About the Show:

"Black Paper Party doesn't exist if it's not for the authentic representation of the Black diaspora and our products."

– Jasmine Hudson

What does it really take to build a business rooted in culture, stay true to your mission, and scale to 20,000 points of distribution—all from Northwest Arkansas? Jasmine Hudson, co-founder of Black Paper Party, is living proof that it's possible.

In this episode of I Am Northwest Arkansas®, host Randy Wilburn welcomes Jasmine back for a candid and wide-ranging conversation about entrepreneurship, representation, and what growth really looks like when you refuse to compromise your values. From packing orders in her garage during the early days to landing shelf space with major retailers, Jasmine pulls back the curtain on the journey—including what really happened after the Shark Tank cameras stopped rolling.

Jasmine also shares how Black Paper Party is using AI and technology to operate smarter, what it means to be selected for the prestigious Endeavor Heartland Scale Up Accelerator, and why staying connected to the mission of celebrating Black joy and culture has been their greatest competitive advantage.

Whether you're a founder grinding through the early stages, an entrepreneur looking to scale without losing your soul, or someone who simply believes that representation matters—this episode is for you. Pull up a chair and get ready to be inspired.

Key Takeaways:

• Authenticity Matters: Staying true to your mission and serving your community is at the heart of lasting growth and brand loyalty.
• Growth Is a Journey: Black Paper Party went from the garage to major retailers by focusing on both process and relationships.
• Technology as a Tool: Leveraging AI can help small teams do more, from managing e-commerce to automating business tasks—but it should never replace original thinking.
• Retail Wisdom: Walmart can be a powerful incubator for brands, especially for those who understand their customer and the importance of scalability.
• Community and Networking: Programs like Endeavor Heartland Scale Up provide important mentorship and support, but you have to put in the work to benefit.
• Resilience in Business: Setbacks, like shipping disasters or lost deals, are part of the journey—true grit keeps you moving forward.

All this and more on this episode of the I Am Northwest Arkansas® podcast.

Important Links and Mentions on the Show*

• Website: Black Paper Party
• Black Paper Party on Instagram
• Black Paper Party on Facebook
• Black Paper Party on LinkedIn
• Endeavor Heartland Scale Up Accelerator: endeavor.org (Check show notes for direct links.)
• Canem Arkan Endeavor Heartland Email
• Shawn Morris Endeavor Heartland Email
• Jasmine Hudson on LinkedIn
• FindItNWA.com NWA’s Hyperlocal Business Directory

This episode is sponsored by*

Signature Bank of Arkansas "Community Banking at its Best!"

*Note: some of the resources mentioned may be affiliate links. This means we get paid a commission (at no extra cost to you) if you use that link to make a purchase.

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• Connect with our Fearless Host, Randy Wilburn on LinkedIn

Thank you for listening to this I am Northwest Arkansas podcast episode. We showcase businesses, culture, entrepreneurship, and life in the Ozarks.

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Mentioned in this episode:

FindItNWA.com

Looking to discover the best local businesses in Northwest Arkansas? 🌟 From cozy cafes to essential services, FindItNWA.com has got you covered. Connect with your local community with just one click and explore something great. Visit finditnwa.com today! #LocalBusiness #CommunitySupport"

FindItNWA.com

Signature Bank of Arkansas "Community Banking at its Best!"

It's time for another episode of I Am Northwest

Arkansas, the podcast covering the intersection of

business, culture, entrepreneurship and life in

general here in the Ozarks. Whether you are considering a

move to this area or trying to learn more about the place you call

home, or we've got something special for you. Here's

our host, Randy Wilber. You

know, one of my favorite things about doing this podcast for

nearly seven years is getting to watch people build not just

their businesses, but themselves. And every once in a while

a guest comes back around and the conversation just

hits different because of everything that's happened in between.

Jasmine Hudson is one of those guests. She's the co founder

of Black Paper Party, a celebration brand creating

culturally inspired party decor and paper

goods centered on black joy and representation. I had

Jasmine on the show back in the early days of I Am Northwest Arkansas

and then again in late 2023 after black paper Party

made their appearance on shark tank season 15 and struck a

deal with Barbara Corcoran. That episode was a good one. Now she's

back. And this time there's another milestone to talk about.

Black Paper Party is part of the endeavor Heartland Spring

2026 Scale Up Accelerator Cohort,

a regional program backed by the Arkansas Economic Development

Commission that helps high growth companies navigate their next

stage of growth. Nine companies were selected and Black

Paper Party is one of them. I've been wanting to dig into what

Endeavor Heartland is doing in this region for a while and

there's no better way to do that than through the lens of a

founder I've known since the beginning. Jasmine, welcome

back to I Am Northwest Arkansas. Thank you so much for having me.

Excited to be here. And you have been there since day one. Have been there

since day one. Yes, yes, yes. I appreciate that. And certainly

you and Jaron and the rest of the amazing

folks at Black Owned NWA were, were gracious

enough to me and welcoming me here to Northwest Arkansas. So I

appreciate you for sure. Absolutely. But yeah, no, so listen, I

want to kind of get into this because we've talked a number of times now.

Once early on and then after Shark Tank. When you look back at those

conversations and it's been a minute now because you guys were on in the first

season of I Am Northwest Arkansas back in 2019.

2020. Oh yeah. So that's been. This is 2026. Right.

So time has gone on. Yeah. So when you look back at those conversations

compared to where you are today, what's the biggest thing that's

changed about how you think about building Black Paper Party.

Oh, my gosh. So there's so much

that has changed in terms of growth. Well,

when you met us at that time, it was very

much just a startup and it was very much really in an

ideation phase. So we started out

with print on demand services and then

slowly started building out our website. But

since then, we've scaled to over 20,000 points of

distribution across seven different retailers. So

what growth looked like then was fulfilling

orders out of our garage and

creating this crazy network of Excel spreadsheets to try

to track everything and staying up at all hours of the night

after really working our 9 to 5 jobs at Walmart when we were

trying to build it. Now we are full time in the business.

We are, you know, we haven't really hired, but we have a

ton of 1099 contract workers and we're looking at

true growth scale, you know, capital

investments as opposed to surviving. We even have a 3

PL now. So we're not pickpacking and fulfilling out of my garage.

So growth then, growth now. There's still growing

pains, a lot of things to learn. And what do I say? New levels,

new devils. Yeah. So that's kind of where we are right now. Absolutely.

Absolutely. What? No, and I appreciate that. And when you guys

started Black Paper Party, it was three founders, is that correct? Okay.

And then so I think with the advent of technology, it allows you

guys to be in different places and still do what you need to do.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So one thing that really stood

out to me, and I know my wife was super excited when you guys first

came out with the wrapping paper and all that different stuff, because

representation matters. But Black Paper Party has always been about

more than product. It seems like you guys have always focused on

cultural representation and what that means for a family

to see themselves reflected in a

celebration. Yep. Has that mission gotten easier or

harder to hold onto as the brand has grown and

you're dealing with major retailers and investors?

I wouldn't say easier or harder. It's just in our DNA and who we

are. Black Paper Party doesn't exist if it's

not for the authentic representation of the Black

diaspora and our products. So things

are changing, especially in the retail landscape where

there's, you know, DEI rollbacks and certain things are

happening from that perspective, however, the mission

stays the mission and our customer appreciates that. She

still wants authentic representation of her culture and

the products that she purchases. So so long as that is her

desire, that is what the need is that we're going to meet.

So, for instance, yes, we did lose our Target

account. You know, however, one of the things that

we saw, which was amazing from this past holiday season, is

that she, she was just like, you know what, I'm trying to shop directly with

you anyway, and we were, you know, setting records

with our e commerce business. So that's where

we know that our growth is going to come from as

our customer is looking for ways to one, directly support

businesses and not necessarily by way of mass retail,

and then also still looking for those solutions even if she's

not able to get it in the stores that she frequents every day. Yeah, I,

I like how you, you, you use the word she. And I'm assuming that

you, in your mind you have an avatar or that prototypical

client. I'm curious to know for Black Paper Party, how

many prototypical customers do you have or

are you really focused on the one? I mean, we have, I would say we

have two distinct customers, but they're

cousins. Okay. They're cousins for sure.

So from just a demo breakdown, I would say about

80% of our customers are

millennial plus black women, okay. That

are in very metropolitan areas. So she's in

the DCs, the Houstons, the Chicago's, and she's very culture forward.

Actually the remaining 20 or so percent is

a Caucasian woman with a multicultural friend group

or a multicultural family. Now when we take that

80% though, and we break her down, we have

one side, we call her the rich auntie. Rich auntie vibes.

Right? So she is the one who, she buys like

the Williams Sonoma. She's very like a

beautifully decorated home and you know, loves

to, we say she catches flights, not feelings. So she'll come in

town, give the either her grandbabies or her nieces and nephews all

of the sugar and goodies, and then she'll finish out her holiday in the

south of France. That's one. And then the other, she is

the savvy shopper. She loves a good deal,

but she loves a really great representation of herself.

So she wants a beautiful tote with a girl with an Afro on it.

Right? So she loves to walk around and showing just kind of her

pride from that perspective. But she loves a really great deal. So that's why

Black Paper Party, we're one of the very, very few

brands, especially black owned brands if you really think about it.

Try to name one. I'll wait while I'm, while I'm talking.

That actually sells into Dollar General and

Family Dollar all the way through the Walmarts, all the way to

Macy's. It's the exact same brand, same core product,

wrapping paper is sold in each of those tiers outside

of, like, Disney, Nickelodeon, Bluey, who

is really sold and not backed by a conglomerate,

you know what I mean? That can actually reach each of those tiers.

That's a wide range, for sure. Of retail outlets. Absolutely.

Like, ridiculously wide. Yes. Right. Like some. Some go into

one and not the other. Right. And vice versa. Yeah. And that's. I used to

be a buyer at Walmart. One of the things that I ran into was

a supplier would say, like, say I wanted to go after

cookware that is in Macy's. That supplier wouldn't

sell to me because they were nervous that if they sold to me that

they would lose their Macy's account. Yeah. Right. So there's a perception

as though, like, Macy's doesn't want what they sell in the Dollar

Generals, you know, so how are we able, you know, to convince the

Macy's to carry that wrapping paper and Family Dollar

to carry our wrapping paper. Sure. And then also have a presence in

Walmart as well. So it's. It's been an interesting wild ride. And I

definitely can say that our retail backgrounds have helped, but

that's one of the things that we're considering when we're thinking about the customer and

meeting her needs, where she is. And then now, in this day and age

with kind of things kind of changing around macroeconomically and

socially, what does E commerce look like for us now? Yeah, and I

also. I think a lot of that also speaks to the value and

the strength of the. And I'm using air quotes now. Black dollar.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Over a trillion dollars to spend. Oh, it's a

lot. It's a lot. So, I mean, you know, when you do it, a lot

of times you equate the spending power of African Americans can

be equated to the certain size GDP of

a country. Right. And certainly for my

listeners that are not black, it is an important

subject that comes up a lot because sometimes

economically, we understand things economically

in economic terms. And so I think it's important to understand that.

And so the reason why I think what Jasmine and

her partners are doing is so important is because the market has

been asking for this for a long time and it just didn't exist.

Right. And I think for anyone listening, just the

understanding that sometimes you just want certain things that look like you.

Yes. You know, and. And it's not against anything else. And

you might have other stuff, because I'm gonna buy Some wrapping paper from

Ikea as well or from some other places. But I also like the

little girl wrapping paper that we've gotten from. It's both. And. Yes. And

so. Absolutely. Yeah. And so, I mean, I think it's important for people to understand

that and just cultural standpoint, to understand that

it brings a level of cultural pride and importance.

And also, again, just being seen 100%. It's just. And

that's why I think you guys have tapped into something. You know, when they talk

about a taproot, when a taproot taps into something, it

unveils or reveals something of value. Right.

And so I'm glad that you guys have taken the time to do this

to identify your prototypical customer. And

it sounds like you have a really good handle. And I'm surprised to hear that

the Caucasian female is also a big

supporter of Black Paper Party. She absolutely is.

She has a community of friends, people from

her church, even her actual, like, family,

nuclear family. She may be like, what is it? I forgot what

they call it. But, like, multicultural adopt. Like, she has, like, multicultural kids.

Yeah, sure. So extended family. So. Yes. And then some of them

honestly just wants to support. Yeah. So

she. I'll never forget one of my really great friends, April. She

brought Black Paper Party and she just gave it to everyone in the family.

And frankly, her family is not multicultural. Right.

Everyone was unwrapping, you know, Aunt Holly wrapping paper, our rich auntie

Vibes wrapping paper during the holidays, and they absolutely loved it. Absolutely.

It's bigger than just, you know. Yeah, I'm black and I'm buying black rack

wrapping paper. Sure, sure. And I don't want that to be lost on the listeners

because I think they need to understand that. So you mentioned earlier that you

were a buyer for Walmart. You've been in the Walmart

ecosystem for a while now. Yes. That's where you cut your teeth in

retail for sure. You actually said in our last

conversation, and I'm going back in the annals of time now, that

Walmart is probably one of the greatest incubators

for businesses. Does that still hold true? And what

has that relationship taught you about scaling a

consumer brand in this region here and beyond?

Yeah, I would definitely say that

it is true, but I'm not saying it's true in

the sense of it's easy. Yeah, you know, it's very

difficult. And it's actually even more difficult now. Well, it'll always be,

like, more difficult as times change. Right. But we are on

the cusp of very seismic shifts that are happening especially

in the age of AI and especially in the age of

accelerated E commerce. Yeah. So Walmart's really

big focus, they gotta beat Amazon, right? Absolutely.

So they have to get really good and savvy at E commerce. What does that

mean for a small business? You have to drop ship. They're not going to just

cut a PO and put you on the side counter. And for some

businesses, you really don't want that anyway. Trust me, like you don't want to scale

that fast if you're not ready from an infrastructure perspective. So

when I say it's a great incubator for businesses, Walmart

is going where the customer is going. How? I was just kind of describing our

customer. They have an insane grasp on who their customer is.

Yeah. So so long as your customer is aligned to the Walmart

customer, servicing Walmart and calling upon them as a

retailer is a great incubator for your business. Now you

don't want to be over leveraged because if it doesn't work out, you can

go bankrupt. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. So you need to be savvy,

you need to be smart. But they will keep you on your toes in terms

of how to service the customer, where she shops, how she shops,

and they're going to hold you accountable in terms of leveraging technology,

specifically AI, to move faster and grow faster. And

when you think about it, AI wasn't at the forefront of your mind when you

first started Black Paper Party. Can you give me an examp

of how you now consider things? Given AI is a

mainstay. Right. Versus when you first started Black Paper Party?

Sure. Well, like you said at the beginning, I mean, AI was not

a thing that we even played around with at all at

the beginning. But now, especially with just

the limited amount of resources we have as a small business, we

leverage AI to the nth degree,

just from a bandwidth perspective. And then one of the things is we use

it not to replace critical thinking, but to

be a catalyst to just thinking faster and

smarter and getting really in depth research

quickly and synthesizing insights quickly

so it enables us to move faster. So we use it as more of an

enabler and not necessarily a replacement for anything.

But with that being said, like we can throw in so much

data and then it can spit back out a dashboard.

Right. It can take our tone of voice that we've trained

it on and build out the year's worth of email

blasts. Yeah, it can. Even so, like perplexity can go into

the back end of our shopify and optimize each of our listings

for SEO. And now we have A, E, O and

geo, which is all AI driven, you know, engine

search optimization. So if a customer is in chat,

GPT saying, man, I wish there was African American wrapping paper.

We would come up. And there's ways to optimize for that. And Perplexity

can do that. Claude has rewritten so many of our

SOPs. Right. And with Claude Cowork, it can go

in. Oh my gosh, when I say it's a great admin help,

it can go through, find all of my emails, everything that's a

priority, and it'll give me my rundown for the whole week.

Right. So instead of starting from ground zero with

absolutely everything like we did back in 2019, we are actually

starting at, you know, spot 100 and going forward.

So that's why I really, really enjoy AI and

what's been helping us kind of scale and grow. So it sounds like it has

helped to augment your growth. For sure. It hasn't

replaced anything, if you will, because, I mean. And the other thing I want to

mention, give a shout out to the amazing artists that you have

and Jaron and the work that she's done and she's created

so many different characters that are mainstays

in your wrapping paper and in some of your figurines and some of

the other items that you sell that are part of your.

What's the cool. The Claus family. The Claus family, yeah.

Jaren is the creator of the Claws family. We have Papa, Nana,

Claus. We have a ton of personalities. Noel, Stacy. We

have Frankincense, but we call him Uncle Frank. We have the Claws babies,

Grace, Faith. So we have the three wise

women and angels and gnomes and nutcrackers.

So. But there is just a way that it's kind of

illustrated and presented to the customer that you can

tell it was created by hands that know you.

Because otherwise, for instance, what we say, like our

biggest competition, because a lot of the other small businesses that we came up

with aren't really around anymore. Our biggest competition is private

label retail, the Family Dollars. That. And

listen, they already know we've had the conversation, so this is not confidential. They

created a wrapping paper that looked exactly like our skater

girls. And we were like, how could you do that? Because we're sitting right next

to them on the shelf. Sure. Ours is $5, theirs is $1.

And it cannibalize. We cannibalize really each other in a lot of ways. So

it wasn't optimal and now we are the. The brand

of choice and the, you know, people of color of choice. I don't know

for that specific solution for their merchandising strategy going

forward. Yeah. But our main competition, outside

of, like, the Hallmarks and the American Greetings, really, is the

retailers that think that they can just take a character color, drop

brown on them, and that's it. Yeah. And it doesn't work

that way. The customer sees right through it. Yeah, it really doesn't. I mean, it's

kind of like. It's kind of how Target embraced Tabitha Brown.

Sure. Yep. And utilized her skill set and ability.

Right. And the way that she reached out into the black community.

For sure. And leverage that for their retail

purposes. So. And even there at Black History Month

assortment, actually, Maria, our CEO, she was one of

the pioneers of the Black History Month

collection, launching initially at Target because she was at Target

before she came over to Walmart. And it's really how they will

assign, like an artist and you'll see the tag and the profile of that

artist and all Target is. Is just a conduit to it, you know,

coming to the masses as opposed to commandeering.

Sure, sure. Commandeering the culture and then putting it out as

though you were able to develop it first. Yeah. So it is

important. The customer is looking for authenticity. They really are, trust me. And

I think, you know, and I look at my wife as. I think my wife

fills in. She's not a millennial, but she fills in that she profile

for your, you know, prototypical buyer where, you know, she can

tell certain things. And it just. It's like a spidey

sense. Right. She's like, oh, no, I know what's needed. Am I being exploited

or, you know, marketed to, sold to, or they

really value me. I think that's really interesting. But now I also

remember, and we talked about this on the last one, and I'd love for you

just to quickly expound upon your experience with Shark Tank.

One of the things, and it's not a secret that you got a deal on.

On Shark Tank with Barbara Corcoran, but that never

materialized, which a lot of people don't realize. I think people don't realize. People think

all those deals happen quite frequently. And especially,

I want to say it's like high, like 80, 85% or more. So it's

really high. But what. What did that experience teach you? Sure.

Well, it was okay. Just like with really any

startup investor, business investor relationship,

before you establish a partnership, you have to go through due diligence.

You have to go through the numbers and make sure that everyone's on the same

page, that this is really a viable investment. The numbers that we

shared, real. Let me back up a little bit. The way we even came about

Shark Tank was they reached out to us. Yeah. And

so we didn't audition. And it was. At first we thought it was

spam, and then our PR agent was just like, you

guys have got to respond. Yeah. So we responded. We did kind of our

initial pitch and all of that, but at the time, Maria, our

CEO, she was pregnant. And when they normally do the

taping of the holiday episode, she would have been too pregnant to travel

to LA to film. So they wanted us on the show so bad that they

actually let us film in the summer. So we went out to LA

LA in the summer and we gave our projections. We went out on that

carpet. We gave out our projections for the year. All of those numbers

were good, solid, and we had it backed by, you know, material

POS that were going to come through. So once we got the deal,

the lights, you know, go off and all of us go back to our respective

locations. Barbara and her team commenced due diligence. So we're giving

them all the information now. She's very savvy and she says

you are a holiday business. So she dragged her feet to see

how we would do during the holidays. That's smart. She's. You know what I mean?

She's a smart lady. Well, we had a supplier that year

that flat out. I am not being, I'm not exaggerating,

ghosted us. Okay. That supplier fell off the face of the earth.

To this day, we can't get in contact with them. So they did

not ship our CVS shipment at all. The order.

They didn't ship Macy's at all. They shipped half of

Walmart and they shipped none of the inventory for our website.

So we had a quarter million dollar windfall. I mean, and it was to the

dollar. So when she came back and said, so how'd you guys do?

We're like, well, we missed projection by a long

shot. Top line, bottom line, everything was

wrecked. Completely wrecked. Yeah. And essentially she just

changed the deal. She was just like, okay. Instead of, what is it,

250 for 10. She kept the valuation, but it was just

less. It was like 125 for five. Right, okay. But we were just like,

there's no point in giving up equity, especially with the terms and how

she wanted to be paid out for $125,000, we can go get that in debt.

Yeah. So we respectfully declined. And she said,

hey, that's kind of what it would take for me to be a part of

this. I totally understand you guys not wanting, you know, to give up

5%, 425. So we just decided not to ink the deal.

But she still has been a support. Okay. So her. She

has, like this crew of people, they send out tips and tricks on

businesses and ways to optimize your social media and all of

that. And then we give her, what is it, like twice

a year, kind of updates on how we're doing financially. And during

our next, like, our actual round, like a true round, we would love

to bring her to the table. And she said she's willing to have that conversation.

So it's more of a. It's not a. No, it's not right now. Right,

right. Or like, the door is open. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And I'm

curious to know, and I don't know if you know this, if all the sharks

are like that, but I would. I would imagine that they are all kind of

little different. I feel like each of them have their own style. Yeah. And

I actually feel as though if we would have missed our projection, like, for

instance, like, Mr. Wonderful would have just been like, oh, forget it. You know, like,

not even of changing the structure of the deal. It just would have been done.

Yeah. So I feel as though some of them just kind of have their own

nuances. And I mean, of course, they're like the head of it, but they have

their full team that runs the due diligence and all of that. So it's really

based on their recommendation. Sure. So they all kind of have their own

processes. No, I understand that. I understand that. Well, that perfectly takes me to

this next question, which, you know, when I think about why

we're here today to have this conversation. And I've been

aware of Kana, Mark, and Sean over at

Endeavor Hartland for a while. Janem. I'm sorry. Yeah. I always say

Kanam. Yeah, it's Janem. Yeah, it reads that way. It does, it does.

It does. And I have butchered her name. Janem. I'm so sorry.

But. No, seriously, you know, they've been doing some great

work here quietly in northwest Arkansas, and I would

love to. For you to kind of walk us through getting into the

Endeavor Heartland scale up cohort. Sure. What made you say

yes to this particular program and what are you hoping to get out of

it that you couldn't get somewhere else? Sure. So I know you kind

of talked about Endeavor, but to just kind of level set on what Scale up

is. Scale up is Endeavor's program for founders who've moved past

kind of like that startup phase and are ready to grow into the next

tier. It's a non dilutive cohort that pairs you with

world class mentors, a peer community of fellow founders, and

kind of like that tactical support around fundraising operations,

scaling and scaling challenges. So for me and Black

Paper Party, it's really a launch pad, so a way to plug into

a trusted network of operators and investors as we push the company

into the next phase of growth. So in terms of getting in,

Sean, shout out to Sean. So he reached out. We've been really like

close and talking about Endeavor for a while. Just quite

frankly, our revenue just needs to be, you know, higher

to be in the true kind of endeavor network.

But being part of Scale up, super shout out to Sean.

Sean reached out to be a part of the Scale up program

because we have been in business going on six years, so

we're not necessarily in the super scrappy startup phase, but we are

in the phase where we are quickly starting to

look for, you know, growth capital and all of that. So being a part of

a cohort that's in the same kind of maturation phase

has been great. We've been having just really great, almost

mastermind level conversations with each other. And

then the Scale up program has also put us in front of really great mentors,

industry mentors, especially living in Northwest Arkansas

and being so close to Walmart. So kind of

everyone is really affiliated in the retail space, which has been great

from this cohort's perspective. And then in terms of

what do I hope to gain that I couldn't get

otherwise? It's really back to what I was saying. It's that

network of support that Endeavor

and Scale up has been able to provide. So they're able to kind of knock

down a lot of barriers in terms of access to people,

access to capital, access to information

that would have taken, I can't say I would have never gotten to it, but

it's made it so much simpler and easier. So that's why,

you know, Scale up has been really important to the development of Blackpaper

Party. Do you think that more startup

entrepreneurs that want to get into larger retail spaces could

benefit from residing or being here as a, as

a, as a home base for growth?

Yes, but it only works if you work it. Yeah, right. I mean, you guys

have been working it for a long time. You can't just move here and

think through osmosis that you'll be fine. You know what I mean?

That's not how it works. And just frankly, through the scale up program, it's

only two of us out of the nine that actually live here. The

rest are realizing the value of like maybe wanting to

move here because the two that I speak of myself

and. Oh, I forgot his name, I'm so sorry. But we have a

really great network here. So the ones that don't live here have to work

really hard to establish and maintain their networks, whereas I can go

to Onyx up the street, you know what I mean, and you know, catch up.

So there is value in being here, but

it won't just happen. Your networks have to be

cultivated, relationships have to be, you know, sought out.

So if you get here, get ready to work. But it does make it a

lot easier if you are here. So for how long is the

cohort? It's three months. Okay. And then those that are out of

town, they fly here? They do. Okay, all right, cool. But you're already here, so

you don't have to worry about that. Just go up the street at the Ledger.

Yeah, exactly. So. And the Ledger is a cool spot to hang out and

work and yeah, you know, it's kind of like, you know, if we work and

a library had a baby, it would be the Ledger. Yeah. So it's a great

place to go and create and do some interesting things. So specifically the

floor that we're on in the ledger, the fifth floor, is called the

Arcade space. So it's essentially like a

co working space within a co working space because the Ledger itself is a co

working space. But Arcade is specifically for

like those founders and like that startup ecosystem.

So I just love that they kind of have that space within a space so

that you can have a great meeting of the minds with

like minded people that are trying to grow their businesses just like you

are. Sure. What do you feel like is going to be one of your

biggest takeaways from this experience? More so

than anything else? Maybe something beyond because again, you are seasoned. I mean,

you were at Walmart, you've got the T shirt. Right. So for

you, what is going to be one of your larger takeaways?

Maybe something that you didn't think about three months ago when you got into the

program that you're like, man, this is going to be, this is really valuable for

me, I think overwhelmingly realizing that

I haven't even scraped the surface of the

capabilities of AI. Yeah. So in this

specific cohort, while it's largely kind of

retail based. Only two of us are product based businesses. The

rest are leveraging AI to create very

innovative solutions for retailers to better reach

their customers by way of either supply chain or marketing,

reverse logistics, all of that. So a lot

of the solutions that they've been able to create, I'm like, oh, I'm not

thinking big enough, like, at all. And it. And for me, I

have undiagnosed adhd, so I have to be really careful or else

we're gonna have like flying wrapping paper. Yeah, right. Like I have to, like,

figure out what actually makes sense. But there's

a much greater world in terms of capabilities

outside of having Claude, you know, schedule a meeting on your

calendar. You know what I mean? There's just so much more. So now that I'm

better understanding the ways that I can

just make you smarter and really provide true solutions

that, you know, people are willing to pay millions of dollars for.

We got to think about what does that mean for us. Yeah, no, and I

always try to help people. I know there is a lot of fear and trepidation

around AI society in general. Yeah, for sure. When I think about,

I always think about. I grew up around it and I'm a date myself. I

grew up around the $6 million man. So major Steve Austin, you

know, when he had his crash and they rebuilt him, they built

him stronger and faster. He was faster. He had the bionic arm.

I mean, I used to have the little figurine. Figurine and

everything for that. But I think about that, and in the same vein

that I think about AI, it's like, it's not so much that AI

makes you smarter, but it does enhance a lot of the things that

you do. And you don't want to be robbed of your ability to critically think

or to write or to ideate over what you, what you want to do. And

I'm not suggesting that at all. But it is a great tool to

use or to add to your tool belt. And it does make, it does make

you stronger. Yeah. As far as that's concerned. So. Yeah. And just

like Excel being a tool, a calculator being a tool. Yeah. And we use those.

Exactly. But you, you have to have an original thought. Yes. Like, if

you want to be innovative, you have to have an original thought. And

then it can help you, you know, put some structure around it.

Sure. But I love to challenge it, play devil's advocate or have

it, you know, critically analyze my thoughts. And then we go back

and forth like things like that. But you have to still be

original. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. So. And on. In that vein

of being original, you know, one of the things that I think about

Black Paper Party is really built around a specific community

and a specific kind of joy. As you think about scaling, which

we've talked a little bit about, more products, more distribution, more

visibility, all things that are necessary to reach the full

retail scope of what your capabilities are. Right. How do you

make sure the brand doesn't lose the thing

that made people fall in love with it in the first place?

For us, it just. I think it goes back to the first question

that you asked. And when I say that it's truly in our DNA

and we do not veer from it. Yeah. We have been asked. They're

just like, what about, you know, Hanukkah? Or, you know,

yeah, yeah, yeah, things like that. So it's just we

stay to one. We stay to what we know so we can bring the

authenticity to life. Sure. Cool. I've never

celebrated Hanukkah. The closest I've been to Hanukkah is

the episode of Rugrats, you know what I mean,

where I learned about the dreidels and all of that. But I

can't bring that to life in a way that's

meaningful because I'm not kin to it. Yeah. You know what I mean?

So it would be very tone deaf,

inauthentic, and honestly a slap in the

face, I think, to those who actually celebrate. Because

it's just like, so you really just put this out there to make money

because you don't know the first thing about the first thing. So

it makes it very, very simple and very easy. That's like

the least of our worries in terms of how do we stay true to

who we are. Because we can't literally be a business if we don't.

We stay in that pocket and everything kind of

flows from it. Yeah. So truly, having art

that represents the culture that we can actually know and

speak to and bring to life has just been critical. And

anytime, you know, because we may be pressured a

bit, or for instance, we'll send off illustrations

to be rendered into products and it'll come back, you

know, in a shade that, you know, that's not what we sent over.

So we'll course correct from that perspective. But we've never

been pressured by any of our retail partners, really, any of our

customers. So it hasn't really been a question of

changing or not staying true to who we were

or are because of any kind of external pressures.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's important. And certainly for the founders and

entrepreneurs that are listening to this, especially those like you

guys, that are building brands centered on underrepresented

communities. What's real quickly, one thing you wish someone

had told you earlier in this journey, that would have saved

you some time or some pain. Is there anything that you can

think of where you might have kind of stepped out of your lane a little

bit and you were like, no, no, I got to come back over here. And

you course corrected. Yeah, I would say yes, but

not. Not in the sense of us

veering off of our mission and kind of who we are.

I would say more so we can be our

own worst enemy when we kind of overthink. Yeah. And

I think analysis paralysis was our

biggest problem starting out especially. You want to know what's funny?

Is that because we came from retail, we really understood the process

and the way things work. So we really understood the process and the way

things worked. Right. So on one end, that really worked to our

advantage. On the other end, it allowed for,

I would say, like industry disruptors to completely

blow past us. Because since they didn't understand, like really

know the process, they ignored the process. So they fast

tracked because we're making sure we're hitting steps A, B, C and D.

They're going from A to Z because they don't know any better. Yeah.

And in some cases that really helped. That helped in

terms of speed, that helped in terms of kind of flooding the market.

And it was just a brand that honestly eclipsed

us. Right. In terms of how flu fast she was able to get to

market. Now the problem is if you build on

a Sandy foundation, it'll fall. So because you skipped from

A to Z, you didn't do the building blocks, that is, you know,

B all the way through. So while she eclipsed us for a

solid three years, she's non existent in the market right now

outside of one of her sub brands really. But nothing

had staying power long term. We're still in industry. Yeah,

right. But it caused a lot of anxiety for me, I would

say maybe about two, three years ago, because I'm just like, how is this lady

with no background in retail eating our

lunch? Because when I say she, she wasn't

playing any games, you know what I mean? She was a great relationship

builder. That's the thing. And she knew how to turn those relationships into

real opportunities and quickly. So while she's, you know, wine

and, and, and dining, we're up all night, you Know, building, you know,

the process and all of that, and, you know, trying to get a Madsen boat

from Vietnam to the. To the port. And she was fully kind of

like, licensed, so she didn't have to worry about a lot of that. So one

of the things that I wish that we. I wish we would have did

both. I wish we wouldn't have allowed ourselves to be so bogged down

by the process that we were able to move a lot faster,

but empowered by how smart we were. Sure. So we know

how to get from A to Z. We don't have to take forever

to get there, though. So we can smartly build our processes

and bring products to market, but we don't have to take

the Walmart route, which is, you know, 12 months to bring something to life.

We don't have to do that. So it's kind of like holding two thoughts, opposing

thoughts in your head at the same time, being respectful of the process.

Right. But at the same time, but just scrappy, just getting out there and hustling.

And not to say that we weren't. We were. I'm telling you, we were up

all night. You know what I mean? But at the same time, we.

We just weren't really doing a lot of, I would say, like, the relationship building.

That would have sped up a lot of things for us. Well,

I mean, all of that makes perfect sense. And I think that it's important

for us to be able to really think about the whole process.

Right. And I think a lot of times people just see the end result and

say, oh, black Piper party. That's. That's awesome. But you don't see all

of the hard work that goes into it. And you can ignore

it at your peril, or you can, I'm telling you, at your peril.

You can. You can, you know, observe what goes into

it and determine what your next steps need to be for your

particular business. Yeah. And I think one of the things that we need to get

better at is sharing more of that story and that journey.

Because a lot of people actually don't know what goes into it, because

especially when you're going through really hard times, it's almost shameful to share

it. Right? Yeah. The times where there's more, you know,

month than there is money. Right. When there's

disagreements amongst the founders, when the account

walks away from you, when your supplier walks away from you,

when the product is just not right, or we just turned in

a beautiful trend that we thought was gorgeous and the

buyer is just like, yuck. And you're like, wait a minute, what?

Like, how can you say that this is my baby? And you actually have to

remove yourself from the emotions, the fact that each of us had to go into

therapy. You don't just go on social media and

shout that from the rooftops. But if you really want to understand,

we did not wake up and end up in these retailers without, like

you were saying, cutting our teeth. The teeth. The teeth were cut. The nose was

cut, the cheek was cut, the hands were cut, feet were cut. So

it takes a lot. And to think that any founder got

to a place of what some may call like excellence

or perceived success and not had some

crazy times is ignorant at best.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I think that's a great place for us to

put a note in here. As I like to say, with all of our conversations,

this is a comma, not a period, for sure. So, yeah, we're going on three

now. Absolutely. Absolutely. But Jasmine, this has been such a good

conversation three times on this podcast. It just keeps getting better.

That's what happens when you stay in the work and keep building. If anybody wants

to reach out or connect with Black Paper Party or with you, what's the best

way for them to do that? Sure. So blackpaperparty.com we

have like a contact us or you can reach out directly at

info@blackpaper party. My personal email is just

jasmine@blackpaperparty, but be sure to follow us on

Instagram, on Facebook. You literally just look us up or LinkedIn as well.

Yeah, you look us up. Black Paper Party. We will be there. Yeah. And we'll

also put a link to Endeavor Heartland as well for anyone that. So that

way they can check it out. So. But thank you so much. We really appreciate

it. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, folks, Black Paper Party

is exactly the kind of story this podcast exists

to tell. A brand born out of a real need built by

founders who refused to wait for someone else to fill the gap. And

now, at a point where the whole region is paying attention, we're

rooting for you. If you want to check out Black Paper Party and you

should head over to blackpaperparty.com and if you want to

learn more about what Endeavor Heartland is doing to support

high growth founders across this region, Visit

[email protected]

office, Bentonville. I know that's a long one.

I'll put it in the show notes so that you have it. But Endeavor's doing

some great things in this region and beyond, and so we certainly want to make

sure you have a way to catch up with Janem and Sean

and learn more about what they're doing. That is a wrap on this

episode of I Am Northwest Arkansas. If this

conversation meant something to you, share it with somebody, leave us

a review, and as always, keep showing up for this community

because it shows up for you. I'm Randy Wilburn

and this has been another episode of the I Am Northwest

Arkansas podcast. Peace.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of I Am Northwest

Arkansas. Check us out each and every week, available

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