Every so often, you come across a product and instantly know it will be a new staple in your life. The annual prayer journal from Val Marie Paper is one of those products for me. Every year, it’s at the top of my holiday wish list!
That’s why I was so excited to sit down with founder Valerie Woerner. Since 2013, Val Marie Paper has sold nearly 100,000 journals and collected an overflowing folder of thank you’s from happy customers – myself included!
In this interview, you’ll get to hear how Val came up with the idea for her bestselling product and why she intentionally slowed down at the height of her business success.
WILDFLOWER SHOWNOTES : shannaskidmore.com/valerie-woerner
📌 RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Yearly Prayer Journal (Shanna’s Pick!)
Val’s Book “Led not Driven”
Pray Confidently and Consistently Book
Every so often, you come across a product and instantly know it will be a new staple in your life. The annual prayer journal from Val Marie Paper is one of those products for me. Every year, it’s at the top of my holiday wish list!
That’s why I was so excited to sit down with founder Valerie Woerner. Since 2013, Val Marie Paper has sold nearly 100,000 journals and collected an overflowing folder of thank you’s from happy customers – myself included!
In this interview, you’ll get to hear how Val came up with the idea for her bestselling product and why she intentionally slowed down at the height of her business success.
WILDFLOWER SHOWNOTES : shannaskidmore.com/valerie-woerner
📌 RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Yearly Prayer Journal (Shanna’s Pick!)
Val’s Book “Led not Driven”
Pray Confidently and Consistently Book
Valerie (00:00):
We had a really big shipment coming in. It was supposed to come in October. These were our pre-ordered journals that we always do in August, and it did not come in in time. Everything was delayed. We did not get our journals until December 9th, and this was people who had ordered four months before knowing that they were going to have for Christmas two months early.
Shanna (00:20):
You're listening to Consider the Wildflowers, the podcast, episode 69. Every so often you come across a product and instantly know it will be a new staple in your life. The annual Prayer Journal from Val Marie Paper is one of those products for me every year. It's at the top of my holiday wishlist. That's why I was so excited to sit down with founder Valerie Warner. Since 2013, Val Marie Paper has sold nearly a hundred thousand journals and collected an overflowing folder of thank you notes from happy customers, myself included. In this interview, you'll get to hear how Val came up with the idea for her bestselling product and why she intentionally slowed down at the height of her business success. If you dig professional bios, here goes. Valerie Warner is the author of multiple books, including Pray Confidently and Consistently and Springboard Prayers and the host of the podcast Prayer in a Noisy World.
(01:10):
She's the creator of Valerie Paper, prompted prayer journals which have sold over 125,000 copies and lives in South Carolina with her husband, Tyler and their two daughters. Okay, formal introduction's over. Let's dive in. Hey, it's Shanna, and this is Consider the Wildflowers, the podcast. For the past 15 plus years, I've had the honor to hear thousands of stories from entrepreneurs around the world. As a former Fortune 100 financial advisor, turn business consultant, I have a unique opportunity to see the reel. Behind the highlight reel. I'm talking profit and loss statements, unpaid taxes, moments of burnout, and those of utter victory. Or as my husband says, the content everyone is wondering but not many are talking about. And now I'm bringing these private conversations to you here, the untold stories of how industry leaders, founders, and up and coming entrepreneurs got their start, the experiences that shaped them and the journey to building the brands they have today. Stories that will inspire and reignite encourage to redefine success and build a life and business on your own terms. Welcome Wildflower. I'm so glad you're here. Hey, Val, welcome to this show.
Valerie (02:12):
Thank you so much for having me, Shana. I'm so looking forward to this.
Shanna (02:15):
I mean, it has been just so long since we've chatted and it makes me so sad, but every day I write in my prayer, not every day. Listen
Valerie (02:24):
Quite
Shanna (02:25):
A lot. I write in my prayer journal and I just think of you and the work that you're doing and your beautiful Good. So I just am honored to have you on the show. I'm so excited.
Valerie (02:36):
Thank you.
Shanna (02:38):
Okay, we did a quick introduction, but before we dive into the backstory, will you just say hello, tell everybody who you are and what your current business is?
Valerie (02:48):
Yeah. I'm Valerie. I own Valerie Paper and live in South Louisiana, and we create journals and I also write books.
Shanna (02:58):
And how old are you? Have two girls.
Valerie (03:01):
Oh yeah. How old? Vvi and Vanna. I
Shanna (03:04):
Love them. I feel like because I've been on social media so long, I haven't gotten to watch the journey of the girls.
Valerie (03:11):
They're not even wanted anymore.
Shanna (03:13):
How old are they now?
Valerie (03:14):
They're 10. Vivi turned 10. She is basically the same age as our business because we started selling the journals whenever she was 10 months or two weeks old. Oh my goodness. And then Vanna is seven, so my baby is seven.
Shanna (03:27):
Oh my goodness. These little tinies grow up so fast. I can't believe it. So this is my 10th year in business too, which is so fun. And it's gone by really fast, which is awesome. So, okay, take us back, Val, 10 years or longer. Tell us what you were doing before starting this business. Did you have other businesses? Are you working full-time? Just kind of give me the backstory.
Valerie (03:52):
Yeah, so it was, I guess 15 years ago I was working, I graduated from college in journalism and was going to work at our local newspaper. And basically I wanted to be a writer, but to start out, you kind of start at the copy desk where you lay out the front pages, you design things and put headlines on it. And I did that for probably a year and a half. And it was not, I got very jaded very quickly. I saw that, okay, I don't have a future of writing here. It was kind of presented like that whenever you get hired, like, oh yeah, you're going to work your way up. And then I slowly saw none of the riders actually started out here. So anyway, it was a good job. I learned a lot of skills of design at the time that I had started in college, but this was a chance to really learn how to do it on a more consistent basis.
(04:49):
But there was the summer that I was working there, I was in three weddings and because of my job, I worked four to midnight and my days off were Monday and Tuesday. I worked every holiday. So it was very hard to support those friends in their wedding plans. And this sounds so cliche and dumb, but I watched the wedding planner with J-Lo, and I was like, I could do this. I could do this. I could be more involved with my friends. And truly, I feel like the Lord just put that passion on my heart to do that and ended up praying about it for a month or two. And then I'd be like, no, this is dumb. Why would I do this? And when people say, that must've been so scary to start a business, what I always say is the fear of staying in the job I was in is what?
(05:39):
It was bigger than the fear of starting a business. And I think that happens for a lot of people. You have to fear what you're in more than you fear the uncertainty of starting a business. So I started a wedding planning company. There was one lady in town who was older and more like a mom figure, and she didn't have a, and I knew at this 200 eight that people were starting to search more online for wedding stuff. And I had my best friend who I'm now married to do my website, and it just kind of took off from there. And you are familiar a lot with the wedding industry because you've worked with so many people in that. And I was thinking, I was like, I wonder if that's where I first learned about you, but I guess it was around you said 2012,
Shanna (06:23):
13. Yeah, so I started, technically I launched my business 2013, but I was working with people 20 11, 20 12. Yeah,
Valerie (06:31):
Okay. Yes, yes. And I think you were working with some of the floral people that I knew about and stuff like that. But yeah, from there it is a grind and I have so much respect for people who are able to be a wedding planner for years and years. I did it for two or three years, was able to sell that business to somebody else in town who wanted to be a wedding planner and was at that point just going to focus on wedding invitations, which I had started to do just because I was working with these brides who wanted invitations and they're expensive. And I had that background from journalism. And at the time, me and my husband wanted to start a family. I was like, let me just do the wedding invitations. We sold the wedding planning business, and then while I was pregnant with Vivi, I was super anxious.
(07:22):
I have hypochondria and just every weird feeling in your body when you're pregnant just sent my nerves. I don't know, it was overwhelming. And I really wanted to keep track of my prayers to where I would actually use something I would actually know to pray what I wanted to pray for. And whenever I couldn't find it, I googled for months just to see this has to exist. And when I couldn't find it, my printer was like, well, I can print you some, but you need to print 50 at least you can't just do one of these for you. And so my plan was just to share that with my Instagram account that had been following me with wedding stuff, and it just took off a lot quicker than I expected. And it's one of those things where you think I'm the only one who struggles with this. I'm sure everybody else is just having these amazing elaborate prayer times and I'm the only one who can't actually pray and get distracted. And it was just such a lie and very humbling to see that this product could help other people.
Shanna (08:27):
At what part in this journey did you get married?
Valerie (08:31):
We got married in 2010. So while I was a wedding planner, I got to plan my wedding while I was a planner. Yeah,
Shanna (08:38):
Okay. So then you start doing invitations and then move into these prayer journals, which now you offer a lot more than that, but I know that was what I initially for sure know you for is this yearly prayer journal. So tell me about figuring out the bookmaking process, the production side, the pricing side, buying inventory. I would just love to hear that first 50 run and then how it grew from there, kind of what went well, what did not go well,
Valerie (09:15):
Man, so in the beginning it's so weird. Looking back, I'm like, that was so easy. As we've faced challenges over the last 10 years, we're just like, we really fell into that, which was such a blessing. But because it was my local printer, the printer that I used for invitations was local to me. So literally five minutes down the road from me, they still print all of our composed small journals. I love them. It's a very small team, a team of three, but they handle our stuff. They treat us so well over there. But I think in the beginning, obviously you don't know what you're doing and you just kind of hope for the best and you're just kind of even pricing the journals. It was like, okay, well $15 sounds like a good number and I don't even know why I would priced it as that.
(10:05):
And even now we've gone up $1 on the price for that same small journal, which was 10 years ago, and our costs have gone up, but in my mind, I feel like that's what I would pay for it. I don't want to, and this could be a whole therapy session on pricing. I feel like this is the hard part when people are like, go up on your, I'm like, no, but I want it to be super accessible and we'll get into it. We have bigger products now and different things that have changed our business, but we have this one and we want to keep it this way so that people can have a low entry to seeing if this can help their prayer life because it's the same format even with our nicer quality journals. But this is the journal, the $15 journal is what changed my prayer life in that first year. And for pricing, like I said, I don't know if it was very calculated and it was probably just more like, okay, I think this will work. And it, it worked very well and we weren't giving at the time, which I don't want to say also probably made it easier, but now we have that built in. We started early, but not from the beginning.
Shanna (11:21):
Now you give a portion of your proceeds.
Valerie (11:24):
Yeah, we started out, I want to say giving like 50 cents of every journal, which was, I want to say like 3%. Don't quote me on that, I won't quote you. And then now we do 15%, which we've gone up over the time. And it is super humbling because we are able to give a lot. And I think it's one of those things where I've tithed my whole life even as a child. And I'm really glad for that because the numbers are vastly bigger now. So we probably last year gave a hundred thousand dollars to charity, and that does not come. I just can't imagine trying to do that just one day wake up and be like, oh, actually this is just not our money anymore. But it started really slow with a dollar or two as a child.
Shanna (12:16):
Yeah, I think that's such a good, I mean, just giving saving. I heard a pastor years ago when we lived in Atlanta, do a series. It was Andy Stanley on the idea of being rich. And he just talked about, and I think it's so true, it really stuck with me, whether it's giving tithing, saving, whatever it is, practicing starting small, we all think, oh, I'll give one day or I'll save one day when I make this much, I'll do that. But like you said, I have found as well, it's that small practice, the smaller amounts that allow you to wake up one day and give a hundred thousand dollars, that's not something that without practice many people would do. So, okay, this is so good. All right. Tell me how from that first run of 50, how it grew. And also I would love to hear Val, if you want to share about how this practice of journaling and prayer helped you in this season of anxiety and overwhelm and because it's become the mission really of, I don't want to speak for you, but a mission I think of your company.
Valerie (13:27):
Yeah. Well, first it was pretty crazy because leading up to actually starting the prayer journals side of the business, I was writing in another journal. I'd write out prayers. I wasn't able to keep track of the requests, which is what our format is, but into my journals, it's filled with, Lord, I feel like you're wanting me to do this stationary wedding invitations, but you need to provide clients. I don't have enough. And it was over and over again, just very focused on something that I thought God was going to grow and seeing that he was doing something totally different in the background. So I always like to mention that because I feel like so often we can set our eyes on something that we think is going to happen and God could be doing something totally different. And it was so much bigger, getting a couple of more invitation clients is very different from where we are right now.
(14:25):
But no, so my mom, I have a twin sister, and then my husband, they could barely recognize me during that first, the two weeks before she was born, I found out nine days before that she was breach. So we had to do a C-section planted very last minute. It was like an easy pregnancy. And then all this happened and very emotional, but a lot of prayer obviously in that season. And God gave me so much joy and peace. I'm telling you, they would tell you, they're like, we could not recognize her because I was able to pray for the things that I really wanted to. Very specific things like Vivi, sleep, nursing, me and Tyler staying connected throughout that season, what would happen to our businesses? He is also an entrepreneur or was at the time. So it was from, I don't know how to say, trying to sell a product when you have been so changed by it.
(15:28):
It was very electric. And I feel like we have gone through different seasons where, and you can maybe tell Val Marie paper where you could tell the ebb and flow of my own prayer life and whenever I struggle just because it's not as electric in the copy or different things like that. But yeah, I think that's just a challenge we all face as business owners and as honestly as somebody who knows that we have an enemy who doesn't want us to pray. He will try to sabotage my own prayer life knowing how much it could affect others.
Shanna (16:01):
Yeah, I just started reading side note, Priscilla Shire's book on prayer. I've only read the first chapter, but I just made me so grateful, Val, for the product, the resource really that you've created and that I've now had for, I think this is my goodness, I don't even know, fifth or sixth journal, and I have the annual, the big one. I get it every year for Christmas. I'm like, nothing else on my Christmas, Elizabeth, please get me this.
(16:30):
And it was just so sweet to, I keep them so I can go back and see just so much of the journey of our life and the way God has prayers have played out and have been answered in different ways. So Val, walk me through, and I love what you brought up about so many of us have an emotional tie to the product or service that we are selling. There is a passion behind it, but passion ebbs and flows. And I was just talking to Kyle a few weeks ago about, wow, if you could just show up all the time with that intensity, you could just grow. But that's not how we work. That's not how our lives work. Sometimes we are really strong and sometimes our life needs more of our energy. So I'm really glad you brought that up, especially with the type of product that you sell. You're very passionate about it, but I'm sure in some seasons you need to pull back. So will you just walk me through the growth of the company? Did you transition out of the stationary? How did you see the product line start growing? Were there any fears in growing it? Just walk through the first five-ish years.
Valerie (17:52):
Yeah, so I want to say within the first year or two, I decided to write a book and I was going to self-publish it myself, which we did. And I think at that point it was, okay, you can't write a book. You can't do the prayer journals and do the stationary. And so I think at that point we were stable enough to drop the invitations. And it was a very weird slow, I don't even think I told people right away that I wasn't doing anymore, but it had just kind of slowly weaned off. And whenever we decided to let go, and I say we just because my husband is a part of me figuring out these decisions, but whenever it was time to let go of the stationary, it was weird because it was one of those things where it wasn't moving the needle at all.
(18:42):
It was such a small part of the business, but because you have it as your identity at some point, it's hard to even see that without looking at the numbers. And I think it really did take a hard look at the numbers of like, whoa, it feels like this is half my business, but really this is 5%. And I think at that point it was a lot easier to let go of. It was like, okay, I'm just going to turn this form off on my website. And we just stopped one day and then I think I might've emailed people a month or two later and was like, you may have noticed, but it was a very slow thing. But as far as adding other products, we started, some of it was just customers asking, oh, I'd love this for my husband, or I'd love this for my kid.
(19:25):
And we would basically add a product or two each year. And at one point we did have to kind of pull back, I'm trying to think, it might've been three years into it, we had this, it was like the first time we were really faced with competition because when we started it was like, I feel like journals. There's a lot more of that now. I think even before some of the big ones that do boutique bible studies and different things like that, they didn't print their own collection the way we see it now. So it was very easy in the beginning we just took off. And then 2016 was whenever there was just more people doing similar things. And I think at that point I realized, okay, I've kind of been coasting and just kind of resting on the fact that we're the only ones in this space.
(20:19):
And it was a hard shift of like, okay, I just started looking at the competition and feeling like we're getting squeezed out. They're taking, we've had this whole pie and now we're just losing there. It was hard to not feel like the scarcity mindset with it. And I did a lot of praying that year and came to the conclusion that we really did need to niche down on these things because we had started talking about marriage. We had started talking about different things and not far off from prayer, but far enough to where I was like, no, we have to get focused back on prayer. And when we did, it was really good. We were able to become the expert. I don't even want to say that about prayer, but we became somebody that if somebody wanted to do a podcast on prayer, they came to us and you really do water down your message if you talk to everybody or about everything. Anyway, that really helped. And then that was the year we came out with our spiral hardbound linen edition. And that really changed our business too, because we were no longer just selling a $15 product to people anymore. We were selling a $40 product and we saw a lot of growth that year or after the 2016 going into 2017. We really saw that shift.
Shanna (21:46):
Yeah, they're so beautiful. I love the Spiral V. That's the one I have every year. But was it scary, val, to invest in? Will you just talk me through learning how to manage inventory and ordering, and especially if you're seeing the market get a little more saturated, how did you handle the growth on the backend where there are ever moments of fear? And I'm sure at this point you're like outside you, you're not shipping these from your house, kind of diving in and accepting the growth.
Valerie (22:24):
So we actually have stayed very lean. So from the beginning, I've always been a big saver. My husband would just be like, we could invest this. We could put this into a, we could do different things with this. It's just sitting in the bank account. I think for many years I probably had like 200,000 just sitting in the account because I wanted to be able to have the freedom to know that we could pay people just to do what we wanted with the money. And so I did have a very, we'd say for the future, but whenever we, and that's probably more past when we started the yearly, when we did the yearly, we actually did. So it was a very, I didn't have to front the money for that. We were like, let's figure out who actually wants this, how many we can order.
(23:16):
And that was huge for us. We've never been in debt, we've never been close to debt. So it was a very slow progression. And I want to say the first year we ordered, maybe we thought we were going to order 500 and we ordered 1500 or we might've ordered just 500, and then we did 1500 the next year. But it was like we had set ourself up to where we were able to pay for those journals with the pre-orders that we had, and then we had the rest to last us through the holidays. And to be honest, we've continued to do that August pre-order mainly for our customers. We don't need to do that anymore. But we've gotten to a place where we're like, we love getting to offer it for less for these people who will buy a journal that starts in January, they'll buy that in August.
(24:08):
And we just feel like, because talked about it as a team, we're like, should we just wait? Should we just wait till we get 'em in stock and they don't have to wait? And that's kind of been a question. I'm always open to feedback though if you have thoughts on that, but that has been something that we're like, it's kind of like the analogy where they talk about the mom making the roast or whatever. And she used to always cut off the ends because that's how her mom did it and her grandma. And then it's like it was just because of the pan. And so I feel like at this point it's like that's why we do it because of why we did it in the beginning anyway. Yeah,
Shanna (24:44):
I love that you do it. Hey, you talked about the numbers a little bit, and Val, I don't know if you're willing to share, but in the beginning you're doing 500 1500 journals. Can you just for perspective sake, tell us what quantities are you seeing now?
Valerie (24:58):
We are seeing? So we've introduced another journal that people basically choose if they want the rhythms, which is for the whole year. And then we have something called the signature, which is you get two journals for the year, they're six months, they're basically if you want to write more in your journal. So we've kind of split that inventory a little bit. But I want to say this year we ordered 12,000 total. So I think it was 8,000 rhythms and 4,000 of the signature. And then we also our signature, part of the reason we wanted to do that, it's undated, it can last through the year because having a product that you can only sell for a certain time, that is the scary part. We did order more this year than we did last year, and that's a risk that we take, but we just are hopeful of who we will get to reach this year. But the signature, we do a couple of different colors every year, but because they are still undated, we basically have 10 different color options and that was just kind of something fun we wanted to do. Yeah, so I dunno if
Shanna (26:05):
That answers it. I love it. Looking back, would you say that you have seen any major turning points in the business or any seasons where things really started to take off and really grow?
Valerie (26:19):
Yeah, I think 2018 was a big year. I was going to have my first traditionally published book in bookstores and everything like that in the following year, but I was writing my book that year, it was due in April. And then we actually went to Magnolia. Their markets that they have, they have spring at the silos and celebration. And that spring we went to that market and it was a turning point to have a bigger audience, but it was also a turning point because we got to meet, I think they had 40 or 50,000 people at the markets and we got to meet so many people who are already customers we got to hug, take pictures with and just see people that we knew their Instagram handle, but we got to meet 'em face to face. And when you have an online shop, you don't get that interaction very much.
(27:17):
So just getting to hear their stories, to get to pray with them. Our booth was literally a prayer closet basically. We had a wall where people can share prayer quests and we did get to pray with them. So that was a big turning point as far as maybe reach and different things like that. But I think also that was a really successful year on paper. And at the end of that year I decided my word for the year was going to be led, not driven, because I still felt very hollow after. And that was a hard realization that you can reach all these goals that you want. I got be a published author, I got a contract for that. And backstory in high school, I wanted to be a writer. I didn't want to be an author because I thought that was a lot of words for one topic, but I wanted to be poet laureate actually of the United States.
(28:16):
But I feel like it was like I got to realize my dream in a lot of ways that year our sales were growing. I mean we actually had, Joanna Gaines had the prayer journals for one of her daughter's party as a favor for one of their birthday parties, which we didn't talk about at the time. I know they're very private about different things. So we don't advertise that. I guess I did just now. But yeah, it's been years. I feel like it's okay at this point, but it was just a very successful year on paper. But very, I felt like I was neglecting my kids. I felt like I was just this hurried feeling of chasing after things. And the idea of led, not driven was like, I want to live. I'm following what the Lord's calling me to. I'm not trying to run ahead of him. And I think a lot of, I'm a very ambitious person. I love setting goals. I love planning a thousand things. Whenever the idea of, oh, just plan one or two big goals during the year, whatever, I'm like, but there's six things I want to get done this year and I always overwhelm myself. So I feel like the following year was like, okay, now how do we do this but slow down And yeah, I don't know if that answers the question.
Shanna (29:36):
It does. So I want to follow up. So how did you do this but slow down?
Valerie (29:41):
Yeah, so I actually wrote a book called Plan Driven, and it's literally diary entries from that year of, I call it, it's memoir ish basically. But I shared it was a journey I was focused on to the point where focused. I didn't plan on writing a book about it. It was more like, I just need to be journaling this consistently. I need this top of mind throughout my days. And it was amazing to see the different lessons that you're just like, this is everywhere. I'm being hit with this. It's kind the whole, you find out about a certain kind of car and then you see it everywhere. You see
Shanna (30:19):
It everywhere. Yep.
Valerie (30:21):
Yeah, I was doing that and I did learn how to slow down. And even after, during that year, I feel like I was trying, so when we went to Magnolia the first time, that was two weeks before my book deadline, which is crazy to try to cram in this event that takes a lot. I think we found out about it six weeks before, but I was like, I don't want to miss this opportunity. And then I had, my book deal was two books, so the following month I had the companion devotional due and I was like, okay, I keep telling my family we're going to slow down, we're going to slow down. So I was like, we really have to. So I remember seeing Sen be, which I'm sure you're familiar with being from Georgia. I remember seeing, I think it was in Southern Weddings magazine, Laura had done a photo shoot of that, and I was like, it looks so peaceful.
(31:14):
So we rented a house there for the month of June. My husband was an entrepreneur at the time, so he had a flexible job and I was like, let's just go and rest. And it's weird that that's in the middle of all of this because it still felt like it is a lesson that takes forever. So I started that and then I had this lead night driven year. But it's one of those lessons that I feel like because it's my natural inclination, I catch myself a lot with it. And I feel like I'm a lot more aware of what causes stress. And my body is very physically, I know my body tells me when to slow down and I listen a lot more now. But I did have another situation which I'm sure we'll talk about in 2020 along with everybody else. That catapulted me into a lot of changes as
Shanna (32:04):
Well. Okay. I want to talk about that and I don't know if that has anything to do with what I'm about to ask you about Instagram. So did the company mostly grow, especially in the beginning with Instagram? And then you mentioned before we hit record that you took time off Instagram, you're no longer on Instagram, I don't know. So I'm interested, will you talk through just marketing, was Instagram a big part of your growth? Did you decide to quit? And then if you want to share about 2020, I'd love to hear.
Valerie (32:35):
Yeah, okay. So Instagram was definitely one of our biggest drivers in the beginning. Everybody was sharing pictures of their quiet time and it was easy. People were sharing pictures of their journal and we grew a lot through that. And I think it was weird. There was almost like this pullback, and I think that it's very much still shared now, but there was definitely a pullback of I want my quiet times to be quieter and I don't want to post about everything. My time with it just became different. So for us, we definitely saw a shift in that. But I got offline in 2021, but 2020 was, we had a really big shipment coming in and it was supposed to come in October. These were our pre-order journals that we always do in August, and it did not come in time. So everything was delayed. Obviously you guys remember that year, but we did not get our journals until December 9th.
(33:37):
And this was people who had ordered two, no, let's see, four months before knowing that they were going to have for Christmas two months early. The panic that I tell you, when we had 5,000 orders to get out before Christmas, we hired every college student we could find. We worked from first thing in the morning all day. We would work from nine to six at a storage unit. And this is south Louisiana, so it's not freezing cold, but it was down to the thirties. We were like, it's cold for Louisiana. Yeah, it was cold for Louisiana, exactly. But we worked and then I would take stuff home to work every night, and I literally made myself sick. So we did this for, I think we shipped for December 9th. I think we shipped for maybe nine days straight like this, and we got 'em out. But we actually had another issue.
(34:29):
We had, we call it Clover Gate, but we had one of our colors, the skew number somehow messed up and we sent out 500 journals of the wrong color to somebody, which meant 500 people were waiting on a color, but we had already shipped them out. It was a complete mess because we were searching of the storage unit. We're like, where are the other 500? They must have counted wrong. And then we started getting emails of people saying, I got the wrong color. No. So we had this disaster of we had to send out an email basically asking them, do you want for us to pay to ship it? And it cost $8 to ship back. So we were losing that and then we're having to ship back to other people, or do you want to just take a discount and keep it? And then we had to go back to the people who were waiting on that color and say, Hey, do you want to wait for this color?
(35:19):
Or would you take a discount and take another color? So it was like the Excel sheets and the emails and the forms, and it was a nightmare on top of an already really hard season. And that was honestly our biggest year that we've had. We have, well, and I'll get into the Instagram and everything in a second, but early January I started having this pain in my stomach and I think it was just stress related. And I feel like my health basically took a turn after that. And from that moment, just having that be our biggest year, and then we went into this season of several things happening, my health changing, I decided to get off Instagram in that late January. And it has changed our business. Like I said, that was our biggest year. So our past two or three years have not been that big.
(36:21):
And I don't know if it's a combination of, I mean this is my own theories, you can only do so much to try to figure this out. But I think it's a combination of at that point, I was probably haven't worked more than 10 to 15 hours a week in the last two or three years. I'm not on social media the same way. And I have wondered if just that debacle of what happened just turned people off to where we're just like, oh, can't we can't come back from this? And as a business, I feel like we're stronger and we learned a lot from that and we've grown, but you can't convince a customer to give you a second chance. So yeah, I can go into the Instagram more now, but that's kind of my thoughts around it.
Shanna (37:10):
Think Val, thanks for sharing that. And I think there's so many highs and lows in business. I think it's very interesting. I don't know if you know this, and I wish I knew the statistic, but so many businesses, and of course you all haven't closed but close after their biggest, at their highest year in sales. And I think that, I just wonder, of course we don't always know why, but I think sometimes that growth and you all had to deal with so much, but I want to say as a customer myself that maybe there are some people that would not turn me away, that would not cause me to not come back. So let's go into, and I think this will have to do with the last three years in growing a business and kind of what we talked about the very beginning of the podcast, we have a passion for what we do.
(38:02):
That doesn't mean we feel passionate every day. That doesn't mean we have the energy every day to give it a hundred percent. And it sounds like these last few years have been more taking a step back from the business to really mend your health and work on your family. So do you feel like in these last few years you're like, how are you finding now that harmony in your work life and your home life, and if you want to speak to the numbers side with sales not being what they have been, has that been okay with you? You've worked a lot less. Are you okay with maybe trading some of that income for more time? Will you just talk through you these last few years and how has the harmony between work and life been better?
Valerie (38:53):
Yeah. After when we saw, I think the first year after getting off social media, our sales were maybe down like 0.2% or something silly to where, okay, or maybe it might've been a little bit more than that this year that I talked to my life coach Diana, she was Diana Kerr at the time, but when we talked about that she was, was the amount that y'all were down worth not being on Instagram? And I was like, I don't know how to say absolutely. As in it was worth not having the extra income to be off. And I think that is something that you do have to weigh the cost of that. And I have to remind myself of that because it's hard. We have kind of gone through another cycle of the competition and even last year having some things happen, I don't know how to say, not stealing customers, but some unsavory marketing tactics against us.
(39:58):
And it was hard to then see it happened a week or two before our pre-orders and then see our pre-orders different. It's hard to not for that. I think that's the hardest part in this season is not feeling like I have to react to that. I can't just sit back. I have to react to that. And that's the instinct. That's not how you're supposed to run a business, but that's just the instinct of, well, how can I just sit? I feel like I need to strive more. I feel like I need to figure out how we're going to overcome this and different things like that. But yeah, that has been a hard part. And honestly, I'm very much in a transitional phase right now because it has been a hard few years with my health just zapping every bit of energy that I have to where I probably have an hour, maybe an hour of two of focus or just the energy to really work on the business.
(40:59):
And it's hard to run a business like that. But what I've had to see is I'm grateful that I have a business that is scalable. We have a shipping manager who I don't ship the journals so we can grow that side, we can sell more and I'm not directly having to do that every single day or to respond to that. I'm able to be sick, I'm able to be tired, I'm able to and I don't want to be. And just in the last two weeks I've had some major healing and transformation. And this year it was interesting, I think in, so we're 2023 in early, maybe spring of this year, I went to a hotel for two days to just figure some stuff out. We were just trying to figure out what to do next for the business. And I realized I was looking back at all these notes I had Evernote and looking back at different things that I would do weekly that would push the business forward.
(42:00):
And it was another spot of like, okay, I have been coasting now. It's been for good reason health and I have two girls now. It's a very different spot than I was in 10 years ago, but it was realizing it was almost getting excited again for my business. And we invested a lot and made some decisions. And not all of them honestly have worked, have been successful or have been smart decisions. It's kind of like we're just experimenting and trying different things. But I'm very grateful to be in the very early transitions of feeling better, feeling excited, feeling honestly. I think the hardest part about being off Instagram is the disconnect that you can feel from your customer and how I'll hop on every once in a while and I just love getting to hear their stories. And it's almost like you remember that you're selling to a person whose prayer life is changing, and that is, I'll look at some of the emails that we get and whenever I read those, how one person was touched or different things like that, it pulls you out of the big numbers that you could just kind of see, oh, well, whatever it is.
(43:20):
You just think these are people, these are thousands of people every year. How am I greedy to want just a couple thousand more? I dunno.
(43:32):
I feel like this is kind of a weird answer because I don't feel like, it's not like this is far enough in the past where I'm like, this is what I did and everything like that. But this is just where I've been transitioning in the last few weeks, months and this year just trying to figure out what that looks like next for us. And I'm definitely motivated by our customers so much. And I guess whenever I say that, just knowing that we are touching individual lives and that's hard to do offline, but we're figuring it out.
Shanna (44:03):
And I think something, I've been off pretty much off of Instagram since 2017 and now I talk and speak about it so much because I think so many people wonder why. But I also always want to say I'm not totally against Instagram and some we might be back. I think being open to the season you're in. And Val, thanks for sharing that. Just knowing that, again, we've talked about this whole time passion ebbs and flows, and I think the whole idea of the why of your business sometimes gets watered down and diluted. But I have found this in my 10th year of business as well, how important it is to have a strong tie to why you're doing what you do because the hard stuff comes and knowing why you want to keep going or maybe it's a season not two. I think being tied to that. Okay, Val, I want to ask one more question that I always love to hear before we go into a quick fire round. And thank you just for your vulnerability and sharing your journey, and it's been so good to catch up with you. I always like to ask, we haven't talked a ton about money and numbers, but I always like to ask, what is the best thing that you have learned about money?
Valerie (45:16):
Man. So for me, I think, like I said, Tyler and I, he has been an entrepreneur for as long as I've known him. We were starting out hustling together very early on and we didn't have to worry too much about money because we just had a very simple, simple life. So even when we weren't making a lot, our life was very simple. We were able to save, we able to do all that. And as our businesses grew, I feel like we haven't had to really, we say we trust the Lord with our finances, but we don't have sleepless nights over money because we've had enough saved to where we've been comfortable and I feel like this year has challenged us. So my husband is actually an interim pastor at our church and is no longer an entrepreneur. And just with us like Valerie Paper, not where it has been in the past, it has been more of a test to put or it's put what we have been saying to actual the test.
(46:22):
I don't want to be dramatic about it. We are still very comfortable and we're not that. It's like, oh, we're like, I don't know. I don't want to make it more dramatic than it is. It's just not how we're used to living. So even a little change in that has been like, oh, now we have more chance to worry about small things that we won't do because of it. So anyway, where I was headed with that, except to say that I think we can say that we trust the Lord with certain things and I think actually putting into practice has been just something that I want it to be. I don't want it to just be true on paper. I want it to be true in my spirit, in my life and how I live and how we're still generous. We're not going to change our generosity because we want to take home more or something like that, or we want to build a bigger house or different things like that. So trusting in the Lord with it all and not just on paper.
Shanna (47:19):
Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Okay, Val, let's go into a quick fire. Number one. What is one thing you would be embarrassed if people knew?
Valerie (47:27):
I feel like I kind of shared it earlier, just the idea that I've probably spent more time worried about being squeezed out of our industry, or we're 10 years old and I read a stat the other day that 4% of businesses make it past 10 years, but it's like we have to keep pivoting to stay up with the guys who have the new energy and everything like that. So I think I probably spend more time feeling like the old actress who no longer gets called for the IT girl roles than people probably realize and it's honestly, it's a silly perspective. It's all in who you're comparing yourself to and it's silly, but that is my embarrassing thought. Yeah,
Shanna (48:16):
I'm sure many people have had similar fears and have had to work through them. So yeah. Thanks for sharing. Val, any regrets or wish you could do over moments?
Valerie (48:26):
I wish I planned better for leaving Instagram, so I listened to so much of your content about that, Shana, but it was almost like I was resonating with the psyching myself up for it or getting excited about it whenever it happened. I felt very comfortable that it was the right thing to do, but I did not have a game plan. I did not have a strategy. I did not have anything to replace it, which is something you talk about and I wish I had been a little bit more, even if I had started it right when we left, it would've been better. But I don't think I thought about like, oh, you know what? Instagram was probably helping. It probably took me a year and a half to get there, which is so silly, but silly. That is my probably regret
Shanna (49:05):
So much I could say about that because I'm very passionate about this topic and I really, I've been urged, I feel an urge to write so much more about it. Again, not that Instagram is the enemy, actually. It's done a lot of great things for small businesses, but having a plan. Yes. Okay, everybody listening, stay tuned because I'm feeling the need to talk about this more. Okay. Big win or pinch me moment.
Valerie (49:33):
I think very early on, Emily Maynard from the Bachelorette shared a picture of our journals. She bought some, I didn't know she bought any, but she just shared a picture. I'm talking like 2014, 15 and did not even know she had 'em. And it was crazy. Our sales went wild that month and that was the first time I was like, whoa, this is our little bitty journal. How did she even find it? So it was just a cool moment. Yeah.
Shanna (50:03):
That's awesome. Okay. Best advice or just really good advice that you have received
Valerie (50:08):
To think more? We have, I'll get ideas and I just want to put them out there so fast that I think that they're not as strong as they could be if I slowed down and beta tested or did different things or was more patient with it. So I'm learning how to be patient and not feel like everything has to roll out so fast.
Shanna (50:32):
Val is so funny that you say that because that's like I literally just said the thing about social media and I'm the same exact way I am. Like,
Valerie (50:41):
We got to get this out. I know we
Shanna (50:42):
Got to get out, but I have, that's been one of the biggest lessons I have learned in business is to formula. Sometimes it's good just like go for it, run with it. But for me, oftentimes and my personality, I want something done and developed because I get so excited about an idea, but I don't have the energy to follow through with it. So I just have, I'm trying to learn to close my mouth until it's ready.
Valerie (51:11):
Yeah.
Shanna (51:12):
So clear that I'm not very good at it. I just said that about social media, but I hear you. Okay. What are you working on now or one resource that you would like to share?
Valerie (51:23):
We right now are working on a product that I have not been this excited since we came out with our first prayer journal. And it's basically kind of going to be like this complimentary. Our prayer journals help people get rid of the distractions and focus on what they want to pray for. Having a list of that and this product is going to help you take one of those prayer requests and know how to pray for it in a full 360 expanded way. Because I think that's why prayer books of prayer actual prayers are so popular is because we don't know what to say about the things we want to pray for. And I have a book called Pray Confidently and Consistently, and I want to help with that confidence piece and I'm really excited about it. And we are actually beta testing it. I decided to beta test it. We're doing that with some people right now and hoping to have it in the spring, but going to be patient, so we do it right.
Shanna (52:20):
I love it. I'm so excited to see when it comes out. Val, thanks for sharing and thank you for your time today and just your journey. And I think I have no doubt that it's resonated with so many just hearing the highs and the lows and the messy middle moments. But will you just send us off and looking back, what would you tell yourself on day one of maybe creating that first prayer journal or in that season where you were just feeling so much anxiety, looking back now 10 years, what would you tell yourself then?
Valerie (52:52):
So I'll try to say this as brief as possible, but I recently went to go see a doctor in Cleveland who is actually why I'm feeling a lot of my health issues gone. But he is a tremendous man who is doing amazing work, healing people, and he's invented a couple of things that are going to be big for the world soon. But he talked, I was basically just asking him questions throughout the whole time we were meeting and he talked so much about not seeking all these opportunities, but that he was just patient for them. And he's an older gentleman and he knows he doesn't have a crazy amount of time left, but his sincerity to just stay steady when he could feel like I've got a hurry. This is like I need to get this done, has honestly transformed the way I want to run my business. I really do want to come from a way of not just patience, but truly not feeling like I have to be so scrappy and make everything happen. And I wish I could tell that to myself in the beginning because it was easy for a while and I didn't have that, but I think as hardship came, you do kind of get that feeling of having to be scrappy, and I would've loved to start out with that mindset.
Shanna (54:16):
Yeah, just being more open-handed instead of feeling like you have to make everything happen.
Valerie (54:21):
Yes, absolutely.
Shanna (54:22):
That's such good advice. Okay, Val, this has been wonderful. Thank you for your time. Thank you for sharing your story. I love your resource on prayer and it's been a gift in my life and thank you for the work that you do, and I'm excited to see what the next 10 years hold.
Valerie (54:40):
Yes, absolutely. Thank you so much, SHA. You've been such a mentor to me as a business owner, so I appreciate you.
Shanna (54:48):
Hey, wildflower, you just finished another episode of Consider the Wildflowers the podcast. Head over to consider the wildflowers podcast.com for show notes, resource links, and to learn how you can connect with Val. One final thought for today from Seth Godin. Be in a hurry to create work people would miss if it were gone. As always, thank you for listening. I'll see you next time.