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Episode 015: Jamie Kutchman - The Secrets to Perfect Client Gifts
171 Plays6 years ago
Today's guest is Jamie Kutchman of Marigold and Grey, a company that provides artisan gifts for weddings, events and businesses. In today's episode, Jamie shares with us how her past work prepared her for her entrepreneurial journey, how a pivot early in her business led to huge growth, and tips for effective client gifting.
The highlights:
02:15 How a background in internet and medical sales prepared Jamie for entrepreneurship.
09:39 The stress of starting a business vs. the stress of being an employee in a business.
11:33 The disastrous event that led to the gifting business idea.
16:43 An assumption didn’t play out, and a pivot that led to major growth.
24:27 The challenges of client gifting and how to get started.
27:57 Thinking through what to gift your clients.
30:45 How much to spend on client gifts
34:58 When to outsource your client gifting
37:11 Tips for DIY client gifting
41:24 Expanding to serve corporate clients and how they found Marigold & Grey
43:45 How Jamie’s new website will more effectively serve different segments of her customers.
Jamie bid farewell to the corporate world to start M&G. This makes sense since gift giving has always been her love language. She lives with her golf-smitten husband, Jeff, in the DC area. After meeting in 2010 and marrying in 2012, thanks to eHarmony, Jamie affectionately refers to Jeff as the best thing she’s ever found online. Jamie is a stepmom of three and more recently, a mom to two rescue pups, Lewis & Clarkie. While she enjoys DC life, she's a true Virginia girl at heart. Aside from gift design, it's good bourbon and bbq, Redskins football, prop styling, encouraging other entrepreneurs, and long weekend getaways that make her world go round.
For the show notes, go to https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-jamie-kutchman-episode-15/
Recommended
Transcript
Jamie's Bold Move: Quitting Without a Resume
00:00:05
Speaker
and then I went home and I had to tell my husband what I did go up. That's what I'm wondering, what his response was. No, he said, oh, you know, don't worry. Like, your resume is amazing. Like, look what you've done. You know, beef up that resume and get yourself back out there. And I just said to him, I said, no, like, I don't, I actually don't need a resume for what I'm about to do.
Davy Jones Introduces Creative Business Ventures
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome to the Brands at Book Show, where we help creative, service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones.
00:00:37
Speaker
Today's guest is Jamie Kuchman. Jamie left the corporate world to start Mary Golden Gray, a company that provides artisan gifts for weddings, events, and businesses. In today's episode, Jamie shares with us how her past work prepared her for her entrepreneurial journey, how a pivot early in her business led to huge growth, and tips for effective client gifting.
From Wedding to Corporate: Jamie's Business Evolution
00:01:06
Speaker
So Jamie, welcome to the Brands That Book Show. I am so excited to have you here because we get to talk about gifting, among other things, among how you built your business. And I remember back when you started your business because Krista did some photography of your gifts for you. But yes, she did go way back.
00:01:26
Speaker
Yeah, and it's been fun. I mean, your business is huge now. So looking back at when it was just getting started and when you were primarily providing artisan gifts for weddings, now you provide artisan gifts for weddings, corporate events, and client gifts. So I feel like things have really taken off. I know you had a really big winter holiday sales were great. And so I'm so excited to dig in and hear more about that. But first,
The Cutthroat World of Medical Sales
00:01:55
Speaker
We always go back in time a little bit because your background is not in client gifts or gifting. It's in medical sales, medical and surgical sales. Walk us through how you went from medical and surgical sales, which from what I understand is pretty cut throat environment. Is that right? That is an understatement. That is definitely a true statement. First of all, thank you so much for having me.
00:02:22
Speaker
It's really great to be here. I'm honored to be asked. And congrats on the new venture of the podcast. I think it's fantastic what you're doing. And yes, when I was thinking about when you all asked me to be on here, it was kind of a little nostalgic because I go way back. Just Krista was literally one of the first creatives in the industry that I interacted with when she photographed some styled images for my initial website. So yeah, so thank you so much for having me. Yeah, for sure.
00:02:50
Speaker
Yeah, and going back to the story, you're right, it is a little bit of an unconventional story of how I got started. I did internet sales when I first graduated from college and did that for three years and then that whole tech bubble just completely burst and I happened to work for the internet portion of WorldCom and we all know what happened with them.
00:03:13
Speaker
He worked somewhere longer. It was like the first year I started making less money and I said, this isn't what it's supposed to be like. So I started interviewing and I went into medical and surgical sales and I ended up having a very successful career doing that. I was there for almost 11 years.
00:03:29
Speaker
And to be honest with you, I never thought of myself as starting my own business. I think deep down I always wanted to. I always admired entrepreneurs. I always considered myself to be a creative person. I was doing creative things for my friends on the side, you know, events and baby showers and wedding showers and all of that. I was always the person, the go-to person for anything creative, you know, even with gifting. But I never imagined building a business out of it.
00:03:58
Speaker
And I got married in 2012. And during that time, I had a really hard time finding very unique items to put together these Virginia themed wedding welcome
The Spark: Wedding Gift Mix-Up to Business Idea
00:04:11
Speaker
gifts. All of our guests were coming from out of town. We got married in Lexington, Virginia, where my family has a farm. And so I wanted everyone to have these really special gifts. And it took me, I can't even calculate how many days, hours, weeks to find what I was going to put in the bags.
00:04:27
Speaker
And then I outsourced it to my wedding planner and somehow, I don't know what went wrong, but they ended up at the wrong hotels where we didn't have guests even staying. So some of the bags went to some guests and then the other half went, God knows where, they never recovered them. So people at the wedding were actually talking about the bags and how great they were and some people were saying, oh my God, we never got it. Why didn't we get ours? And it was just insane and it was a big mix up.
00:04:51
Speaker
But the light bulb went off in my head and I thought oh my gosh if I could have outsourced that service I absolutely would have done it because it was a nightmare and it was something that came down to the final weeks right before the wedding date and that's when stress is the highest and that's should not be doing assembly lines in their living of that sort they should be relaxing and tying up the loose ends and letting their wedding planners, you know handle everything else and
00:05:16
Speaker
and wedding planners shouldn't be doing that. There are many other kind of more important things that they should be doing too. So this idea popped into my head in 2012.
From Dot Com to Medical Sales: Jamie's Career Path
00:05:25
Speaker
So going back even before, so back to medical sales and transitioning from, and that's crazy, you were in the midst of the dot com bubble there. So transitioning out of that into medical sales, did that come naturally to you? Did selling, especially in that environment where, and I imagine there's an entrepreneurial side to that as well because I imagine it's very much commission based. So you're out there, I assume, tracking down leads and prospects and making sales.
00:05:55
Speaker
Yes. So the first job that I had out of college, which was again, internet sales was actually all over the phone. Their entire sales force was over the phone. And so we were selling, you know, business grade, very high speed internet service to, I mean, huge, huge corporations. And so, you know, I did very well at that. But like I said, there was a reason, an economic reason for me to then leave.
00:06:19
Speaker
Yeah, I knew that the medical surgical side was what I wanted to do and it is very cutthroat It is the company that I worked for it was completely a hundred percent full commission so if my customers did not pay their invoices and
00:06:35
Speaker
I did not get paid. So at the end of every month, I could pull down a report and see invoice number, blah, blah, blah. This is what the amount was. This is what my commission was. Invoice number, blah, blah, blah, and on and on and on. So if they didn't pay, I would also get a report saying outstanding invoices. And there were times when I'd have to go into meetings with accounting departments and say, you're past due on $450,000. When are you going to pay this? In the back of my mind, I'm thinking this drastically, directly impacts my income.
00:07:07
Speaker
There was security because I worked very hard and I worked up a base of business. So I kind of thought that was going to be, but it was very stressful because you never knew what was going to happen. If somebody wanted to, let's say you did a product conversion and you got them to sign a proposal for something and they were ordering it and somebody came in and they just, or a new nursing director or something came in, they could just flip of the switch, take that away from you and your income could be cut by like 50% or more. You never knew. So it was always kind of feeling anxious.
00:07:26
Speaker
So there was really no ever, you know,
00:07:37
Speaker
And I think over 11 years, I never realized how much pressure was actually on my shoulders. I just thought I was, you know, an employee working for a company, but I literally did everything. I was the primary contact for that account for no matter what. So all the way from maintaining my existing base level of business, then the following year I had to grow it by huge percentage amounts and then keep the existing business. So it was.
00:08:06
Speaker
very much sales-oriented, extremely cutthroat, extremely competitive market. But I also had to learn the client experience part of it because I had to maintain that existing base of business that I had. So when I transitioned, I actually very spontaneously quit my job on a conference call.
The Unexpected Resignation
00:08:26
Speaker
It definitely was not planned.
00:08:28
Speaker
And I'm not one that likes change. So if it had not happened that way, this business wouldn't even be here today. But that is that is actually how it happened. So when I made the transition,
00:08:44
Speaker
It actually felt easier to me than I thought it would. I had this mystical entrepreneur image in my head like, who is this magical unicorn of a person and I was actually doing it. It came a little bit easier in terms of meeting people and doing the sales and figuring out what is our client experience going to look like, all the way to where am I going to source products from.
00:09:08
Speaker
And I was gonna ask about that because the transition from medical sales, that sounds really, really stressful, but entrepreneurship is as well. So that's interesting, going from medical and surgical sales to entrepreneurship, you almost felt a relief. Why do you think that was? Why do you think you felt less stress going into a business that really at the
00:09:34
Speaker
you probably had high hopes for, but you didn't know was going to necessarily take off in the way that it has.
Entrepreneurship vs. Corporate Stress
00:09:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think the stress is equal. I think it's very much different. Before, I didn't have a lot of control over my own destiny. Being in sales, you have more than a regular nine to five set salary employee. You have far more ability to control your income. But at the end of the day, I was at the mercy of
00:10:02
Speaker
Clients that could you know on a whim just pull business from me some of them just cuz they were maybe they were in a bad mood like you never know or maybe a new Director or you know sea level person came in and they had royalties elsewhere. You never know it could it could happen for any reason so that I always kind of had a pit in my stomach in my day-to-day and
00:10:23
Speaker
When I moved over, the stress level, as you know, as a business owner is just as high. It's like, where's it going to come from? How am I going to do this? The pressure feels absolutely immense, like on your shoulders. But there's definitely, you feel more in control of your own destiny. And there is a satisfaction that I get from doing what I do, being able to combine the creative with the business piece of it.
00:10:49
Speaker
that makes me very happy. So my stress level has not gone down at all. It's actually probably gone way worse. But it feels more worthwhile to me if that makes any sense. Yeah, I think that makes complete sense. And I appreciate that nuance view that it's really not any less stressful going from that sales job to entrepreneurship. It's just, like you said, different. It's worse. It's worse. It's just more pleasant. And I enjoy the people that I work with a lot more than I ever did before.
00:11:17
Speaker
Yeah. So going back to 2012, that's when you got married, correct? Yes. And that's when you had that gift fiasco, people not getting their gifts. When did you decide to quit after that? Because you were still working this medical sales job, right, at the time? So I got married, came back from my honeymoon. Like I said, it was just this thought in my mind that popped into my mind. I'm like, that needs to be a business. And then I came home from my honeymoon and I go back to my very lucrative, successful career.
00:11:46
Speaker
And again, in my mind, I never thought I could quit. I just, cause I thought to myself, you know, so many people would kill to have this job. Like I'm ungrateful. I'm just foolish if I, if I were to like give it up. Um, but one day, um, so I had the same like manager and VP for about a decade and then that's, he retired and that all switched. And so their mindset was completely different than the first VP that I was always used to.
00:12:14
Speaker
And just one day, just something he said to me on a conference call just rubbed me the wrong way. And I was on with him, my manager, and then my VP, it was just the three of us on a call, and it just came over me. And I was like, actually, you know, we're not gonna circle back to that spreadsheet. I resign. Like it just came out of my mouth, I resign.
00:12:33
Speaker
And I felt my body just go numb because I couldn't believe I actually did that. But looking back, it's kind of meant to be. And then I went home and I had to tell my husband what I did. That's what I'm wondering what his response was. No, because he said, oh, don't worry. Your resume is amazing. Look what you've done. Well, beef up that resume and get yourself back out there. And I just said to him, I said,
00:12:54
Speaker
No, I actually don't need a resume for what I'm about to do." I said, I'm going to make gift bags. Remember those gift bags I made for our wedding? He was like, yes. He goes, what are you talking about? It took a while.
00:13:13
Speaker
he finally, obviously, saw what I meant. I think it actually took the first time of us being in Washingtonian bride and groom for him to really believe that I actually had a viable business, which is a little ways into the business, obviously. But if I had not quit in that manner, in that very just spontaneous way, my personality, I never would have quit. I would have sat there and thought about it for years.
Transferable Skills: Sales to Entrepreneurship
00:13:39
Speaker
thinking I don't have the skill set, thinking I'm not cut out for that. I'm only an employee. But if you actually look at the skill set that I had from that job, it was extremely transferable to a lot of what I'm doing today. Of course, not everything. When you own a business, you have to know a little bit about everything, which is daunting, okay?
00:14:00
Speaker
It was more transferable than I ever realized, and it prepared me as well as anybody could be prepared for what business ownership really, truly is like, because it's not easy.
00:14:13
Speaker
Oh yeah, I think that job especially just because you had, I mean it was all commission based, you had to generate your own business, you had to maintain client relationships. You could never let up. Yeah, and you couldn't, and probably another reason why the way in which you quit was a blessing because otherwise you probably would have never had time even to juggle this new gifting business, right?
00:14:38
Speaker
Yeah, and beyond that, I mean, just, you know, especially when the client didn't pay the invoice, I mean, you had to probably be very good at communication with clients and maintaining that relationship and being able to go to them and say, hey, you need to pay this invoice, you know, because otherwise you don't get paid. So all things, I mean, I think from the outside looking in, very transferable skills from one, you know, career to the next.
00:15:04
Speaker
Yeah, and I wish that that I wish that that people that are kind of there are a lot of people that are doing like a side hustle and they question that and I just think that if they sat down and they literally thought about what they're actually doing every day and the significance of what they're doing every day and how that would transfer I think their confidence levels could go up quite a bit like I wish mine had.
00:15:27
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I wish I had thought about it that way before, you know. Yeah, and I've talked about, you know, I've talked about on previous episodes a little bit about my background and my undergraduate degrees in theology, you know. Yeah, it's nothing or another point. It was nothing like that. Look at you now. It's incredible. Exactly. And you go through it, you know, I had a background in education and so, but I swear to people that there's things that I picked up along the way that definitely have informed how I do
00:15:53
Speaker
you know, business today. So I really do believe that God doesn't waste anything. And there's just, you know, so much from, you know, one journey to the next that you pick up and you don't even know, you know, how it's going to benefit you in the, in whatever the next phase is. But this subject right here is like subject for a whole separate podcast for hours, just on this piece alone, because I believe so strongly in it, honestly, yeah, about transferable skills and how you really have it, but you don't really know that you have
00:16:23
Speaker
Yeah. And until maybe one day down the road, looking back, I think we forget how much we know and how much we pick up in even short
Lessons Learned: Interactive Website Challenges
00:16:30
Speaker
amount of time. But as you transition to this new business, I mean, what did that look like? Did you even know really where to start? I mean, obviously you had the work ethic and you had all sorts of great experience. But what was step number one? I had no clue. Okay. So I was like, okay, I need to get some products. I need to figure out what I'm going to sell and I need a website.
00:16:51
Speaker
So my vision of the business, right, was that I was going to build this cool website that was going to allow people to kind of create their own and build their own gifts. So I hired a web designer and made this like really fancy website and people could go on and they would pick their, you know, packaging, like their box bag or basket, then they would advance to the next step and they would put in their food items, like their candy and their sweets.
00:17:17
Speaker
Then the next step, they can put in beverages and each screen, they'd have like a ton of things to choose from. Then they could even customize their gift tag and their ribbon color, blah, blah, blah. And they would check out. And I thought I was just going to have this website and I'd have people like putting the gifts together. And I was just going to travel the world with my husband and everything was going to be amazing. Like I thought my stress level was going to be like nothing, you know, like it used to be so high and I thought it was going to be so low. Okay. Well,
00:17:44
Speaker
nothing could have been farther from the truth. And so this was a, this was a software. I mean, this wasn't just a website. This was like a, an app almost or a software tool where people went on and selected different stuff. And so it was this real build your own tool. And so I imagine that was pretty expensive to build. And it's really expensive. And I spent a lot of my savings accounts.
00:18:04
Speaker
from my previous job on this website, on this tool that I thought was going to be so amazing. And it did. It was a cool thing. It made a splash. It was certainly different. It led to me having conversations with people that I still work with today. But I
00:18:19
Speaker
drastically underestimated my market. The way that I realized that is that once I started networking and having conversations with people, they don't want to have anything to do with their gifting. Our clientele, they want us to do everything from start to finish.
00:18:36
Speaker
So we ended up doing a lot of custom gift design, like in bulk, and we were doing that. And then there were some people that couldn't meet our minimums. So I said, okay, well, we need something that they can order quickly that, you know, I want to keep them under our brand. So I developed, I added a pre-designed shop where I would design the gifts and put them in there. They can order them one at a time. And so then we had three ways to work with us. We had custom gift design, then we had the pre-designed shop, one at a time, already made.
00:19:05
Speaker
And then we had this tool, right? And the tool, we get orders every now and then, but it wasn't doing what I thought it was gonna do, and it certainly wasn't gonna pay overhead, and it certainly wasn't gonna get me where I needed to go. And I kept it there for the longest time, and we had Pinterest linking to there, and we had everything else. And one day, it just hit me, and I thought, and we talked about it as a team, and the thought was, it's confusing for people. They don't know what we are.
00:19:36
Speaker
And it literally broke my heart to have to do this, but I said, okay, let's take that piece of it down. Let's, let's deactivate the build your own tool. And I was seeing dollar signs and, and months worth of work. Yeah. And I like get, she, I like get the goosebumps. It's so traumatic.
00:19:58
Speaker
But we deactivated it and instantly our pre-designed volume skyrocketed. So because of that clear message, clients then knew where they belonged either in custom or pre-designed based on what minimum order they had. They knew what we were. But the consistent message was that either in the pre-designed shop that we still have now and custom,
00:20:20
Speaker
those clients aren't doing any of the design work. They're not deciding what goes in the gifts. We are. We're helping them. They have preferences, but we're helping them. They want the convenience and the quality, and they don't want to go on a tool and think about it. There are some other businesses that are doing it that way, and that's fantastic, but for us, that was not working.
00:20:41
Speaker
I say we, it was I at the time. I take responsibility for drastically underestimating our client and really undershooting the market that I was trying to sell to.
00:20:52
Speaker
Yeah, but you know, I think intuitively, we tend to think, oh, if we give people more choices, they're going to be happier with that. But at the end of the day, when we eliminate choices, it's crazy. So for you, you eliminate this choice, which is clients building their own gift and now pre-designed gifts take off.
00:21:11
Speaker
But kudos to you for recognizing like, hey, this isn't working out, especially after dumping money into it. Because anytime you dump, I think, time and money and effort into something, it's really hard to nix it, right? The only reason it stayed up as long as it did was because of the money and the time. And I was just too emotionally attached to it. I mean, I knew probably deep down it should have gone ages ago. Sure.
00:21:36
Speaker
And there, I mean, if there exists, I should probably sell it to somebody and let them try to do something with it. But the technology still exists. I just have it deactivated. So anyway.
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah. But you successfully pivoted to realizing, hey, people don't want to design their own gifts. And it kind of makes sense, right? And this is a good segue into talking about client gifts, which I want to get to in a second. Because we talk to people all the time, especially in coaching, who don't really know where to start when it comes to what gifts to get their clients. And they don't know what to start, they don't know what to include, they don't know what's like,
00:22:08
Speaker
too on the nose, you know, like mug with like logo on it or, you know, they want to go something fancier, but they just don't know where to start. So I'd love to chat with you about that. But I really, you know, I really admire how, you know, you've decided, you decided, hey, this isn't what people want. This is, I'm going to eliminate this. All of a sudden, your messaging is that much clearer and just through
Client Gifting Strategies and Success
00:22:31
Speaker
elimination. And now things just start to move in the right direction.
00:22:35
Speaker
Yes. And it's funny as I see other businesses pop up with this technology, you know, I'm tempted. You know, it just kills me, like gives me a pit in my stomach and it kills me. I'm like, well, we could, we could do that too, but I know better. Like I know better and I have to remain disciplined to that.
00:22:52
Speaker
Clarity of message is really what listening understanding who your ideal client is and Not just ideal because they're nice and they like you and you like them. That's not what it means It's like they're ideal because they really want exactly what you're offering Like understanding that and remaining true to it is so important. Everyone talks about it. But oh my god I swear to god it's it is the thing it is the thing and
00:23:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I would say even for us when we transitioned to doing Davy and Krista, so Davy and Krista as it is today, our initial website, I mean, it had like every service you could imagine when it comes to like web design and development, right? I mean, from copywriting to SEO to digital marketing to design. And it took some time, you know, but finally, it probably took six to eight months to realize, okay, this is just overwhelming for people and people don't really know what it is that we do and what our core
00:23:45
Speaker
offer is. And I tell people all the time, once we started eliminating things from our site, we really zeroed in on our message and exactly what we do and who we do it for, helping creative service-based businesses. All of a sudden, things started looking up for us.
00:24:02
Speaker
Definitely, definitely something to be said for eliminating things and just figuring out what matters, what matters most. But let's talk about client gifts. I'm telling you, one of the biggest things I mean, when we do a coaching session, it is bound to it's bound to come up. What should I gift my clients? When should I gift my clients? Why do you think that this is so challenging for people? I think it's challenging. So just to
00:24:30
Speaker
intro, we do client appreciation gifting for small businesses and large businesses all the time. And we hear the same things from people all the time, such as
00:24:47
Speaker
I'm just I'm just I'm exhausted with like I I'm at home goods and I'm like throwing stuff in a basket and I don't know what to do and then I get it looking really pretty and then I'm at home and then I'm back in my office and I get sidetracked and three months go by and oh my god I never sent it and I don't want to go to the post office and I don't want to wait in line or I don't know when to give it to them so we hear it all but it's all very similar
00:25:12
Speaker
And the first thing that i say to people when they call into us and they're asking for help is you have to have a system you have to work it into your workflow and you have to decide at what point in your overall process from start to finish are you going to get your client are you gonna get them as soon as they signed the agreement with you.
00:25:30
Speaker
Or are you going to gift them at the very end? And that just depends on who you are, like a photographer, or a wedding planner, or a bridal salon owner, or a web designer. I mean, we've worked with a realtor. We worked with every single type. And it just depends on. But a lot of people do give the gifts right when the project is booked. They want to kick off the project on a great foot. They want to show appreciation for the booking. And that would be the first thing. So you need to know when you're going to give it.
00:25:59
Speaker
and it needs to be systematic. So you need to know what you're giving them, and you need to be giving the same thing every time. Now, if you want to vary it a little bit, you can do a handwritten note. You're allowed to do that. But for the most part, you should be giving the same thing every time. Know where it's coming from, have it in stock, and have a system of when you build them, how many you keep in your own inventory. It's probably a small amount. If you don't have a ton of space, that's fine. You're not a gifting business.
00:26:27
Speaker
The key is to have almost like a program, like a gifting program and have it fit into your workflow and have it be the same thing every time. And then you know exactly what you're spending on each client every time so you can work it into your pricing. There's nothing wrong with increasing your pricing.
00:26:42
Speaker
to account for a client gift. I tell this to people all the time. They're a little bit gassed when I say that. But that is part of the client experience that you're offering. So I don't see any reason why you wouldn't be able to include that in your overall pricing.
00:26:57
Speaker
Do you have a recommended amount of gifting? I know this is probably a hard question to answer because you work with so many different types of businesses, but do you have a recommended timing for gifts or amount of gifts? I know for weddings, since we work with the couple generally over the period of nine months to a year because when they book, we'll generally do a booking gift and then maybe something after their engagement session and then maybe something after the wedding.
00:27:26
Speaker
So how do you go about even deciding, okay, when's the best time to give a gift and how many gifts? And I guess another one, not to, I'm just piling the questions on. That form as far as questions go. And that leads into wondering, how much should I spend? And we see people on both ends of the spectrum where it's like next to nothing and it's really just the handwritten note or a note or something like that too.
00:27:50
Speaker
spending probably far more than they should because they feel like maybe they have to because otherwise it's not a good enough gift. Right, I understand. In terms of when to gift, I think you really need to try to get in the head of the recipient. So let's, I mean, let's talk weddings. Okay, so let's say a wedding planner, for example.
00:28:11
Speaker
So, um, the couple signs on with the wedding planner and there's a lot of excitement surrounding that. And they've had probably a ton of choices and they've finally settled upon this one wedding planner and they sign the agreement. And you know, who knows? Maybe they, they're like having a little buyers or more sites. Did we spend too much? Did we, did we make the right choice? You know how everyone tends to do that. Imagine then receiving something in the mail from that planner, like within the week or two weeks.
00:28:38
Speaker
You're like, oh, knew it. I made the right choice. Like, that's why I booked her or him, you know. And then another way of thinking is, you know, with wedding planning, there are a lot of major decisions that go on kind of in the upfront, like the major things are decided. Like, of course, they, you know, book the photographer and then they're going to book the
00:28:56
Speaker
venue and then they're going to book the catering. But once some of those bigger ticket items and contracts are signed, there tends to be somewhat of a little bit of a lull. And so some people I've heard they really enjoy gifting in that lull period where the bride is sort of like not as excited
00:29:14
Speaker
or the groom, not as excited as they were in the beginning. And so some of them like to send a small gift just to kind of get them jazzed up again about it. And then of course at the end, the wedding, the wedding weekend, they're gonna gift something. Now, it doesn't have to be equally as expensive or significant for every single time, but just being thoughtful about when. So typically our clients are doing a curated box that's branded to them for the onboarding gift.
00:29:43
Speaker
and then they're doing something, you know, maybe a little bit smaller in the middle, even if it's just a handwritten note, like, again, I'm so excited for your wedding, blah, blah, blah. And then the wedding weekend, they might give a bottle of champagne or something that's appropriate for that type of occasion. So they are spreading it out. But most of the clients that we work with are either giving it the curated type of box that's branded in the beginning or at the very end of the project.
00:30:08
Speaker
Sure, and that kind of makes sense, I think. Especially, you know, just the primacy and recency effect, you know, when you first meet somebody and then leaving them, you know, right as you deliver maybe the final product, leaving a lasting impression.
00:30:23
Speaker
But what would you recommend people spend? What's an appropriate amount to spend? Do you have a percentage maybe that you work off of of how much that client is worth? And I know that's probably a crude way to put it, but let's say the invoice is for $1,000 or so. How do you calculate what to spend on a gift?
00:30:45
Speaker
See, this is very tricky. This is very tricky because we don't always know what our clients are actually charging. So it's like, you know, you got to tread lightly with that. But in general, we are working with high-end wedding planners and, you know, high-end like fine art wedding photographers. And so in general, they're spending between like 75 and $150 per gift.
00:31:10
Speaker
And this is for the significant gift, like the onboarding gift. Some people do actually spend more, but that is usually the average that we are seeing, that we're seeing spent. And they definitely work it into their pricing. And the way that they justify it is that this person just spent thousands of dollars with me, like I need to reciprocate in this way. And it's not just about the money, it's about having something that's
00:31:35
Speaker
thoughtful and very well curated. And with items that the recipients are, that are appropriate for the occasion, appropriate for the recipients that they're actually going to hopefully use and enjoy, that are well thought out. So, you know, when we advise our clients, like we, first is aesthetic. Like we want it to look like that brand, you know, color palette, logo, all those types of things. If patterns are involved in the brand, we try to work those into the gift however we can.
00:32:03
Speaker
And then also just vibe of the brand. Like, are you, um, you know, just very fine art and light and airy, like that's how the gift should feel. Or are you really edgy and bright and bold? Um, and you know, that the gift should reflect that feeling and you can actually do that with items and with paper and with ribbon and with, you know, you can actually take a brand and reflect it in the form of a gift box, I believe.
00:32:30
Speaker
Yeah, and I like what you said about the amount being spent, too. One thing that we advise people is just say three to five percent of whatever the invoice amount is. And I'm terrible at math, so I won't do it in my head. But generally, for a lot of people who are charging a couple thousand dollars, it really ends up being in that 75 to 150 dollar range.
00:32:54
Speaker
So, you know, I imagine that you've talked with clients who may be thrown ideas at you and you're probably like, no, that's not what you want to do. Are there any dos and don'ts when it comes to gifting? Like, have you ever seen just some some disastrous stuff? And then on the other hand, some stuff where you're like, you know, or that you've put together that you're like, wow, this is this is awesome. And more people should should take this approach.
00:33:17
Speaker
Yeah, to be honest with you, the people that come to us, they've come to us after they've already had the disaster. It's a disaster. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. And they come to us ready for with an open mind. Maybe they have some preferences, like, I really love this and I want to share it with my clients. That's one approach you can take. It doesn't have to be just about your brand. It could be about something that is your favorite item that you want to then share with your client and make it clear with them
00:33:45
Speaker
This is why you like love this item or something and allow your client to kind of see into your world too because it's a personal relationship back and forth and depending on the length of the project you could be working with that person for a year two years like or even an ongoing relationship.
00:34:01
Speaker
So, you know, there are a lot of different strategies with that. But when people come to us, they're at the point where they want us to design it for them. They want us to take their brand, take their vibe, take, you know, whatever few preferences they have and show them and go to them and say, this is the concept that I think you should go with. And then we have a process where we go back and forth and tweak it much like any custom process, design process, and tweak it until they look at it and they say, this feels like me, like this feels like my brand.
00:34:29
Speaker
At what point would you recommend that somebody reach out to you? So for instance, I assume maybe when you're just getting started and you only have five clients for the first year, let's say, that maybe it's probably not within the budget to reach out to your company and say, hey, can we put together these client gifts? And maybe you disagree with that. Feel free to say, no, they should start right away. But when would you recommend really outsourcing that to a company like yours?
00:34:58
Speaker
Yeah, so I would say obviously, I'm a big believer in asking your bookkeeper or your accountant, like at what point you can afford it if you're not comfortable raising your prices. So you have to know that. If you account for that, then you know, great. But if not, if you're going to absorb that cost and keep your prices the same.
00:35:14
Speaker
then you just need to make sure that your finances obviously, you want to look out for the financial health of your business. But I think for us, for client gifting, our minimums are 12. So if you're doing 12 in the course of a year, that just happens to be what ours are. And if you're doing more than that, certainly. But I also think it has to do with what's the best use of your time? How much time are you spending on putting those five together?
00:35:42
Speaker
And what could you be doing instead of that time? For us, if you don't meet our minimums, again, that's why I created the Ready to Ship shop. So they can pre-design so they can just go in and buy one at a time and we hand write a personal note. So it goes to their client and they're getting a client gift. It's not branded in their brand per se, but you can work up to that and get to the point where you are doing that.
00:36:05
Speaker
where you are doing a custom, where it is custom branded for you. But you at least know that it's curated. And again, as far as time goes, I mean, it's not just a matter of
00:36:14
Speaker
I mean, it's sourcing the gift, putting it together, bringing it to the post office, you know, whatever else goes into it in terms of like writing a note. Yeah, so you could save probably a decent amount of time each week, especially as you get, and I think 12 is a great number, you know? If you have to do more than 12 of those, then it's probably best to outsource that. So for somebody- Yeah, we keep it low for that reason, to try to accommodate like our minimums for events, to be honest with you, are much larger. Yeah, sure.
00:36:43
Speaker
But for client gifting, we try to keep it as low as possible to try to accommodate small businesses. They need their time back. They're doing so many things. They need their time back. So we try to keep it low. I'll try to keep it at that number as long as I can. I think that's a good number. So do you have any tips for somebody who's doing it themselves? Maybe not quite ready to go through Marygold, but needs to put together a client gift.
00:37:11
Speaker
Yeah, so I would just say consider your brand much like I mentioned before. Just consider your aesthetic. We always ask our clients and part of the questionnaire process is
00:37:24
Speaker
Give me three words that describe your brand, and then you want to create the gift vibe around that. You also want to consider the usefulness of the items for the people that are receiving them. If you are a wedding planner and you're a couple, you have a male-female couple, and you're giving the gift only to the bride, well, you're missing out on half of that equation. That's a good point. There's a big movement towards unisex.
00:37:51
Speaker
client gifting in the wedding industry because the grooms, they should not be ignored. There's also a movement towards, shouldn't even be a movement, but same-sex gifting which we absolutely accommodate all the time and are happy to do so. So just making sure that the items are useful and appropriate. And then also incorporating your logo. Don't be afraid to incorporate your logo, your branding patterns into the gift because
00:38:17
Speaker
shows off who you are, especially if you're proud of your branding or you've just rebranded and you've gotten a new brand. It's like the perfect time to re-up your client gifts.
00:38:26
Speaker
Awesome. And so primarily when you started your business, and correct me if I'm wrong here, you did wedding
Business Expansion: Weddings to Corporate Gifting
00:38:34
Speaker
gifts. That was primarily what? Gifs, yep. Yep. And so since then, like I mentioned at the beginning of the interview, you've moved into corporate events and client gifting. So how did you transition primarily from gifts for weddings to working with corporate clients? Did you change up your marketing? Did they find you?
00:38:54
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So we began as, you know, doing wedding welcome gifts, obviously. And the people that we were working with for the wedding welcome gifts were like a lot of them were in the wedding industry. So they started asking about client gifting. So that was just a natural progression. But corporate events is a whole different thing. And so even though the function of the gift is different, the reason for it is different.
00:39:20
Speaker
The concept behind it is really the same. So everybody wants to give a well curated, thoughtful, aesthetically pleasing gift as much as they can. And so I think what happened was we have this portfolio of work.
00:39:39
Speaker
And, you know, even though somebody's in the corporate world, the people that are making decisions about gifting are, you know, marketing executives who are essentially creatives, you know, and then, you know, corporate planners who are essentially they have to be creative. And so they know the creative places to go and find examples of work, i.e. certain social media platforms. And so corporate people have been finding us, loving what we've done for wedding.
00:40:05
Speaker
and we are able to tweak our formula a little bit from wedding to make it very appropriate for corporate. So when I'm talking with my corporate clients, I'm saying to them, look,
00:40:15
Speaker
You know, yes our wedding portfolio. Yeah, it's feminine. It looks very most of it looks very girly I said, but we're gonna use the same formula for you. We're gonna make it Completely on brand we're gonna make it completely appropriate and useful for your recipient and we're gonna also make it professional So we're gonna find a way to incorporate your logo and your branding without making it be cheesy corporate swag but in a very tasteful balanced way and
00:40:43
Speaker
And they love that. They want that. They haven't ever seen that before. They want corporate gifts that make a splash, that are unique, that are artisan. But are still very professional and reflect their brand. So we have access to their brand style guides. We follow them. We rely on them. And we give them something that for me is like right in the middle between super corporate and super wedding. We're doing something right in the middle.
00:41:11
Speaker
Yeah, because when I imagine a corporate graphs, I think like pens, you know, the cheap pens with the logos on our email marketing all the time, like your last branded pen, like nobody wants it, it ends up in the drawer in the swag graveyard or whatever. Yeah. And the worst part about is that they hardly ever work, you know, they are something goes wrong with them. So as far as social media goes, or these platforms that you find corporate clients on, is it mostly like what is it? Is it LinkedIn? Or is it?
00:41:39
Speaker
Pinterest? It's actually not LinkedIn that I know of. Nobody's ever come and said we found you via LinkedIn. It's also interesting because where people say that they found you, they probably first found you somewhere else. But the last place that they actually saw your work is what they tell you. It's a little hard to gauge. But the normal ones, Instagram,
00:41:58
Speaker
Pinterest and then Google search is very high for us. Yeah. Yeah, and I would think that Google search would be Instagram is interesting to me because You know in the past I thought it was very much consumer facing, you know, it was good for The wedding industry, let's say because you know normal people and getting married were on it, right only recently
Leveraging Social Media for Client Acquisition
00:42:23
Speaker
or relatively recently I'd say in the last year or two, have I heard that a lot of B2B type stuff or business can be generated from Instagram. So it's interesting that you would mention Instagram. And then Pinterest, I also think, like Google, I would assume would be a good generator of traffic, of even corporate traffic for you.
00:42:46
Speaker
Yes, because again, the people that are doing the gifting, that's where they're going to go to look for ideas. And then they're like, oh, wow, I can actually outsource this. Are you kidding me? And they get so excited. But they're going to those places to at least get ideas because they think they're going to be doing it themselves. And then once they realize they don't have to, they get really very excited because again, it's not what they should be doing with their time. Chances are it's a huge hassle for them every time. So yeah, both of those sources have been very good to us.
00:43:14
Speaker
And I assume that because you're providing gifts for them that are so different than maybe what's been provided for them in the past, that there's probably a pretty good word of mouth that comes from that as well. Yes. And we also work very hard to get repeat clients because they're doing repeat events. So that always helps as well.
00:43:35
Speaker
Is there anything else that you do to attract corporate clients or that you're in the process of doing? I have a little bit of insight into it because, Chris, as we speak, working on your website. Yeah, you have a little insight into what my strategy is. It's really funny. I've had so many conversations with corporate clients and they see our website as it currently is and they love it. They're female, they love it.
00:44:06
Speaker
But in a corporate situation, it's always usually by committee. So they will have to go to the team and get everybody to sign off on this. So then when they pass around the website to the committee, which often, let's just face it, is a lot of men, they'll come back to me and they'll say, everybody thinks they're worried. They think it looks a little girly. And I say to them,
00:44:28
Speaker
you know don't worry we are designing to the aesthetic of the event so yours will not look like this and so I've worked because we have now have such a large portfolio of corporate work and client work and wedding work I'm able to go behind the scenes and scramble and get them examples of projects and I work very hard to do that but I
00:44:50
Speaker
you know, the new website will cater more to, it'll cater to all groups equally. So each group will have its own landing page to go to where they can find imagery and case studies of their own, of their own gifts for their own reasons.
00:45:06
Speaker
So I think that'll be a lot easier. I won't have to be making these excuses why the website looks so girly to a bunch of men and begging them to trust me that I got you. I understand. I can make masculine gifts. Just as easily as I can make a frilly girly gift. Trust me.
00:45:23
Speaker
Well, I'm really excited about launching a new website and I know that you all have been working really hard on that. I know Krista is appreciative of your clear feedback as you all have been working through that kind of stuff. For any listeners out there,
00:45:42
Speaker
working on a website redesign, I think one thing that you've done really well, Jamie, is just communicating clearly and quickly. So when stuff is sent over to you, it's not like three weeks, four weeks go by, and then it's like, oh, can we change this or that? So I'm going to plug Krista here, and I'll say she's a machine. So anyone listening, Krista is a machine. So I will give her feedback, and then it's my whole team, we joke about it. Because by the time I roll into the office in the morning, I already have.
00:46:12
Speaker
an updated version from her than with more work for me to review and do. So we just laugh. We're like, Chris says my new boss. She's a machine. She's fantastic. And what I love working with her, especially the second time around that I have a business, when you build a website and you don't have a business and you just have this idea, God help you. It's so hard. It's so hard to make decisions. You're all over the place. But when you have a business and you know
00:46:39
Speaker
what those goals are, and you know that your existing website is not doing you any favors at all, you have to be very clear about what those business goals are, and you have to let the website help you achieve those. Of course, I want the website to be the most beautiful, gorgeous, custom thing in the whole wide world, but if it's not gonna convert, it doesn't do any good. So, Krista is a great balance for me, because I'm like, I want it to look this way, and she's like, it's not gonna function that way. I want it to look this way. So, she's getting me exactly where I need to go.
00:47:09
Speaker
Um...
00:47:10
Speaker
and to take the business to the next level hands down. She is a machine. She is super efficient. And I'll pass that on. And like I said, we're really excited for this new website to launch.
Connect and Engage: Instagram and Beyond
00:47:23
Speaker
So as we wrap up here, if people want to follow along, maybe people want to connect with you potentially about some client gifts or want to see what your business is all about, where can they follow along and where can they learn more about you?
00:47:40
Speaker
So I would say the best place would be Instagram, obviously. So we're at Mary Gold Gray. Gray is G-R-E-Y. So that's our handle and we're very active on the feed as well as stories. So we do a lot of like behind the scenes and we'll show gift builds in the process in entirety and like often talk about like why we've chosen certain items that we have. So that's a good place to
00:48:02
Speaker
not only see the body of work, but also get an idea of our philosophy and how we work together as a team and kind of see the environment that we work in. And then, obviously, our current website is marigoldgray.com. I'm not a big fan of our current website. Obviously, I wouldn't be redesigning it, but the new one should be coming hopefully very soon, so be on the lookout for that. Yeah, maybe even by the time this episode launches.
00:48:27
Speaker
So, thank you so much for sharing your time and expertise with us. I think that people, especially people who are just in gifting, really should be part of the client experience because I think it really does enhance someone's brand. So I think that this is going to be a really enlightening conversation. So thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. It was a blast.
Podcast Engagement: Subscribe and Review
00:48:53
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Brancet Bookshelf. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.