272 – Taking a Worn Out Industry and Making it New Again with Alex Kurkowski of Tellinga

Gift biz unwrapped episode 272.

My first step was anxiety.

And then my second step was anxiety.

My third step was anxiety.

Why were you anxious?

You hadn't done anything at exactly attention.

Gifters bakers,

crafters, and makers pursuing your dream can be fun.

Whether you have an established business or looking to start one.

Now you are in the right place.

This is give to biz unwrapped,

helping you turn your skill into a flourishing business.

Join us for an episode,

packed full of invaluable guidance,

resources, and the support you need to grow.

Your gift biz.

Here is your host gift biz gal Sue moon Heights.

Hi there.

It's Sue.

And thanks for being here with me today.

Before we get into the show.

One quick announcement.

I continue to hear from a number of you asking about

how to get into maker's MBA.

So this is a program that's created to take a brand

new business dreamer from concept to profitable business in a proven

step by step manner,

and it's open once a year.

but I'm hearing you because the truth is even when you

have a business up and running,

things can get messy and important foundational elements like websites and

email marketing can be forgotten or never set up in the

first place because you're busy.

So I created a new option for you.

My established business listeners who have been running your business for

two years or more,

it's called makers,

MBA accelerator,

and it fast tracks you to a specific area of your

business that you know,

needs attention,

but you haven't had the time to focus on it.

This comes at a perfect time.

As you start to prep for the all important holiday season,

particularly this year,

if this sounds like something,

you'd be interested in head over to gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash maker's MBA there,

you'll see a link for established businesses.

Just click on that.

I ask you a couple of questions and you can be

in maker's MBA accelerator quickly from there.

Let's talk now about this week's show.

If I were to tell you a young man recently out

of school would have a passion and interest in snail mail,

much less greeting cards.

You'd probably think I was crazy.

Well, I am kind of crazy,

but that's beside the point,

Alex, the hero of this story is taking things we already

know. And to be honest,

may think of as part of the past and re-inventing them

in an entirely new and way.

He's making waves in the greeting card industry and beyond make

sure to stay until the end to hear the impressive vision

he has for the future.

It blew me away.

Okay. I'm opening the envelope and revealing all Today.

I can't wait to introduce you to Alex.

Krakowski. Alex is the founder of a greeting card startup called,

which actually began when he was pursuing his MBA at rice

university, after graduating and entering the workforce.

Alex noticed that his free time was slipping away along with

his relationships with friends and family.

So to keep in touch,

he started snail,

mailing them,

literary art seasonal work in the form of letters.

He would draw pictures in story form and mail them out

to loved ones piece by piece over time.

So imagine a comic with images being taken apart page by

page. And then those pages sent out one by one throughout

weeks or even months for his friends and family.

It was a way to stay connected and create fun,

personalized stories.

They would look forward to checking their mailboxes every day and

enjoyed the stories because they were always goofy sent over time

and big bonus Alex's family and friends were the main characters

in their own personalized mailbox movie from there telling guh was

born Alex,

welcome to the gift biz on wrapped podcast.

That was quite the intro suit.

Thank you so much for having me.

I am very grateful for being here.

I am thrilled to have you on,

and we get a lot of people who are interested in

being on the show and I have to look and see

if they fit with the audience,

you know,

all that type of thing.

I looked at your website and I was in thrawled like,

this was so cool.

So unique.

I am a really,

really excited to hear your whole story.

So yay.

You're here.

Uh, thank you.

So I have a big smile on my face and you're

making my face a little bit red right now with all

the compliments at a time that I desperately need them.

So thank you,

sir. Aw,

we all can use a little bit of that right now,

I guess.

Right? Well,

let's start out in our traditional way.

I know that this made you have to think for a

second, but I like to have our guests share with us

a little bit about themselves by way of a motivational candle.

So if you were to tell me a color that resonates

with you and a quote that you would put on a

candle, if you were creating one that spoke all about you,

what would your candle look like Alex?

So I'm going to answer in a way that maybe none

of your podcast members have answered before.

I'm going to say that my candle burns in two different

colors. And I think that with people that come on,

there's many different personalities and then even within the podcast member

that comes on,

they sometimes are at an extreme high.

Sometimes they're an extreme low.

So I think for me,

and for all of your listeners that are entrepreneurs can completely

attest and agree with this is I think I burned two

colors. One is an extreme white light,

yellow, and that's because I'm an extreme optimist sometimes.

And that's the way that I have to be to,

to keep moving things forward.

But then there's days or times that I'm kind of almost

like a dark black where things are a little bit lonely

and sad.

And I think that the motivational quote behind the dark black

light is you have to grind a shine is what I

like to say.

You have to keep grinding to keep shining,

right? And what that means is whenever things are black and

looking down and looking bad,

you have to keep persevering and working through them to kind

of take that black light and turn into a lighter color

where it can eventually turn into that bright white light yellow,

right? And then with the bright yellow,

I would say that the motivational sides of that is it's

kind of fun to do the impossible,

right? And Walt Disney said that that might be kind of

a cliche quote.

But to me it means that I always like to put

a lot on my plate.

And for the stuff that I think is Dane near impossible

to complete,

as long as they keep pushing and moving forward,

I'm usually able to complete those things in one way or

another. So it's being an extreme optimist with that bright yellow

light pair with the Walt Disney quote.

So I think that I kind of shine in two different

colors for that question.

I think we can all relate to that.

Anyone who's an entrepreneur starting something new like that definitely has

those two sides,

hopefully more the yellow than the black.

Right. But you would also note,

I don't know if you've seen my podcast logo,

it's totally bright yellow and black.

So when you were saying that,

I'm like,

Oh, that's cool.

I nailed it.

Nailed the answer there,

you nail it.

As long as it's resonating with you.

And like it made 100% total sense to me.

And I'm a super positive person just by nature also.

So yellow dominate,

but it would be so nice if we could just stay

away from those black times,

not reality,

You have to go through the tower to get to the

suite. And I think that's what entrepreneurship is all about.

It's not for the fainthearted.

It's for those that are tough and it's easier said than

done. And whenever you're actually going through and you're going through

those dark times,

you've got to grind your way out of it as best

you possibly can.

And I think that there's some listeners out there right now,

they're shaking their heads and smiling and completely agreeing with what

I have to say right now.

Totally what I'll also say.

And I'd be curious about your thoughts on this as well

is it's during those dark times when most people quit,

when it's a struggle,

when they reach a challenge,

I think for a lot of us,

it's the tech part of some of the things we're trying

to do.

It starts to get almost too overwhelming.

And this is when you really want to plow through,

because if you think about it,

most people fall off then.

So if you can get through that,

I'm almost thinking of like a race like hurdles or something.

People fall off certain hurdles.

There are less people coming to the finish line,

which means less competition for you when you actually reach the

line, get your business started,

get that new product out,

whatever it is for you.

So it's worth getting through these dark times is the point.

Yeah. And I think,

like I said earlier,

It's a necessary evil because I feel like they do need

to go through that sour to really appreciate the sweet and

there's no sweet without the sour.

Right. And if things just come easily to you then is

that meaningful?

Is that impactful to you?

And I think that overcoming those hurdles as part of the

process and the process is so super important,

not in terms of personal growth and overall learning experience,

but I feel like that you need to have those moments.

So then at the end of it,

whatever success,

however you define success,

whatever that looks like to you,

that whenever you do achieve that,

you can look back it's where you first started and then

reflect on where you are and see how far you've come.

And I think that moment right there,

and it happens and I've hit certain milestones since I launched

something. And we'll talk more about the hand a little bit,

but I've picked certain milestones now where I look back and

thought to myself months before years before,

Oh my gosh.

Like I never thought I could achieve that myself.

And I just kept my nose to the grindstone.

I was able to do that.

So I feel like that part of hardship,

and I don't want to go so far as the same

going through depression,

but like going through a hardship,

hardships is part of the process.

And as part of that sour to ultimately appreciate the sweet,

I agree.

And so often,

you know,

we're always going for that next step.

And so sometimes we forget to go back and celebrate and

really recognize how far we've come.

Sure. Because we're just always striving to go forward,

forward, forward,

forward. But instead of going forward right now,

I want to go back and talk to me about what

happened after you graduated.

I didn't include in the intro,

some of the other jobs you had,

so I'd like you to quickly go through there and then

we're going to talk all about your business development.

Sure. So after I graduated from my MBA at rice university,

I was thrilled really upon graduating because while I was obtaining

my MBA also had a full time job in my career

that I currently have,

but I was thrilled because I didn't have the workload of

20 to 30 extra hours a week of MBA academics on

top of my normal career workload.

And then I kind of had that monkey off my back.

So now I felt like a superhero pretty much because now

I didn't have to worry about that extreme workload.

So I continued on my career that I currently have and

continued to work on my startup on the side,

what little hours I had left over in the day.

Okay. So,

but you also worked for other people for a while too,

right? Or you worked other businesses,

Right? Yes.

And I currently work for quote unquote,

other people right now I'm in the corporate world.

And so I still have a full time job slash career

and I've launched and in growing to Linka as kind of

like a side hustle slash startup company on the side with

what little hours I've left over.

So I am doing both currently and my workload is intense,

but there's light at the end of the tunnel.

Okay, perfect.

That's perfect.

Because so many of our listeners are doing the same thing.

This is something that I think is a really smart move

growing and building on the side versus,

you know,

how the people will say,

Oh, just quit your other job and jump in and then

it'll have to be a success.

I think that's so stressful when you're doing it that way.

You're putting yourself up for risk.

And it's just like,

I much prefer what you're talking about,

where you have some income,

you have some stability and you're able to start building something

of your own also.

So that's perfect,

but okay.

So now that I know that let's just get into,

to Linga.

Okay. So start with how you decided to turn this into

an actual business.

Like when did that come about?

Sure. So roughly three years ago,

I decided to go back to school and obtain my MBA

from rice university.

About a year into the program,

I was inundated overwhelmed with work.

It must have been midnight on like a Tuesday.

I was studying for an accounting exam and I got really

tired of work,

extremely bored with what I was studying.

And I was like,

what am I doing here?

You know,

it's midnight on a Tuesday.

And I've realized like I have a full time job and

I'm getting my MBA with an intense workload.

And I really have no time for friends or family anymore.

So taking a step back from there even,

I've always been a huge fan of snail mail whenever I

was in sixth grade,

my English teacher said that she used to write letters to

her mom and they used to exchange letters back and forth

as a way to keep in touch.

And at that time back then,

whenever I was 11,

12 years old,

people were still writing letters to each other,

but there wasn't the digital or social media experience that we

had today in the world that we live in today.

Right. So I thought it was really cool that she used

to exchange letters with her mom a unique way to keep

in touch.

Right. So right after I heard that from me being in

sixth grade,

I started writing letters to my grandma.

Right. And so I started writing letters back and forth and

it was fun.

We did that for roughly two years or so.

And then from there,

I used to exchange letters with people while I was in

college. Right.

So I've always been like a really big fan of snail

mail. I've always looked forward to getting greeting card in the

mail sports illustrated in the mail.

So with that kind of love of the traditional mailbox,

I started thinking,

man, I don't see my friends or family anymore.

I'm constantly studying midnight on Tuesday accounting exam.

I'm studying for nothing seems to stick anymore.

I need to take a break.

Right. So what I did is I drew little stick men

drawings of two prior experiences before in my life.

And I sent them off one to my mom and then

one to my brother.

Yes. Now Madison envelopes in my car and some stamps on

my car.

And then I sent them off as kind of me being

stressed out and wanting to take a break from my work.

Yeah. And one of the drawings was reminiscing,

a period from my past with my mom.

And this is kind of hard to follow,

but I'm hoping your listeners can understand where I'm coming from

here. But whenever I was growing up,

the first star Wars movie,

Phantom menace was a huge movie at the time.

And one of the characters,

Natalie Portman played queen Amidala.

And so my mom watched it when my brother and I

had the movie theater,

I think we went opening day and my mom afterwards in

a way to get us to do chores and for us

to keep to our studies,

she said,

you listened to me on queen mama Dolla.

So instead of queen Amandola,

she nicknamed herself queen mama Dolla.

I love that we laughed the one time,

but then like It became a thing probably Cause she kept

saying it over and over again.

And maybe there was a diminishing return on the comedy there

because she kept saying it over and over again.

So I drew a little stick man,

drawing of reminiscing,

her saying that,

and her dressed up as a queen.

I sent that off to my mom.

And then the other incident was with my brother when we

were growing up,

I was,

I think,

16 at the time he was 18.

He was a senior in high school.

We went up to Wisconsin to visit some relatives.

And we're at the Kansas city chiefs training camp.

And one of our favorite players growing up was Tony Gonzalez

tied in for the Kansas city chiefs at the time.

And keep in mind,

my brother is 18 years old.

He pretty much has chest hair,

facial hair.

He's almost full grown man about to go off to college.

Right? Whenever Tony Gonzalez comes out of the locker room,

he in the most childlike voice goes,

Tony, Tony,

Tony, can you please sign my ball?

I came all the way from Houston,

Texas for you to sign my ball,

please, please,

please. It's kind of a,

one of those had to be there type stores.

Cause it blew me away.

Blew my parents away.

They were standing by like,

where did that little childlike voice come from?

You're like almost an adult male.

Like what are you doing?

It was the most cringe-worthy it was just the worst thing

in the world during like,

Oh my God,

you're like an adult man.

Like you shouldn't sound like that.

And so we all gave him a hard time for that.

So I drew a stick figure,

picture drawing of him,

trying to reminisce that period from as much as possible.

Cause I wanted them to go and check their mailbox and

to receive it and it to be a different form of

message or receiving something from someone I've really put a smile

on their face as a way to kind of keep in

touch with them.

So they absolutely loved it.

Some days go by I'm in one of my classes at

rice, I tell one of my friends what I did and

that friend actually told me,

Hey, maybe you should turn this into a business.

Right? And so that's essentially the birth of to and to

lingo stands for telling a story.

And what we do is we create a pistol area,

greeting cards that tell people's unique stories.

That is so cool.

Do you think that if your friend wouldn't have said that

you would have ever come to the idea?

I don't think so because I just wasn't thinking about it

that way.

While I was getting my MBA,

everything was so much bigger than sending letters or greeting cards

in the mail.

Everything was very corporate.

So to speak of getting the next position in your current

career and getting the next spot,

or if you were to start a company,

start something,

another electric car company or saw or something way,

what people would perceive as a bigger,

so absolutely not.

And not cross my mind at all.

Yeah. It's very interesting.

I mean,

that happened to me too.

It was my husband who had to say,

why don't you go into business yourself?

You know,

I had been coaching people forever on the corporate side.

And so when I stopped,

it was the same thing.

And I think it's similar with our listeners too.

They don't necessarily,

you know,

if they make things,

you know,

they're creators,

handmade, creators,

the idea doesn't necessarily come to them themselves that they're capable

of doing what other people have seen them do.

So this is kind of a heads up to anybody who's

listening. Who's had anybody ever say to you,

Hey, maybe you should start selling that.

It's such a great product.

I love it.

You should think about turning it into a business because you

can see here where other people have had that experience and

it's been successful.

So I love that.

That was your story.

So what then did you,

do you thought about it and obviously considered it to be

a good idea?

What was your first step to actually forming a business around

this? My first step was anxiety and then my second step

was anxiety.

My third step was anxiety.

Why were you anxious?

You hadn't done anything at exactly.

Well, as anxious is because I haven't done anything yet.

I've never started a company before.

I've never done any of the immediate things that I thought

that I would need to do upon launching the company,

not to mention I had a full workload with my career.

And then on top of that,

I was getting my MBA.

So I have two major things going on already.

And then how do I launch a company coming to be

that third thing in my life?

Oh, so why did you decide you needed to do it

then versus waiting?

Like until you were done with your degree,

were you that excited about it or I was that excited

about it,

but I just had an entrepreneurial kind of itch that I

needed to scratch.

And Rice's entrepreneurship program is for whatever it's worth your listeners,

just ranked number one in the nation.

There's a very strong entrepreneurship program and I was constantly immersed

within the program with other entrepreneurs as well as the academics

behind it and almost being consistently bombarded by entrepreneurship at rice.

So I've always kind of had this itch that I've wanted

to scratch with entrepreneurship.

And then I paired that with getting my MBA from a

really strong entrepreneurship school.

And then you pair both of those things with the fact

that I really loved the idea.

And I thought,

ultimately, that this is a simple idea.

I'm not creating a cure for cancer.

You know,

as I mentioned,

I'm not creating another electric car company.

That is a simple enough idea that I could perhaps execute

on this at least starting by myself and having a full

career workload paired with an MBA workload.

And I could actually do this.

Right. So as far as getting started,

it's just anxiety.

Because even though it's not some big grandiose ideas,

I mentioned,

there's still a huge learning curve,

but I've never done this before.

And so I started trying to tackle things,

right. I knew that I wanted to have a website.

I started doing research,

tons of research,

tons of research.

What were you researching?

Just researching a,

you know,

if anyone's currently doing this and what epistolary is a literary

art form in the form of letters being sent through the

mail, a Dracula print broker.

Did you know that word when you started out or you

found that in your research?

No, I didn't.

And I'm sure while you're listening to it.

Cause I mean,

it's a thing,

people know pistol.

I did not know that.

And so I didn't know it.

Yeah, exactly.

So a pistol is thing and then I started researching epistolary

if there's any companies currently doing it.

And I started researching other greeting card companies,

I started researching like where this could be a fit,

right. And I had a certain vision for it.

So whenever I first started and it's definitely changed since whenever

I first started,

but just started doing a bunch of research on kind of

the landscape of different industries and if anyone's doing it and

where it would fit.

And then on top of that,

I started researching,

you know,

how am I going to be able to build a website

and how am I going to generate traffic?

Where am I going to find the artists?

What style are they going to draw on?

How are operations going to look,

accounting, finance,

the business functions and entrepreneurship has to take on.

I started just kind of thinking and researching all those things.

And then I just started building a list and tackling one

thing at a time.

And if I knew back then what I knew now,

it's just,

I say that and I shrug my shoulders at the same

time and close my eyes and think it's been,

even though this is an epistle Eric greeting card company and

what was seemingly simple to launch and grow at the time,

roughly two years ago,

it's been so much more work than I anticipated since then.

But so I started doing all of this research.

Essentially. I started to kind of morph this product and started

to kind of build on it slowly over time.

Okay. What would you say to somebody now you were just

mentioning if I would have only known back then?

Well, back then,

first of all,

isn't that long ago,

two years ago,

but what would you say to yourself that you wish you

would've done differently at this point?

Like I'm thinking for people,

Alex, who are just thinking of starting out,

could, do you have any tips right here at this beginning

point of something you would have done differently By no means

am I an expert or a teacher,

but You're an expert on your situation though.

Thank you.

Thank you,

sir. You brought up a point earlier the tech side right

early in the podcast.

The way that I look at it now is a,

I would find a co founder,

right? I did not have a cofounder and launch.

I think it's so super important to have another person launching

a company with you because you have all of these ideas

and opinions and thoughts about where you want to take the

company and how you want to do it,

how you want to execute.

But I think it's so important to have someone that has

maybe contrasting skills years or just anyone else,

really to help field your opinions and ideas and thoughts,

and then build on those and then develop new ones.

Right? So that's one huge mistake that I made is not

having co-founder in the way that I look at it is

I learned in grad school,

you're supposed to have this hipster,

right? And you're supposed to have a hacker and you're supposed

to have a hustler.

So kind of start with three people.

What I mean by that as the hipsters kind of the

visionary and the thought leader and where they want to take

the brand and what the brand is and where they want

to take it.

The hacker is essentially that the coder,

the programming,

the tech person,

which I thought,

which I so desperately need now and definitely needed fact then,

and then the hustler,

right? The salesman.

And that's more of who I am.

It's kind of the hustler slash hipster.

And I kind of lack those hacking skills,

but the hustle hustler,

the salesmen to go out acquire leads,

acquire sales,

build SEO factors.

So I think starting not just what,

maybe one co-founder,

but starting with three people,

the hustler,

the hipster and the hacker I think is super important.

Interesting. Yeah.

If you can,

I mean,

a lot of people do just start as one and have

to play all the roles and eventually gravitate into what is

the most comfortable for them.

That's when me,

and I think,

I think that,

like I know that I've definitely stunted my acceleration and growth

for doing that,

but I think about this daily Sue and I think about

why I lost the company by myself is because I didn't

want to,

well, I was kind of foolish if I went back in

time, would I do that again?

I'd be 50 50.

Why I just gave your listeners advice that I would do

that. There's also a part of me,

maybe half of me that wouldn't do that.

Why? Because I feel like it's so important that you have

a lot of listeners.

You've had a lot of people on your podcasts that you

said that would not,

or that I had to do it by themselves.

And I think that's super important because you're learning all the

facets of what it takes to get the job done.

Right. You're learning all your business functions,

you're learning your business and you're not delegating it out.

So since you understand your business,

then you can hire later on.

So for example,

I didn't know anything about SEO whenever I first started.

I didn't know anything about building a website.

I didn't know anything about a lot of stuff that I've

now learned.

Right? And so I feel like it's so important for people

to go out and go through that hardship of learning early

on. So then whenever the company does scale to a point

where they have to start hiring on employees,

that they can do so in a very intelligent way,

because they know what the business needs and they know here's

what I need from SEO.

Here's what I need from a website.

Here's what I need from an application.

Here's what I need from whatever,

because you've gone through it yourself.

And you know that you can't necessarily tackle due to some

constraints, whether it be time or anything else,

but you know what the business needs more than anyone else

does. So instead of immediately just delegating out tasks,

you don't even know how to manage those tasks.

You don't know how to manage those people because you've never

gone through yourself.

But if you've gone through building website,

you've gone through SEO,

you've gone through accounting,

finance, other business functions.

You've gone through that,

suck by yourself.

And you know how to manage that with the people that

you do decide to hire on later in your business,

if that makes sense.

Yeah. And I think a lot depends on just how you

are as a personality too.

I mean,

I don't have co-founders or partners with either of my businesses,

but I have an assistant who is solid gold and she

is like,

Sue, if anything happens to you,

do you know that I am not taking on this company?

Like, she didn't want any responsibility like that,

but she's loving everything she's doing.

She doesn't have the skin in the game like that,

especially financially.

So I think that,

and I also like to call all the shots too with

advice and all of that.

So I think I really like what you're talking about is

having someone else around to bounce ideas off of maybe that

a business coach,

maybe it's entering a program.

Like we have a special program called maker's MBA for makers

to help them start their business.

Maybe someone from your chamber or a local,

who's also starting a business.

So you guys can like bounce ideas off each other.

But I think having somebody else there,

because let's face it,

when we're looking at our own ideas all the time,

everything looks great.

Right. Or we get stuck and we're overwhelmed.

Okay. So you got things started,

you did all your research.

You wish you would've had someone else to bounce ideas off

of. So that's really interesting and good for us to know,

talk us through where you were and what you had in

place. At the point you went quote,

unquote, live with the business we're coming right back after a

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Sure. I'll explain just briefly what the business actually is.

Right? So,

as I mentioned,

stands for telling a story,

we create a pistol lyric greeting cards that tell people's unique

stories, usually love stories.

And this is usually sent to someone as a premium greeting

card or a really unique gift,

right? And so let's say,

Sue, you and I are best friends,

and I want to buy you a birthday gift,

right? So I log on it to linda.com.

And then the first thing I do is I select a

certain story length,

whether it be a one day story or one week story,

a two week story or a one month story,

and I'll come full circle with that hearing a little bit

and what those story links are.

And let's say,

I say,

Sue is an evil podcast host,

trying to actually take down all makers and creators and craftsmen

across the globe.

She's not really doing this from the kindness of her heart.

She's not really trying to do anything positive for the makers

of the world.

And she's really trying to take us down,

Alex. I'm not liking your story.

Keep going.

I'm just kidding.

I know.

And you find this funny,

cause I know you and I know that you do this

right. I'm also a maker and craftsman myself.

So it's funny.

It's relatable to both of us because we're best friends.

And then I throw your brother in there.

Let's say you have a brother and say,

C's brother is my sidekick and we try to take you

down or whatever.

Right? So I probably description.

And then I upload a photo of your brother,

upload a photo of me and then you,

and then I hit submit.

And then from there it gets sent off to a team

of 25 contracted artists that are located throughout the United States.

And they then begin illustrating out that story on a five

and a half by eight and a half size greeting card,

like card stock.

They begin drawing out that story.

And these snail mail it out piece by piece every other

day for one week,

two weeks or one month.

So going back to the story links,

the one day story is just one hand drawn illustration.

The one week story is three hand drawn illustrations sent out

every other day over one week.

The two week story is six hand drawn illustrations sent out

every other day,

over two weeks.

And then one,

one story is 12 liters and sends out every other day

over one month.

Right? So the whole point of this.

And so let me get back to the story is let's

say first part you get in your plotting to take down

all craftsmen and makers and stuff like that,

right? And that's the first illustration that you receive in your

mailbox. And then two days later it's even know that illustration,

it's me meeting up with our brother and he's my sidekick.

And we're like going to go take you down or whatever.

And so every other day you receive another part of that

story in the mail.

And it's essentially like a very personalized storybook for all ages.

If you were to rip out all the pages that personalized

storybook and you were to snail,

mail them out every other day for that period of time,

that's what we're doing,

right? And the whole point of this is kind of tap

back into the tangible,

the physical,

the real side of life,

getting people to look forward to their mailbox.

Everybody has a mailbox,

but they're not often excited to check it anymore because it's

usually filled with junk mail and bills.

And you pair that with everything's email,

everything's social media,

everything's digitized electronic these days,

that this is the anti social media,

anti digital electronic company.

And that we're trying to kind of get back into that

tangible, physical,

real old school way of life.

And we're trying to accomplish that really through the mailbox and

be a mailbox company and getting people at the end of

a hard work day,

they come home and they receive another part of the story

that they're the lead character.

And just to put a smile on their face.

Well, first off,

who wouldn't want a story written about them,

whether you're the evil villain or not,

I don't know.

Like I want my story now.

Right, right.

But then you can keep that,

like, that's something,

it is a gift unto itself.

It's a card.

Right. And so many of us have challenges of like,

what do you do with your cards after you get them

anyway? Right.

But now these are pictures.

So you could be framing them.

You could put them all together for the story.

Or you could just keep them together as like you're saying,

like its own little storybook where you're the main character.

I think it's brilliant.

And the reason why position is officially as like a greeting

card or an alternative greeting card is because I just think

traditional green cards,

for lack of a better word suck,

right? They're not truly personalized.

They're fixed,

they're cheesy.

They don't say what you really want to say.

Right. And usually whenever I received them and I think 99%

of your listeners would agree with me is that whenever I

received them,

I fake smile say,

thank you.

Maybe I pretend to put it up on their fridge for

a second.

But whenever that person leaves my house or at least whatever

situation I'm in,

I'll take it and usually throw it away where it's almost

meaningless to me because of how generic fix and lame it

is. Right.

Then there's really no additional benefit after you receive it just

the first time.

Or you can't do anything like frame it or you can't

put it on a tee shirt or a mug,

or you can't put it somewhere up in your office to

remind you how you need to have a gift.

That was really the lead character.

And right.

So I just think that greeting cards that they have with

other companies and will continue to be disrupted because they need

to be because of how fixed they are in nature.

Right. I mean,

there are customized cards now,

but they still only take it to a certain level.

You are way over that with what you're doing.

So what are the price ranges?

You don't have to tell me for each one of the

times, but like where does it range from the least expensive?

Like the one day to the two months,

what's your range?

It's 10 to $120.

Okay. So reasonable.

If you wanted to do like one card,

one week,

even two weeks would equal the cost of a gift.

Let's say you were sending someone a gift.

It's kind of the greeting card that serves as the gift

and also the greeting card at the same time.

But even at $10 for the one day card,

I mean,

that's still extremely competitive for the premium greeting card space.

And you look at other more premium green card offerings at

the top shelf at CVS or Walgreens or some other company's

currently selling more higher and greeting cards mean you're looking at

10 to $15 anyways,

but those greeting cards that you're purchasing there are still 10

to 15 bucks or that are still fixed.

And to have the same message,

mine is completely a hundred percent personalized and customized.

So we're really excited about that.

Totally get it.

I'm totally in line with your pricing.

Love it.

Okay. So now that we understand what the product is,

what did you have in place when you got started?

Let's start there and then I have a follow up question.

You had your website,

obviously Here come the hardest,

right? Like I gotta plug an artist,

where am I going to find these artists?

Right. So I reached out to art organizations at rice university,

as well as the university of Houston is a Houston based

company. And I asked the presidents there,

do you have any people that'd be interested in this?

And so they blast it out to their people.

And the response was over whelming.

I mean,

I must have had a hundred applications sent to me just

from two different groups that I sent it out to.

So, I mean,

there was a real need for artists to want to get

plugged into a cool new startup platform.

So I need to hire the artist.

Right. And then from there,

what do I do with artists?

Right? Like what are they going to be illustrating on?

What's that gonna look like?

And how is that going to be delivered?

What internal platform are we going to use to communicate and

to run operations on?

There's just so much to consider.

But like I said,

it was one thing at a time.

And as soon as I reached out to acquire artists and

I interviewed the artists,

I was like,

well, what am I going to do with them?

Now that I have them on board.

And now that I have them on board,

what platform are they going to be plugged into?

Where they can communicate and post their artwork to.

And then it was just one thing at a time.

And like,

really it's like I had what I thought at the time,

two or three more things to do.

It was really like in reality,

it was like 20 to 30 things more to do,

but I didn't see those 20 or 30 things to do

from there.

I only saw the two or three because I thought it

would be a lot simpler than what it actually was.

Cause one thing leads to another leads to,

Oh yeah,

for sure problems lead to other problems.

So did you start with several artists and then get up

and running and test the system to see where the holes

were and other things that you had to add in That

is exactly what I did.

Yep. I saw one of the holes where I had immediate

friends and family obviously purchase telling stores just to give it

a good test and then worked out the holes later on.

Okay. So it wasn't totally perfect when you started,

which is a good lesson for all of us to remember

you still got started and sometimes you can't find the holes

until you've started.

It was awful.

Okay. So there has to be a story.

I'm not letting that statement just pass by.

So what was awful?

It was awful because the website functionality,

like it was bad looking and like,

I didn't know how to build a website.

I'm so much better at it now.

And I still have a lot to learn,

but the user experience for the website was awful.

The artist's way that they received orders.

Mike. So whenever a customer submitted an order,

I took that information and sent it off to an artist

via text message.

And then just said,

Hey, can you please complete this order via text message.

And now we have an internal platform that obviously is automated

that whenever an order comes in,

it automatically gets sent out and it gets posted and then

they take it and they complete the story and they upload

images where at the time it was just me sending out.

First of all,

it was a terrible user experience.

A website barely worked.

And then if a customer was able to complete an order

on the website,

that order was just taken by me and sent to an

artist via text message and say,

Hey, can you just complete this and send out these illustrations

whenever you can.

And it was all done on computer paper at the time,

eight and a half by 11 size piece of computer paper.

And now we have nice,

good premium recycled card stock that we illustrate from,

with branding and a logo all over it,

you know,

but it was on computer paper and it was really just

a lot of guesswork.

And it was me wondering if the artist was completing the

story on time,

what the artwork actually looked like,

because I had no clue what it looked like whenever they

were completing,

it sent off to customers.

The time that they were sending it out,

that was very important for it to stay consistent with every

other day schedule.

So it was all over the place.

And I don't want to get into the nitty gritties of

it, but like suddenly the website and it was the process

behind the order,

in the internal platforms that we use or didn't use at

the time.

So it was clunky and a high level of just manual

activity that had to happen.

But I hope you don't beat yourself up a lot about

that because you had to go through that process to get

to where you are now.

I'm proud of my team and I'm proud of myself for

having overcome that.

And when you talked earlier about just wanting to give up,

especially from the tech side,

man, I've wanted to give up so much,

but I believe in this product,

I believe in the vision so much that it's keeping me

pushed forward.

So what did you say to yourself on those days when

you, on the black days when you wanted to give up,

right. And you were just going to be over,

how did you keep going?

Lots of coffee.

I'm into that.

That's good.

Yeah. Lots of coffee.

And just being a pause,

like ha I just,

I don't know.

Some internal driver of mine Drive,

I guess.

Yeah. Yeah.

Self-starter and me envisioning what this product could be and where

it needs to be.

And the niche that it will be in and kind of

has already placed itself in,

but kind of seeing and understanding that before in the past

week, I just need to get over this little hurdle here.

And after I get over this little hurdle here,

I'm gonna have to get over this slightly bigger hurdle here.

Am I taking it one step at a time?

And I'm just gonna keep moving forward.

Right. But it's kinda like when you watch like sports and

you just hear athletes talk about taking things one game at

a time.

I mean,

that's so true.

And it's just taking one play at a time,

one game at a time,

one task,

one challenge at a time overcoming and not thinking too far

into the future.

You kind of have the Superbowl in mind.

Right. But you're not consistently thinking I need to be at

super bowl right now.

You're just thinking I need to have a good regular season.

Once I have a good regular season,

then I'll get into the playoffs.

I need to have good playoffs.

Playoffs will beat me to the super bowl.

Right. It's but not completely so fixated and stuck on the

super bowl,

but just taking everything once that one game,

one play at a time.

And that's the approach that I took and just kind of

little bite sizes at times.

Yeah. So you have the overall vision,

but then you work on the little tasks,

each little task at hand.

And each of those is a mini success too.

When you've gotten that one done,

then you go to the bigger one,

like you said,

and the bigger one.

Yeah. What guests is exciting.

Right? We've been on podcast,

bill farmer.

The first time we were on a podcast,

I was rattled.

I was so nervous.

And now I feel a lot more confident talking to you

and I feel comfortable.

And it's fun for me.

Whenever I first did a podcast,

I was very uncomfortable.

I wasn't having fun.

I was nervous.

And now talking to you,

Sue, this is great.

And so it shows the growth of me shows the growth

of the company.

and there's more growth in the future for sure.

So one question I know our listeners will be really interested

in hearing about is how did you attract your first customers?

So you're not physically anywhere,

right? You're only on the website.

I'm thinking,

correct me if I'm wrong.

Pulling on the website.

Yep. Okay.

So how did you attract your first customers to even know

about the website?

First of all,

his friends and family,

we had to create content for the website.

We had to create illustrations to show his examples,

right? So to get my mom,

dad, brother,

girlfriend, all of my peers at rice at the time like,

Hey, please buy this,

please buy this.

And it was extremely frightened.

Now we have listed,

for example,

a $10,

one day card.

It used to be called $3.

So it was extremely cheap.

Right. And just getting people around me to make sales,

but that was fun.

But obviously what matters most is to having customer that's never,

or that you don't know order your product.

Right. And so I actually reached out to the rice thresher,

which is a newspaper at a rice university.

And I told them what we were accomplished,

trying to accomplish about our project.

And they did a story on to lingo.

And then once that posted,

there was a sale that was made that night from a

person that I've never heard of before had no connection to

any of my friends or family,

nothing at all.

And sometimes sales before then would come in and it'd be

from someone I've never seen before.

But then I later found out it was a friend of

a friend or a friend of my parents or something like

that. Right.

But then a cell came through and I did so much

research just to find out that it was from someone that's

not connected to me at all through any degrees of separation

That was pivotal.

And then that was the most euphoric,

exciting, entertaining,

awesome feeling.

And I later found out,

I think the next day that they had saw the article

in the rice thresher and decided to give it a try.

And I remember it was at night whenever they made the

order, I was sitting in the middle of class and I

couldn't sit still.

I almost wanted to leave room and do jumping jacks and

pushups because I was so pumped at that.

It actually happened.

Right. And that's whenever the validation hit before then everything leading

up to that moment,

it was kind of like,

ah, this is probably not going to work.

This product stinks.

Nobody wants us.

Nobody wants me.

Nobody likes this idea,

whatever, you know,

but whenever that sale was made,

there was so much weight that was lifted off my sores.

That monkey was essentially off my back and still came from

a person that no one knew no one's heard of.

And it was the most amazing thing in the world.

I couldn't believe it.

And just so much validation.

Yeah. That is amazing.

And when that happens,

then, you know,

there's more,

when that first one comes in like that,

you know,

there can be others behind it.

Sure. Yeah.

Absolutely. And a lot has come since then.

So that was kind of the start,

I would say.

That's pretty much the launch of everything before then was kind

of like a pilot program test program.

Okay. All right.

And so now what are you doing today to attract people

over to your website?

I'm getting on a gift biz,

unwrapped podcast and talk group.

There you go.

No, right now,

uh, currently I'm working a lot on SEO search engine optimization.

I'm currently working with a person we're doing a lot of

key things to help boost the organic rankings up to Linga.

So whenever people search for key things on Google,

they'll find us the top of the search rankings,

right. Also have some Google ads that are currently running out

there that are generating traffic for the website.

There's a lot of a word of mouth going on right

now. And then I have an affiliate program where affiliates are

awarded 20% of whatever sales that come through their affiliate code.

There's a couple of minimal things out there.

And currently I'm actually talking with three or four different companies

about potential partnerships,

strategic partnerships that we'll put to Linda in a place to

help their brand,

but then also their brand helped to Linga.

And that's kind of the next big phase of sales is

that I've done the SEO thing.

I've done pay-per-click and Google ads.

I'm on social media,

all the social media platforms and maximizing those as much as

I possibly can.

I've realized as long as kind of gotten to this point

where I blog,

but things kind of gotten to this point where partnerships is

kind of the name of the game.

And right now I'm talking with a few companies out there

to help hopefully put some lingo and that white,

bright, yellow light we talked about earlier.

Got it.

So something that comes to mind and I did not look

for this specifically on your website yet,

but I'm just curious is someone who is in receipt of

one of the cards or the whole series,

let's say they did a whole month worth.

Is there a way for them to take those images and

to transfer them over to other things like you had alluded

to earlier?

Is there a way to do that today?

Absolutely. Yeah.

I have a spot on the website where like you received

the physical,

obviously print via that card stock I brought up earlier,

but then you also received the digital print simultaneously.

So you received both the digital and physical and what you

can do with the digital is you can go back to

that Selingo website and you could put your favorite illustration or

all of your illustrations if you want to.

And you can put it on a mug or on a

tee shirt or on eight brain,

whatever you want to,

you can go back to the Celine website and put your

favorites on the illustration on whatever you want to,

to personalize another gift item and serve as a forever.

Oh my gosh.

I love that.

Do you include like a gift card or the option to

have a gift certificate for the recipient to be able to

do that,

to take their favorite?

Sure. Yeah.

We actually do offer gift cards.

Some people don't want to tell a story.

They don't want to provide a description,

upload photos,

but they want to provide that for someone else.

So they give them the gift of a tongue,

a gift card.

And we have sales coming through from people that have purchased

gift cards for other people that have wanted to tell their

own story for themselves,

or to offer that as a good gift item for someone

else. So we do offer the ability for customers yes,

to come back and put their digital print on whatever item

they want to put it on,

on this link website,

as well as gift cards that they can take in gifted

people in unique ways.

Love your model.

I love it because it's an extension of the card.

So it's another way to generate revenue and just to pass

on the creativity that was already done in the beginning with

the first cards.

Absolutely. Yep.

That's fabulous.

Okay. So would you say the business has been up and

running for two years or three years?

It's two years.

Two years.

Okay. It's almost two years.

Yep. Okay.

So look at how far you've come already in two years.

It's crazy.

Like really It has,

and I have to remind myself of that constantly.

I have to constantly look back and like,

man, what were you just two years ago?

Where are you at now?

Keep pushing.

Let's keep pushing.

Yeah. Well,

and I appreciate you being honest and saying that because here

we've been talking about how great everything is not without the

black days,

right? Like things get dark and troublesome and all of that,

but it's good for us to hear when there are struggles

and challenges from others who from the outside looked like everything

is going well,

because to get to that point have been challenges before.

And when we're in those days,

when it's hard,

you forget that there's the yellow later,

right? There's the light later because you just get bogged down

because the darker days just feel so yucky That they do.

And there's been more dark days than light days.

But the good thing is within the past,

I'd say six months there have definitely been more light days

than dark days.

So getting out of that dark time,

the worst is in the beginning,

the worst with everything that we're seeing the beginning,

but then I'm so glad we grew out of that.

It felt like forever.

But now I would say we are officially out of those

very, very,

very dark days.

Okay. So here's a question for you.

Do you think the days were dark because of what you

said to yourself because of the pressure,

like the pressure you put on yourself and the drive to

be where you're trying to go faster.

That's probably half of it,

right? I'd say the other half comes from me having a

vision for what this product should be for a great customer

experience, right.

That putting the customer first and thinking about ordering it,

telling a story through their eyes,

for them to go to the website for them to go

through the process and then receive the cards that they receive

and just creating a great customer experience that I'm charging money

for this product.

I want it to be the best possible product and provide

the most value to the customer.

So yes,

it was built on speed and where I want this platform

to go where it is now.

But a lot of it is like built off and driven

from the customer experience and me wanting them to have a

great time.

So I would say both of those things.

Okay. Well,

I'm glad to hear that it's leveling off and soon it's

going to be the yellow is more than the black,

right? For sure.

But the theme of the podcast.

Exactly. Exactly.

I've just kept going back to that also,

because I thought I love actually both those colors too,

to be honest.

Sure. So where do you see this going from here?

Yeah. So the goal is to start onboarding writers in the

future. Right now we just have artists that are illustrating out

stories is that,

but then the next three months,

I really want to start onboarding like novelists people that are

writing short stories,

poets, if you will,

and to do like letter writing.

So we're doing artists.

And then we also have writers since to do both of

them and to really eventually own the mailbox,

right. And to be a mailbox company.

And we're delivering letters and we're delivering a pistol area,

art, right?

We're doing all through the mailbox.

And then I want to implement a subscription program that where

people can subscribe and they can say,

Hey, I have an anniversary here at Valentine's day here,

birthday here,

whatever event that they're trying to celebrate,

that they get subscribed.

And then on certain dates,

they receive another part of their story,

their life story,

whatever story they want to tell,

or they receive a brand new car,

but to have some kind of subscription platform in place.

And then I want to open this up for businesses to

allow right now we're a hundred percent BTC,

but to open this up,

the BDB that there's been a lot of interest from businesses

that have wanted to please to Linda as thank you cards

to their clients.

And then other ways of using the telling of cards from

a B2B perspective.

So having subscription model in place,

and then eventually as it scales,

it's going to need to get flipped into like an Airbnb

style model where artists can across the world.

And we shipped out to 36 different countries at this point,

which I'm extremely proud of.

It's amazing,

but artists across the world can onboard themselves quickly onboard themselves

through a verification process.

They can post their previous artwork or their towing to artwork

and have their own personalized portfolio.

And they can set their own pricing within limits and allow

people to let the market dictate what they're worth and determine

if they want to buy cards from them.

And to flip into an Airbnb.

And everyone kind of has their own little page,

right. But as you know,

Airbnb is apartments,

not like a mansion.

A mansion is going to cost a lot more than an

apartment, but people can very quickly onboard themselves and start renting

out a space on Airbnb.

So I really want to get into that.

And then eventually I want to initiate really direct mail advertising

partnerships. And I want to approach businesses that let's say there's

a comparable business that selling like art utensils,

right. Or art materials,

right. And approach like hobby lobby and say,

Hey, hobby lobby,

you already do a direct mail advertising campaign.

I will guarantee you a hundred percent open rate.

You go ahead and give me whatever advertisement,

brochure, marketing piece that you would normally send out your direct

mail campaign.

You go ahead and give it to me.

And I'll instruct all of the artists to put your brochure

or your advertisement in the envelope and let that be another

form of revenue generation.

Right? So everybody's going to want to open up the envelope

and they're gonna want to see they're telling a story that's

being gifted to them.

And then right next to that,

that illustration,

there was economical.

It was going to be a hobby lobby or whatever.

Ed's art supply store brochure in the envelope.

Right? So bottom line,

I want to do writer's number one and want to get

the subscription model.

Number two,

with a business to business,

I want to flip it into an Airbnb model and eventually

get into this direct mail advertising partnership model.

Okay. I'm speechless.

That is amazing.

Alex easier said than done.

At first,

I was going to say,

yeah, you don't have any ideas,

but that would not have given credit to everything that you

just said as I'm listening to your vision for the future,

the passion that comes through in your voice gives me chills.

It's just amazing.

I absolutely love every single thing you said,

and I am really excited for you,

Alex. Thank you,

sir. It sounds amazing to talk about,

and it's another thing to be about it,

right? Anyone can say anything's actually executing it,

but I think all of these things I can execute.

So I'm shaking my head right now and I'm feeling confident

about it.

And I think that is something that we can handle.

Yeah. And one at a time,

and you definitely know where you're going.

That is for sure.

That's right.

Share a little bit with our listeners about where they can

learn more about you.

And then I was also thinking we have creators here.

So if you want to give a little pitch for,

if you're looking for more artists or now writers take it

away, Sir,

I'll start with page two,

the artists and the writers.

If you were a really unique and creative artist,

I would love for you to reach out to me.

You can go to the lingo website and you can contact

us on this lingo website.

Same thing for the writers.

I'm looking at,

do this.

I'm looking to start onboarding writers and August,

September, not necessarily doing it right now,

but if you want to reach out to me right now

and get in the pipeline,

you'll be the first people that I contact.

You can still go to the website and contact me.

They're looking for anyone that's interested in poems or short stories,

a little novels,

love letters.

If you think that you want to do that and you

want to come on board to Linga,

then go there to lynda.com

website and reach out to us.

It'd be awesome.

And as far as for customers,

a lot of holidays coming up on the latter end of

the year,

or if you just want to send a two Linga card

to someone just to keep in touch with them in unique

way, you can visit dot com.

You can go through the steps to where your story.

There is a discount I like to offer.

You can get a 15% off of your order using coupon

code to Linga,

T E L L I N G a.

You can use that for 15% off,

and then you can also find us on social media at,

to Linga stories on all the major platforms.

If you'd like to tell your story with us,

we would love to you.

You can reach Out to us@tellinga.com.

Thank you so much too,

for having us on Alex.

This has been absolutely wonderful.

Like I said,

I love the passion.

I love your product,

actually. Just the whole thing is so creative yet.

It ties in with things we know,

right? Our story,

the mail greeting cards,

all of that.

So it's very relatable.

I'll though done in a completely different way.

I am so excited to watch how you progress and what

the future holds for you and to Linga.

Thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you.

So you have a good day.

You too,

are you as impressed with Alex as I am?

I feel like I lit a rocket ship when I asked

him about his future vision and he lifted off with his

full plan.

It's a lot it's big and I have no doubt that

it will happen next week.

We're going overseas and talking about manufacturing,

your product in a foreign land.

Did you ever wonder about the process behind going from a

product idea to actually having it in your hand or maybe

even having your current product mass produced?

Because demand is increasing a great problem to have,

right? We'll uncover what's behind overseas production in the show next

week until then a gentle reminder that subscribing and reviewing.

It's a great way to give back and show your support

for the show.

I've made it much easier for you to do that.

Now, just go over to gift biz,

unwrapped.com forward slash review.

I really appreciate it.

And thank you so much to those of you who have

already written a rating and review for this show,

make it a great week,

stay healthy and safe,

and I'll see you again next Monday.

Bye for now.

I want to make sure you're familiar with my free Facebook

group called gift is breeze.

It's a place where we all gather and our community to

support each other.

Got a really fun post in there.

That's my favorite of the week.

I have to say where I invite all of you to

share what you're doing to show pictures of your product,

to show what you're working on for the week to get

reaction from other people and just for fun,

because we all get to see the wonderful products that everybody

in the community is making my favorite post every single week,

without doubt.

Wait, what,

aren't you part of the group already,

if not make sure to jump over to Facebook and search

for the group gift biz breeze don't delay.