We sat down with Keller Anne Ruble, Founder of PS Post for this month's Wisdom Wednesday: Founders Edition! Keller Anne is a former policy expert turned entrepreneur who started PS Post to solve one of her problems with gift giving. PS Post is the new, earth-conscious way to send gifts and cards by mail. We had such a fun and dynamic conversation with Keller Anne, we can’t wait to share with you today! 

Watch the full conversation on our IGTV here! 

Can you Share Your Founders Story?

Like many Founder’s stories, Keller Anne’s story was identifying a problem and figuring out a solution. Keller shared, “My personal problem was I love giving gifts and writing handwritten notes but always had a challenge getting the actual gift to the post office. If I didn’t have stamps at home, the addressed card would sit on my desk for months at a time”. The idea for PS Post came from the missed post office trips as well as when she traveled to a friend's wedding across the country. She had a card she gifted for the happy couple at the reception, but the gift she ordered from the registry was a bit delayed. She didn’t want her friends to think the gift wasn’t coming from the registry. At the time QR codes were everywhere, and are everywhere especially now, so she had the thought of putting a QR code inside an actual card so you could add gifts to them.

It took about a year of learning, building a team, and really testing a product for PS Post to emerge. “I went up to many people perusing store aisles and then explained my idea to them to see if they’d think it was something of interest, we validated this across ages and genders and decided to launch in December 2020.” Keller Anne shared, “PS Post, is a web service that mails personalized postcards directly to people with the option to add on an e-gift. The cards are 5x7 inches and printed on 100% recycled paper because we love to be stewards of the environment. You can order on your phone, type away your message, and PS Post adds the message for you and the e-gift as well. We also partner with some fabulous retail partners to add the e-gift options.”

 

What advice would you give to yourself on Day 1 of starting your business? 

“One thing I really had to internalize, was maintaining a level of persistence when starting PS Post.” Keller Anne knew she had a great idea and that people resonated with it, but ultimately the business needed her efforts AND persistence to keep it going. Keller Anne explained that with this journey there have been many moments of, “Crisis and breakdowns but each time this has happened there’s work done to understand how to get over or around that hurdle. Through this process we found so many ways of doing things from all the walls that we’ve hit. The walls did not discourage us but pushed us forward.”

 

What are your biggest goals for this year + how do you plan to celebrate when you hit them?

“Our first big goal in 2021 is to be a more recognizable brand name nationally and our second is to expand our B2B services. There are so many businesses that are celebrating their team members or have large client lists they want to thank and PS Post has amazing solutions for businesses with large gift giving needs.”

To celebrate wins, Keller Anne and her co-founder will often pop a bottle of bubbly in the backyard and talk about what led them to this celebration and what they’ve learned. 

 

How do you define work life balance?

Keller Anne’s answer to this blew us away. In fact, our team has started to implement some of her balance principles into our weekly routines! 

She shared, “It takes so many iterations and once you get to a good place of balance, something in business or your personal life changes, and throws your balance off.  I started keeping track of my hours and then in tandem gave myself permission to step back. If I work all weekend filling orders one day and then am doing a lot of social media content creation the next, I give myself Friday off or sleep in one day”

Her next hack for creating work life balance is carving out an hour every morning for “Power Hour", a tactic that a business mentor shared with her that we love! “This practice is amazing, the night before you set a top priority list of things to do in the first hour of the day. Then you tackle those, without distractions. It allows me to start on a high note and tackle some of the biggest tasks of the day. After that hour, I take a shower to decompress my brain and let the ideas meld or sit in my garden with coffee and my cat and let my brain rest.”

Some other great pieces of advice from Keller Anne on work life balance, “Thinking time is working time. Going on a walk to think is productive. Give yourself that permission.”

 

Favorite sip + snack? (favorite wine, other alcohol or non-alcoholic beverage and pairing!)

Keller Anne is on the mocktail train lately! Her favorite sips at the moment, “Lots of mocktails -- bubbly water with elderflower syrup and a sprig of rosemary or sage from the garden, as well as blueberries with lemon!” Her favorite snacks at the moment, “Wasa crackers with jam and brie on top, or sugar snap peas and hummus”. 

Delish! A huge thank you to Keller Anne for sitting down and chatting with us. We are so happy to have you part of our Wander + Ivy community! 

Shop all of our single serve wines made with organic grapes on our online wine shop.