2019 Look Back & Look Forward with Katie Hunt

As we head into the holidays, I want to take a moment to reflect back on 2019 and look forward to what’s in store for 2020. I encourage you to do the same!   2019 was an amazing year around here.   We published 58 podcast episodes this year and surpassed 400,000 downloads.  This show has been live for almost 3 years and during that time we’ve taken very few breaks.  We bring you fresh, new content weekly and sometimes multiple times a week and I have a small team of highly talented people that ensure each episode gets to your ears — and I’m eternally grateful for each and every one of them.  This podcast wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for them.   We welcomed over 150 new students to the Paper Camp family through our conference and online course.  Our conference moved to a new venue that gave us more room to spread out both inside & outside — and lots of amazing natural light.    I often joke that I want people that come to Paper Camp to feel like they are being welcomed into my home and surrounded by new friends — this venue is a great spot for us to connect, learn and grow together.   And, this year, we underwent a major rebrand transitioning my 8 year old business from its original name Tradeshow Bootcamp to our new name Proof to Product.  This project stretched me in so many ways as a business owner — I re-evaluated our audience, our programming and we made some major shifts to ensure that we’re serving our audience and making the biggest impact possible.      We built out a new website that has a ton of resources specifically for product based businesses — we have three free masterclasses, the blog, podcast episodes, case studies & alumni highlights, plus our favorite tools & vendors that we love.   2019 was a year of reflection and stripping away the things that were no longer working for me, the business and all of you so that we can bring you even more in 2020.   Looking ahead — We have some incredible things lined up for all of you in 2020.    For the podcast, we’ll be back on January 7th with a new episode featuring my friend and Paper Camp alumni, Kristen Ley of Thimblepress.   Kristen has made some incredible and intentional shifts in her business Ince the last time she was on the show.  She let go of her national sales reps, downsized her product line and reduced her team of employees.  She re-evaluated what she wanted in her life & her business, then made changes that have led to beautiful results.  I’m excited for you to hear her story.   We’ll host our Paper Camp conference February 25-26th in Los Angeles to talk about product development, selling wholesale, sales & marketing strategies as well as exhibiting at trade shows.  This is more of a workshop vibe than a conference — we cap the program at 30 people so that you can get to know everyone there and we have time dedicated to 1-1 time with our speakers.  February will be the only time we offer our Paper Camp program in-person.  But, we will have the 4-week online course available twice in 2020 — once in the Spring and once in the Fall.  Stay tuned for more detail there.   And, we’re bringing you something brand new in 2020 that we’re still working on and I can’t share, yet.  But it will involve live trainings with me and guest experts on things like marketing, sales and scaling your business, regular office hours where you can pick my brain and ask me questions and access to a wider community of product developers across multiple industries.   I’m not quite ready to spill the beans on this one, but we’ll share more details as its ready.   And, lastly as we head into the holidays I want to thank all of you for being here and making Proof to Product what it is.  I firmly believe that by sharing our stories, our expertise and resources — all of our businesses will thrive.   So, thank you for being here, thank you for listening, for sharing the show with your friends.   I hope you had a wonderful holiday season surrounded by family and friends.   I’ll see you in 2020!