We were lucky to catch up with Samonne & Kristen Smith recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Samonne & Kristen, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear from you about what you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry and why it matters.

We feel that Corporate America misses the mark when it comes to relationship management, whether it relates to employee or client relationships. These relationships are the lifeblood of any organization, yet we often see where they are to relationships companies dedicate the least amount of time and resources to.

To better understand, we have two contrasting stories. One is an example of where the relationship management got it right and the other is an example of where the mark is often missed.

Samonne: My story relates to the many Sales People that would visit our team seeking to improve the business relationships with an aim to gaining more business from us. Rewards would come in the form of pizza parties, branded corporate swag and more donuts than our waistlines could handle. None of these ‘gifts’ would be remembered once they were consumed and even worse, didn’t make us any more willing to do business with the bearer. There was no real impact and we definitely didn’t feel special or cared about because the reasoning was, ‘oh you did this for all of your customers”

Kristen: My experience was a little different and is from the standpoint of an employee. I remember this particular Christmas when the company I was working for decided to gift all of its employees with portfolios that were personalized with everyones name on it. Everyone in every department was beside themselves. The bragged about their gifts and commonly relayed stories of having thier gifts stolen by a spouse or child because of how wonderful it was. The employees felt seen and cared about and were quick to brag to anyone that would listen about the wonderful thing their company gifted for the holidays. This major score was swiftly followed up by a miss when two weeks later the company ‘gifted’ the entire staff shot glasses with the company name and logo and a branded box of matches. Though the concept behin this gift was nice, many employees left the item on their desks or simply gave them away. Why? Becasue they were not enamored by the idea of being a walking billboard for the company they worked for.

The lesson in both cases? Corporate swag and food deliveries are not gifts and do not do a great job of making the recipients feel valued, cared about or seen.

Samonne & Kristen, 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?

Kristen, the owner and CEO has always had a love and talent for design. Any opportunity to help a friend with a piece of graphic art or logo was seen as an opportunity to shine in her skillset. Eventually she was able to use this skill to create the beautiful designs dislayed on all of the company’s products. Samonne, co-founder and COO has always had a passion for small business and helping others to suceed in thier own entrepreneurial endeavours. These passions aligned was the birth place of a creative brand that focuses on helping businesses and entrepreneurs to develop and improve their client/employee relationship management programs with an aim to increasing revenues with existing customers as well as turning clients into brand ambassadors and referal machines.

We do this through our exclusive relationship management program, known as the Cre8tive Gift Club. This membership gives you access to an exclusive client relationship management platform and service that focuses on creating memorable gifts at the right time. Our focus for our clients is to create brand loyalty, improve client retention and increase referals.

We set ourselves a part in the corporate gifting industry because we do not believe that one size fits all. In fact, just the opposite, no two clients are alike and a strategy that individualizes client gifting will always be more effective than the cookie cutter method.

As a brand we pride ourselves on our customer service. We treat our clients the way we want to be treated and this is a bell that rings true in all of our client reviews. An equally important value is the quality of our products and our craftsmanship. Each item that we offer is hand selected for quality and since we personalize all of our gifts in-house, we put them through a rigorus inspection process before shipping. We never ship any product that we would not want to receive.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The pivots have been unlimited, lol. If there is one thing in business that you must learn to perfect, its pivoting. You learn quickly that nothing ever goes as planned and you just have to roll with the punches.

No greater time was this true than this year. Just like every other e-commerce business we rode what I like to call the pandemic wings of success. During the pandemic, e-commerce was amazing and experienced an astronomical boom. Everyone was inside and had loads of government money to spend. They were looking for things to buy online simply for the thrill of having packages show up on their doorsteps, in many cases. We started our company just before the pandemic hit hard and during that time experienced phenomenal growth. But then, 2022 hit and everyone was back outside. The downside was that people weren’t shopping online as much and it was harder to capture their attention online. Inevitably, we experienced a rapid decline in revenues. However, we had a decision to make. We could either close up shop or make a decision to pivot. We chose to pivot in two ways. 1st, one of us had to return to a corporate job for a source of income to keep the dream alive. And let me tell you, there is no shame in it. You must be prepared to do what you need to do to keep the dream alive.

The second pivot was in our business model. We had in hindsight created a single stream of income for our company which we quickly learned was a terrible idea. So we quickly pivoted by adding additional marketplaces and services that only enhanced our brand and created a greater chance for our company to succeed.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Kristen: Oh this question is for me! I had to unlearn staying in my comfort zone and only do things that were easy.

Let me tell you, I like comfort! My comfort zone is comfy! I thrive where everything was comfortable. Initially that was with graphics and design. I could design all day and night as long as you do not ask me to do anything else. Then I had to get comfortable with lasering and production. I did not like that! What, you want to put the machine together? You want me to figure out the laser settings and to test on products? Oh no honey. If you asked me anything I would say, “I don’t know how to do that, but I’m sure Samonne does or if not, I’m sure she’ll figure it out. Do you have a design question for me though?” lol

Because, full transparency, having to figure out ANYTHING was, and sometimes still is, very uncomfortable for me. But boy, when you have your own business that is a concept/lesson you have to unlearn very quickly because you’ll stay stuck. Not only will your business not grow but you as a person won’t grow.

I’ve slowly been trying to extend myself in areas of the business that honestly two years ago, I felt I had no business being in lol like Marketing or Business Development, Growth and Scaling, Operations and Procedures, HR and Training Employees, basically everything else that involves running a business aside from designing. Honestly, with that mindset, are you truly a business partner?

Staying in my comfort zone was/is definitely easy, however I reached a point when I realized that the “comfort zone” isn’t so comfy nor fun when others were depending on me to pull my weight for or in a business I wanted to start in the first place.

Growth is not comfortable, but it is a must!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.cre8tivemotifs.com
• Instagram: @cre8tivemotifs
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