57: How One Idea Transformed Thousands of Lives
In this episode of the HobbyScool podcast, host Dr. Destini Copp takes listeners on a heartfelt journey through the origin story of HobbyScool. From a spontaneous domain name purchase during a family vacation to a thriving community of passionate hobbyists, Destini shares the ups and downs of building a business around creative pursuits and lifelong learning.
Discover how HobbyScool evolved from digital learning boxes to successful online summits, and learn about the core values that drive the brand's mission. Destini's encouraging words and practical insights offer inspiration for anyone looking to explore new hobbies or turn their passions into profitable ventures. This episode is a must-listen for creative souls and aspiring entrepreneurs alike.
Key points with timestamps:
00:01:33 - The spontaneous purchase of the HobbyScool domain name
04:04 - Transition from digital learning boxes to online learning summits
06:29 - HobbyScool's core values and mission
08:23 - Future plans for monetization support and product offerings
10:29 - The value of VIP passes and premium speaker bonuses
Mentioned In This Episode
Don't forget to join our wait list for the next HobbyScool online learning summit. Our summits are free to attend and you can be the first to know when the next summit launches by joining our newsletter here.
The HobbyScool Story: From Beach Vacation Idea to Thriving Community
Have you ever had a brilliant idea strike you while on vacation? For Dr. Destini Copp, founder of HobbyScool, a simple domain name search during a family trip to Florida sparked a journey that would impact thousands of creative souls. In this post, we'll dive into the origin story of HobbyScool, exploring how a passion for hobbies and lifelong learning transformed into a vibrant online community.
A Spontaneous Start: The Birth of HobbyScool
Picture this: It's April 2021, and Dr. Destini Copp is enjoying an early morning coffee in Watercolor, Florida. With her family still asleep, she finds herself idly browsing a domain name generator, playing with combinations related to hobbies. Suddenly, she stumbles upon "HobbyScool" (without the 'h' in school). Intrigued by the possibilities, she makes an impulsive decision to purchase the domain.
Little did Destini know that this spur-of-the-moment buy would be the foundation for a business that would touch the lives of countless hobby enthusiasts. The name stuck, and even without the 'h', HobbyScool began its journey to becoming a household name for creative pursuits.
From Digital Boxes to Virtual Summits: The Evolution of HobbyScool
Like many great ideas, HobbyScool didn't immediately take off. Destini spent months pondering how to monetize the concept, knowing she wanted to create something valuable for hobby enthusiasts while also building a sustainable business.
The first iteration came in the form of digital learning boxes, curated collections of resources focused on specific niches. While these were well-received, Destini felt there was potential for more significant growth and community engagement.
Drawing from her experience with virtual summits in her personal brand, Destini decided to bring this format to HobbyScool. The first HobbyScool Online Learning Summit, focused on home gardening and cooking, launched in July 2022. It was an instant hit, paving the way for future summits covering a wide range of hobbies from handmade crafts to various forms of artistic expression.
Core Values and Mission: The Heart of HobbyScool
As HobbyScool grew, so did its sense of purpose. The brand's core values crystallized around the belief that creative passions can lead to life-changing journeys. This ethos drives everything HobbyScool does, from the content they create to the community they foster.
The mission of HobbyScool is clear: to create a space where people can explore hobbies and creative passions, finding personal satisfaction and, potentially, ways to monetize their interests. By valuing community, collaboration, and continuous learning, HobbyScool has become more than just a platform – it's a supportive ecosystem for creative souls.
Looking to the Future: Expanding Horizons
With a strong foundation in place, HobbyScool is setting its sights on even greater impact. Future plans include:
Developing resources to help hobbyists monetize their passions
Expanding the HobbyScool Shopify store with new product offerings
Continuing to offer free access to online learning summits
Enhancing VIP passes with valuable lifetime access and premium bonuses
The goal is clear: to support and inspire individuals at every stage of their creative journey, whether they're just starting to explore a new hobby or looking to turn their passion into a full-time career.
Join the HobbyScool Community
HobbyScool's story is one of passion, perseverance, and the power of community. From a spontaneous domain purchase to a thriving platform for creative exploration, Dr. Destini Copp has created a space where hobbyists of all levels can learn, grow, and connect.
Whether you're a seasoned crafter, a curious beginner, or somewhere in between, HobbyScool welcomes you. By offering both free and premium content, HobbyScool ensures that everyone has the opportunity to explore new interests and develop their skills.
Ready to embark on your own creative journey? Visit HobbyScool.com to join the waitlist for the next free Online Learning Summit and become part of this vibrant community of passionate individuals. Who knows? Your next hobby might just be the start of something amazing.
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Transcript:
Dr. Destini Copp [00:00:04]:
Welcome to the HobbyScool podcast. Whether you're a seasoned hobbyist or just getting started, HobbyScool is the perfect place to learn something new. My name is Dr. Destini Copp, and I'm your host of the podcast. But before we jump into our episode for today, the only thing I ask is if you enjoy the episode, please share with a friend and give us an honest review on your favorite podcast platform. This helps us get out the content to more people. I also wanna invite you to get on our wait list for our next HobbyScool Online Learning Summit. These are free to attend, and you can find the link to join at hobbyscool.com, which is also in our podcast show notes.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:00:49]:
Now sit back, relax, and enjoy the episode. Hi there. Destiny here, and I'm super excited that you are joining me here today, where I'm gonna be giving you a little bit more background on the origin story of HobbyScool. So if you've never heard the story and you've never heard about how we got started, you are going to love this episode. And I'm going to kinda set the stage here for you. So back in around April of 2021, during a family vacation, we were in Watercolor, Florida. And if you've never been down to Watercolor, Florida, it's off of 30a. It's right next to Seaside, Rosemary Beach, Alys Beach down there.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:01:33]:
We love going down there. We go down there as much as we possibly can. We love the bike trails there and all of the amenities that they have at watercolor. And on this particular day, I was up early. I tend to get up before anybody else. Anybody else in my family gets up, and I had my laptop out. I had my coffee right next to me, and I was just really just playing around. I was thinking, you know, I just I'm interested in starting something new, and I was on this domain name generator web website called Namelix.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:02:09]:
And that was before chat gpt or anything else was out there. So this is what I used and, you know, what basically what you would do, you would put in some combinations or things that you are interested in. So I was putting in hobbies and was really curious about what creative and unique names I could come up with related to that particular topic. Because I was very passionate about it and exploring, you know, different types of hobbies and really wanted to see if there was anything out there that I could actually make a business out of. So what I found was a domain name called HobbyScool without the h in it. So sometimes people ask me, well, why don't you have the h in there? Well, simply put, because it wasn't available for me to purchase. That's the most simple answer I can give you. So Hobbyscool without the h was there, and it was available.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:03:04]:
And I went ahead and bought it right then. Okay? So it really was a spontaneous type decision, and I was like, you know what? I think I can make something out of this. I think I can make a business out of this, and I think I can do this and help and bring value to a ton of people in this world. But I sat on it for a while because at the beginning, I was like, I didn't know what I could do with it. I was thinking about it, just chewing on it. I was really just trying to figure out, you know, how can I monetize it? Right? Because this is a business, so you wanna make sure that you're gonna make money, So I sat on it for, like, 6 months or so, and then I decided, I said, you know what? I want to jump in on this, see what I can do with this, and just get started. So what we started with were these, what we call these online learning boxes. So and I think 1 of the first things we did, 1 of the first ones we did, we called it the Mindful Living Learning Box.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:04:04]:
And basically, what it was, it was a collection of digital resources in that particular niche. So we had, you know, a really great group of contributors. They contribute contributed some premium bonuses to this particular bundle. And then we sold it, and people loved it, but it really wasn't growing the brand and the business in the way that I wanted it to, in the way that I knew I could do. And what I decided to do next was to try an online learning virtual summit. So I had done some summits in my personal brand. So I also own destinycop.com, where I'm a business growth coach for digital product entrepreneurs. Have some other products and services there, and I had ran some summits in that particular brand and had seen a lot of success with that bat.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:04:55]:
So I was like, you know what? I'm gonna bring that to HobbyScool. So 1 of the first online learning virtual summits that we did with HobbyScool was our home gardening and cooking edition. So that launch, I think it was around, like, July of 2022. It was a huge, huge success. We saw a tremendous amount of growth and engagement in that particular summit, and that led us to do multiple iterations of various different summits in all types of hobbies and niches. And what we did, as we went through that, we kept running the summits. We would get expert speakers in those particular niches, and our audience started to grow. And people loved what we were doing and what we were bringing into the world.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:05:43]:
So we started expanding. So 1 of the summits that we did was our Art of Handmade Summit, where we had expert speakers come in and talk about different type of handmade stuff. So if you've been in any of our summits, you know how this works. It might have been like somebody coming in and speaking on how to crochet or how to do quilting, or sewing, or soap making, or jewelry making, really anything handmade. So that was 1 of the summits that we did. Another summit that we did was our Art of Expression Summit. So in that particular summit, we had people come in and talk about like journaling, calligraphy, drawing, watercolor painting, you know, those type of things. So we had a lot of interest in that.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:06:29]:
So I was like, you know what? People love what we're doing. They love what we're kind of bringing to the table, and we like, you know, everybody likes exploring different types of creative passions, and that's really 1 of our core values here at HobbyScool. So we know and believe that creative passions can lead to life changing journeys. So that is something that we, you know, believe in, and that's something that we like to explore and bring to the world with our online learning verse minutes. So our mission here at HobbyScool is to create a space where people can explore these hobbies, these creative passions, where they can find personal satisfactions. And, also, if they're interested in it, they can also discover ways to monetize these passions and monetize what they're doing. We also value community at HobbyScool. So right now we have a Facebook group community where we value collaboration, continuous learning.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:07:37]:
So if you are interested in exploring new interest and new hobbies, and if you're a creative person and you love just trying different things, HobbyScool is the place to be. We are here to support you and to inspire you every step of the way. So there you go. That's a little bit of a background story on HobbyScool, how we got started, how I came up with the idea, how I built this business from a domain name purchase. So there you go. I do want to talk a little bit more about some of our future plans. So we know that a lot of you are interested in this. You are interested in monetizing your hobbies.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:08:23]:
You found something that you absolutely love doing, and you're like, you know what? I want to see can I make a side hustle out of this? Or can I turn this side hustle into my full time 5 job? And we know because we have brought you examples after examples after examples of this, that this is truly visible. We have tons of these examples on our podcasts. A lot of our speakers have done this themselves. The speakers that we have coming into this to the summits, they have, you know, built these businesses from things that they absolutely projects that they absolutely love doing, and I've also done it personally. So so we know this can happen. And if this is something that you are interested in doing, we're gonna be here to support you in that endeavor. So that's gonna be 1 of our product that we're gonna be, offering in the very near future in addition to our online learning virtual summits. Now the other thing that we have done and something that we're going to continue to expand in is our HobbyScool Shopify store.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:09:30]:
So we're gonna continue to invest and work on that and add new product offerings to that. Now 1 thing that I absolutely love about HobbyScool is that we are able to offer these online learning virtual summits for free. So no matter what your economic background is, no matter where you are, no matter where you are in your journey of exploring creative passions in these hobbies, you can attend these online learning virtual summits for free. You get to watch this expert speaker presentations for free for 24 hours. And we also offer our VIP VIP pass. Now if you want lifetime access, you can get that with this VIP pass. So you get lifetime access to all of the speaker presentations, plus the premium speaker bonuses that come along with our pass when we're, you know, particular summit. It is a great way to support us in our efforts so we can continue to do what we're doing.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:10:29]:
And we've had a ton of people who have come back and said, you know what? I am so glad I purchased that VIP pass. They love getting that lifetime access to the expert speaker presentations. They can go back and reference them at any time. But I think really what makes these passes also so very valuable are the premium speaker bonuses from our expert speakers. So when we are launching a new summit, you can go and register for free, and that's perfectly fine. You can attend for free. But on the next page after you register, there will be a page that come up that says, you know, before you go, we have this special offer that we think you'll be interested in, and that gives you the details on that VIP pass and any premium speaker bonuses that go along with that VIP pass. So there you go.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:11:16]:
That gives you just a little bit of insight into the origin story of HobbyScool and what our core values are and what we're gonna continue to do. So first of all, I just wanna say thank you, thank you, thank you so much for being part of our journey and being part of this vibrant community of passionate individuals who are interested in exploring new hobbies. Thank you so much for listening today. Don't forget to sign up for the wait list so you'll be the first to know when our next free HobbyScool Online Learning Summit launches. The link is in the show notes for this episode, or you can go to hobbyscool.com, and that's HobbyScool with school without an H in it. Talk soon.