From Kitchen Table to Global Community: How The Knitting Tree LA Built a Business Around Belonging with Annette Corsino-Blair & Bruce Blair

Speaker A: Who's ready to rock today? Fire Nation JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire brought to you by High Level, the all in one sales and marketing platform. And today we'll be breaking down how to go from Kitchen table to global community. How the Knitting Tree LA built a business around belonging to drop these vibe bombs. I brought Annette Corsino Blair and Bruce Blair into EO Fire Studios. And then Bruce are co founders of the Knitting Tree la, a community centered fiber arts business blending creativity, education, hospitality and connection while expanding its mission beyond Los Angeles. And today we'll be talking about building together, selling more than a product, emotional support, chicken, the return of the third place and oh, uh, so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Annette, uh, Bruce and our sponsors. If you are building a real business, you need real infrastructure. High Level gives you website hosting funnels, email marketing automation, calendar booking payments and course hosting all on one platform plus award winning 24. 7 support. Get a 30 day free trial in my full bonus stack that includes a 50 minute private call with me and much more at high level fire.com high level fire.com Bruce, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

Speaker B: A lot of people believe if you haven't been successful then you can't be. And that's not true. You know, think your life is full of small successes every single day. So just learn to acknowledge them, build on them, adopt an attitude of gratitude. You know you gotta walk before you can run. So remember, it's not a race.

Speaker A: Bruce, you absolutely crushed the beginning part of this conversation. As Fire Nation we're talking about going from Kitchen table to what global community. How the Knitting Tree LA built a business around belogging. And I want to bring in the second half of this pie here. And that's Annette to start talking about going from kitchen table to business. Because Annette, you started teaching knitting to friends and neighbors just around your kitchen table. I mean how did those informal gatherings eventually evolve into what is now the Knitting Tree la. And when did you realize you were building something much, much bigger?

Speaker C: Well, I want to start by talking about paying it forward in the fiber arts and knitting, crochet and all the fiber arts are something like dance and like a lot of the art forms that once you know it, you pay it forward. And um, knitting and crochet and all those fiber arts are something that's always been done together. So I grew up in a um, in a Post World War II low income housing project with, you know, where there was literally like 100 red brick buildings. So the gatherings were always outside and we were always sharing. It was a diverse, like crazy diverse community to grow up in. And, um, my dad was an Italian immigrant, my mother Mexican. And you know, we had every race and, you know, economic whatever in, in the neighborhood. And we would just all gather outside. There was always like food smells and people doing something, you know, making something. My next door neighbor was a basket maker from the old country in Italy. And ah, yeah, it was just a great place to grow up. And I feel like I'm, um, constantly trying to recreate that. You know, now in the store we have a giant kitchen table. Um, and, uh, yeah, as I started teaching people more and more, I was like, okay, well obviously we need a store in the neighborhood. Let's open a store. So dingus me, you know, I was like, no business experience at all. You know, opening a store. We were open in three months. And yeah, that's how it started.

Speaker A: And I love that because a lot of times, Fire Nation, you do hear a lot of entrepreneurs say, man, if I knew what it was going to take before I started, I never would have started. And listen, ignorance is absolutely bliss when it comes to a lot of entrepreneurial things. And Bruce, I want to bring you back in here to talk about building together, because, I mean, listen, you and Annette, you two bring very different strengths to the business. I mean, Annette's creative, she has a teaching background. You have hospitality experience, which of course has come in huge. So how exactly have you divided responsibilities and how have those complimentary strengths actually shaped a company?

Speaker B: Want to just start very quickly with how we met, um, because I think it's instructive for how we've, um, grown and succeeded. But Annette and I, I was a widower raising my son, and she, her, um, children were gone. Uh, we were both single and we met in tango dancing school, of all things. And after a year of dating, she said, I want to get back into the yarn business. She owned a store in Venice, California that, um, did not survive the Great Recession. It closed in 2009. And so I said, well. And the store was up for sale in the area, and I said, well, let me go down and look at it with you. I did. And then I had never stepped foot in a yarn shop. I knew nothing about it, had no idea. I've had a long career in hospitality at the highest levels. But I turned to her and I said, I'll go in on this with You. And she looked me in the eye and said, bruce, you know, that's more serious than getting married, right? But I looked at her and I said, you know what, Annette? I believe in you. You have something special. You have a spark. People are drawn to you. I don't know anything about knitting. Um, I said, can you make any money doing this? And she said, well, yeah, but I will tell you, it's not a get rich quick scheme, that's for sure. And, and then, and working together, opening the store, bringing our talents to the table. I recognized very quickly, Annette is the franchise. She's the Caitlin Clark, you know, the Michael Jordan pick your era. And she's the instinctive artist. She leads with intuition, and she approaches life with a childlike wonder. You know, I like she's. She's the gregarious giver, you know, a joy instigator. And with my background in hospitality, working for luxury companies like Ritz Carlton, the Beverly Hilton Hotel, the Kemp hunting group out of San Francisco, I had a long history of in my body believing and, um, that genuine care and concern for your guest is the way to go. So that kind of training is just instinctive to me. And my body and my background helped me add structure to the culture of hospitality. I coined a phrase that I like to say, we practice aggressive hospitality. When that door opens, we break the ice, we lean into the guest, we get to know them, we want to start a conversation and be enthusiastic. And coupled with Annette's natural gregariousness, it's just that people want to, um, come and be part of a community that supports and hears them.

Speaker A: I mean, that story is fantastic. It makes me want to pick up Tango again for sure. Anything you want to add to what Bruce has shared before we move on?

Speaker C: Ah, yeah, we always say, um, Bruce is the hype man. He has a lot more words than me, but he's wonderful. I mean, Bruce taught me about aggressive hospitality. He taught me about the power of remaining calm, um, in, um, you know, some upsetting circumstances, you know, about how. Where the power, the power lies in, um, maintaining, you know, your equilibrium. Now, growing up Mexican, Italian, I don't have a lot of that. So I've learned a lot from him and I think that he's learned a lot from me about being, um, just following your instincts and following your gut, you know. And so I think we work really well together.

Speaker A: And that kind of leads us into selling more than a product because the industry has actually become more than a place just to buy yarn. I mean, that's not what the knitting tree is alone. So how intentionally, Annette, did you build a business where community, where belonging, education, relationships, where they all became part of that customer experience?

Speaker C: Well, I always wanted to have a place where people could come and create and meet each other. My biggest, um, joy is when I see people becoming friends with each other that never would have met. And we're near the airport in la and so we get people from all around the world. So it's not just LA now. LA Alone is like its own metropolis with people from all over the place. So, um, again, recreating that kitchen table kind of thing, when people walk in the door so many times, they say, oh, my God, the vibe in here is amazing. And there's so many people that say, this is my happy place. You know, this is Disneyland for adults. And that's what we wanted. We wanted, you know, people to just come walk through the door and just go, ah, uh. And for us on the other end to say, I see you. You're an actual human being. You're not just someone who can buy stuff from us. You know, we want to make your day better. We want to, um, to just bring some brightness to your day and to give you a little break from the onslaught of the horrible mess that's out there. Um, and I think we've done it. You know, we, um. Every one of our employees has been a customer. You know, they've come to me and said, I'd love to work here. You know, I love this place. And they've become ambassadors and our customers have become ambassadors. And one of the things that is a result of that is that when we were having trouble around Covid and after Covid, we turned to the community and we said, we want to stay here. And they came forward. We had to do a crowdfunding at one point, and they kept us here. So, you know, that's. That's one of the things that you get when you create this kind of community, is they have your back.

Speaker A: And that's selling more than a product. Fire Nation. And we're going to be talking about the emotional support chicken, about the return of third place and more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. How many times have you had a conversation with a customer, a team member, or another entrepreneur and walked away thinking there were some great ideas in there, only to forget half of them an hour later? You want to be present in the conversation, not buried in your phone taking notes. That's where Roon comes in. Roon is an ultra thin AI note taking Device that attaches directly to your phone with MagSafe. Press a button and Roon captures the conversation and turns it into notes, action items and info you can actually use later. Use it for team meetings, customer conversations, brainstorming sessions, or those random moments when your next great idea shows up. Um, unexpectedly. I am so blown away by how much more efficient my pre interview process is with the help of Roon. And at less than 3 millimeters thick, it lives right on your phone without feeling like another device you have to carry around. For a special 10% off, visit Roon AI EOF Roon can also connect with tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Notion and securely stores up to 140 hours of recordings locally, even without an Internet connection. Stop trying to remember every great idea and start capturing them. For a special 10% off, visit R U U N E A I E O F Again, for special 10% off, visit Rune AI Eof Fire Nation. If you are building a real business, you need real infrastructure. That is why High Level is Entrepreneur on Fire's featured partner. High Level gives you a website builder and hosting funnels and landing pages, email marketing, appointment scheduling, payment processing, course and membership hosting, and so much more. Everything you need to succeed. All under one roof. No duct tape, no juggling. Five platforms, just one clean system for your business. And their award winning 24. 7 has your back when you need it most. When you sign up at high level fire.com, you also get my exclusive bonus stack. A 30 day free trial, a private 15 minute call with me, m jld access to my weekly live office hours, a digital copy of my book the Common Path to uncommon success, my 50 days to something execution roadmap, and more. Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. All right, we're back. And Bruce, I want to start with you as we talk about the Emotional Support Chicken because, I mean, an unexpected product became a major source of attention for the Knitting Tree. What did the popularity of the Emotional Support Chicken teach you about creating products that connect with people emotionally while still creating some commercial value?

Speaker B: Yeah, this is such a big question for us. We're still a little bit in awe of how broad this has gotten. It's actually because comes a phrase that's in the culture now way beyond what we've created. Um, just, uh, so Annette created the Emotional Support chicken about what, four or five years ago? Annette. The first time. And,

Speaker C: uh, 2019.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it was, it was a knitted stuffed chicken. That's very adorable. Um, it's Pillow size. You can hug it, and you have a visceral physiological reaction to it. And it's the same for everybody. It's instantly whimsical and. And calming. And when Annette first, um, had the idea in the store, all of the regulars said, you've got to teach a class. We need to do this. And so immediately, the local community lit fire on this. And that told us one thing. And then she decided to start selling kits. Putting together our yarn with everything to make it from the eyes to the. Everything you need, including, um, um, a name tag that. That we cr. That we cut ourselves, because we have, what, 34 chickens now, all different colors, and they all have funny names like Shakira, Beyonce, El, 10 John. So it's all about fun and whimsy, but it has a deeper, uh, meaning and connection. And this is what, getting to your question, that people have responded to this, um, in a very real way, I think, because there's such a need. People are feeling disconnected from each other, the world. Every time you open up social media, media, you get an onslaught of this terrible news. And a little tiny, you know, um, ray of sunshine in your day, when you make one of these with your hands and give them. And I can tell you there are tens of thousands of people worldwide that make hundreds of them and give them to friends. When you give them to someone, you're giving them a hug. And what. What could be wrong with that? You're saying, I care about you. And just, uh, some proof of the pudding we have. We sell 34 different, um, colorways in kits that we put together ourselves in our little shop. And we sell the pattern as well. The pattern has sold in 76 countries. We have now available, made it available in seven languages. And between kits and patterns, we probably sold 200,000 of them. And there are Facebook pages of emotional support, chicken groups that have tens of thousands of members around the world. And people, literally people have made hundreds of them. So it's verifiable fact. There are over a million of these chickens on the planet. That tells me something. There's a need for connection and a little bit of fun, a little bit of hope.

Speaker A: I mean, Fire Nation, we have a lot to get to. But I want to move over to Annette. If you want to add something to that before we move into the next topic,

Speaker C: I think it just hit at the right time. Um, right around the last election, it really started taking off even more. And, you know, I just wanted to add that it's being used in children's hospitals in um, psychiatrists office for women who've had mastectomies. They can hold onto them. Um, you know, I get um, emails all the time, like I want to make these and donate them to the gala for domestic violence. You know, I got um, I got an email from a, ah, woman who said she uses the chickens for the, for kids in public speaking. And they hold on to those chickens while they're, they're talking and it somehow eases that their minds, you know. So, um, my niece is a teacher and you know, she makes the little chicken juniors and gives them out for kids who need support, you know. So it's, it, it's a little chicken, but it's a lot more.

Speaker A: I mean L10 John. That's just such a classic. I love that. And then I want to stay with you. With the return for third place, um, so much shopping and social interaction is happening online right now. I mean, why do you think people are increasingly craving spaces where they can create, they can learn, they can genuinely connect with others.

Speaker C: There's no replacement for the physical space. You know, we do have our online school platform and that is um, you know, us reaching out to a greater audience besides Los Angeles. But you know, you talk about blue zones, what is the most important thing? It's support of community and making connections. Just having someone say, you know, know your name. I try and know most people who come in, I try and learn their name and that says I see you. And that is really, really important. You know, especially in la, which can be um, very hard to connect with people. Um, those third spaces, they bring people together. And like I said, there's no substituting for that support that you get in a physical space where you're sitting with other people. We have potlucks twice a week and so we're sharing food, we're sharing inspiration, we're sharing our life experiences. You know, people have come in who are sick and dying. People are come in, come in who are like, uh, they're having babies. You know, it's like everything that life has to offer happens in our shop. They're not actually having babies in our shop. It's like, please, we're not, we're not, we're not that. But I'm just saying it's a reflection of life itself and people want to share those milestones in their life. We've had people um, come in who said, you know, my mom just passed away. This place meant so much. We're mentioning you in the memorial, you know, in the flyer, you know, and it's it's just, it's just wonderful that that's what feeds us and that's what keeps us going.

Speaker A: And Bruce, I know you have a little cherry on top to add here.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. There is so much um, in the news today. Current it's medical science, uh, medicine has um, done lots of research about the effects of loneliness and isolation in our culture, you know, and that just uh, was honored to uh, write an opinion piece that published a Newsweek magazine two weeks ago about this topic. That we are in an epidemic of loneliness in our country and it has real physical ramifications in people's health, um, and, and even mortality. And in fact science has now concluded that loneliness and isolation can be as dangerous to you physically as smoking. So creating a space where people can come and be heard and make a friend. Well, the whole, in, in the past we always met people in physical spaces. You know, before we had all the social media. That's how you connected. At the local market you would see someone every week. And now over time they become an acquaintance and then they become a friend. And that's how community is built and that's what keeps us together as, as, as humans.

Speaker A: So I want to keep with you, Bruce, here to talk about scaling without losing the magic because as the knitting tree reaches customers even beyond Los Angeles, how do you expand the business and educational offerings while you're still protecting the personal, the welcoming culture that you know, made this brand successful?

Speaker B: I think it all starts from you got to care about people, you have to stay true to yourself. Um, and that's where we started. That was the initial impulse, taking a community gathering around a kitchen table and trying to make it bigger. We did that locally and now we're doing it internationally with our new online school platform where we, we just launched it in August and we have um, over 200 people that joined from over six countries. And we're trying to create the in store experience online where um, a private closed group where we can chat, where they can access ah, Annette's library of video tutorial and people can check in with us and say I have a problem with my knitting. How can someone help me? And we can help them live through, through that platform. But you never stop doing what got you there. You know, look for the spark in each person, celebrate small successes. You know, I think about um, famous stories about some of our presidents and there are many of them have had the same quality. But Barack Obama, but uh, when he was president, famously or actually it was not very well known every single night before he went to bed, he would handwrite responses to people that had written to him. He's the president and he's still trying to connect with one person at a time in a meaningful way.

Speaker C: Yeah. And everyone who joins our platform, we get on there and say, welcome, um, tell us about yourself. Meet the other people. And we're starting to get like, oh, you're in the same town as me, we should meet up, you know, and that is, you know, we're trying to echo our store experience.

Speaker A: Annette, I want to stay with you here because Fire Nation's learned a lot. We've talked about the emotional support chicken, the return of the third place scaling without losing magic. Selling is more than a product building together all of this amazing content we share today. If Fire Nation is listening and they want to connect with you, with Bruce, with your business, what is your call to action for our listeners today to learn more about what you have going on at the Knitting Tree?

Speaker C: Well, the first thing would be to get on our website, ah, uh, the knittingtreela.com um, we have lists of our in person classes. We have um, how to connect with our school platform there. Um, we have emails there. Um, you could, if you want to contact me directly, I'm annettenittingtree la. Um, come visit our store. We're um, right. We're about eight minutes from LAX and we'd love to see you and we'd love to hear your story.

Speaker A: Bruce, give us a final value bomb as well to this, just to bring this home.

Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

Speaker A: Yeah,

Speaker B: I've wanted to say this a whole conversation because we're going to break some news here. Something that came to us since we scheduled with you a while ago. This was totally new but because of the work Annette has done, because of the global reach of the emotional support chicken product and our now online community, the US Chamber of Commerce in DC, um, emailed us two weeks ago and they have selected us for their 2026 Top 100 Small Businesses in America. Yeah, it just happened. And in a week and a half we fly back to D.C. for the awards banquet. It um, then they, they put us in, they have 10 categories and we're in the category they call Global Stars. Which means we're not just a small business in America that's doing well in our community, but we have made um, uh, international impact. So Fire Nation, keep your fingers crossed for us. In a week and a half we'll be at the awards gala and hopefully we can bring even more recognition to our um, our industry and you know, and the focus, um, on building community.

Speaker A: Fire Nation. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with acb, BB and JLD today. So keep up the heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com just type bruce and Annette or one of the two. Either name will bring up the show notes page. It'll pop right up and you can connect with them directly. Congratulations to both of you for this latest and greatest, but also for everything that you've accomplished, accomplished throughout the time you've been doing this incredible work. So thank you both for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

Speaker C: Thank you so much

Speaker B: John.

Speaker C: Appreciate it.

Speaker A: Hey Fire Nation. A huge thank you to our sponsors and Annette and Bruce for sponsoring today's episode and Fire Nation. Are you an entrepreneur on fire who wants to share your amazing message with the world? If yes, all you need to do to apply to be on eofire is visit eofire.com Guest I'll catch you there. Or I'll catch you on the flip side. If you are building a real business, you need real infrastructure. High Level gives you website hosting, funnels, email marketing automation, calendar booking, payments and course hosting all on one platform. Plus award winning 24. 7 support. Get a 30 day free trial in my full bonus stack that includes a 15 minute private call with me and much more at High Level. Fire.com/levelfire.com Sam.