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

Amanda, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

It all began with my grandma.

A few years ago on a chilly Christmas Eve in Northern Arizona, Grandma opened her front door to find a holiday wreath sitting at her doorstep. The wreath was covered in beautiful pine foliage and bright poinsettia flowers, yet lacked a gift tag so she could know who sent it to her. Her curiosity got the best of her, so she called up her daughters, neighbors, and old friends in an attempt to locate the sender. Each conversation was filled with joy and energy, spreading the spirit of gratitude to every person she spoke with while she was reminded of how truly appreciated she was by those around her.

Grandma was so filled with gratitude that someone sent her something special because they were thinking of her- making her feel seen, loved, and appreciated. Her joyous spirit was contagious to the people she called and she carried the emotion of gratitude with her for many days after. The anonymous gift was so much more than a wreath; it was a connection through gratitude that multiplied again and again every time she saw the wreath or spoke to someone new about it.

What Grandma showed me is that the spirit of gratitude holds incredible power. This emotion should not be reserved just for the holidays, and it is so important to spread the feeling of appreciation for one another no matter the time of year. We wanted to capture this feeling and share it with the world – so my husband and I launched Gratitude Gifted.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Gratitude Gifted is a gratitude company. We have our top-rated gratitude journal, Choose Gratitude Change the World. We also have our handmade gratitude bracelets, hand-stamped with the symbol of gratitude onto sterling silver. These are made with ethically sourced grade A gemstones. We also have hand-poured gratitude candles which are made here in Arizona! We also carry apparel, stickers, and more.

We sell customizable gratitude letters with gifts and allow people to also share gratitude with others they love and appreciate.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

My last day at my corporate career is this FRIDAY! This means by the time you read this, Gratitude Gifted will be my full time job.

Gratitude Gifted was started a year and a half ago when I partnered with my now husband to bring this dream of ours to fruition. I have always been a great saver, so I had a large sum of cash to invest into the business. He matched my investment, which allowed us to really do it right. We were able to invest in inventory, the right tools, a website, and a brand builder to create what Gratitude Gifted is now.

Starting a business is funny – you have to be extremely scrappy and lean initially as you are building, but I believe you cannot grow until you start bringing in other people to help you. For me, I started working with people who were experts. This means I hired an agency to run my Amazon business and then hired someone to run social management and social ads. I really struggled to give up control but once I did, I watched my business truly start to take off.

A key milestone was the day we brought that Amazon agency on to help us. It took so much off my plate and let us turn the dial to scale the business to a state of profitability.

The second key milestone was actually the day I put in my 2 weeks’ notice at my corporate job. I was making 6 figures and was actually just offered a new role and promotion, and at that moment it became clear. I was ready to make the jump, move away from the golden handcuffs of a corporate job, and really give Gratitude Gifted my all.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

A big pivot was actually with Gratitude Gifted and our target messaging.

When the brand launched, it was actually mostly a product that was meant to be gifted anonymously. I even published my gratitude journal anonymously rather than using my own name! The hope was that it would be in line with the brand.

However, what we found was that it was difficult to get the messaging across. We had to sell a story rather than have ads that were direct conversions for the shoppers. The act of anonymous giving is still extremely dear to my heart and one day, I know it will be a large part of the business after we get more people indoctrinated with our brand!!

However, it just was not working like we had hoped so we instead switched to a more traditional direct-to-consumer model. It was a really difficult decision – I had to redo all our email flows, a lot of our ad creative, our marketing materials, and the identity of the brand. I am proud to say that it paid off and the DTC model is what Gratitude Gifted was meant to be for now!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.gratitudegifted.com
• Instagram: @gratitudegifted
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gratitudegifted/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandadavis11/
• Other: Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/gratitudegifted/