In February, our company was selected by the Inland Empire Women’s Business Center to join a mastermind group; a group of business owners geared to helping each other out in the areas of operations, marketing and finances.  One of the first questions asked to us was “Do you have a business plan?” Well, my answer was kind of.  For the next 2 weeks, I concentrated on writing a business plan, which includes a section on marketing.  At the end of two weeks I met with our facilitator, Jim Teague to discuss my lack of a marketing plan.

'Move It' Encouragement Card

You see, 2 years ago I sold my bookkeeping business and went full time in owning a greeting card company not knowing much about the industry. I spent the first year and half designing and printing 40 cards for our Say It With Jack collection. I had never read Pushing the Envelope by Meryl Hooker (I have read it 2x now) nor was I plugged into greeting card groups (like I am now) on LinkedIn to understand the industry.  And, each time we designed a category of the collection (birthday, Christmas, etc.) we printed 1000 cards each. Why? Because someone suggested the way to calculate your unit retail price is to know your unit cost; so get a printing quote based on a 1000 cards each.  You can only imagine the downside to this mistake; which I have spent enough time beating myself up with but there is a huge upside.

When I met with Jim regarding my marketing plan, he suggested I focus on one thing: sell your inventory. Don’t worry about your new line (Say It With Ink), lets re-launch the Jack line.  So there I was wondering if I had the faith of a mustard seed to accomplish this.  Well, with this goal in front of me, my mind has been coming up with all sorts of creative ways to distribute the cards.  But the one thought that keeps me motivated is “when I sell/distribute all 40,000 cards, 40,000 people will have read and been blessed by God’s promises of hope, comfort, joy and encouragement.” I can only achieve this great feat through faith, the faith of a mustard seed. Will you join me in spreading the word to 40,000 people? What is your biggest goal that needs mustard seed faith?

…if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’, and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you. Matthew 17:20