We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Shelby Spinosa. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Shelby below.
Alright, Shelby thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s talk about keeping costs under control when growing. How have you managed to keep costs from getting out of control?
Working remote is one way that we have minimized costs for our business, as well as utilizing as many cheap & free services to support our business as we can. One of the main ways that we control the cost of growth is by doing all of our marketing ourselves via social media. Utilizing Amazon to publish, print & sell our journal has also been huge for getting our journals in people’s hands at 0 up front cost to us!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
We are 3 long distance best friends who strive to make long distance friendship easier for everyone out there with besties that live far away. Whether you left home for college, a job, have kids that have moved away, no matter where life has taken you & your loved ones, we have a solution for you. Our 10-20 years of friendship joint with our 7 years of long distance friendship led us to create something that’s bringing pen pals back in a fun & modernized way. The Long Distance Besties Pen Pal Journal is or will be your new favorite way to nourish those friendships with people who may be far away, but are still a hugely important part of your life. It is a promoted journal that prompts you to tell your besties what’s new in your life, get deep, talk travel plans, share recipes & stickers & postcards & song recommendations & so much more!
This all started with us sending each other letters, pictures, postcards, etc. back & forth to each other about 2 years ago. Even though we’re blessed to live in a time where we can stay connected through technology in so many ways, we’ve always enjoyed old fashioned letter writing. I mean who doesn’t love getting fun mail! Until one day, we thought we could do something different. We decided to create a way for us to be pen pals while creating a sort of scrapbook of journal entries & memories that we can pass back & forth & look back on for years to come. Once we came up with the concept, it was just a matter of texting ideas back & forth in the group chat until the LDB pen pal journal came to life!
The reality is, pretty much everyone will have at least 1 long distance friend once you reach adulthood. We really believe this is going to keep those friendships alive beyond just texting & social media in a way long distance besties everywhere have never experienced! We are so proud of the journal we’ve created and have had the best time passing it around ourselves. Maycen even just announced she’s pregnant with her 3rd baby via the ‘what’s new’ section before sending it off for us to hear the big announcement, it was incredible!! We have loved hearing how excited people are about this journal & can’t wait to continue bringing pen pals back for besties everywhere!
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
One lesson I have had to unlearn is that if your product is really good, you will achieve grand success really quickly & easily. While gaining a lot of success quickly is possible, I have learned that hard work & consistency will continue to produce results over time!
How’d you meet your business partner?
* Olivia & I (Shelby) met way back in 2005 as kindergarteners in Fort Myers, Florida. We grew up together on beach days, Disney world trips & endless sleepovers. As we were about to enter 8th grade, Olivia found out she was moving to Iowa. Our 13 year old hearts were broken! Thankfully we were able to remain close friends through texting, Skype & visits every year or so. Once in Iowa, Olivia met Maycen! They became besties & experienced all the homecomings & missed curfews together (sorry moms!). Olivia brought Maycen along on a few trips back home to Fort Myers where we all got to spend time together & we have been a trio of besties ever since!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://a.co/d/3RjMF4U
- Instagram: @longdistancebestiesldb
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1B25s8FnYk/?mibextid=K35XfP
- Youtube: @longdistancebestiesLDB
Image Credits
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