Episode 2: Knowing Your Why with Tiffany Grimes of Posterity Paper

Tiffany’s love for greeting cards started with her grandmother, who lovingly sent cards to friends and family for their birthdays. After her grandmother’s passing, Tiffany took on the role of sending greeting cards to her grandmother’s loved ones. However, the cards were not the ones she would want to send, which stirred in her the desire to design her own cards. Attending Paper Camp with Katie Hunt was a pivotal moment for her business and she officially opened her shop in April 2020. 

How a strong “why” can be an anchor

Tiffany started off with a strong “why” for creating her business, which was to “Inspire a new generation of thoughtfulness.” She wanted to encourage the younger generation to send more cards to loved ones. Upon reflection, Tiffany realized that she found herself drifting away from her “why” when she was trying to please people and make more money. She believes it is important to have a strong “why” and focus on it while running your business or it is easy to get off course.

Breakthroughs and creating guiding principles 

Tiffany recalled two breakthroughs that helped her come back to her “why” and eventually create what she calls, “guiding principles.”

One experience was attending a store in Savannah Georgia called, "The Paris Market." This was almost a spiritual experience for Tiffany as she experienced someone else's creativity through textiles, smells, and the beauty in the shop. She loved this feeling and wanted to translate it into her business and have those who came into contact with the things she had made to feel similarly. 

Not long after, she went to Magnolia in Waco Texas, and was very inspired by how every detail was so intentional and thoughtful from the color palette to the customer service. She left feeling inspired and wanted her customers to feel seen and know that she created her product with them in mind. 

After these two experiences she started thinking: what is it that my brand believes in, what experience am I trying to give my customers, what am I trying to create, and what is the feeling people are going to have when they encounter my art?

It was then that she started to write down her “guiding principles” starting with the phrase “WE BELIEVE.” Some of her phrases include:

We believe in the power of handwritten notes
We believe that no one should rejoice or weep alone and that compliments are meant to be shared 
We believe “It’s the thought that counts” needn't be an excuse but a call to be more intentional
We believe that life’s a page-turner and that plot twists are part of everyone’s story
We believe that it’s time to inspire a new generation of thoughtfulness for posterity’s sake 
We believe the book was better 
We believe each new season deserves its own notebook 
We believe that happy mail blesses the recipient and the sender 

When she looks upon these principles she is deeply reminded of her “why.” When she hits a creative block or is given an opportunity she looks at these and asks, “Does this match up with the type of life and the brand and the experience that I am trying to create?” If it doesn’t, it helps her say no to things when she would often have said yes. 

Creating from experiences and a deep sense of purpose

Tiffany explains that as a stationery designer, she is designing for two people: the buyer of the card and also the recipient. As she has developed her style, she is more intentional about listening to her gut and what she wants to create. When a client comes to her asking for something that doesn’t really resonate with her style or meets her why anymore she has learned to push back. This is important to her as she creates and designs in an authentic way and so she is not allowing herself to be put in a box. As she continues to create, Tiffany also recognizes that her art is influenced by much of her life experiences such as her former career as a teacher. 

Tips for creating your own guiding principles

-Get quiet to have the mental space to reflect
-Get out of your normal environment 
-Be attentive during your days to gather ideas, because you aren’t going to get all your thoughts down in one session
-Remember your guiding principles are a living document that will shift and change 
-Allow yourself to feel as you write. What are things that anger you? What is causing you to grieve? What is firing you up? What makes you cry and brings you joy? Let these things guide you and follow your emotions.
-Post it, because if it’s out of sight it’s out of mind
-Use these guiding principles in your branding and packaging to be transparent about what you stand for. 

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Having guiding principles can help direct when saying “yes” or “no” to
  opportunities, guide how we create artwork with our end customer in mind, and help us from getting off when we find ourselves trying to please people. 

• We need to give ourselves grace for our early work because we put ourselves out there and had the courage to start

• We shouldn’t belittle our journey or our beginnings, because our journey and everything we have experienced influences our work and how we run our business 

• We need to be mindful of getting stuck in the research phase. Eventually, we need to move to action.

• Having boundaries can ensure that we run our businesses and that our businesses do not run us 
   

Tiffany Grimes helps busy women show up for the people they love through modern, humorous, and thoughtful stationery. She witnessed the simple power of sending a greeting card and handwritten message from her late grandmother. Tiffany’s mission is to continue her grandmother’s legacy by inspiring a new generation of thoughtfulness through stationery.

The diversity of her experiences and interests bring a fresh voice to the stationery industry. Her unique POV is informed by her faith, her culture, her infatuation with 90’s slang, and her curiously compatible love for Anne of Green Gables and Afros.

When she’s not homeschooling her three children or watching basketball with her husband, Tiffany can be found sipping chai and catching up on her backlog of podcast episodes.

Find Tiffany at
www.posteritypaper.com and on instagram @posteritypaper