Atlanta Woodworking Show 2017

In case you were sleeping under a rock the last weekend, the Atlanta Woodworking Show just wrapped up. This event was EPIC! We had probably over 200 content creators (bloggers, YouTubers, Instragramers [is that even a thing]) all together in one space; well 2 booths. This is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, get together we have had.

The weekend started off with some much needed family time. Kendra and I took the kids and spent almost 8 hours toting them around the Georgia Aquarium. I loved seeing the Whale Sharks and the Tropical Fish Tank. Braydan even over came his fear and touched a shark, many many times. Londyn was absolutely amazed by the Dolphin show and the otters. At the end of the day we took the kids and had a caricature drawing done of them. Check it out, aren’t they cute?

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Let’s start off with Izzy Swan, he was awesome enough to get a block of hotel rooms at a HUGE discount for everyone, right across the street from the Cobb Galleria Convention Center. His company, Tool Masters Association, partnered with Sawblade.com to provide a booth for people to congregate in and hang out. TMA buttons were everywhere and on everyone at the show. Admittedly, I have not become a member of the TMA yet. I just didn’t know how it would fit in with the vision of my channel or how it would support me. But that the end of the day it isn’t about ME, it is about supporting another awesome content creator and I dare to call a good friend. So, as soon as I am done writing this post, I am pulling out my wallet and seeing what it is all about.

Then there was the Southern Woodworkers booth. Zach Manring (Southernginger.com), Chris Philhower (wallmanwoodshop.com), and myself put this booth on with just over 3 weeks notice. Chris was trying to get us a booth for several months and just weeks before the show we had confirmation that we were indeed getting the booth. Now what? How did we go about filling the booth and getting people into it? Zach brought his awesome Tear Drop Trailer. You can watch his build series here: YouTube. He even built a spinning sticker carousel to giveaway, which ended up being something everyone wanted. Chris spent 3 long weeks building shelving units and tables to display peoples work. I brought out the GIANT Centipede Sawhorse to act as a center display and with one weeks notice I built the booth’s sign, not once but actually 2 times. I used Stickermule’s Wall Decal and 4 days after I made it the edges started curling up on itself. Stickermule was awesome enough to print another one within the hour and overnight it to me in Atlanta. I literally checked into my hotel at 10:00 Thursday night and started working on repairing the sign, so it would be at the show Friday morning.

Now we had a way to fill the booth but how do we get people to stop by the booth and check us out. Heck I figured lets give something away. Who doesn’t like free stuff? Keith from Centipede Sawhorse was going to be at the show and he graciously offered to donate a K100 (2’x4’) for the giveaway. Sam from DIYHuntress.com built us a beautiful entry box to hold all the entries we were hoping to get.

As the show started, we soon realized that it wasn’t the giveaway that was drawing people to our booth. We had 3 different major factors driving the traffic:

1. Zach’s Tear Drop Trailer & Everyone else’s work (thank you to everyone that brought something to display).
2. Fellow content creators were wanting to stop and talk shop.
3. Izzy Swan was telling people to come check us out, or that is what we heard anyway. (Thank You Izzy)

Over the course of the 3 days I got to meet some amazing content creators, traded a bunch of stickers, and took very few pictures (I know, why didn’t I take more). The booth turned out to be extremely successful and we couldn’t be more grateful to everyone that pitched in and donated monetarily or with their time to man the booth. Thank you to all of you. We are planning on returning next year with a bigger booth and an even bigger turnout.

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