Joy Relief Connection

Oct 2023

Michael

This is a big week at The Flower Letters. Please stay tuned to our social media and emails for announcements, releases, and details for our upcoming holiday sale. We’ve launched early bird holiday pricing on The Mailers and Audrey Rose.  More information is at the bottom of this email or on our website. 

In 2020, we started The Flower Letters with the hope a few people would see what we’re doing, get it, sign up, and have something to look forward to. We very much enjoyed the entire process of developing the story, writing it, and releasing it in August. Funf act - our original concept was for me and Hannie to write letters back and forth as our characters. I wrote one letter (part of which made it into Audre Rose #1)…but it quickly became apparent that Hannie is a far better writer and creator than me. I also saw how much joy it brought her to write these characters, design the letters, and get creative with the inserts. 

So this is the part where I could say…we launched and the rest is history! As to say we accomplished what we set out to. To be honest, we didn’t exactly know what we wanted to accomplish when we launched. But it soon became clear as we started to hear back from you, our readers. As we read your comments, notes, and letters (yes, hand-written letters that we still get today and love) we began to see what this is and what it is not. We started to see the impact this is having on people, on me and Hannie, and everyone working with us. Four major impacts emerged, which ultimately became our mission. Everything we do at The Flower Letters is aligned with and working toward the four pillars of our mission described below. Now this is what we set out to accomplish every day. 

Bring Joy

This is the first pillar of our mission. Joy should be in everything we do…including our stories. When you interact with us, read our stories, emails, or website we hope you feel joy. Our stories will always be full of light, hope, love, and joy. We want you to look forward to each letter and smile at the end. We also want your experience to be joyful…if you’re giving this as a gift, or receiving it, it should be a joyful experience. 

A couple of weeks ago two of our employees told me about something they did for one of our readers. They were following their instincts and did something that went beyond our normal way of operating. It was a great thing for them to do…but when they told me, my reaction was all business. In my mind, I was asking “How do we do that for everyone? We can’t do that for everyone? How do we keep track of that? Is this scalable? How much does this cost us?” So I said something like “I don’t think you should do that ever again” and left it at that. 

The next morning I woke up feeling very uneasy about my interaction with them - especially telling them to never do it again. I felt bad, and it became clear that I was wrong. Yes, it's not scalable, yes it's expensive, and yes it's all of the reasons. But, they were following their instinct to make this experience that much better for this customer. Then it clicked that what I said goes against the very mission of this company and I shouldn’t deter them from working to accomplish that mission. They did the right thing and I was wrong. So I sent them a message apologizing for my words and asked if I could change my advice on the matter to what I should have said. This is the message I sent.

“I want to apologize for how I reacted to what you did for our customer yesterday. What you did yesterday was good and it was right. I want to change my advice on the matter which was to never do that again - what my advice should have been is this: always be looking for ways we can reasonably go above and beyond for our customers, bring them joy, enrich their minds, administer relief, and unite them with family and friends. I don’t want to deter you from doing what you feel is right for our customers. I fear that my reaction may be a deterrent from doing what you feel is right so I retract it and change it in the opposite direction.” 

Administer Relief

I’ve written a few times, including last week, about suffering and the darkness that seems to be all around us. A few months after we launched The Flower Letters we received a letter from one of our first subscribers. They told us they had a chronic illness, and had been suffering for some time. They relayed how they saw one of our ads online and signed up right away. They described how having something to look forward to brought them relief. They’d put the letters on the nightstand and read them over and over again in anticipation of the next. This was a moment of clarity for us and administering relief became a core pillar of our mission. This means our stories are safe. The stories are wholesome and can be read with the entire family. Good and evil will be clear and you won’t be rooting for characters who are awful people, but just less bad than everyone else. We will also do what we can outside the story experience, in our interactions with you to bring you relief. 

Unite Family and Friends

Connection is a fundamental need we all have. In one way or another, we all need a friend. In 2022, we received a note that made this part of our mission clear. She relayed that for one reason or another, she hadn’t spoken with their mother in years. She saw us online and decided to send the letters to their mother in hopes of reconnecting with her in the last years of her life. She told us how the letters served as the means, or an excuse, to be together and talk again. As they read Audrey Rose her mother would share memories she had from that time of her life. 

This wasn’t something we expected when we started the company. But we’ve received several similar stories from around the world. Families get on phone calls to read the letters. Friends gather together to read and discuss the letters. Couples read them together every week as part of their date and the list can go on. 

Something, however, has become clear to us. These connections people have through The Flower Letters have less to do with us and more to do with a desire for connection with friends and family. If we can be the means, then we're very honored and happy about that. We all need a friend and sometimes and good reason or excuse to get together and we're so glad The Flower Letters can be that excuse or reason. 

So have we accomplished what we’ve set out to do? We’re working on it and there is much to do. With a venture and mission like this, the work is never done. There are more stories to tell, more joy to bring, more relief needed, and connections to be made. We are on a mission to bring joy, enrich minds, administer relief, and unite family and friends. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for helping us accomplish this mission. Whether you read the letters, follow us on social media, or are reading this email...THANK YOU!!

Blessings to you, your family, friends, and loved ones this holiday season. 

Michael