We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Katee Finkenhoefer and Julee Blair a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Katee Finkenhoefer and thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love for you to start by sharing your thoughts about the pros and cons of family businesses.

Family Business for us has been a BLESSING! There are few people in this world that we trust with everything as we trust each other. I know this can’t be said for everyone, but because of this we are so grateful. Things flow super naturally for us, especially when it comes to tasks that need to completed. There are some things that we will just take care of even if we don’t ask the other person.

Of course, we have our moments where we don’t see eye to eye, but because we’re family there isn’t any hesitation in giving our opinions. It’s not always pretty, but there’s also the level of unconditional love that lies at the basis of any disagreement.

Katee Finkenhoefer and, 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?

Julee Blair is a wife to husband, Rob Blair and mother to 2 daughters, Katee (28) and Abbie (20). She has worked in education for 20+ years as a Kindergarten teacher and an Early Childhood Education teacher at Grayson High School. Julee enjoys spending time with her family and friends, reading, wine and the beach.

Katee Finkenhoefer is a wife to husband, Adam Finkenhoefer and dog mama to goldendoodles, Oliver and Miller. She spent her early 20’s working at Grayson High School and coaching competitive cheerleading within the high school arena and All Star cheerleading. Katee loves spending time with her “people”, whether that be hosting them in her home with all of the yummy snacks and wine or spending time on her and her husband’s boat on Lake Oconee with cold drinks and good music.

We are a mother daughter duo who has spent the last 21 years as Grayson residents. Our store, Southern Sisters, was once owned originally by the Nash sisters who felt it was time to sell their business as their lives had changed with their children.

That’s where our story begins. As a once dream while floating in the pool, we saw Southern Sisters was for sale and joked, “Wouldn’t that be so fun?” Fast forward, roughly 6 months later, January of 2020, we signed the papers taking ownership of the gift store that we had once been long time customers of. February 1, 2020 was our official first day as owners.

6 weeks later, this thing called COVID came and rocked our world. We were forced to shut our store down for 6 additional weeks. As we both worked in education and competitive cheerleading previously, Katee had started full time at the store and Julee was planning on resigning at the end of the school year. However, Julee felt that wasn’t an option with an uncertain future and her youngest daughter approaching college. Grayson High School called with a position available as an Early Childhood Education teacher and she took it!

After 6 weeks of being shut down, we were able to re-open our doors, just in time for Mother’s Day and what a perfect time. Our store thrives on personal interaction as we are an embroidery and gift boutique. We love being able to personalize a baby’s first blanket or a timeless wedding present, and nothing gives us greater joy than being able to help our customers pick out the perfect gift for that “hard to buy for” person in their live or watch someone’s eyes light up when they try on a piece of clothing that brings out their inner confidence.

We are one of the few small business gift shops in our area and that is something we hear so often, “You don’t see shops like this much anymore” and that is truly what pushes us to continue to offer the newest trends or unique items that you can’t find in big box stores. We are proud of our staff as we couldn’t do this without friendly and helpful faces in addition to ourselves, but we also pride ourselves in the relationships we get to build with our customers. Some of our best customers have become close friends in which we get to celebrate life’s moments with and that is something you can’t find everywhere.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

COVID…. need we say anymore? We were brand new business owners when a global pandemic came through and changed life as we knew it. But failure was not an option. We were able to keep all of our staff on payroll and pay rent without the use of a PPP loan initially, which was huge. We had some incredible customers that continued to shop online, shop via Facetime or private appointments.

BUT even more than that, we had purchased the business from the original owners and felt this was the perfect “down” time to make the store feel more like US. So, we painted the entire store, rearranged, got rid of older display pieces, etc. The store looked completely different, but felt so good. It felt like ours.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Consistency is key! Both of us are techy, but it has taken us a minute to feel comfortable getting out from behind the camera, but that is truly been a game changer for us. We do Live Streams/ Live Sales every Tuesday night to introduce new products to our followers and interact with them. It was once daunting and we kind of dreaded it, but since, it has turned into something we really enjoy. We had to learn that it didn’t have to be perfect. Our customers/ followers like to see that we are real and quirky! We have a glass of wine before we start (and sometimes during) but our customers like to have Tuesday “drinks” with us.

Also, we have to commend our staff. Our staff is composed of mainly 17-20 year olds, so they are PRICELESS when it comes to TikTok ideas and the actual making of content. There is no shame in our game that we don’t know how to seamlessly create these videos, but our girls do and we rely on them heavily for this.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.southernsistersonline.com
• Instagram: southernsistersgrayson
• Facebook: Southern Sisters Grayson

Image Credits
Janell Mitchell Photography