070. Katie Guiliano: Founder of Hosanna Revival

With an estimated 5 billion copies sold and distributed, the Bible is the bestselling book of all time…yet over thousands of years, there have been surprisingly few cover variations. Enter Hosanna Revival: a paper goods company that designs beautiful, artistic Bible covers and other faith-based products.

I sat down with founder Katie Guiliano to hear where this idea came from and how she’s grown the business to 7-figures and a team of 15 full-time employees.

This was such a powerful conversation on the intersection of faith, art, and entrepreneurship!

WILDFLOWER SHOWNOTES : shannaskidmore.com/katie-guiliano

Transcript

Katie (00:00):

Was the biggest next step was, okay, how do I convince these publishers? I had my sites on my favorite publisher, my favorite translation, and I only reached out to them and I emailed and said, Hey, I somehow got ahold of their VP of sales, but I said, Hey, I'm going to be up in the Wheaton, Illinois area. Can I tell you what I've been working on? And of course, I was not going to be at Wheaton, but when he said yes, I'm like, get in the car. We're going to Wheaton. So I guess the Monday after Thanksgiving. So I sent that email and I made the designs over Thanksgiving break. So I painted a version of each of them and made digital mockups of each of the five I wanted to print. Drove up to Wheaton and the VP of sales. Forgot the meeting

Shanna (00:38):

You are listening to Consider the Wildflowers, the podcast episode 70 with an estimated 5 billion copies sold and distributed. The Bible is the bestselling book of all time. Yet over thousands of years, there have been surprisingly few cover variations. Enter Hosanna Revival, a paper goods company that designs beautiful artistic Bible covers and other faith-based products. I sat down with founder Katie Giuliano to hear where the idea came from and how she's grown the business to seven figures and a team of 15 full-time employees. This was such a powerful conversation on the intersection of faith, art, and entrepreneurship. If you dig professional bios, here goes. Katie Giuliano founded Hosanna Revival in 2015 after Rebinding and painting a Bible for herself. She was inspired by the vision of how a beautiful Bible could impact the heart of anyone who held it, leading them to know God through his word.

(01:27):

Now she spends her days designing new products, leading marketing efforts, and of course, painting. Okay, formal introduction's over. Let's dive in. Hey, it's Shanna, and this is Consider the Wildflowers, the podcast. For the past 15 plus years, I've had the honor to hear thousands of stories from entrepreneurs around the world. As a former Fortune 100 financial advisor turned business consultant, I have a unique opportunity to see the real behind the highlight reel. I'm talking profit and loss statements, unpaid taxes, moments of burnout, and those of utter victory. Or as my husband says, the content everyone is wondering but not many are talking about. And now I'm bringing these private conversations to you. Hear the untold stories of how industry leaders, founders, and up and coming entrepreneurs got their start, the experiences that shaped them and the journey to building the brands they have today. Stories that will inspire and reignite encourage to redefine success and build a life and business on your own terms. Welcome Wildflower. I'm so glad you're here. Hi Katie. Welcome to the show.

Katie (02:25):

Oh man, thanks for having me.

Shanna (02:27):

I'm very, very excited to do this. As I was saying right before we hit record, I don't know a ton of your story and your journey we're connected through one of the ladies on my team who was like, we have to get Katie on the show. So I'm excited. I'm going to be a curious new friend that's asking all the questions. So welcome.

Katie (02:44):

Oh, good. And this is my favorite story to tell, so we'll have a good time.

Shanna (02:48):

Do you do a lot of podcast interviews?

Katie (02:51):

Yeah, and I have kind of trimmed back. I pick the ones that I say yes to, and I think they have kind of that thing we can speak to uniquely, which is typically business and entrepreneurship. So this was a no-brainer for us. We were excited to chat with you.

Shanna (03:06):

Well, I feel so honored. Before we talk about life before business and just really get into the story, will you just tell everybody a little bit about who you are, what your company is? I know we'll do a formal introduction, but I always love to hear the words of the entrepreneur.

Katie (03:23):

Yeah, absolutely. So I own Hosanna Revival. We designed Bibles in faith-based paper goods. So we operate out of Cincinnati, Ohio. I own the business now with my husband. I started it when I was in college, so it's been a really fun growing process. Now we have a team of 15 awesome, awesome people, but we're just a highly creative business and we really prioritize just kind of that intersection between faith and entrepreneurship and beautiful design.

Shanna (03:50):

And I know your designs are gorgeous. I was so excited when Lauren sent me your website. I was like, oh, love this so much. And you started the company when in 2015?

Katie (04:00):

Yeah, 2015.

Shanna (04:01):

Okay, so we're on your what, eight? Almost nine?

Katie (04:05):

Yeah, yeah. Well, nine will be in June.

Shanna (04:07):

Okay, that's so exciting. And 15 employees all with you there in Ohio?

Katie (04:13):

Yes. We have 15 full-time, and then our distribution and shipping staff in addition to that, that are all part-timers, but we're all in one big building that we were able to buy in 2021. So we have a really cool office space. It's really creative and just a good spot to be.

Shanna (04:28):

Katie. Oh my goodness, I can't believe in nine years. You have such a big team, such a big operation. I just can't wait to hear how you got here and how comfortable you feel running such a large company. So let's dig in and talk about the background. How did you get started? What prompted the company? Did you want to own a business? Just kind of take me back to those college days and where you thought your career would go.

Katie (04:53):

That's great. It is funny because when I think back to the college decision, that's maybe the first huge decision most people make in their life. And for me, I was deciding do I go to business school or do I go to art school? I'd always been highly creative. My mom's an artist, my dad's an engineer, so I do have this two-sided mind, but it was a tough decision and I ended up going to business school and now I'm like, thank goodness I did, because I already knew how to paint and I didn't know literally anything else. So yeah, I had taken some entrepreneurship classes in high school and just been interested in business, but I don't think I had this specific idea, I'm going to own a business. I can't wait to figure out what. So it was my sophomore year of college. I found myself.

(05:38):

I was a very new Christian. I didn't grow up that way. And so I had some really great community and friends that were just teaching me what it looked like to try to follow Jesus. And they gave me a Bible and said, get reading girl. I just learned a lot about my faith through the Bible. And as I was having those experiences, I'm looking at this book realizing, okay, this is so important to me, but it's ugly just to be blunt, it's plain black and the cover's kind of cheap. And if this book really is as important as they say it is, and if it really is the bestselling book of all time, why the heck is nobody designing a beautiful cover? So it was really just a, okay, I saw a need first I made my own Bible, so I yanked off the cover and rebound a canvas cloth cover and then painted it to just match my style and my design. And now I'm like, okay, this book feels right now. It's very personal to me. From there, I went to the internet and tried to find more of these, and nobody was doing it everywhere I looked. The coolest cover you could find was a cheap fake leather with a dragonfly and a swirl. I'm like, that we can do better. There's better design to be had on these bibles. So I just did quite a bit of research. I mean, fast. It was all within a week, and then I started making prototypes, so I started designing Bibles.

Shanna (07:05):

This is amazing. Okay, so you were a sophomore when you became a Christian, is that what you said? Yeah. Okay. Oh my goodness. I have so many questions about that. But was it that same year when you started, when you created your own cover? I mean, did you think this was going to be a thing? Did you just want to do it for your friends? Was it just for fun? Tell me about those initial days of creating pretty Bibles.

Katie (07:35):

Yeah, it was a pretty slippery slope. So it was within 12 months that I started following Jesus. I think it was about a year later that I sold the first Bible. So I was studying abroad in Spain for most of that. So that's where I had this idea, but couldn't really do anything about it. All that great community I had mentioned was really nervous to send me off alone to Spain to figure out how to be a Christian without church or to friends or anything. So it was just me in the Bible. So yeah, when I did that research, I was thinking, okay, this could be something. I clearly saw the hole in the gap. And at that point I had done a couple internships with startups, tech startups in my town in Cincinnati. And so I had been around entrepreneurs and seen this fast paced business that I thought, okay, this is fun and I know what Etsy is, and I bet I could get on there quickly and sell these things because if I don't, someone's going to, I think Instagram. It was a really cool time to be on Instagram back then. Now it kind stinks.

Shanna (08:37):

I remember those days.

Katie (08:38):

Yeah, it was fun. Just a bunch of creative people doing creative things, and I thought, if I don't start making these and selling them, someone else is going to, and this is an opportunity I think I want to do.

Shanna (08:48):

Okay. So when you went to business school, did you have a career in mind? Did you think you would do startup? Did you think tech? Were you just trying out a lot of different things? And my second question to that is, do you have entrepreneurs in your family? Because for you to just be like, I think this can be a business. I mean, you clearly have an entrepreneur mind.

Katie (09:08):

Thank you. Yeah, no entrepreneurs in the fam, but I think, yeah, just being around the people in my internships was really helpful for that. So my majors in college were marketing in Spanish and international business, so I think my hope was to work in a creative capacity on Spanish speaking brands. But yeah, just creative marketing I think was what I thought where I thought I would head.

Shanna (09:30):

Okay. I love it. Okay, just a quick side note, Kyle, my sweet husband, you can decide if you keep this in, but my husband Kyle became a Christian as an adult as well, and it's just me. I grew up in the church. I've been a Christian since I was teeny tiny. But I love what you said. Watching him read the Bible as an adult is a very different experience than what I grew up with flannel boards and storyboards, and I'm grateful for the way I was raised, and I'm so grateful that I grew up in the church, but I'm so glad that I got to watch Kyle, my husband, become a Christian as an adult. So I love that you said, I just went to Spain with my Bible and we did this thing. Okay. So walk me through these early days of making prototypes. How did you find the materials, the supplies? Did you jump on Etsy? Walk me through kind of just the early days.

Katie (10:23):

Yeah, so as I mentioned before, nobody was doing this, and I think that long we had before this idea really caught on was awesome. It was necessary. And I know a lot of people starting businesses don't have that luxury. You're entering a space where there's lots of competition. And for me, it was just me painted Bibles. That's what we were selling back then, and they just didn't exist, and people were so excited about this idea of customizing the experience of reading the Bible. So that custom mindset was the priority in the beginning, because I made one for me and then I made two, one for each of my sisters. No one in my family is a Christian. So I made some for my sisters, my mom, all before Etsy. So those were my practices, but I picked their colors and verses I thought would speak to them and wrote on the cover.

(11:16):

So when I went to Etsy, I thought I could streamline this and pick one painting to do a couple of, but people probably want a custom experience because that is what's so rich about this. So in the beginning, what I was selling was custom bibles or semi-custom bibles as I called them. So I would either do a fully custom experience for a higher price point, or I would paint a full Bible, and then someone at the end, they could buy that for cheaper, select the verse for me to add on it, and I could add their name and initials all before I sealed it up and they could pick the translation. So those were my two options, and I did that not very long before I realized this isn't sustainable to split hairs there. So for me, it was early on that I realized, oh no, I have to figure out how to scale this because customizable isn't scalable. Yeah.

Shanna (12:08):

So were you just purchasing the Bibles at wholesale, taking the covers off and replacing them just like you did your own with a canvas

Katie (12:19):

Cover? Yeah. So it was a rebinding process early on, which the quality of that, I don't think it's that strong. I was searching for a Bible you could paint on, but as an artist, I knew you can't just paint on anything. And so many bibles are debossed like with the Holy Bible in gold or something. So that would show up if you painted over it. So there wasn't a Bible I could just paint. So ended up finding one in a certain translation that was paintable, but I still had to do quite a bit of prep work to the cover. It had art on it, like a design from the publisher.

Shanna (12:54):

Okay. Iteration one. So you're like, okay, this is not scalable. I cannot, where did you go from there?

Katie (13:03):

Yeah, so I did six months of just taking orders on Etsy. And at the time I had another startup internship. I was also taking classes. It was just a high burnout season. I was priming myself for a lofty burnout coming down the pipeline. So I was, let me think, probably two or three orders a week, but they each took me about five hours. So it was a nice little part-time job. And that was six months, June to December, and then January I thought, I'll make an Instagram account, that would be a good marketing move.

Shanna (13:35):

Oh goodness.

Katie (13:36):

And by the end of the week, I had a thousand followers. Again, it was a good time to be on Instagram, and that number grew by about a thousand a week for quite a while. And then by the end of that first month, January, I had 125 custom orders. Oh my goodness. Like, oh crap, that's quick math. That's not possible. So I'm painting through the hours of the night, and that was really the switch when I'm like, okay, I decide to replicate, print my design, scan in and print. So what does that scalability look like? Yeah,

Shanna (14:08):

Okay. So how did you figure out scalability?

Katie (14:11):

How'd you do it? So at that point, I started looking in, I mean, I'm Googling bible printing press. How do you make bibles? I wanted to print the Bibles out of Cincinnati. Learned quickly that you cannot do that. Not only is it a really specific process, different from just printing a book because it's a special paper, but every translation of the Bible is owned by a publisher. So you can't just go print your version of Harry Potter. You've got to get permission from whoever wrote it. So then that was the biggest next step was, okay, how do I convince these publishers? Can I license your content but print them with my covers and also I have no idea what I'm doing. Where do you get them printed, by the way? And can you help me? So I had my sites on, my favorite publisher, my favorite translation, and I only reached out to them and said, I would like to print five of my designs on your translation.

(15:08):

And that's Crossway. They're up in Wheaton, Illinois. It's like a five hour drive from me. And I emailed and said, Hey, I somehow got ahold of their VP of sales, which is funny. That's not quite the right person I needed to talk to. But I said, Hey, I'm going to be up in the Wheaton, Illinois area. Can I tell you what I've been working on? And of course, I was not going to be at Wheaton, but when he said yes, I'm like, get in the car, we're going to Wheaton. That was the day after, I guess the Monday after Thanksgiving. So I sent that email. I made the designs over Thanksgiving break, so I'm like, I've got these five designs in quotes, but they weren't made yet. I had ideas for them. So I painted a version of each of them and made digital mockups of each of the five I wanted to print.

(15:50):

Drove up to Wheaton and the VP of sales. Forgot the meeting. No, I sat in that waiting room, 19 years old, scared. He walked back from a two and a half hour lunch, and I had been waiting still, and he remembered it was like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. We took this meeting and I've learned a lot now about the Bible printing, the pace of how these publishers, when they print new bibles and it's not constant, they do about two big print runs a year, and we happen to come exactly at the right time for this upcoming print run. So this was going to be for the following summer that the print run was about to go to print, and they said, if you miss this boat, then you'll have to get on the next print run six months from now, but I think we could pull this off. So they approved it with their Bible committees so quickly. That's what miracle too. So they said yes to this project, we need the designs and the artwork in a couple days, but more than that, we don't know you or trust you, so you have to pay us upfront for all of these Bibles. So was we need $72,000, what? Over a weekend? So they gave me my yes on Friday, and I needed that money by Monday to secure this purchase order.

Shanna (17:03):

So you're essentially buying your first run of Bibles at wholesale, then you're going to turn it around and sell it on your own site. Is that kind of

Katie (17:12):

Yep. And they said, we won't sell these on our own site. We'll just basically help you with production and ship 'em straight to you

Shanna (17:18):

And I Were going to do the covers and everything and print all of that. You were going to specify how you wanted it to look

Katie (17:26):

A little bit. So there was a handoff. We worked with the manufacturers. They basically just let us in on their print

Shanna (17:32):

Run. Okay, got it. Okay. So 72,000. Great. Not

Katie (17:36):

Hard, just what a small number. So at that point, thankfully, I had the business insight at some point to make a bank account for Hosanna Revival. So I had 40,000 from painted Bibles that had come in, which was awesome. Then I had about 15 k from working at Chick-fil-A I drained my personal bank account, and there was still money to be had, and we don't come from money. So it was a really big ask to ask my parents, Hey, can you pull this off? Can you help? And I think they gave about 12,000 and I mean, I remember that they're like, we need to see this back. This is a big deal. We can't just give you 12,000. And by the time the Bible's released for pre-order, we made back that 12,000 in the first couple of hours, which was really cool.

Shanna (18:23):

That's amazing. So you did it 70 did. Okay, so you partnered with Crossway, and do you remember how many quantity you got in that first run?

Katie (18:36):

Yeah, so minimum order quantity was a thousand per design. So we did 5,000 Bibles, a thousand of each, and those delivered, we set 'em for pre-order in December, which is so funny. What a long pre-order. I would never do that now. And they officially arrived in May.

Shanna (18:50):

Oh my goodness. Okay. So 5,000 miles. Katie, you're in college. I mean, are you a senior in college?

Katie (18:58):

Yes.

Shanna (18:59):

First of all, the fact that you had 40, 50 something thousand dollars, I'm so impressed. And way to go. You or your parents or the community, I mean, for saving that much money. That's incredible. Yeah.

Katie (19:12):

Well, I think it helped that I was so, I was such a slave to the work that I didn't have time for anything, son. I couldn't spend it. I was painting till 3:00 AM every night.

Shanna (19:22):

Were you scared, Katie? Were you scared?

Katie (19:24):

Oh my gosh,

Shanna (19:25):

I'm going to buy 5,000 Bibles. I'm borrowing money from my parents. Were you scared or did you

Katie (19:30):

Just, so the best advice that I think about all the time, it was Nick's stepdad, mark, he was a businessman, he was a doctor and had a practice. So he was able to give us a lot of really good business advice, and he wouldn't stop saying to us over and over, Katie, how far do you have to fall? You are 19 if this goes wrong, we liquidate the Bibles. I bet we can get you back to $72,000 and you'll go back to college. Oh, that's another thing. I stopped going to college at this time too because the business was growing so quickly and I just didn't have time. So I was nervous. I loved school, a triple major. It was a big deal for me to not do that. But he said, you'll go back to school. How far do you have to fall? So he really instilled in us early on this take a risk. You don't have a family depending on you. If this goes bad, you're back to square one, but you're only at square two.

Shanna (20:28):

I love that. I literally wrote that down and something Kyle and I, my husband and I do a lot is, it's funny. We've never put it in those words, how far do you have to fall? So now I'm clinging onto that. But we think a lot, worst case, if this goes very not the way we hoped, what would we do? And I just think knowing the hoped for outcome and the not hope for outcome and almost takes not the fear, but knowing a plan or having a next step or, okay, I know how far we have to fall. Okay, and I'm okay with that risk and oh my goodness, I love it. Okay, so you had set up your own website, I'm assuming e-commerce put the Bibles on. I mean, were you just figuring all this out yourself? And also when did your husband come into the mix of all of this?

Katie (21:20):

Yeah, so at this point it was figuring it all out bit by bit, lots of Googling at that point. I had hired an employee to help me just ship. She was my shipper. So I would finish a painting and she would wrap the product and handle at that point, took over customer service. That was a massive burden people because at that point we had gated orders. I couldn't just let them fly in. So we did a lottery system every week, Monday night at eight, I'll open up the slots until 25 get bought and then I'll close. So I was doing 25 painted Bibles a week. Again, five hours each, just not happening. So she was handling email and then shipping out the bibles. I brought on a second employee to do marketing. His name is Jake. He was awesome. And he was just going to help with email marketing, all things we really had no clue what we were doing. We're all under 24

Shanna (22:12):

That point. And this was like 2016

Katie (22:15):

Probably? Yeah, 16 to 17. Okay. So the delivery of the first printed Bibles came in May of 17. Okay. Wow. So Nick and I got married fall of 17, and he was working a job. He had a front end development degree, and he was working a payment processing job for about six months. And the night before our wedding, he said, I think I'm going to quit. What if I, because we always knew he'd help with Hosanna someday. We just did not know that that would be the day after our honeymoon. So he quit his job and we didn't tell our parents or anything. We were doing so many crazy risks. They thought we were insane. So put all our eggs in one basket. That was another thing. Until that point, I had never taken a paycheck from Hosanna, and I've just been sipping on the last thousand dollars from my internship or whatever.

(23:03):

And we said, when I get married, I'm going to take a modest paycheck because I have to contribute to this family unit. And so now Nick's joining, and now we have to come up with two paychecks out of Hosanna. So that felt like just a huge risk, but this is a cool story. I share this a lot, but the night before our wedding, late at night, I was working on my vows and I knew these printed bibles were here. Now I could do wholesale and sell to retailers that could then sell the Bibles. And that night a purchase order came in our first big wholesale partner, and their order was within dollars of the entire annual salary we hoped for Nick the night of our wedding.

Shanna (23:42):

Yeah, that's amazing. Kind of those God wink moments,

Katie (23:46):

Isn't that right? I know. We were so scared, but every risk we took, he just showed up for us. We're like, okay, I'll do it again.

Shanna (23:54):

I get those goosebumps. Katie. Oh my goodness. I love your story, and I'm also sweating a little bit for you, but how did you figure out, I mean, this isn't a small, we're talking about 5,000 on your first run. This isn't a small production at this point. You have two employees, you plus your husband now, so four, I'm assuming you have to have these Bibles warehouse somewhere. How did you figure out, talk about, I'm totally off script. I mean, I think I'm following my script, but not really. I'm just so intrigued. How did you figure out the money side? I mean, how did you figure out, first of all, purchase orders? That's something working with the companies I work with that have product, that's the big deal to have to fund the purchase orders upfront before you ever sell them. How do you feel like you figured out the business end of things?

Katie (24:49):

Oh man, and now it is so complex, and I'm grateful that in the beginning it did feel kind of simple like, okay, buy this many bibles, sell 'em for this much more, buy this many Bibles. So the second year we had to place our order for the second year's bibles before the first 5,000 had sold because they're on these really long lead times. So we placed a second order for 10,000 Bibles that following fall. So we had from May till maybe September to sell the first 5,000, and then we ordered 10,000. So it was just this kind of stair

Shanna (25:22):

Step. It's not a deal getting married, getting two salaries added on, let's go ahead and order 10,000 bibles. Okay.

Katie (25:30):

But you're exactly right. It's kind of this, having all our money tied up in inventory, that was foreign to me, especially working in the tech field before this. Any entrepreneur I knew didn't have physical inventory to pay for, and you pay for it almost a year before you get it. It was tricky. So all the while I'm still painting Bibles, so knowing I can probably get about 40,000 of painted money coming through. So that helped, but it really worked. It just worked out very, like I said, it was simple. It was like, don't spend more than you have. We didn't take any lines of credit. We didn't loan money from anybody ever again after my dad. And so it was simple math to us. Don't spend money you don't have. Make sure you can bring in more than you're spending.

Shanna (26:16):

Yeah. Now do you have to have I, this is for Shanna. I'm curious, do you do projections? Are you still ordering from just one place? I mean, it sounds like you're taking on wholesale accounts now too. How are you keeping up with all these moving parts?

Katie (26:35):

Yeah. Well, first of all, thank goodness for our team because I came to the end of myself pretty shortly after where we were in that story. But yeah, just hiring people smarter than me that knew how to do numbers better, and I really am grateful that I had a working business knowledge, just general business and money smarts, but at some point you need a real accountant that can really do this stuff. So yeah, we order from multiple different manufacturers and publishers now. We have different licensing agreements for every translation. We have wholesale accounts for about 45% of our business. E-commerce is 55, so that's still our primary outlet. And so the projections, I would say that's been kind of the bane of our existence. So we know we can sell this many bibles, but the nature of our business wanting to offer this custom experience has always been important to me. So right now we've got over 50 designs in our shop, so the customer can come and take a look and really feel like they're picking something personal to them. But with that, I'm releasing a new collection twice a year. So all these brand new designs, we have no idea how to project if a new design's going to do well at this point, eight plus years in, we have a better idea. But those first years, we literally have no clue. I'm like, oh, we've never done green before. Let's try green. Green doesn't work.

Shanna (27:57):

So it's like some of them would just fly off the shelves and then some of them would sit and you're having to offer discounts,

Katie (28:03):

Which makes wholesale so tough because yeah, if we sell a hundred of a design per month, that's working just fine. We've got a thousand, we would order a thousand of everything for quite a while. That was our minimum and our maximum. And then at some point, a design really takes off. We sell through that first thousand in a month and every wholesaler wants it and we say, we can get you more in eight months. The lead times were just a nightmare. So forecasting, and really, we're a bunch of 23 year olds sitting around a table trying to figure out how to forecast with absolutely no clue because our growth, anybody we'd share our growth numbers with would say, you're lying doubling year over year. And we're like, well, we don't know how to project other than doubling because that's what's happening.

Shanna (28:48):

Yeah, that's amazing. Which just for everybody listening, when you get into a corporate, and this is different Katie for you, but in a corporate environment they're like 3% growth is good. And so when you're seeing double every year, and again, that's for more of an established business, but still doubling every year, anytime you're going to sit down with a finance person, they're going to be like, let's not forecast that again.

Katie (29:14):

Right. It sounds insane.

Shanna (29:17):

With that said, and I need to read my questions and get us back on track, but this has just been so good, Katie, thank you for sharing and just being open book and have you seen any major shifts or pivots in the business? So 2017, I feel like you're really, this is a full-fledged business. You're all in as we record this in the end of 2023. So over the last five years, the world, the industry, I'm sure competition, your marketing strategy, all of it has shifted so much. So how have you, just walk me through the growth of the company and have there ever been any moments where that have required a major pivot or shift for you?

Katie (30:11):

Everything feels really natural. The changes we made were changes we had hoped for and anticipated. There haven't been a ton of surprises, and I say that sometimes and then our employees will be like, Katie, no, you're crazy. This was a really hard year. This happened, this happened, and I just see it all such a natural path forward. So 2020, of course, we entered terrified in that year. We doubled our sales from the year before. It was our biggest year yet we think, I don't know if those was stimulus checks or people turning to God, but 2020 was awesome for us, but that also brought, I mean, triple the lead times that we were used to. So now all the freight forwarding was an absolute nightmare. So products we used to be able to get in six months, I mean now they're projecting a year and a half out.

(30:56):

It was horrible. And because our business is growing so fast and we just didn't have inventory, so we're moving through, it was kind of nice. We're moving through all this low performing inventory all we had and a cleaned house, but that got us so ahead on our production schedule. We're submitting designs over year in advance, so now we're still kind of riding that out. We're just so much further ahead. I think in the beginning of any business, you just don't have that luxury of working really far in advance. Corporations I think do that. They're planning three years in advance, and we just kind of got into that rhythm out of force, which was helpful. The other thing I thought of was just bringing on a new team member. Every time we do, it's a shift to culture and it turns, oftentimes we'll turn an employee into a manager, and so then now I'm teaching my employee how to manage from a few things that I've learned over the years.

(31:51):

It's a lot of learning together. Our culture's really, really fun, and it feels like a lot of like-minded people on mission together, just willing to work really hard. So we love our people, but we're incredibly lean. I cannot believe we only have 15 people for the volume of Bibles that we turn out, but everybody just, they get it. They work hard. But I think managing has been kind of a constant shift over the years that's been, I don't know, I knew how to do art, thought I knew how to do business, thought I knew how to do relationships, but managing, it's a full-time job. Again, it makes sense that people hire just managers, and I'm still out here designing Bibles, leading the marketing team, and somehow trying to care for our people. That's been a huge challenge.

Shanna (32:38):

Yeah, when I talk to companies or CEOs that have a pretty significant team, this is often something I hear. Leading a team is one of the biggest learning opportunities, just learning how to lead and manage and that relationship side. So I hear that echo. Katie, I don't know if you want to share, so you don't have to share, but I am interested, just so we can get a reference maybe, how big is the company now? What is the volume you all are working with? Oh,

Katie (33:14):

Man.

Shanna (33:14):

Just so all of us listeners can wrap our mind around this.

Katie (33:19):

Yeah, I think last year we sent out over a hundred thousand bibles, so we were moving. Amazing. Yeah, it's so fun. It is so fun

Shanna (33:30):

All over the world, just sending Bibles all over the world.

Katie (33:33):

Yeah, it's an absolute blast. Will

Shanna (33:35):

You talk about your marketing strategy a little bit? How have you, and especially with the shift in Instagram, it sounds like you started with Instagram being insane over here. I started my company officially in 2013 consulting and not that spreadsheet through that pretty on an Instagram screen, but definitely it was a different time. Then. How have you all shifted your marketing strategy to continue selling at this volume? And you said 55% still direct to consumer, which is incredible. So will you talk me through that a little bit?

Katie (34:12):

Yeah, absolutely. So like I mentioned that marketing is like if I could pick one thing to do, it would be that I loved working on the marketing of something I'm so passionate about. I do think early on it helped that our product was pretty, even a bad photo could get a lot of likes because it's a beautiful product. So that really worked in our favor setting ourselves apart, our designers, the marketers on our team we're all, a couple of us worked at Anthropology, we're very inspired by very thoughtful, intentional design. Just so much further beyond what you can do on Canva. We all really prioritize actual art and a rich, immersed, artful experience. So I think someone early on would've come in and said, Hey, you're spending way too much time making things pretty A post can do just as well if you just slap it together.

(35:05):

But from the beginning, we have had this all out commitment to just not doing that. But for us, we were committed to being a highly visual brand. We knew other people eventually are going to design beautiful Bibles, so how do we set ourselves apart? And we landed on a brand experience. We wanted to have this specialty brand that people wanted to be a part of, and then inspiring them to grow in their faith. We knew we needed to keep them around because the Bible is often a one-time purchase. It's not like toilet paper. If we're lucky, we could get someone to buy one every three or four years. So we have to inspire them to give these as gifts. We need to inspire them to get a notebook or a Bible study to go alongside of the Bible. And so we knew in order to keep them around, the brand experience needs to be really rich.

Shanna (35:54):

Yeah, I love that. And you feel like that's worked for you. Have there ever been seasons where we need to try something different or new? You're not seeing the same results you used to?

Katie (36:05):

I do think our strategy has remained that big center vein has remained the same, but yeah, Instagram has changed. It's gotten so much harder. We also have experienced a lot of censorship. Any Christian brand can echo that, but you just can't do Google ads. They won't allow you to participate any word that says Bible or church or Jesus or Christian. These posts just don't get shown via the algorithm. So that has been really challenging for how do we, the photos, if it doesn't say the Holy Bible on the cover, our robot's not going to tag it as something to be shielded, but our captions, we have to get really creative with what we talk about.

Shanna (36:44):

Wow. Katie, thank you so much. I mean, this is such a, I'm learning so much just listening to your journey, and I sent you some questions before and totally kind of maybe asked some of them, but haven't just, I'm so intrigued. So I have two non-scripted questions that I wrote down that I would love to ask you before we go into kind of a quick fire round. First, do you have a company that is clearly, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I'm imagining impact driven, you have a passion, and maybe you would even say a calling for what you're doing, getting the Bible and the words of Jesus into more hands. How have you kept the mission of the company and the impact central to what I imagine is the day-to-day struggles, the, oh, I can't, our ad got censored, it's not showing to anybody, or Wow, we're sitting on 10,000 of these designs that didn't move. I mean, you were dealing with hard things that can easily distract. So have there been ways or that you keep the mission central even in hard seasons?

Katie (37:58):

I love that thought because it is hard. It's very hard, and I think anybody, you should and probably do have some kind of passion or initial drive that's leading you in your business or entrepreneurship endeavors. And so we often challenge our employees to find the thread from what you are actually doing to the end user. So if I'm designing, I don't ever talk to the customer anymore at all. I don't do any customer service, but I'm designing and I want you to follow that thread all the way to the end and picture the impact of this design. I'm painting a lily who's grandma's favorite flower is a Lilly that this is going to end up in their hands and we ask all of our employees to do that because it is hard. Exactly like you said, in mission work, work that is missional, there is this deeper passion that it lets you, I think maybe have higher highs and lower lows because it feels so close to your heart. So the lows feel deeply personal. So the rest of our team that does get to work with the customer, they're really helpful in this, that we keep a collection of any good feedback we get, she'll share like, wow, this design was impactful for this reason, drop it in a Slack channel because everyone here in those hard seasons is just desperate to know, is this working or is all this work worth it?

Shanna (39:17):

Yeah. Oh, I love that. Find the thread I have, and everybody's heard me talk about this. They call it my sunshine folder. So I do finance, but my heart is for entrepreneurship and the financial freedom and the time freedom. And our motto around here is business built for life. And so we want to help others build a business that is impacting the life that they want, where so often business can be kind of the number one driver. Does that make sense? So we want life first business that gets, so anyways, I have a sunshine folder for that exact reason because it's one of those things where you have to speak truth over yourself and the work you're doing. And I think about my husband who's a aerospace engineer by trade, and then he joined the company full-time in 2021 officially, but he would say he's working on, he's an aerospace engineer.

(40:09):

He wants to design airplanes, but he's working on a gear that's on the wheel of, I'm going to sound so uneducated right now, but he's working on this tiny little, it's hard sometimes to see the end impact or the end user when you're just working on this tiny little, what paper is best for packaging. So I love that. Okay, my second question, and this speaks to when I named the podcast, consider the Wildflowers, I thought so many biblical references, but also entrepreneurs thrive in the harshest of circumstances just like wildflowers. And so I want to ask you, particularly with your family and working with your husband, but how have you found harmony or what would you say balance, I love the word harmony more than balance, but especially in the fact that you and your husband work together. So are there things that you do in your family to keep family life good, business life good? Are there one to two things that have worked for you all that you would want to share and finding the harmony

Katie (41:18):

And that? I think early on when we were both so burnt out, that became really evident like, oh, we've got to figure something out here because this isn't sustainable either. We looked a lot to, we didn't know any husband wives that were working in business together at the capacity. We found a lot of comfort from pastoral families. We found that husband, wife, pastor and wife duos were able to empathize a lot with what we were going through because the high passion of it all, it felt like so deeply important to our family's mission as a whole because all the advice we were getting outside of that was a lot of leave work at work, don't take it home. And that is good advice, I think in some bounds because this business for us was all consuming in order to grow in a lot of seasons, it had to be brought home and it wasn't really an option to slam the laptop shut at five and not think about it for the whole weekend.

(42:19):

But early on we realized that was a goal that we had was to be able soon we didn't know when, but to be able to have harmony and more space and more time, that wasn't spent on Hosanna, but it was kind of a grunt season of, but at this time, that's not an option, which I think is really tough in entrepreneurship in general. I don't know. We're in that season for a long time. It takes a long time to get out of this. Business demands everything from me, and I think, I don't really have the answer, but business by business. Yeah. Should you set a boundary and make that not happen? Will you harm your business if you do so? And when is it appropriate to set the boundary and make sure that you can prioritize that these other areas of your life? So for us, we knew it was a goal, so it was something we were always working towards working together, husband and wife.

(43:10):

I think something a perk of that is we don't have to do the end of day debrief that I think a lot of our friends do. You come home from work and you want to share what was hard about your day or what was good. We live it together, so when we leave work, we really can say, well, everything that happened to me, I know what happened to you. Let's go to dinner. The last thing I'll say is now that we are in a way, a healthier rhythm of maybe leaving work more at work, we always ask each other permission if that needs to be broken, like, Hey, tonight, here's what I'm going to have to work on and I know that affects you and I'm sorry that I'm going to have to ask you these questions. And we treat it as a rarity rather than the always, because it used to be always, and now it's like, Hey, I know I'm disrupting you. Here's what that might look like. Are you okay with that? And then often the other person is saying, okay, yeah, sure. How can I help? Or No, I can't do that tonight. I'm going to go out with friends because No, thank you. Yeah,

Shanna (44:11):

Yeah. Do you feel like hiring your team and growing your team is what helped you? I know you've mentioned several times seasons of burnout. Is that what helped you get a more sustainable pace, which allowed you to create better boundaries? I totally agree. Sometimes it's all consuming and it needs all of us, but is that what you feel like helped or just are there any things you can see looking back that helped you get out of the burnout seasons?

Katie (44:39):

Yeah, I do think just help, helping hands capacity is really helpful. I look back, early on, we were bringing on people to take tasks, and now I can see what probably made the big shift was that we have strategic high level thinkers that help make big decisions too, and that's hard to hire for in the beginning, especially when it's like, this is my business, my idea, my, but now we've got these employees that have grown into strategic managers and leaders, so we can lean on them for the things that aren't tasks, but just weigh on us forever. So we're sharing that load with more people, knowing if I make a mistake, it's going to be caught by someone else. There's just a lot more accountability, which I think helps mentally so much.

Shanna (45:25):

Oh, this is so good. I wish I could talk to you all day, but I want to be very thank you so much for your time. I mean, there's so much we could dig into about leadership and finances and relationships and marriage, and I'm just so glad to know you. Let's be friends you

Katie (45:41):

Go. I love it.

Shanna (45:42):

Before we go into a quickfire round, and thank you just for off scripting it with me because your story and the growth of the business, and it's fascinating to get to know you, and I feel like this has been a treat for me, but we have a lot of people listening who are entrepreneurs at various stages. This is a hard question. I did not prepare you for it. Some brand new, some wanting to grow business, some in the throes of it. Is there anything that you would want to say either to yourself or to those entrepreneurs listening just about business in general?

Katie (46:19):

Yeah, I think two things come to mind. One, like you already mentioned, let's count the cost. Is this worth it? Because if it is, run hard, run hard towards it and be willing to take the hits, have your eyes set on what you hope it's going to be in the future, but if it's worth it, don't look back. Make it happen. But if you can't confidently say, yeah, this is worth it to me, even if it goes as badly as it possibly could, what I would learn or what I would experience is not enough, then yeah, don't do it. Yeah.

Shanna (46:50):

Yeah. That's so good.

Katie (46:51):

The other thing that I am thinking of is I think if you don't have something unique to offer, don't waste your time either. I don't think wasting your time with imitation or replication just for the sake of being an entrepreneur, it feels like the passion would burn out if you got to believe in what you're doing deeply and you've got to believe confidently that you are offering something unique and bringing something unique to the table. Because imitation, I just think it's cheap and it's not going to last, so it gets so hard that you need to know your idea can withstand what's coming. Yeah.

Shanna (47:29):

Yeah. Both of those things are so good. I'm taking them in, especially in this environment of entrepreneurship the last few years, so different from when you and I started, and I think believing that you have an idea that's worth creating and worth pursuing versus sometimes following a more proven path. Yeah, I think that's such good. Okay, let's go to a quick fire.

Katie (47:56):

Okay.

Shanna (47:57):

I'll actually ask you the real questions first. Okay. What is one thing you would be embarrassed if people knew?

Katie (48:03):

Oh my goodness, I had to think about this one as it relates to business. For years and years, I was so afraid to watch Shark Tank or listen to how I built this. Everyone's like, oh, you should listen to this episode. You should watch this. I was so terrified that I was going to watch it and be discouraged and ashamed that I wasn't doing good enough. I finally watched the show. I'm like, wait, this would've helped me so much. Yeah,

Shanna (48:28):

That's so good. I think people find it fascinating. I don't know, maybe not fascinating is the wrong word, but interesting because I don't read business books. Very rarely do I read a business book, and for me it's more so going back to kind of what you said before. I'm so afraid I'm a consultant, so my ideas are what people pay me for, and I'm so afraid that I will have a similar thought to somebody who wrote a book on it and then I can't use it. I teach teach courses, I teach finance courses, and I'm like, okay, this is what, and so much of finance is just one plus one equals two, but I do it in a creative way. So I am just so careful about what I let in because I want to be able to go into a conversation or go into a course that I'm writing without filtered thoughts or without. That makes sense feeling like I need to be crediting somebody else, so I just don't read very much. Okay. Number two, any regrets or wish you could do over moments?

Katie (49:30):

Yes. What came to mind was definitely management focused, conflict and when to let people go. I wish we would've learned that faster. I think we had to go through it painfully a few times, just trying so desperately to make a square peg fit in a round hole. But I think just a couple times there were people that exited Hosanna that I would do so differently if I had the opportunity now,

Shanna (49:54):

So hard to learn. Okay, big win or pinch me moment.

Katie (49:59):

I think our first million was a pinch me moment. I never thought we'd see that number, but we didn't even know it was happening. Christmas season was such a rush, and our accountant showed up with a bottle of champagne and it was like a surprise to us, like, wait, you're kidding. So that was

Shanna (50:16):

Really awesome when you pass the million dollar in sales mark in a year for the first time. Yeah. That's amazing. That's amazing. What a cool moment and yay for your accountant for bringing champagne.

Katie (50:27):

I know. Good job, bill. Good

Shanna (50:29):

Job. Bill. Most account, you got to find a good numbers person. You really do. Best advice or just really good advice that you have received.

Katie (50:40):

Oh, can I repeat what I said? Just how far do you have to fall? I think about that all the time because now it's farther. It's just farther. The older you get, there's more to lose, but it puts it in good perspective. Is it still worth it?

Shanna (50:54):

And that was your father-in-Law who said that?

Katie (50:57):

Yep. I love that.

Shanna (50:59):

Okay, last quick fire and then we'll send it off. What are you working on now or one resource that you would like to share?

Katie (51:06):

Oh, man. We are working on the next year's collection is where I'm spending my time right now, but we're really excited to have an undated planner. We've had dated planners for years, and this just feels like a fun product that our people have been asking for forever. So we're excited for next year's undated.

Shanna (51:24):

That's so exciting. Are you still doing most of the design yourself? Do you have a design team?

Katie (51:29):

Yeah, I do the product design, and then we have four other designers on our team that do all the marketing and everything beautiful that you see on the internet. They'll often take a painted asset that I made and turn it into just so much more beautiful things, and then a couple of those designers will work on product interior, like planner type set and the lines and all that, things that are not my gifting.

Shanna (51:53):

Yeah, I love that. As someone who, I don't know if you know this, Katie has, I have a business finance degree, a psychology degree, and an art degree. So I'm saying three. Oh my gosh,

Katie (52:03):

You're all over the

Shanna (52:03):

Map. I love that you are still doing, and now that's perfect for what I do. I mean, that's who I work with every day. So much of money is psychology, so cool, and businesses I work with have so much creativity. But anyway, I love that you're still doing the design because I think for me, I know there's pieces that I cannot give up. Even if it made sense on paper or financially for me to not be doing those tasks, I need them. I need them for my own wellbeing, so I love that. Okay, let's send it off. Going back sophomore, junior in college, what would you tell yourself on day one, launching that Etsy shop or when you walked in the crossway, either one, what would you tell yourself? Looking back now?

Katie (52:50):

Oh my gosh. What came to mind was just it's going to work. Keep going because it's going to work. That would be helpful to have known, but I don't know that it would've changed my path. Yeah.

Shanna (53:02):

I love it. Katie, it's been a joy to get to know you. I want everybody to go check out your beautiful goods and what you're doing, and I'm just so grateful to have your time today and you sharing your story. So thank you.

Katie (53:16):

Oh, thanks so much.

Shanna (53:18):

Hey, wildflower, you just finished another episode of Consider the Wildflowers, the podcast, head over to Consider the wildflowers podcast.com for show notes, resource links, and to learn how you can connect with Katie. One final thought for today from Theodore Roosevelt. Believe you can, and you're halfway there. As always, thank you for listening. I'll see you next time. I.