From Youtube Creator to $100M Empire

This week, I’m thrilled to share this profile piece I wrote for Just Go Grind—and honestly, this was one of the most fun founder deep dives I’ve done.

Partly because of the sheer insanity behind a business that went from a niche quilting YouTube channel to a $100M+ empire—and essentially bought an entire town in Missouri. But also because at the heart of it all is Jenny Doan, a woman who took a hobby she loved and built something bigger than she ever imagined.

And when I say empire, I’m not exaggerating.

Hamilton, Missouri, is now the Disneyland of Quilting because of Missouri Star Quilt Company. They own 15 quilt shops, a retreat center, and even a “Man’s Land” for husbands waiting for their wives to shop. They just purchased the next town over, too.

But what fascinated me even more was Al Doan, Jenny’s son and the business mind behind the brand, who believes this model could be replicated across industries.

His argument? Brands shouldn’t just build online—they should create real-world destinations that immerse people in their community. The future of the creator economy isn’t just content or commerce—it’s using content to build community and then fueling commerce from there.

It raises an interesting question: What other companies could pull this off?

I profiled Jenny and the Missouri Star Quilt Co. for the Just Go Grind Newsletter. You can read the full story here.

Alternatively, if your attention span is shot, you can watch the TikTok version below.😅 

@cromwellcreativeco

The creator economy isn’t just about influencers doing brand deals. Jenny Doan turned quilting tutorials into $100 million business and tr... See more

Honestly being on video still makes me cringe, but it’s fun bringing back some of the skills from my journalist days. Given the rise of all the AI-produced junk out there, I do feel like video is going to be even more important because it lets you add some personality to your work that’s harder in text-only content.

One AI Prompt to Try 🪄

If you’re looking to start building your personal brand but feel stuck on where to start, the best advice I can give is to just get out of your own head.

And while you can’t always have a ghostwriter working with you to craft some of your ideas, you can use ChatGPT as a thought partner to build a strategy with you. I’ve been experimenting with this prompt over the past few days and am amazed how helpful it’s been in generating new ideas and giving me a structure for some things I can focus on in my business:

Where this gets interesting is in the back and forth. Again it feels slightly insane going back and forth with a robot, but I suppose this is the future.

After answering some questions, I’m able to distill some of my key topics and stories that might be interesting to my audience. I just needed to get them out of my head.

From there, ChatGPT helped me create an awesome strategy that I can focus on in the next few months to build my personal brand.

Again with any advice around AI, I’ll say this: take what you like/what’s helpful from the responses and ignore the rest. Of course you don’t want to take this strategy suggestions and run with them as concrete advice, but it can be really helpful in organizing your thoughts and giving you some starting points.

What I’m Reading This Week

Lastly, I’m working on building a new theme for this newsletter using beehiiv’s new website builder.

Take a look and let me know what you think! Given that I’m not a designer, there are still a lot of things I’d like to change but don’t know the best way yet. But we’re figuring it out as we go.

This week’s issue is also brought to you by beehiiv (the tool that runs this newsletter). Highly recommend trying it out if you’ve been considering launching your own newsletter - or are frustrated with the platform you’re currently using.

Here, have some jet fuel

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