We recently connected with John & Rachel Stewart and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, John & Rachel thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Getting that first client is always an exciting milestone. Can you talk to us about how you got your first customer who wasn’t a friend, family, or acquaintance?

In the beginning of 2019, John and I were newlyweds focusing on our full-time jobs. In our limited free time, we were crafting our little dream business on the side. We had started the Etsy shop, created shipping profiles, started product photography, and designed a logo. We were open for business. Then for a couple of weeks…crickets. I was excited about our product, and hoped it would strike a chord with customers the way it did for us. In the online space of an ever-changing search algorithm and growing competition, it became clear that we’d have to start advertising. I was determined to wait it out, but John convinced me that putting a small investment forward might just result in the visibility we needed. This was the first of thousands of tiny decisions in entrepreneurship that have propelled us forward. It’s all uncharted territory, so as much as I like to plan, you just have to plan for the unexpected. On January 31, 2019, we got our first order from Ellwood City, PA from a complete stranger! We stared at the screen. Was it real? How did she find us? Truth be told, we didn’t actually know how to make or package a print yet, so while we were excited, I also experienced a bit of panic realizing that this lovely customer was trusting us with her business. It was such a good lesson in embracing the unknowns of running the business as we sourced the maps, designed the hanging hardware for the back, hung her print in our apartment and tweaked small details until it was a product we were proud of. Six years later, we’re a lot more confident about the process and the product itself, but we continue to experience unknowns. We’ll always have that first order from Ellwood City, PA to remind us that it’s never too late to learn something new.

John & Rachel, 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?

We’re John and Rachel Stewart, the owners and designers behind Journey Print Shop. We both have a background in art & photography, but were working in unrelated fields when we started our business. The skills John learned as an engineer and what I learned in public administration & customer service have helped us time and time again. We’re proud of the fact that all of our prints are made in our little family shop in Michigan and we support local businesses whenever we can when sourcing materials. We’re both perfectionists with an obsession for detail, and no matter how we may grow and scale the business, we’re committed to maintaining those expectations without cutting corners.

The concept for Journey Print Shop bloomed out of our mutual love for travel and art. We created our unique designs as a creative passion project that we never thought would grow to become a full time job for both of us. From the very beginning, I considered it an honor to have the opportunity to commemorate our customer’s unique journeys. The details of our lives are a sacred thing to cherish. So often, we get lost in the rush of busyness, worries, and getting to the next thing. Our art is an invitation to stop and simply reflect with gratitude on the joys that we’ve shared with the ones we love. Now a family of three, the concept of journey and looking back at how God has been good to us rings especially true.

Have you ever had to pivot?

This one is easy for me. In July of 2024, we had the immense blessing of becoming parents – something we had always hoped and prayed for. The business we had grown over the past six years had gone through ups and downs and was a seemingly clear path forward to spend all of our time together as our little growing family. We’ve experienced more joy in this last 8 month stretch than we thought possible, but staying on top of the details of running a business has challenged us to think outside of the box. Pivoting our lifestyle has been essential to keep everything going. We’re learning what “flexible work schedule” really means, as 4am was the only time we could hit the orders hard during our Christmas rush. We’re learning how much we need to lean on family and community, and we’re learning what it looks like to delegate, delegate, delegate – which is new for us. We’re both fierce do-it-yourself-ers (you can find John following a YouTube tutorial on virtually any car repair or home renovation project), so this has been a huge season of growth and learning for us. If you’re going to start anything that takes a lot of work – a business, a family – do it scrappy. There’s grace in it. Our customers were so wonderfully thoughtful and sweet when we had to extend lead times following our son’s birth, and we received so many well-wishes from parents of now-grown children. We’re learning the pressure we feel often comes from ourselves, and we have to look at the heartbeat of our own business motto to remember to not take things too seriously.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Some things have come fairly easily to us in our story, and I don’t know why. I know God has had his hand in it, because we certainly couldn’t have gotten this far on our own. And running a business is not for the faint of heart. That being said, we had a few years without much resistance, where things just seemed to work. Over the past year, we’ve experienced some growing pains as we work to scale our business. As I mentioned earlier, we’re perfectionists. So when we fall short of our own expectations, it’s easy to become discouraged. However, in the wise words of Winston Churchill, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” His words illustrate the dual lesson we’re currently learning: If you’re doing well, great! Keep working at it, because it’s not guaranteed. If you fail, great! Learn from it. Keep going.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.journeyprintshop.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/journeyprintshop/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/journeyprintshop
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/journey-print-shop/
• Other: Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/journeyprintshop/?etsrc=sdt