We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kalyn Chandler a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kalyn, thanks for joining us today. We believe kindness is contagious and so we’d love for you to share with us and our audience about the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

In 2018, I was preparing for Effie’s Paper to be a vendor at The Essence Festival in New Orleans over July 4th weekend. The Essence Festival is an annual music festival hosted by Essence magazine, a magazine aimed primarily towards African-American women. The movie Girls Trip with Tiffany Hadish and Jada Pinket-Smith takes place at The Essence Festival. The Essence Festival is a 4-day event with a lot of foot traffic . We started preparing for the event in March; we had to figure out how much product to bring, how to get the product there, the design of our booth, staffing for the booth, hotel rooms, where to store extra product and so on … it felt like the list was never ending. Mid-June rolled around and things were coming together nicely, until they weren’t. A good friend was going to be our main “salesperson” at the event – she was going to travel to from New York to New Orleans with the team but she got the dates mixed up. I was in a panic. The thing about vending at large events like Essence is that you’ve got to be “ON”, a good sales person (or two) is key to insuring you make good on your investment. And, I had invested A LOT of money on this event. Randomly, a friend I’d met online happened to reach out to me a few days later as I was scrambling trying to figure out how to find a good sales person. I shared my dilemma with her and as luck would have it, she was planning to be at the festival and just like that she offered to step in. I was bowled over by her offer and I was desperate. I had no idea if Mia would be a good sales person or not, but I knew I needed someone else in the booth to help sell. As a backdrop, Mia is a television personality and producer. Let me tell you, Mia showed UP and showed OUT. Mia was phenomenal. My team and I all learned a few things from Mia’s selling tactics. The Essence Festival ended up being a great event and experience for us, in large part due to Mia. Mia has a great personality; she had the energy and vibe we needed to bring people to the booth and get them excited about our products. I am so thankful and grateful that Mia just happened to reach out when I needed a lifeline. I can’t imagine having done The Essence Festival with anyone other than Mia as our lead sales person. To top it off, about a month after we got home, Mia called and told me to check my email. I did and when I watched the video she created of the whole weekend, tears just started rolling down my face. I still get emotional thinking about what a kind and generous gesture her presence was that weekend, much less a beautifully produced video to memorialize the experience. They say you don’t meet people by accident on this journey, there’s always a reason, a lesson or a blessing. The universe slides you love notes in the form of people; Mia Fleming was, and continues to be, one of those love notes for me.

Kalyn, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Effie’s Paper :: Stationery&Whatnot is a lifestyle brand created by women for women. We offer our online customers, and wholesale accounts, an on-trend, curated selection of stylish desk, stationery, travel and gift accessories. Our products reflect our belief that The Future is Female. Girl Power reigns supreme in our world. And, our world is fueled by Black Girl Magic!

Founded on the premise of pretty with a purpose; our products serve as daily reminder for women everywhere to embrace their magic at every turn. We are empowering women to live their best lives. At our core, Effie’s Paper is about female empowerment, advocacy and promoting equity for women of color.

Mrs. Effie Hayes, our company’s namesake, was a spitfire with a generous heart, who instilled a love of all things paper, a fierce determination and social responsibility in her granddaughter, Kalyn Johnson Chandler. We’re certain she’s up in heaven tickled pink and delighted in the fact that her legacy continues.

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By way of background, I am a formerly practicing lawyer turned fashion stylist turned graphic designer. I know, it’s a lot! I practiced law at a big law firm for a little over ten years before making my segue to the entrepreneurial world. Before I started Effie’s Paper, I was helping busy professionals get dressed. I was working with doctors, lawyers and bankers – people with very demanding jobs and very little time – so, my approach with them was very high touch. I ran my styling business the way I had learned to run my law practice. As a result, I was burning out quickly. I was having trouble scaling the business (fashion and style blogging was not what it is now …) and it was far more physical than I’d known to realize. In addition to being mentally depleted after working with clients (no matter how fit someone is, we all have body conscious issues and my job was to make everyone feel good about themselves in their clothes), I was also physically exhausted from carrying clothes to the dressing room, helping the seamstress tailor them properly, carrying shopping bags and being on my feet shopping all day long. I started my styling business because I love fashion and style and helping people look and feel good. But, what had once been fun for me as a hobby was turning into a downer for a job. I joked with my husband that I wanted to have a widget that would sell itself while I slept.

Let me back up a little bit. You see, I’ve loved stationery and paper products since I was a little girl. My grandmother and company namesake, Mrs. Effie Hayes, worked for Mitchell Greeting Card Company when I was a kid … Believe it or not, my sister and I had an entire cabinet in my grandparents family room filled with stationery. It was awesome! So, I guess you could say that stationery is in my DNA. But, it wasn’t until I was planning my wedding that the idea of starting a stationery company began to germinate. I had hired a London-based graphic designer to create a bespoke wedding stationery suite for us. Her printers were in India and we were running up against Monsoon season which meant that, in addition to learning how to art direct she and her team, I had to find a printer here to print a lot of our wedding collateral (place cards, table numbers and the like). The more I learned about the manufacturing end of things, the more I felt like having my own stationery company might be the right thing for me. And then, about 6 months after my wedding, I was sitting at my desk writing thank you notes on stationery, aside from my wedding stationery, that I didn’t love and I had my AH-HA moment. I knew that I couldn’t be the only stationery connoisseur craving stationery that had a bit more of an urban modern edge to it.

I originally started Effie’s Paper because I wasn’t finding the kind of personalized stationery I wanted to purchase. I figured if I couldn’t find what I wanted others probably felt the same way.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Fall of 2014 didn’t quite go the way I anticipated. To be honest, I felt like turning my Boss Lady card in and walking away from this thing called entrepreneurship. In the span of about four weeks, I’d lost two great interns, hired another two that I immediately had to fire and my website was hacked. It was pretty bad. I was at my wit’s end and not exactly sure how I was going to balance everything on my own. Plus, my husband and I had planned a big trip for mid-November and I didn’t have anyone to “man” the shop. I was anxious, stressed out and not particularly pleasant to be around . . . sounds crazy, I know. And then in the middle of the chaos, it hit me. Rather than try to fix everything in a short period of time and head into my vacation a hot mess, I decided to shut down. Yup, you heard me. I shut down – literally I put a pop-up box on the website that said the shop was closed for a little R&R and any orders placed would be filled when the shop re-opened the second week in December. I hated the idea of losing money and not being available during one of my most profitable seasons, but even more I hated the idea of going on vacation and not being able to unplug, re-charge and be present with my spouse. Once I thought about it like that, it was an easy decision to make; it was probably the best decision I could’ve made. I went away and enjoyed myself and really didn’t think about the business or my next steps or anything business related. I came back refreshed, but very uncertain about Effie’s Paper. I took the rest of December off mentally, fulfilled orders and decided to start fresh in 2015.

Once the new year started I was full of ideas. I wanted to re-brand, re-build the website and re-visit my product mix and overall mission. I originally started Effie’s Paper because I wasn’t finding the kind of personalized stationery I wanted to purchase. I figured if I couldn’t find what I wanted others probably felt the same way. But, as with any business, sustainability is about being able to scale. Most of us love pretty paper, but many of us love our smartphones and texting more. I realized that if I wanted to scale the business, I needed to pivot. The full name of my company is Effie’s Paper :: Stationery&Whatnot. This was intentional: the original plan was to start off with stationery and slowly incorporate “whatnots” in to the collection. And frankly, we’ve always carried whatnots – coasters, pencils and the like – but I’d never taken the time to really focus on what the perfect complement of whatnots would be for my paper company.

So, in this re-birthing phase, I started to think about the pretty things that I love and buy impulsively. My morning routine consists of working out and going to my local coffee shop for a latte. I’m a sucker for cheeky sayings, notebooks, fun wall prints and just about any desk accessory that’s glammy and makes me smile. Et volià, I had my whatnots! Why have a boring water bottle at the gym when you could have a cute one? I drink a lot of coffee and binge watch Netflix like a champ! So, a travel coffee mug with “What Would Olivia Pope Do?” just made sense. It seems simple and on many levels it was, but if someone had suggested I head in this direction four months prior when it seemed like my entrepreneurial world was crumbling around me, it would have fallen on deaf ears. I needed to step away and rejuvenate my mind, body and soul in order to be able to think cogently about next steps.

We’re still here 7 years later and our products are sold online at effiespaper.com and in 400+ independent retailers across the US, Canada and Haiti and in 200 select Walmart stores. My, what a difference time makes! Yes, Effie’s Paper still sells stationery, but our focus is no longer personalized stationery. On the stationery front, we sell super cute boxed sets of blank note cards (with great cheeky sayings) that make it fun to write those dreaded thank you notes during the holiday season. Today our focus is on pretty desk accessories – cheeky coffee mugs and journals, chic post-it notes and notepads, cool keychains and pretty silk scarves, apparel and stylish makeup bags. They’re all products that I use and love and love making. So when someone asks me what’s the best thing that’s happened to your business, I can say unabashedly, “my website getting hacked.”

How did you build your audience on social media?

To be perfectly honest, I had no interest in social media much less being the face of the brand (despite how it looks!) Years ago, I had an intern who I handed everything off to. But Chloe, my social media intern who became my social media manager, insisted I become the face of the brand. As a first year out of college, her advice to me was “people buy from other people”. She was right. Chloe was instrumental in creating the look and feel of the feed you see today. Instagram has become our calling card and has become a marketing tool in a way I didn’t even know to imagine it could. Nowadays, we all go to someone’s IG feed before going to their website. And the fact that you can shop on IG, now … it’s a little bit bananas. All of that to say, slow and steady wins the race.

Using the same strategy Chloe and I hammered out years ago. The other day someone asked me if Instagram is my favorite social media platform. In many ways it is – I love photographs and pretty visuals. But like many of you, I struggle with understanding the ins and outs of this platform.⁣ Over the course of time, the one thing I’ve learned is that you have to be consistent. You don’t need to have a huge following, but it’s helpful to have a loyal following. I’ve found that the best way to build a following is to be consistent. Post consistently, use a consistent voice and have consistent photography. Regularly, people ask me about the steps we take to curate our feed. My TOP 5 TIPS for creating a cohesive feed:

1. CHOOSE A COLOR SCHEME. Most of our photos have white, pink or both of those colors in them. This way everything flows from one square to the next.⁣

2. TAKE LOTS & LOTS OF PHOTOS! The hardest part about curating a cohesive feed is having good content. Invest in a digital camera, a photographer, a tripod and/or a smartphone with an amazing camera. AND, practice, practice practice. Practice your camera skills both in front of and behind the camera.⁣

3. NEVER POST AN UNEDITED PHOTO. My favorite photo editing apps are @vscocam, @colorstory and @lightroom. BUT some believe that if you use the Instagram filters, IG will give you more love and eyeballs. So um, yeah – use those IG filters!⁣

4. POST DAILY. Kind of seems like a no brainer until you try to do it. Especially if you haven’t figured out 1 – 3 above.⁣

5. BALANCE OUT YOUR IMAGERY. Mix it up – take pictures outside (always the BEST for good lighting), show life behind the scenes and use images that will give people a sense of who you are/what your brand is about.⁣

Rome wasn’t built in a day and nor will your Instagram feed. But, take the time up front to figure out the basics so that you have a good foundation to build upon.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.effiespaper.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/effiespaper
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/effiespaperstationery
• Other: www.pinterest.com/effiesaper