I asked my team a strange question last year. What part of what we teach could someone learn while they’re making biscuits?

They looked at me like, what did you just say?

But that question led to one of the most surprising discoveries of the entire year.

This is episode number eight of nine of The Analog Renaissance, a series where I’m sharing the eight ways we’ve leaned into this analog moment as creatives and as entrepreneurs.

So far, we’ve talked about meeting people in person, sending boxes to doorsteps, designing learning that happens off screen, and obsessing over completion.

This shift is about something quieter, but just as powerful.

Analog advantage, way number seven, is meet them in their analog life.

Seventy-three percent of Americans now listen to podcasts. This number is at an all-time high. Audio content consumption has grown 300% in the last five years, and 61% of branded podcast listeners feel more favorable towards a brand after listening.

The insight for us was that audio meets people in their analog life.

They can listen while they garden, while they drive, while they’re folding laundry, walking their dog. It’s a way to be with them when they step away from screens. It joins them inside their actual life.

So we’ve done this in a bunch of different ways, but one of my favorite examples is that we just launched this big, beautiful 63-page guide called Turn Your Creativity Into Dollars.

Now, this is free. If you don’t have it, you might love to grab it. I’ll link it for you in the show notes, or you can go grab it at bonniechristine.com/dollars.

But here is the thing about a 63-page ebook.

I know what I do with those. I download them, I scroll through them, and then they sit there forever.

So I recorded an audio version.

It took me about 90 minutes. It is me reading the entire thing out loud.

The response has been so fun.

We’ve had over 60,000 people download this in just the last couple of months, and the feedback has been incredible.

People said, I listened to it on my morning walk. I put it on while I painted. I finally finished it because I could listen while I was doing other things.

The principle here is how do we complement digital content, not replace it.

Some people want to read. Some people want to print it out. Some people want to listen. Some people may want to do both.

So why make them choose?

It was about meeting people where they already are.

And my hunch is that it wildly increased the completion rate of this resource.

Pattern is having a moment.

From bold wallpaper to checkered mugs to striped pajamas and floral notebooks, the world is embracing color and texture and personality again. We are officially living in the era of pattern drenching, and honestly, I’m so here for it.

If you’ve been noticing it too and thinking, I wonder if I could make patterns, you absolutely can, and the best way to do it is by using Adobe Illustrator.

It’s where I created my very first repeating pattern over a decade ago, and it’s still the tool that I use and teach today, because it’s designed for this kind of creative work and trusted across the entire industry on a global basis.

Illustrator makes designing seamless repeating patterns feel intuitive. You can easily tweak colors, scale your artwork, and move things around without starting over.

Everything stays crisp because it’s all vector based.

And when you’re ready to put your pattern onto a real product, Illustrator works beautifully with printers, manufacturers, and licensing partners.

So whether you’re creating patterns for your notebooks, your living room walls, or dreaming of turning your creativity into a career, Illustrator helps your ideas go from sketch to look at what I made.

Head on over to our show notes, open Adobe Illustrator, and have some fun.

Pattern is having a moment, and Illustrator is how you join it.

So this is the broader application for you, in whatever sector or industry that you’re in.

What parts of your written content can you include an audio version of?

Can you offer a private podcast for your membership, or turn lessons that work as audio into something people can take with them?

Or my goodness, I am literally thinking about this right now.

Why do I not offer an audio version of every email that I send?

I think I will.

Why have I not thought of that?

Okay, if you’re on my email list, hold me to this. The email that I’m sending next is called Letters to Creative You. Hold me to this. I’m going to include an audio version of it, of me reading.

Because who has time to sit down and read a whole email?

But if you get my email and you could click play and go back to painting, I’ve gotten the message to you without making you sit there and read.

Okay, so anyways, that was a total tangent. You got me. I got so inspired.

So then, how can you turn lessons that work as audio into something people can take with them?

Here’s the question that we asked ourselves, and I want to ask you the same.

What part of your content can someone learn while they’re covered in flour, making biscuits, or while they’re gardening, or while they’re on a drive?

And how can you meet them there?

Here’s what I want to do to tie it all together.

This whole series has been about one thing.

Going deeper with people by meeting them where they are.

In person, with physical products, through print, with their hands, in boxes on their doorsteps, through completion support, and now in their ears while they live their analog lives.

Digital is how we reach people.

Analog is how we go deep with them.

If I could have a quote that sums up this entire series, that is it.

Digital is not the enemy. We love digital. Digital is how we reach each other.

Analog is how we go deep with each other.

But there’s one more thing.

The thing I’ve been building to this entire time.

The way that we reimagined the actual filming of the Surface Design Immersion course.

This approach that we took, I don’t think anyone that I know of has taken in online education before.

I haven’t told you about the decision we made that changed everything about how this course looks and feels.

It’s called “come with me” filming.

And in the final episode, I’m going to take you inside the most ambitious creative project of my career to date, and invite you into something that I hope will change your life, and that you can use in your own business as well.

My friends, create the beauty that you want to see come alive in the world, and remember there’s room for you.