Tying It All Together!

Hey friends,

Today’s post is going to be a little different because I plan to just pour my heart out and share what’s on my mind in regards to where this company has been and where it is headed. {WARNING: It is long. I’m sorry.} As most of you know, this business of ours has been a HUGE endeavor for us. So much so, that it has been downright overwhelming at times, and there were moments that I really didn’t think we were going to make it {which if you know me, that goes against everything in my “eternally optimistic” DNA, so it is a pretty tough thing for me to admit.}

So I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m going to reiterate that patience has never been a virtue that comes easily to me. Much to my dismay, I’ve found out that nothing is done fast in this industry, and that if you are a perfectionist and want to do everything with excellence, its going to take even more time. It is very frustrating to have so many projects going at once with completion dates mostly out of my control. I wish I could blame what feels like the most painfully slow progress solely on the nature of this industry and let myself off the hook, but in reality, my lack of focus, time, and even motivation at times is surely partly to blame. I have definitely not yet mastered how to be mommy, wife, AND entrepreneur, and there have been many months where my personal life has absolutely trumped my business ambitions. Simple as that!

As fun as it is to share all the frustrations and doubts I’ve encountered in this venture, I’d much rather take the opportunity to reflect on the highlights of the past three years instead. This is not in any way to toot my own horn. I’m honestly just hoping it will help me to get my mind right. Recently, I have gotten into the bad habit of letting all the stress and insecurities I feel overshadow all the things I enjoy about being an entrepreneur. It’s time to count my blessings. So I hope this little exercise will be interesting to you as well as therapeutic for me! Sit back, relax, and get out your popcorn {or your celery sticks rather}.

Marpé’s 2011-2014 Highlight Reel: 

November 2011: I get the opportunity to share my vision with Dr. Brown. He decides he’s in! Yay!

March 2012: We officially become an LLC and start setting up all the logistics for owning a business.

April 2012: Dr. Brown has come up with his formulas, and we begin working with R&D at our top choice lab to develop our first four products.

May 2012:

– We get to visit our manufacturer, and personally pick up our first four samples of our very own formulas!

– We choose our first graphic designer/website builder and decide on our two logos.

June 2012- November 2012: We work with manufacturer, graphic designer, and packager to finalize production and labeling of all four products. {It was an exhausting 6 month process of me being the middleman!}

December 2012: Our test market batch of the 4 products arrive at our local warehouse from the manufacturer and are ready to be assembled into kits!!

January 2013:

– Assembly is complete and final product is ready!

– We sell our first case of kits {to Dr. Brown’s office, lol,} but our first sale goes in the books!

January 2013- May 2013:

– We work with web designer on getting website up and running. This project has ALL my attention at this point, and I didn’t focus at all on selling kits because I didn’t feel like we were ready to do so without the website set up. {Not so sure about the logic behind that feeling now that I look back! =/}

– Dr. Brown continues to sell kits in his office with patients seeing excellent results!

May 2013: I make my first personal sale. It was to my mom, but hey at least it was a sale!

June 2013: NatureKits website goes LIVE!

July 2013: We hire Micah, our first Sales Rep!

July 2013-October 2013: We hit some speed bumps and get distracted tending to issues found by a consultant we hired, halting our marketing initiative almost completely in its tracks.

October 2013: We slowly begin a soft entry into the market by advertising solely on social media platforms and put our efforts to get into stores on hold while we tend to the concerns.

November 2013:

– I start my blog … the very beginnings of the online holistic education portion of our business.

– A popular mommy blog, The Little Green Playpen, did a positive review of our product!

– Another mommy blog, Your Organic Child, features our product as a giveaway.

December 2013:

– Our first educational video explaining the Immune Support System is posted to our blog!

– Our first online order comes in!! Thank. The. Lord.

January 2014: We start seriously talking to our graphic designer friend, Travis, about building our educational meal planning website… a goal that had been there since the beginning but was too overwhelming to address at first.

February 2014:

– We start gathering recipes to cook for the website.

– Dr. Brown decides to have a Homeopathy class for his patients in March, and we decide to get a remedy kit packaged for his class attendees with the intention of adding that product to our online product offering in the future.

March 2014:

– We successfully host Dr. Brown’s class!

– We meet a new manufacturer, who is closer to home and super easy to work with.

– We get our new kit in, but begin the process of writing out the detailed instructional booklet to accompany it {this project is STILL not done. Apparently it takes a long time to write a book. We are almost there though!}.

April 2014:

– We hit 1000 likes on Facebook… thanks to the help of the SMO company we were using at the time. =)

– Labels for the new kit come in!

May 2014- August 2014: 

– Micah, Celia, and I cook like crazy, take pics of all our hard work, and upload over 100 recipes to the new site!

– Travis works his tail off as well building the site, getting it functioning, and looking pretty.

August 2014: Marpewellness.com goes live and we add our very first paying meal plan member to our site … my best friend, Stefanie. 😉

September 2014- November 2014:  

– Online NatureKits sales start to come in more regularly as cold and flu season arrives.

– Micah, Celia, and I start to get the hang of consistently coming up with more recipes and meal plans, and making sure they get uploaded to the site by our newsletter day, Friday.

– We slowly add more meal plan members to our site.

– Travis works on all our updated marketing materials reflecting the new website and offerings.

November 2014: With the new website up and running, I finally think outside the box and decide to do something a little different to market what all we do. We host our first holiday market vendor booth, and I, honestly, have no idea what to expect. But guess what I find out … random holiday shoppers are actually interested in what we are doing! Acquire 35 new emails, sell 7 meal plan membership gift cards PLUS 3 kits, and hardly stop talking for the entire 6 hours. A few decent sized online orders come in that very same day as well.  A much needed WIN for a tired and weary team! =)

December 2014: Marketing materials are finally ready!! Micah and I decide to pop on over to the local health food store I have been eyeballing for 2 years now, Mike’s Health Collection, in McKinney. Didn’t really have a game plan except to just go in there and share our hearts and our passion for what we are doing. You know what, something must have rung true for him as well because he said …. YES!! NatureKits will be in stores starting today (as long as the order arrives on schedule.) How cool is that?! We will also be doing an in-store demo from 11-2 on Monday, which we are super excited about! We are beyond stoked and grateful for this opportunity! It finally feels like its our time, and we. are. ready.

If you’ve made it this far… thank you so much for joining me on a little trip down memory lane. I do feel much better after getting all that out! Seeing it written out like that makes me realize just how much work has gone into this, and I feel the need to say thank you to all that have helped us and supported us on this journey. Most of all, thank you, Lord, for the stamina and strength to get this far!

I titled this blog post “Tying it all together” because it finally feels like the mumbled, jumbled mess of the vision that lived in my head for so many years is finally out for all to see. The more loose ends we tie up, the clearer it has become… even for me! I mean I am finally able to do an elevator speech, which was not possible even a few short months ago. In fact, I can tell you what I do in one short sentence… wanna hear?

Ok here it goes… “Marpé is a wellness company that helps build immune systems through diet, lifestyle, and natural medicine.” BOOM.

And that’s tying it all together, y’all!

Til next time,