38. Creative Business 101: SELL YOUR Affirmation Card Deck Product with Gabby Jockers

If you're feeling inspired to create your own affirmation card deck or simply intrigued by the process of creating a physical product, then this episode is a must-listen. 

In today's show, my co-creator and bestie joins me to discuss the exciting journey of creating an affirmation card deck.  We decided to share the behind-the-scenes experiences of our successful launch of The Body Deck, (with 77 affirmation cards), back in November on both Etsy and via local markets. 

We'll be diving into the steps we took to bring our card deck to life, offering valuable insights and practical advice. And don't forget to share this episode with your creative friends! Get ready to be inspired and empowered to take your own creative projects to the next level.

Here's a glimpse of what you can expect in this value-packed episode:

• How to create a clear theme and direction for a product that help you stand out and speak to your desired audience. We discuss our brainstorm process and what helps tie everything together. 
• Achieve success whether solo or building a team by leveraging skill sets and experience: Why you don't need a massive team or external funding to start your project, and how you can tap into your existing skills or acquire new ones along the way.
• How the intersection of our work in the health, body image healing, boudoir, and mindset coaching / eating disorder fields, led us to create the Body Deck—an affirmation card deck focused on body image healing and related aspects.
• The fascinating process of crafting the deck: what tools we used, process for coming up with relevant and unique affirmations,  and important design principles to consider. 
• Nitty gritty on printing/production of card deck: what to consider and how to find the best fit for your budget and requirements, plus important reminders before making your first big order. 
• We discuss importance and the how-to for setting realistic goals, intentions and commitments for the project to ensure you aren't wasting your time/money. 

If you're a creative entrepreneur out there share your work with me by tagging me on the high vibe mindset instagram @highvibemindset.podcast and on the Soulea instagram (my design business) @soulea.co

Remember to subscribe to our podcast and leave a review if you enjoyed this episode. Stay tuned for more exciting conversations with remarkable guests!

Mentioned in Show:

Gabby Boudoir Photography: https://embodiedartboudoir.com/

Gabby's instagram: https://instagram.com/embodiedartboudoir?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

High Vibe Mindset on Instagram

Support this show: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/highvibepod 

I've launched a new affirmation card deck designed with YOU, the listeners in mind! The Body Deck offers 77 beautiful cards that address the three high-vibe killers of disconnection, negative-self talk & lack of self-care/coping practices. Best of all, it's portable & affordable at $33. Benefit from the transformative practice of affirmations anywhere you go. Stop self-sabotage & start being the highest version of YOU: Visit soulea.co

Transcript

Gabby Card deck P2

Melissa: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode. I've got my co-creator and bestie here to talk about the steps that we took to create a card deck after we launched the body Deck, our 77 affirmation card deck in November. We've had a lot of people ask us about how to create a physical product, so we thought it'd be great to share.

The behind the scenes in this episode with you all. If you're feeling inspired to make your own card deck or curious about how it's done, keep listening, and we are going to share the process and the behind the scenes with you. And don't forget to share this episode with your creative friends. All right, so let's talk about the steps of making the card deck.

What was the first thing that you remember? Like where did we start? 

Gabby: Well, we started with you coming to me and saying, do you wanna make a card deck with me? So gotta have the idea first. True. And when you came to me saying, do you wanna [00:01:00] make a card deck together? I was not somebody who had been using a lot of card decks, but you were Oh yeah.

And I've been seeing how you use them in your everyday life. And you had showed me all the gorgeous decks that you had. So when you came to me with this idea, I was like, oh yeah, let's do it. That sounds so fun. And it sounds like a really fun project to do together. 

Melissa: Yeah, definitely. I love card decks. I definitely have a collection growing here of probably almost 30 by now.

I keep buying them. It's a problem, but it's super fun because. I love affirmation card decks, but there's so many other types of decks that you can get and they have different themes and so we'll talk about what ours is and the theme. I would say then it sounds like step one is have the idea and then, just make that choice.

Decide, okay, [00:02:00] this is something I wanna figure out and I wanna start making. 

Gabby: Absolutely. And I think it probably also helps to think of what do I need to do to get this done? Like who needs to be part of this? Some people may have all the resources that they need within their own self to get a project like this done, and other people either want to work with others or they need the complimentary skill sets that somebody else might provide to be able to actually bring the car back to life.

Melissa: Definitely it can be, and it's helpful to have a team. And you and I, our skillsets are opposite in a lot of ways, which is complimentary, which is a good thing. But I think. A lot of people, like I even think about myself a few years ago and when I was getting my mba, a lot of people think, I can't start a project like this, or I can't create a physical product.

I can't start a business. I can't do anything unless I have this huge team or have these co-founders or have investors. And a lot of [00:03:00] times we hold ourselves back because we. Think that we need these things when, depending on what it is, it could be something that you already have this skillset for, or that you can, go on YouTube and you can learn.

Gabby: Exactly. And also to all the listeners who are thinking, I'm not sure if I have the whole skillset, don't let that stop you from starting because you might not understand how your skills fit the project. Or what exactly you have or what exactly you don't have that you need until you get started. Like we had designed the entire deck and we're working on the box.

When we're like, oh, we need help designing this box. We can't do it. And then we got outside help. So don't let not having the entire skillset that you may need to take this project from start to finish to stop you from even starting. 

Melissa: Yes, so do some research in the beginning, but again, don't just like get stuck in that research phase or thinking I [00:04:00] can't, I don't have every single skillset, and so I'm not even gonna start until I get all of that.

Like Gabby said, get started. Do what you can do, and you can always hire out. You can find people. You don't have to hire a full-time person. You can find someone on fiverr, which I have done Upwork and fiverr. All right, so you decide, I'm gonna make a card deck or I'm gonna make a physical product.

What did we do next? 

Gabby: We picked our theme and we set our intention for the product. And the theme was kind of natural for us because you're, you've done work as a registered dietician, as a mindset coach, as an intuitive eating coach in the health field, in the body confidence field. In the body image healing field, as a boudoir photographer, I do a lot of work in the body image field, in the body image healing and all that kind of good stuff.

So making a cart deck focused on affirmations [00:05:00] toward your body, and then also taking it a level deeper and addressing connection, values, emotions. Relationship with food, relationship with rest, self care, activity, movement, all those things is part of your relationship with your body. So when it just turned out to be the perfect theme for us, the intersection of our works to have it be body image focused, to be body focused.

That's why it's called the body deck. And then we set our intention for the for, for how we wanted this product to come to life. Yes. And with the theme, definitely our theme is body image healing. And I love that you describe, there's a other areas, other topics too that compliment and that help reinforce body image healing.

And so, we have different cards on. [00:06:00] Emotions and energy and just all these different areas, and that was intentional for us and that was part of the theme. The other intention and like theme we had around the deck was to be intentional to make it an affirmation card deck, right? To say, okay, the way you use this is the way that.

Commonly, there's a lot of different ways we can use affirmations, but that was our intention. Use this in all those different ways that you could pull a card, read an affirmation, repeat an affirmation, say the affirmation and really can support you to change your language to input positive beliefs, positive affirmations.

So that was something that we were also intentional about, because. There's so many different awesome types of card decks out there, and there could be a card deck that is full of journal prompts or a card deck that is full of practices or, coping skills or just reflection. [00:07:00] And they they have.

Different actions for you to take. So our intention was to make something that would be affirmations based and we give a few ideas on how to use that. But , like you said, the way I was already using affirmations, that's something that we set that intention of we wanna make a deck that can allow people to, to use this tool.

In the same way. For me, affirmations were really powerful and that have writing or reading or saying out loud a positive statement was revolutionary for me because I'm someone that had a really loud inner critic and that really needed to set that practice in motion in my life and to change my core beliefs and to change my self-talk.

And that was a big part of our theme and our car deck that we created. Absolutely, and I think that this [00:08:00] intention for affirmations, bleeds in a lot to the next step of when we actually created the content itself. So there's a lot of overlap between these because our intention was to create a card deck that people could use easily, quickly, anywhere, and help them.

Practice positive self-talk through affirmations actively as somebody personally who has who before this point, I had not used a ton of card decks. I had not really used tarot cards. I'd had a couple people do readings for me, and friend situations, friends who have tarot debts. I've had them do readings for me occasionally.

I do not know how to use a TA deck, and there's a lot of. Meaning and symbolism behind all the cards. And if you've ever used or seen anybody use a Tero deck, you may have noticed that most Tero decks come with a booklet explaining the meaning of each of the cards. And we [00:09:00] intentionally chose to create a card deck that did not require a supplementary resource to utilize and understand it.

So that's a big reason why besides the fact that affirmations are incredible and useful and something that both of us have used to make very powerful transformations in our lives. Neither of us really wanted to write a book about the cards, and we both wanted a a resource that somebody could bring with them anywhere.

Super portable, easy to use. And you don't have to pull a card and then open up a book and read this whole thing about what that card means. You could pull a card, read the affirmation, understand it, perhaps make your own interpretation, perhaps you might go journal about it, perhaps you might meditate on it or think about it for a few minutes, but you don't need a.

Extra tools to help you get everything that you can get out of that affirmation. Yeah. And that was what we chose that those type of card decks are ones that I just [00:10:00] find myself using daily, using the most, and I still appreciate the ones that. Have, the little booklet, but that's gonna be more occasional for me.

Right? Or that's something that I'll set an intentional ritual around, or have more time dedicated to sit there and sit with it and read the guidebook and the interpretation. And I think those are great. But for us, I thought about what has helped me personally and what's the style that I like the most, and what do I find the most useful and solve as a problem of.

Wanting to have a daily affirmation practice. And it gets real old to try to like Google and find different articles and different affirmations listed somewhere, or just try to come up with your own and write it on a journal. So I'm like, yeah, I would love a themed affirmation. Card deck, that's just super easy.

[00:11:00] And if you only have time to read one card that day, it's effective. Absolutely, and I love that about the card deck because it makes it something about the body deck. It makes it something that's really easy for me to use personally too. I don't know how many of your listeners have crazy short attention spans like me, but I find it so much harder to use a resource where I have to.

Flipped through multiple resources. I have the card, I have the book, I have these things that works really well for a lot of people. For me, it wasn't as good. I just didn't find myself using those kinds of things where, I couldn't just interpret it based on what I saw in front of me.

I had to have somebody else tell me what it means. Did wasn't really super compatible with me and funny enough coming when it comes to the. Like, how did we create the affirmations and all that kind of stuff. That's actually the question that I get the most when I'm sharing the Bobby deck with people.

Like when I've gone to markets as a vendor, when I've shared it with friends, they're like, how did you come up [00:12:00] with all these affirmations? So can we talk about that next? Yeah. Okay. Awesome. So how do you answer your friends, Gabby? How do I answer my friends? I, it's super simple. I tell them, we came up with the words first.

Words that had meaning to us, words that felt significant, words that felt relevant to the topic of a body focused and body image and body confidence focused affirmation. And we came up with this list of like a hundred. Words, just words that felt important, like magic or food or rest or self care. All things that were like, what are the important ideas to our relationships with our bodies?

So we started there. What are the important concepts or ideas to the relationships, to our bodies? And then we went, this took the longest, I think this probably this stage probably took the longest of creating the whole card [00:13:00] doc. This creating the affirmations and anyone who looks at them can tell immediately that these are not generic affirmations.

They're of affirmations we put our hearts and souls into because we spent months going through this list of words and creating affirmations that we felt. Captured the spirit or the essence of that word in, in a positive context of relationship to your body? Yes. When we were sitting, when we were doing that initial.

Practice of, okay, let's even come up with a hundred words and put that, on an Excel sheet and just sit there with what words are important to us. I definitely tuned into my values, what's important to me, and like the top values and also those themes, right? I'm a dietician. You're a photographer.

We have done a lot of therapeutic work on ourselves and we read a lot of books and mental health, all these it's like they say, right? [00:14:00] A lot of times you wanna share what the world or create something that is the thing. That helped you get through a really hard time that you wish you could give to your younger self, right?

Like, hey here's what I learned. This is what helped me, and you're so grateful for learning these important life lessons and tools and you're, you just wanna gift that to other people. So that's what we were thinking of too, of, well, what are, what are the. Areas of life and what are those values and what meaning does that hold?

And then like you said, coming up with the words first, which you can see on our card deck on the bottom of every card, there's a word there, right? So it might be self-compassion or. It might be abundance or it could be eating nourishments. Just different things. And then the [00:15:00] affirmations, like you said, we just really sat with them and took our time to try to do our best to embody.

A lesson, and also, like you said, a positive affirmation. Something that when you read it, you can repeat it and it changes, the core belief that you have. It's a tool. It helps you to see things in a different way. It helps you to bring in that healthier perspective when you are having a hard time.

When you are having a hard day I think that's the best time to use these affirmations is when you're stressed out and when you are not getting your needs met and when you feel stuck or confused and down on yourself. And then these. Affirmations can be a guide [00:16:00] and a way for you to tap back in to remind yourself of your power and remind yourself of your worth, and remind yourself of your own values, right?

Like, how do I wanna be showing up in the world? How do I wanna be showing up to my. Life. And so we have those values. You could Google any value list out there. Right? And I think that we captured a lot of the values and I actually wanna challenge people. I think it'd be really cool if you picked up our card deck and you sit with all those words that you can add to it.

You can create your own card deck, additions and affirmations and whatever words we missed that you can Also pause and reflect and think of that for yourself. But yeah, that was our process to everything is that happened first was writing it down, right? Like on a Word doc, an Excel sheet, and just sitting and writing the text, [00:17:00] the copy first.

And I love the way that you put that as our lessons, because I truly believe that. So many of those affirmations all actually, all of the affirmations incorporate lessons that I have learned through my own self-love journey, my own body image healing journey, co confidence journey. They're all lessons that I learned that I just wish everybody would know already.

I want everybody to know these things that I know, because I want everybody to feel. Better about themselves, the way that I have been able to feel better about myself through learning these lessons. So I think that this part, when it comes to the content in your cards, when it comes to the information that you are communicating with your cards, whether that's through words or design, which we're gonna talk about next, whether it's through words or design, really think about the truth.

Or the heart of the matter, and what do you want others to [00:18:00] gain from utilizing the car deck that you are creating if you are here because you want inspiration to create your own. So definitely. So, yeah, it's it. It's gotta come from the heart. The content has gotta come from the heart, from the soul. It's got to have meaning.

At least that's the way we approached it, well, yeah, that's a million different ways to do it. Yeah, I was gonna say that's, that was our process. And I just wanna speak to the people who might be listening that are like, okay, that's so not my field or what I'm thinking of doing when I wanna create a physical product.

But just to say, start. Small and easy, right? And start with a focus on maybe the text. Just write down your ideas and then organize it as you go. So maybe you are, creating a card deck on how to, I don't know, on color theory or how to, I don't know. I'm all out of I ideas, but what other kind of card decks exist?

I've seen [00:19:00] one on, date channel prom, date night questions or questions to ask your kids. Yeah, so it could be anything. It could be any subject is that it's something that you actually care about. Oh yeah. Yeah. So yeah, so we created the content. That was how we created our affirmations, and then we did the design.

And when I say we did the design, I mean Melissa did the design and I kind of helped. Melissa is the amazing, incredible designer behind the artwork, and I was there as a sounding board and additional. Kind of ideas person, this seems off, let's do something about it, or That looks amazing, let's go more in this direction.

And it took a while to get the design direction down because I mean, anyone who's been listening to this podcast knows that Melissa, it loves a million things and has so many ideas. So it took us a [00:20:00] while to really hone down on the right design aesthetic that would compliment the purpose of the cards and just.

Be fun to make. And then once we did, I think you had a lot of fun with it, didn't you? Yeah I love design and this just. Ignited me to want to learn even more and learn of their tools. So surprisingly, this car deck was made in Canva, which means anyone can do it and you don't have to be as uptight and obsessed about the design as I am.

I definitely spent a trillion hours on a million iterations of this card deck, and it's just funny to think about. I wish I had the originals, but I just kept editing within the fi, the same Canva file. But the first five versions look totally different until you, you have to take the action and play around with it to let the creativity and let it come out.

Right. [00:21:00] We don't always, we might struggle to even have the vision in our head when we start. We might just like, I think for you and I, Gabby, we. We just knew we wanted a card deck and we had the theme and we knew we could get the words down pretty easy. Like we knew where we were going. And for design, I had no clue.

I was like, I am just gonna have to play around with it until I like it. And that's what happened. A good place that could start for design is to think about. What you want your colors to be. The theme of the deck, it starts to get a little, maybe just just a little chaotic and a little too much.

If it's more than four colors, I think we have three main colors, pink, blue, and green, and that's usually what you see for brand. Colors and branding might be three colors, four at the most, [00:22:00] like an extra accent color. So that's something you can keep in mind. And so you could start with that. I think even more for us, more so than the colors was like, The feeling of the design, the vibe or the aesthetic.

Yeah. That was next. We started with the colors. Yeah. And then the aesthetic, the vibe for sure. That's important. And think about yourself and think about your audience. What would you like to see? What kind of design do you like? There's so many various options out there, and that could also play into.

Who you wanna speak to. So for us, we wanted it to, we wanted our colors to mean something and we wanted it to create a vibe of growth and also being like, just cool and trendy and look good, be aesthetic, right? Not be too simple. I, per, I personally think of the aesthetic as [00:23:00] dreamy.

Abstract. Oh, I love that. Yeah. That's how I think about it. And abstract is my jam. It's my dream. Yeah. And it's an abstract because first of all, it's fun and second of all, sometimes we gotta get a little bit outside of our standard reality to do the growth work that we need to do for ourselves. Yeah. So think about that, right? If you're not sure, like pay attention to. The aesthetic and the vibes and just the art that you like. I used a lot of the colors and the symbols and concepts. I've got a lot of like spacey and chroy themes. Dreamy, ethereal themes, and definitely love abstract art. So I like that you described it that way.

Yeah, it's totally dreamy, abstract to me, and I love the way that you use my photos. In the, I was like, I was not expecting that at all when we started making the deck. And then [00:24:00] you're like, you need to send me a bunch of photos for the cards. And I was like, excuses. Yeah. It's just perfect. Are you kidding?

Basically, it's exactly the work you're doing, you're. Yeah, using all different types of body types. You're helping women to feel beautiful and empowered and to capture that right. To capture like the self-love on camera. And it's just perfect to have that in our card deck. I had some other fun, like Roman sculptures and just spacey things, but yeah, definitely so. Awesome that I could use your photography for the card deck. So again, it goes back to the intention, right? So if you're getting stuck at any part, whether it's creating the content for your cards or creating the design for cards, go back to your intention. What do you want people to get out of this?

And since our intention had so much to do with helping people with their body image, with body confidence, with self-love, it turned out to be a natural obvious [00:25:00] decision to use boudoir photos in there. Yeah. And. On the design side, I'm someone who grew up really creative and like collaging and taking photos, writing, short fiction and essays and I just always loved being creative, but it's not what I pursued in my career.

And so, That imposter syndrome can show up too. Or you could think like, oh, I can't make a product, or I can't do anything unless I hire a graphic designer or unless I go to school. Or unless I learn Adobe. But Canva exists. I mean, it's completely user friendly. I. It's so easy to start a theme in there to get your ideas going and switch things out and make it your own and make it look totally different.

So again, don't let that be a barrier. You could definitely, anyone could start with Canva. You don't have to use Adobe and Design does not, you're like, design does not have to mean [00:26:00] what our car deck looks like, which has these very, like I said, dreamy, abstract, surrealistic. Escapes on them. Design.

You have several card decks, Melissa, that I've seen that are simply text on a plain colored background. Yep. Design does not have to be intense or really complicated. It has to be just aesthetic, aesthetically pleasing, which means, putting a light colored text on a light colored background is gonna make it really hard to read.

So design also has a very practical element and a big part of our design process was what is the way that we can make this text easy to read? We don't want somebody to pick up the cards and not be able to read the text because the colors were too similar or the background was too busy or it overlapped with some weird stuff.

So we intentionally went through the design several times for readability. [00:27:00] Yeah, the legibility, because that's really important if you're making a product that its intended use is to be read. Super important. I'm someone that likes all kinds of designs, so even things that would be ugly or weird or crazy, I am all about it.

But the most important thing is that it has the function and you can read it, right? It follows those rules of readability and contrast and balance and all those things. So I think if you. Just make sure that you're doing that. You'll be set. You can keep it really simple. Just make sure that. It has contrast and you can read it, right?

Don't put dark red text on a black background. Put like a white text on a black background. Those type of things. But yeah, so designing the deck, like I said, you can do that in Canva. You could always hire someone, but that was the next step for us, is just [00:28:00] designing that. And that was a lot of fun.

And then once we had all that ready, right? We're like, wow, we actually have 77 little digital cards in here in Canva that have our affirmations and have our designs. They're ready to go. Then Gabby really took over, saved the day, and did a lot of the research on, okay, how are we actually gonna, make this thing come to life and be a real card deck.

Yep. So Melissa's strengths are very much in that design world, the ideas world, and I am a very practical research oriented type of person. I love digging through the internet and finding answers to my questions and finding ways to do things. And so I took on most of the responsibility of the research for the logistical side of it while Melissa was up to her ears in creating beautiful designs.[00:29:00] 

So what we ended up doing, there were a few different options. I ended up even speaking to somebody I had met. A magician that I hired for a party once had his own tarot card deck company, so he very generously offered me a little bit of time. We were talking about something else and we ended up talking for an hour about the process of creating his card deck.

So having somebody. Like this is why we're doing this podcast episode because having hearing from an actual humans experience who had done it before is so helpful. And he was telling me about printing from China or printing in the us and our big barrier was the quantity. As a new company with a new product, we didn't have a ton of money to meet a 10,000 card deck, minimum order.

That this cool, awesome local US based company had. So we actually had to go abroad and we ended up finding a printer in Hong Kong that had no minimum car deck orders so that [00:30:00] we could actually afford to get our car decks. And we started with 250 cards sorry, two 50 card decks. And we ended up choosing a printer out of Hong Kong just because.

I did a ton of research on different printers. I compared materials, costs, and a ton of them were the identical. So I kind of suspect there's one big holding company behind a lot of the printers. And it might not actually matter that much, which Wouldn you go with, because I feel like a lot of them are actually at the same company.

But I don't read Chinese, so I can't exactly go on their websites and figure this out. Yeah, reading Chinese. So I did what I could. What was available to me using a lot of Google. And we ended up choosing a printer called Make Plane Cards. They make a bunch of stuff and they ended up they have, they do actually a lot of people couldn't order print tarot cards through them, plane cards, game boards, and tarot cards.

So we went with the tarot size for our card deck and that was pretty [00:31:00] easy. Once, once we figured out the printer and made that decision, we ordered a sample card deck from them. Just to get the process moving, to make it start to feel real and to have the product in our hands, because, kind of related to design, that's another important part of the di design process, is you can easily see things online.

But usually when you're designing something online, same thing. When it, it goes to editing photos and stuff, you usually have the image blown up. It's a little, it's either a little or a lot bigger than what it'll look like in real life. And the color calibration between monitors, computer screens, phones, the colors are calibrated slightly differently, so colors may appear differently on your computer screen or on your phone screen as they do in real life.

So ordering that sample deck was a really important part of the process. Yeah, our grain looked really different. Our grain looked really different from Canva versus when we had the deck printed in our hands. [00:32:00] Yeah, after ordering that first test card deck, we actually noticed a few things that we did not like about the design. The main font we were using didn't really do anything for us. The spacing was off of the word on each carjack the main. Theme of each card. Of each card, the space the word was not spaced properly, the borders were uneven, and that was something we could only figure out from printing a test deck.

So if you're thinking of doing this, absolutely. Make sure to print a sample deck before you make your first large bulk purchase. . For us, we ended up going, like Gabby said, with make plane cards. We did a round of 250 that cost, a couple thousand for us. We had agreed to it. We committed, so that's something to think about too, like how [00:33:00] are you gonna pay for this?

Where do you wanna start? We wanted to start small and definitely get that sample deck first, and that sample deck can run you anywhere from 25 to $50 for one of those, just depending on who you're going with and how many cards you have and, adding the box design or anything. But another idea actually.

Some of the Sam, some companies, Some require a minimum and you can't do sample decks. That's part of the reason why we chose to make playing cards because they would allow, they didn't have a minimum. So we can print just one deck with them versus the companies that require, you to have a 1000 or 10,000 unit minimum.

Yeah. So that's good to be aware of too, and. We wanted to go with a manufacturer and we wanted to go with someone that makes different, they already make affirmation cards and different things like this because, we wanted it to look like the style that we enjoy [00:34:00] to have a nice box that it's stored in.

But you could also, if you wanted start with printing. On Canva directly. Canva has the pro, if you have the pro version, they've got all types of printing options and pretty cheap. And you can get a, a test of if you're not needing the box or if you have a different thing to store it in or different, some people use little valet bags or different things, so there's other options you could look into as well.

. Other printing companies, if you're not gonna do. The packaging and the, and that box, that's the typical affirmation card or tarot card style of a card deck. Yeah, absolutely. And we actually, our first sample card deck, we didn't even have our box with it because we hadn't designed a box yet, but we didn't wanna let we, again, to the point we made in the beginning of this episode, don't let what you don't know [00:35:00] stop you from starting.

We knew we wanted to make this deck. We did not. The box required additional design school skills using software like InDesign. That though Melissa knows now, she didn't know back then. So we didn't let that stop us from ordering our first test deck. We ordered the first test deck, kept on refining that and learning from what we observed and what we liked and didn't like, and at the same time, we were working on getting help outside help.

To put together the box design because that we needed help with that. Yeah. And my dad's a graphic designer, so he helped me design the, get the sizing right and design the box. But again, I think if there's a place where you feel. Hung up or limited of, I don't have enough money to get all those orders right now.

I need to wait. But you feel called to make a car deck or you wanna be in this creative process, or you just wanna [00:36:00] create something? You can find a way to scale it down. Right? I think about how part of why we didn't even wait until we designed the actual packaging in the box and we're like, let's just, let's print the cards is cuz we.

Wanted to play with the cards. I think that's important too. Like you create your product. It's not only to make sure there's no errors, but for you to actually use it and be like, well, how are other people gonna experience this? How do I experience it? . And you can even improve on it from there. And then the other reason was because we were thinking about.

While we have it printed, we don't need the box. You could take your printed cards to a store or to a publisher or show it off, and that might create some opportunities and connections and that might help you get team players that might help you get to the next step, right? By doing what you can.

[00:37:00] So, You don't need the box, obviously that'd be nicer. If that's something you want, you can work toward that. But do what you can get the, if you can only print the cards from Canva, do that. Why wait on that, right? Absolutely. Okay, so in our process, we finally designed the box and we used one of Gabby's.

Beautiful photos too on the cover. And we made the design all awesome, which I also made in Canva, but I had to scale it and resize it using, Adobe. And so that's where we got some help and learned that. And then we made our first big order, our 250 decks and then the last up in our, that was scary.

Yeah. The one who did the order and it was, I was sweating you. I mean, anyone who listen, you know when you're gonna spend [00:38:00] thousands of dollars on something, especially those who have started a business or launched a product, you know who are listening to this. I think anyone can relate to the fear of, oh my God, am I going to?

Lose this money or am I going to bank money? Yeah. Am I flushing money down the toilet or am I e Even if you don't feel that way, I was. Super confident in this deck. I still am. I absolutely love this product. I think it is incredible. I think it is so valuable for real people and I was still sweating bullets and scared shitless when I had to press that order button for several thousand dollars.

Yeah, it's intimidating. So get support if you need to. I got support. I was like, who is, I'm doing it. I just painted. I would like texting my friends support where I needed. Cause it's scary. To put your money where your mouth is. It can be intimidating and scary when you have done all this work, but then when you have to put the big bucks behind it, woo, there's nothing that's gonna, get [00:39:00] your sweat glands going.

Yeah. Putting big money behind your. Behind what you believe. It's hard to take a risk, but this was not impulsive. This was a calculated risk. There was a lot of conversation before we ever hit by, right? It's like we made a commitment like, Hey, if we're gonna do this, we are gonna give ourselves a year to sell all the card decks and to repay.

What we, to repay the cost and to make sure that at a minimum we break even, which means that you and I are gonna have to commit to marketing. And we had to agree, we're gonna work on this at least once a week. We're gonna meet, we're gonna do all these things to not just buy it and let it sit on our shelves and lose money, but we're gonna, we made that commitment and we took that calcula calculated risk and we.

Before we ever bought it, we had all these pieces in place. We knew who the card deck was [00:40:00] for, we knew what the theme was. We made it cohesive, we made it readable, we made it functional, like all those pieces. So I think that's super critical too, is. Take those steps and don't just think about, cuz right now we're just talking about making a car deck, right?

We're just talking about the process of making a physical product. But what's so key and so important is after you create the product and you're gonna make your first big order, you should already have had a plan and a commitment to marketing and selling that product. Yeah, and our plan was Etsy. I, again, as a research person, I spent a lot of time researching different online platforms and different ways that we can sell from Etsy to Shopify, to Amazon to our own website, which would kind of be hand in hand with Shopify to local [00:41:00] publishers.

All this kind of good stuff. And it's not that we're not exploring all those options still because, when you're marketing and selling something, you have to, you can't just set it and forget it. It's not a set it and forget the thing. But we decided from the beginning to focus on Etsy because the platform aligns with who we are, small creators small business, something creative, something artistic, something that is not, super corporate or mass produced and handmade.

Anything like that. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. Oh, I said handmade. Handmade. Yeah, exactly. So that's why we chose Etsy. And that has been an interesting experiment, learning how to use a brand new platform, brand new to us, and learning how to succeed on it. And, there's struggles and there's successes with it as there would be with anything that we chose.

Yeah. And it's been really fun to explore and to learn and it's worth mentioning that. When [00:42:00] starting a new project like this, one thing totally new, one thing that we went into it talking about very candidly between the two of us was we really don't expect to make much money on this first print.

This first print was about establishing ourselves, was about building a community, building fans, building followers as getting the cards into as many hands as possible. So that it could grow, it could continue to grow organically and through marketing methods. And we knew that we were not gonna make a ton of money on this because most, we have the cost of each card deck.

And at 250 cards, it's not a very large order for these manufacturers. So the price is much higher than if you were, if we ordered 10,000 cards r per deck unit. Would probably be half what we paid. So our expenses when it comes to the cards themselves are somewhat [00:43:00] high compared to if we had, a ton of money and a corporate a target behind us that could order oodles of these and get the costs really low.

And we also had a lot of new costs when it comes to marketing and selling. Like we've been going to local markets and there are costs involved entry fees as a vendor. Gift bags as in the bags that you put the purchased items into the supplies to set up a booth. So there are different costs involved and it's just worth noting that in the beginning, profit is not our primary goal.

Profit is 100% of goal, especially in the long term. But in the beginning, we chose. Learning, marketing, selling and experimenting over pure profit because this is my second business now, third business, and that's just one of the things that I've learned. Yeah. And that's just how it goes for small businesses.

If you're not pitching an idea and getting a 4 [00:44:00] million investment, like that's how it goes. It's a slow build and you grow as you go. And for all the creatives out there, Turn your ideas into reality. This is part of it too, like I'm super proud we are more than halfway through selling our first order and the whole, the biggest point for me is I want to spend my time creating things that I love and.

Sending out messages that are meaningful and that can impact other people's lives. And that's what we're doing. So that is so fulfilling for me, and it's so exciting and it's like, yeah, this might take 10 years to take off, but you're in that, you're in that journey. You're in that process. So it's cool.

It's like we're selling it. At markets and to different people online and Etsy. And one day it could be in [00:45:00] a Barnes and Noble or a Target or we could keep selling it and growing it online, , and keep building and getting bigger and bigger orders, but, I think the hardest step and the biggest accomplishment is just getting started, right?

Of like taking that calculated risk and turning your idea into a reality. And so do that even on the smallest, tiniest scale ever. Even of creating your idea and just posting it. Maybe it's not even printed, but you post it or the next step, like print it for yourself and use it because you love it, absolutely. That's why I think the most important thing, if you are a independent, creative individual who's not making a product or a carjack for a large corporation, if you're making it for yourself in the effort of building your own business and having a direct impact on your community, then. [00:46:00] Just being aware and realistic about how the money will flow.

That yeah, there are those overnight rugs to Rich's stories. I guarantee they're not overnight. I guarantee they're always 10 years in the making. Yeah, exactly. There's a lot of years in the mar making. Not to say that your product won't be successful, but that's why it's so important.

To work on something you're truly passionate about and that you know makes a difference in the world because that will give you the endurance to withstand the challenges and the struggles on your way to success. Because if your heart is in it, if your soul is in it, if you put yourself into the project, if you know that what you're creating is meaningful and has value and will make an impact on people, it will all work out in the end.

Yeah, but you need that passion is what has, what I've learned on my own personal journey is that passion needs to be there to sustain [00:47:00] me through the challenging parts of building a business and creating a product. Because without that passion, the second that a challenge comes up, the second a week goes by without a sale in our FC store, I'm not sitting there panicking, wondering, was this a total failure?

I'm like, it's okay. We just need to keep on experimenting and figuring out what's the secret sauce. For making this successful. Exactly. We definitely need to do another episode in the future on just marketing and those ups and downs with marketings and what we've learned, but. Yeah, lots of lessons, but this was so great, Gabby.

I'm glad we were able to share with our listeners, and get them inspired by how to create a physical product and take them behind the scenes of our card deck. That was so much fun. Yeah, and I hope that, People are inspired by this and wanna create their card, their own card deck, or physical [00:48:00] products.

Please share it with us. We would love to see what you're creating. We would love to cheer you on and to support you because community over con competition. We wanna lift everybody up who's listening to this podcast, who's inspired and ready to create and make a difference in people's lives and help others through your own.

Beautiful innate magic. We're on your team. Yeah. I will never have enough card decks, so please make more. I will get them and she'll get one for herself and then she'll get one and send to me for my birthday. So yeah. That's your standard birthday gift. It is. I think it's two years in a row now. I love it.

All right. Thank you for having me. This is fabulous. Yes. I can't wait for the next one. See you next time. All right.