Episode 86 - How we’re revamping Paper to Profits

03/11/21 • 23 min

We’ll be honest: we’ve felt completely overwhelmed many, many times. You may think we’ve got our crap together, but we don’t always.

That’s one reason why we brought on Christina Shay to our Paper Talk team. She is an integrator who oversees our brands and helps us keep the big picture in mind. We chatted with her in our latest episode of Paper Talk about her journey from the corporate world to focusing on small businesses, plus our extensive revamps of Paper to Profits.

You can listen to the episode to hear all about Christina’s work with small businesses and what she sees as their biggest challenges. You’ll also want to hear all about our amazing changes to Paper to Profits.

Head to www.PaperTalkPodcast.com.com to read more about this episode and to see the show notes

Head to www.PaperTalkPodcast.com.com to read more about this episode and to see the show notes

Previous Episode

Episode 86 - How we’re revamping Paper to Profits

We’ve brought in the amazing Christina Shay to help us update Paper to Profits to be easier for students to use and complete. Learn all about it in our latest episode.

Do you have a to-do list a mile long? Feel like you’ll never get through it all?

We’ll be honest: we’ve felt completely overwhelmed many, many times. You may think we’ve got our crap together, but we don’t always.

That’s one reason why we brought on Christina Shay to our Paper Talk team. She is an integrator who oversees our brands and helps us keep the big picture in mind. We chatted with her in our latest episode of Paper Talk about her journey from the corporate world to focusing on small businesses, plus our extensive revamps of Paper to Profits.

Softer Tone

As we’ve mentioned before, Jessie practiced law and Quynh has a background in business, marketing, and finance. This means that we have a wealth of information to pass on to other entrepreneurs, but we can also get caught up in business speak and legalese. If you don’t have a similar background, it might be difficult to follow some of the jargon.

Thanks to Christina’s work launching other creative business courses, she’s helped us soften some of this specialized language to make it more accessible to a wider audience. Christina herself has an educational and work background in business, but she has a keen eye for spotting areas with a stiff tone you’d probably encounter in a college course, not a class for artists. She’s been invaluable by shaping Paper to Profits into something a creative business owner of any background can benefit from.

We want our high value content to reach and help as many of you as possible, and a softened tone will help more people understand and get through our course.

Accountability

Last year we included a one-on-one mentorship session at the end of our inaugural Paper to Profits course. We wanted to help our students on an individual level with whatever was holding them back or giving them problems.

What we found, though, was that not everyone made it to the end of the course to get to that mentorship piece. Life happens. We’re all busy. We know that. So to help keep students on track, we’re shifting that mentorship piece and breaking it up over the entire length of the class.

We’ll meet together as a group after each section to discuss what was covered, problem solve together, and keep one another accountable. This means that you’ll have a deadline to finish a chapter.

If that sounds overwhelming, keep in mind that you can always go back to review content—and know that this will help you actually finish the course! Think about projects you’ve started that didn’t have a deadline. Did they get shoved to the back burner whenever something else came along? Are they still sitting unfinished in the closet collecting dust, either metaphorically or literally? Your business matters. It deserves some attention. Our Mastermind sessions will make you accountable to yourself.

Next Episode

Episode 87 - Overcoming Challenges with Rose Mille

We talked with Bob and Michelle Jorgensen all about their products, business, and how they face challenges in our latest episode.

If you’ve used doublette, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with Rose Mille.

We love our German crepe paper, and we were excited to chat with one of the distributors of our favorite product on our latest episode of Paper Talk. Bob and Michelle Jorgensen joined us to talk about the behind the scenes of their business and to get our feedback about what paper florists most want when it comes to crepe selection.

Michelle founded Rose Mille in 1998, and has long been a leader in bringing materials and workshops to crafters in many different disciplines. Listen to our conversation to hear all about the fascinating world of importing handmade supplies from Germany and more about what Rose Mille plans to offer next.

In the meantime, we were inspired by Bob and Michelle’s scrappy attitude when it comes to making lemonade out of lemons—or in their case, snowman noses out of spun cotton that was supposed to be much bigger. Here are some of the creative ways they have met challenges that can help us all push ourselves more.

Repurpose Materials

Just like in the snowman nose example, Bob and Michelle have had to be creative sometimes when it comes to the materials that arrive.

Their distributors in Germany source from small, cottage industries that produce handmade goods. That can mean that there is one person in a small village who makes carrot-shaped spun cotton, and if that person passes away without a child willing to take on that business, that product is just gone—or at least won’t be available at the same level of quality.

But when a shipment comes in that isn’t quite right, Bob and Michelle try to salvage what they can and repurpose materials. The teeny carrot-shaped spun cotton becomes snowman noses.

You may make a paper flower that doesn’t come out quite right, or maybe you can’t get your hands on the perfect material for your project. Don’t give up! Maybe you can turn that flower into something else. Maybe you can use a different paper. A little creativity can go a long way.

Welcome Competition

Michelle shared the story of how they first started carrying crepe paper. You can hear all the details in the episode, but in short, they were the only ones importing German crepe at the time.

Four years later, Lia Griffith started her partnership with Werola, the manufacturer of doublette. Werola decided to make some colors only available through Lia Griffith and no longer available through Rose Mille.

That’s frustrating when you’ve been in the game longer, right? Well, Michelle kept a good attitude about it. “There’s room for everybody,” she told us on the podcast. She acknowledged that Lia Griffith showed people what to do with crepe, which they hadn’t been doing at Rose Mille.

That kind of attitude gives you more room to move forward, which Bob and Michelle definitely are. Instead of bemoaning the fact that some color combinations aren’t available to them, they asked us which combos we’d like to see as paper florists. Which brings us to...

Ask Questions

We love that Bob and Michelle asked us what we and our listeners wanted as paper florists! There’s really no better way to get your customers what they want and to be successful as a business than by really listening to your clients.

If there is a doublette color combination that you’d like to see, or if there’s any other products that would help your art, email Rose Mille at [email protected]. You’ll hear in the podcast just how eager they are to hear from paper florists. Don’t be shy!

Listen to the episode now to learn even more about what Rose Mille has to offer and how they operate.

Here’s what you’ll hear when you listen to our conversation:

New crepe paper and colors Rose Mille will offer this spring.
More about the fascinating cottage industries in Germany.
How they decide which products to offer.
Other challenges that they’ve had to overcome.

Remember to hop onto our weekly meeting on Clubhouse on Thursdays at 7pm PST/10pm EST, and to join our Facebook group where you can share, connect, and grow with us. Please also consider supporting us on Patreon for even more great content like this.