off a message to the university students, set up a meeting for the master's degree set up a meeting for my team. And. It's time. Like I have felt it. It is time to have some separation so that my kids can see me far more present. I think I'm a relatively present parent already. As I get older, I start to realize that they're all the stuff that we do is great. But the only thing that remains are relationships. That's it. And so I find myself wanting more time with my kids, more time with my spouse, more time with people I love, and that fills me up.

Susan: 7:12

So what I'm hearing here loud and clear is there's seasons. Mhm. Sometimes you do have to do the thing when your Children are small and you're working while they're napping or after they've gone to bed and you need that to be convenient or you simply couldn't get it done. But then there are seasons when that doesn't have to happen anymore, when you can actually clock some business hours. And so you've come to that season. And I love that. I love that you're recognizing that and taking steps. Okay.

Carina: 7:39

I

Susan: 7:39

Go ahead, finish your statement and

Carina: 7:41

was gonna say, not only is it a great season, but also I think if this barn had been built even 10 years ago, it would have been irrelevant to me. Like it wouldn't have, I wouldn't, I don't need it, in just being a designer, like I don't need to create all this extra content in owning a university and owning a design suite program. I do need content. So it's also where your business is at. That's don't make things unless they are useful to what you're currently doing.

Susan: 8:12

Solid advice. Okay, now I want to ask you because I do content creation on a much smaller scale. But of course, one of the dilemmas that I run into then is, how do I get someone to video me doing something or set up a camera system? What are maybe give us a simple and then a more complex version of how you create, let's say, some short form videos. Let's just keep it simple.

Carina: 8:35

Yeah, we do a lot of short form and we are on five platforms for short form. So we do Pinterest YouTube shorts Instagram, Tik TOK and Facebook. Yeah. So all

Susan: 8:49

give us because a lot of people listening will be much more beginner level than you are. So give us a bit of a ramp into that. Like where did you start with this production and then what kind of came next? You don't have to make it too detailed or complicated, but I want to see how in the world you got to where you are now. And I bet you, you have, a marketing manager and maybe more than one who works in that for you.

Carina: 9:08

Yeah, it's a convoluted journey guys. That's the thing about the, all of the platforms. That's very frustrating because we don't have massive numbers on our channels. Instead, what we have done is try to really dig into our niche harder so that we have strong numbers on our channels, which is a really different way to think about it. I think sometimes because of that, people don't realize we're multimillion dollar businesses and that, we own a university and stuff because they're so busy looking, Oh, Carina doesn't have some ginormous number, but I think it's been far more relevant to just really dig in and do your niche. So this is what I, how I started. I started with Instagram short term, short form video. I did a lot of, because I didn't like. Having to pre think out how I was going to do something. I would just videotape myself doing the thing. So for me, it's crafting, it's quilting, it's designing the fabric. It's any of those things. And I would just film myself and then I loved there was this app and I think it still exists. I haven't been using it recently, but it's called splice on my phone. And I would just. Put together a 15 second reel and then I would add music to it when I went to Instagram. It's gotten a little more complicated. So if you don't want to just do that, one of the best things you can do, and I figured this out, even though it takes more time at the front, it takes very little time at the end. And that is now you'll notice if you go on my free, mostly we don't do music, we do voiceover. And that's because we don't have to then choose music and we can do automatic posting. We use something called go high level, which is. Not everybody's going to have, especially early on but Adobe express planally, there's all these softwares out there that will do automatic posting for you. And what I found was I was spending too much time in posting every morning, even though I had them all set up, I would still spend 30 minutes posting on all our channels. And I was like. We have to get rid of this. This has to go away. And we decided to go to voiceover. It's been one of the best things and the worst things. Cause it means it's a lot of work up front. Cause I do a voiceover on top of the video, but here's the thing I've decided about it. It's actually much better for the viewer because they hear my voice. They actually get to hear what I'm, seeing. That's happening in the video, and it gives them far more information than the description we just had, and this has been, this is goes to show you really cannot control what's going on instagram or any other channel. We just had a real go viral 1. 6 million over a weekend and it, I don't have a massive following you guys. So that's why I was like. What is happening here? And we've had this happen before, but usually on crafting videos, it was a video I reposted from Christmas day last year of making a fort with a new toy with my son. That's it. And I'm just explaining the fort and I'm explaining how I put it together. That's it. And 1. 6 million views. You guys like what? Why? And so the lesson learned here is don't worry about it. Just post because you don't know what's going to go viral.

Susan: 12:13

I so agree. But I hope everyone caught that. To me, very huge tip about the fact that if you don't use music, you don't run into copyright issues with trying to post on different platforms. If it's your own voice and your own voiceover, once you've made it once, you can do that pre scheduling and boom, that's

Carina: 12:33

platforms, guys. Five platforms.

Susan: 12:36

Wow, that is key. That is a massive time saver. And even if you do that for nine out of 10 of your videos and you still want that little bit of music in there. Great. Okay. Speaking of viral videos, I've had that happen to. I had a video one time that was me quilting at the long arm. piece of silly music with it, and I think it was 15 seconds long, 12 million views. And that has never happened since I've had some go, viral. But like, where in the world are there 12 million people that want to see quilting? However, you've hit on a couple big points, which are that number of followers or even likes and views is very much a vanity metric. What matters in your bottom line Is the loyal following of your people, which is linked directly to their interest and to the value you're giving them. So that's what I hear you doing. How?

Carina: 14:51

people don't realize this because I will go on Instagram and I will know someone with 250, 000 followers makes, if they are lucky, 30, 000 a year. I know someone else who has a thousand followers who makes 10 million. I a year. And that's the difference. When you know what's going on behind the scenes, it becomes much more clear what is really going on with the content and with the numbers. And I think most people are so dazzled by the numbers that they don't realize hey, there's another thing going on here. And then also, I think, If you're someone who is creating a business and you're trying to get content out there if you spend more time figuring out what the end goal is, like we have some true end goals for the numbers and they have very little to do with actual numbers of followers has everything to do with financials of the companies.

Susan: 15:45

Yes, I so agree. So is this something that you teach Carina within your the courses that you. Teach at your university, like not only the design, but the business, the administration.

Carina: 15:58

Yeah, we do teach business, but for most people it's because your brand spanking new as a designer, you don't have good business foundations. So we actually start with that because we actually don't recommend, especially for designers. So if you're someone who owns a creative business, you probably have to start with content creation. Designers don't. And there's a reason for that. It's because we use online platforms to run their algorithms. And so instead it's better for them to learn SEO. It's better for them to understand keywords and tags. It's better. for them to understand those types of things so that they can make money without even any content creation. My, my sister alone makes multiple six figures. Nobody knows who the heck she is because she, it's based on the money and the sales. And so because of that, we're able to get away with not doing content creation. Now, Once you get to a certain point, it's time to build a brand. And usually that's in second or third year. So we do have a branding and social media class within our coursework, but we actually recommend people don't take it until way after they get their business foundations in place and they're actually making money in sales. Yeah.

Susan: 17:04

I think that is so good. It is all too easy to get caught up in the glitter of what someone looks like on social media. So here's a tiny example because YouTube's kind of my homey place and I'm in some groups of YouTubers, that are building channels, studying, et cetera. And recently someone celebrated their a hundred thousand follower silver button, right? I have about 20, 000 followers, but here's the kicker. We had the same number of views between us. So what's the difference? The difference is my people come back again and again and again, and just scoop up everything that I deliver. So the same principle is applying and you're underlining that what's key is that you deliver the thing and that you've got a method for reaching people and selling. And that's what SEO or search engine optimization is all about. Can people find you? And truthfully, Social media on its own does not do that for you. That's the people that like the pretty things in the catchy music. That's not necessarily the customers or students, right?

Carina: 18:06

Yeah. I think as long as you have a purpose in your business, your, whatever your creative business is, then, and you're showing that it's going to, you're going to find the right people. The algorithm will help you find the right people. So if content creation is the main way you're getting audience, you're getting people into your back pocket so they can see what you're doing. It's going to be super helpful to you to have a thousand followers that are very strong versus a hundred thousand that wouldn't pay you a dollar to do the things that you're doing.

Susan: 18:38

So then you're even your early content creation played into that. In other words, you were showing literally what it was that you do, skillset and knowledge base are. And therefore the people that are attracted to that, right? Are the people that want to learn about that.

Carina: 18:55

Yeah, it's interesting because I've had to pivot over the years, right? Cause my businesses have changed as happens, but surprisingly, we don't get a huge drop off. People are still interested in the weird stuff that I'm doing. So for example, the. Instagram feed that Carina Gardner feed used to be completely devoted to fabric. And actually in the early days we tried to do both my SVGs, my scrapbooking and fabric all in the same feed. And it did not work. Like it's like it lost people because of the fabric piece. And then they would come in if they were in SVGs, but then they'd see me post too much fabric stuff. So they would leave. And so it just didn't work in the early Instagram. Now the algorithm has changed since then. And then there was a pivot when I started design suite. And so I had to start showing more design stuff versus just fabric. So now I have a mix of, teaching and showing design. And then the same thing happened on the Carina Gardner paper craft feed because we separated those out. So that actually has a pretty big following. But what we did was we changed that to the university feed. So the university of arts and design, we started in 2024, it's a graduate school program. And we went ahead and changed that because I was like, I am not going to continue to show just design stuff anymore. Now I'm showing design stuff from our students and I'm showing design products that are being made by members. And I've changed and surprisingly people have been okay with kind of seeing that evolution along with me.

Susan: 20:25

I find that really interesting, and probably most of us, myself included. Haven't evolved to that level where we've got enough and large enough branches that we would divide. But I find that interesting and I love the way how you thought about that systematically. Who is this one trying to reach and am I serving them up what they need? And if I'm serving them more than what they need, should I maybe have a parting of the ways of those? And that's a really good way to approach it. I love that. Tell me more about your design school, whether it's Design Suite or whether it's the university you pick. I want to know what drives this, what kind of people are coming to it. Yeah.

Carina: 21:02

This is, it's, this is such an interesting evolution. So one of the things we have in design suite is follow the money. We always say follow the money because very often most people follow the passion. I feel very passionate about my creative thing. And so they follow the passion.

Susan: 21:19

You sound like Mike Rowe.

Carina: 21:21

Yeah. So instead we say follow the money because here's the thing. The more you follow the money, actually, the more you get to follow your passion in a lot of ways. If you're in the creative fields anyway I always use the example of Pablo Picasso because we feature him in one of my books, make art that sells. He was able to do 50,000 artworks during his lifetime, and the only reason he was able to do that much is because he got paid for the artwork. If he had to get a side job or a day job, he wouldn't have produced 50,000 works. So if you wanna do the thing you really wanna do, then you gotta learn how to make money doing it. Three and a half years ago. Almost four years ago, I started design suite and the reason behind it was I started seeing all these niches of design, stationary design, surface pattern design card design. And there were all these little niches. And what I realized is people weren't getting a really good comprehensive design education. And you mentioned in the bio, I have a PhD from the university of Minnesota. So I would teach. My, my specialty was typography packaging design. So I was a lot with the juniors and stuff as well. And I just, I started having this feeling of there's nothing out there. That's like just being like, Hey, let me teach you comprehensive design. So you could design in any field you wanted to, but also you understood how to build a business. Off of that and then at any point in your career, you could pivot to wherever you want to go because you understood the fundamentals of both and

Susan: 22:52

it gained

Carina: 22:53

it, it gained traction like stupidly fast in a way I had no idea it was going to gain traction. We now have a cap. We do not allow over a certain number of members in that per year. As we're doing this, as I built it, one of the things you get when you're really dug into a program like mine is you get a lot of feedback. And we did all the things the member members wanted us to do. They were like, we want a community. Great. We'll give it to you. We want to talk to each other. Okay. Let's build Marco Polo groups. We want we want to understand how you do workflow, Carina. Okay. Let's build a class for it. Hey, there's this new AI thing. Can you teach us how to use it? Carina? Okay. Let's build a class for it. So it's expanded into this crazy program. We meet once a week. It's 17 courses that I update. All the time, constantly. There are bonus courses. There are Marco Polo feeds that you get to talk to with people every single day. We do these five hour virtual conferences at quarterly with everything that's updated. In the new year. We always go over all the trends, everything that's going on. And then we always say once a design suite member, always a design suite member. So we do an annual meeting in January telling. Everyone, even if you're not currently in design suite, if you're a design suite alumni, we tell everybody all the upcoming trends, where we see the industry going, we just, we really we really play into what they need. And that came from just listening to our members.

Susan: 24:20

And

Carina: 24:21

in 2024, as we're like moving along, as my team has been growing and we're doing all this stuff. I realized that.

Susan: 24:29

We

Carina: 24:30

We had something special like that we hadn't seen anywhere else. And a lot of it was the fact that I was actually building university level coursework, plus listening to the needs of the members and really building something special.

Susan: 24:44

talk

Carina: 24:44

this idea came along of what would it be like to start an actual university? What would. What would this look like? How hard would it be? And so I started digging in. I started going to conferences with higher ed department of ed type things, and I can't talk a lot about it, but I will say this. It became very clear that we would Set ourselves apart and be able to give people the kind of degrees that you aren't finding at universities right now. A design degree that teaches you how to also run your own business or be a creative director or know how to run a team or use project management software doesn't exist. And I was like what would it be like to not only be a unicorn in the design industry, but be a unicorn in the university industry, which That was very appealing.

Susan: 25:42

agree. And just right off the top of my head, I see one of your huge strengths being that you are listening to your students and pivoting quickly or answering quickly or growing quickly to meet the need. That is something that traditionally universities and frankly, High schools and elementary schools don't do right. There's there years behind the actual developments in the actual world. You've got boots on the ground and you're keeping up. That's awesome.

Carina: 26:11

Yeah. It's been interesting as we developed curriculum for the university. So we're mostly a graduate school and we're only licensed right now in 23 states. By the time this comes out, maybe 24, but we like it is building a university requires a lot of stamina. First off I do have a PhD in design, which is. itself. There's only at least one, maybe two universities in the entire country who give a PhD in design. The terminal degree is an MFA. A master's of fine arts. So you can teach at the university level with an MFA. And always one of my goals as, A ceo was to produce high level designers who could then also go out and teach my curriculum. So what did we build into our university? We have an mfa program So we have a master's of fine arts in digital design. We have a master's of arts in design Business. So if you just want a business degree, you can get a master's of arts in that. And we have a design certificate. So if you don't have a bachelor's degree and you still want this like very good, strong business design curriculum, we have a design certificate for those who want to do it. This is the start. I can't tell you where it's going because it's insane. We already have plans. So we have a 10 year plan at a university. You, people don't realize this. I had to literally sign my next 60 years away to Utah, letting them know that I would give transcripts out for the next 60 years. So like creating a university isn't the same as a regular business. You can get into business and get out quick. This is not the case with the university. Once you're in it. And that is a really good thing, I think, because I think people know I'm not going away and the university isn't going away. It's not built on just Carina as we build out faculty, as we build out advisors, we have a registrar, we have, we just hired our first lot. You have to have a library. Did you know that for university?

Susan: 28:08

I did not.

Carina: 28:09

There are all these things. And so there's a structural piece that most people don't understand because it's not just building a business. It's building something that will stay strong for generations and years to come.

Susan: 28:22

I'm so impressed in this current market of So many digital courses about every topic under the sun. Inevitably, there are some in there that are, professed to be a thing, but aren't necessarily or have a skill set or be able to teach something, but can't necessarily. So what you're saying is it's an onerous procedure for you, but for the consumer, there's that absolute security in knowing that you do have all these things in place. You're for real. And what you teach is legit. I hope it will all be worth it in the end for you. It's so exciting because I do think this is absolutely groundbreaking.

Carina: 28:59

I think it's more about purpose, right? I thought to myself, what is something that could live on past me? How could we make sure that people are learning how? And so forth are really understanding how to run businesses, become creative directors, become leaders in the industry. And I was like, this is the way we're going to do it. This is how we get the prestige. This is how we get the degrees for it. And it's been. I'm not going to lie. It's an exhausting process. The number of meetings I sit in, we had to hire consultancies and I would recommend you don't do this unless you have a nest egg. There's quite a bit of money that goes into the front end of the first three years of building a university that most people don't realize. That has very little to do with education, has everything to do with operations.

Susan: 29:44

I can imagine. My last question is a personal one. It's often being said that you can't do everything. And I know women say this quite a lot. You can't have everything. You can't be everything. How, Carina, do you approach choosing which are the things that are most important to you and where you're going to spend your time?

Carina: 30:05

Always the most impact. What is the thing that I'm going to have the most impact on? Is it better for me to sit in a one hour meeting with my 12 people on my design team or the faculty at my university? Knowing that it's so hard because I will say I'm a doer. Like I want to spend that one hour creating or making or, something when it's better for me to spend an hour in a meeting delegating to everybody to make sure that it gets done. So whatever has the most impact is what I'm going to be doing. If I am the only person who can work on licensing, if I am the only person who can attend the university meetings, cause I'm the only one who has a doctorate, if I'm the only one who can teach the graduate level classes, then that is the job I have to do. I am not allowed to spend my time in admin work. I'm not allowed to even spend my time. I have an executive assistant who had to send out emails to all the faculty members for me to set up meetings. I'm like, I'm That is not a job I should be doing. I like I can't be doing that. There are too many people at play. And this has been a hard thing. I will say becoming CEO of a company is recognizing that. The team matters. We have, I think, 12 people over on the design suite team. Probably a little bit more than that because we've got people in and out for different types of jobs. And then we have seven people on the university team and that's growing extremely rapidly as we hire new faculty and stuff. And then we have over a hundred people in design suite and we have multiple people in the university. So there's like a lot of people being overseen here. And if I don't Think very smartly about my time. Then I am doing a disservice to every single one of those people.

Susan: 31:50

So that's a whole, it's another level in growth of an entrepreneur, right? This, creating your own business, then becoming CEO of your business, but then becoming the person who invests in and oversees and brainstorms the business is yet beyond a CEO. It's fascinating to see you doing that. Yeah, I'm so inspired. Thank you so much for spending the time with me today. It has been a real pleasure as always.

Carina: 32:15

Thanks so much for having me, Susan.

Susan: 32:18

Thank you, my friend, for tuning in. If you've enjoyed this conversation with Carina, would you take a moment and review the podcast? Always so much appreciated. And until next time, may your sorrows be patched and your joys be quilted.