Born and raised in Houston, TX, Alex Kurkowski is the founder of a greeting card startup called Tellinga.  After completing his undergraduate degree from Texas Tech University, he started his career in the alcohol industry.  After three years of drinking for a living, he decided to transition his career to the pharmaceutical industry.  After seven years of working in that space, he decided to pursue an MBA, where he graduated from Rice University in May of 2019.  While attending Rice, he launched Tellinga in September 2018.

What inspired you to start your business?

In 2018, I started attending Rice University as an MBA candidate.  Already equipped with a career, and now maintaining a new MBA workload proved to be a tall task.  I noticed that all my free time started to slip away, and so did a lot of my relationships with friends and family.  To keep in touch, I started snail mailing them epistolary (literary/artisanal work in the form of letters) style illustrations.  I would draw pictures in story form and snail-mail them out to loved ones piece by piece over time. 

Imagine a comic or any book with images being taken apart page by page, and then those pages snail-mailed out one by one throughout weeks or even months!  For my friends and family, it was always a way to stay connected and create fun, personalized stories so that they could look forward to checking their mailboxes every day. My family and friends always enjoyed these stories because they were always goofy, consistently sent over time, and they were always drawn as the main characters in their own personalized “mailbox movie.” 

For example, I sent the first two to my brother and mother when I started attending Rice University. The story about my brother was based on a running joke we shared about a trip to see the Kansas City Chiefs training camp in Wisconsin; my then-teenage brother asked tight end (Tony Gonzalez) to autograph his ball while fake crying about having come all the way from Houston to get his signature. The one to my mom referenced one of her nicknames: “Queen Mamadala,” a playoff of Queen Amidala from Star Wars. After telling a few friends at school that I was sending art stories through snail mail to friends and family, they suggested I turn my hobby into a business, so I decided to start Tellinga.  Tellinga (like telling a story) creates personalized hand-drawn greeting cards that tell your story through snail mail. Story recipients receive illustrated stories about themselves based on unique preferences. It can be fun, dramatic, thoughtful... anything!

Where is your business based?

Houston, TX-based with gig economy artists located throughout the United States creating from the comfort of their own homes.

How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?

First of all, I am currently funding Tellinga by renting out a room in my house on Airbnb, mining cryptocurrency, and funds from my career (full-time job). I started with a really bad looking website; then I messaged local university art clubs for artists that would like to work for free (at the time, I couldn’t afford to compensate the artists, but I obviously do now).  After those two tasks, I messed up what seemed to be like one million things. I then finally got the hang of social media marketing, affiliate marketing, SEO, building a better website, automating tasks, PPC campaigns, and many other tasks.

What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business? 

We have fun with press creation. 

There are 25 talented artists currently creating stories at Tellinga, and it’s always fun to be on TV or the radio together because it helps grow the Tellinga brand, artist’s personal brand, and by acquiring new PR skills. 

It’s so much fun to feature one of our artist’s work in a new edition of a newspaper or magazine. We all get a huge kick out of taking ideas and seeing them come to life not just by artwork but by press features.  It’s a huge validator for everyone at Tellinga.

 What have been your biggest challenges, and how did you overcome them?

It is acquiring sales! I always think of an effective sales process or representative as the lead singer of a band.  Anyone can go out and learn how to play the drums (legal knowledge), bass (programming skills), or guitar (accounting). Still, not everyone can be the lead singer because it requires an X factor that I believe only certain people have, and if not, then it is very hard to acquire. I have not overcome this significant challenge, but a few partnerships and initiatives are currently aligning as we speak.

How do you stay focused?

I don’t have any problems staying focused because I’m loving what I’m doing in that we are creating something special from nothing.

How do you differentiate your business from the competition? 

Greeting cards for lack of a better word, suck.  They are templated without any real personalization or meaning.  Messages are usually generic, lame, and flat out cheesy.  Greeting cards also provide zero additional benefits.  Sure, maybe you put one up on your fridge for a week, but nobody truly enjoys it.  When people usually receive a greeting card, they fake smile, say “thank you,” and toss it out when nobody is looking contributing to the world's paper pollution epidemic.  Why? It’s because there is zero additional use because of its lack of meaning and feeling. 

Lastly, you only receive greeting cards one time in one occurrence or situation.  I honestly don’t know how greeting cards have survived this long.  Tellinga is the perfect solution to these problems.  Tellinga offers 100% personalization/customization allowing the customer to have whatever they want. Messages are told in story form, which is more heartfelt and personal than standardized templates.  Tellinga cards are created on recycled cardstock and provide additional uses including framing, putting on your refrigerator, set as the profile picture on your social media pages, and you can even create your own reusable storybook for your coffee table or book collection. Lastly, you receive Tellinga hand-drawn cards over time to enjoy multiple times rather than just the one and done occurrence.  Tellinga is truly where greeting cards meet storybooks meet snail mail!

What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?

Our distribution of sales:

●      40% Press (Blogs, Magazines, Newspapers, Podcasts, Television, Radio) - all free

●      25% Organic search (SEO)

●      25% Word of mouth from previous customers

●      10% social media (Equal between Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest)

What's your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?

The little things are the big things, and they definitely pile up. Find individuals with contrasting skills and leverage their knowledge and experience as much as possible.  For example:  If you are a sales/marketing guru but lack the technical skills or legal knowledge the go out and find 2-3 advisors that you can leverage to grow your brand faster and more efficiently.  Like everything else, it seems, it's always a lot more challenging than you think.

What's your favorite app, blog, and book? Why?

This is such a pretentious entrepreneurship question - it’s almost annoying to answer. The only things I read were my textbooks and case studies during my MBA.  I would much rather learn by listening to podcasts while I work/drive, listening to mentors, and, most importantly, failing. I just don't have the time or energy to read as I am doing a million things all at once.  I believe it is very inefficient to read books when you can learn the same thing while multitasking or faster through another medium.  I believe that if you have the time to read books, then you are not working hard enough on/in your business.

What's your favorite business tool or resource? Why?

Marketing (Hootsuite, Canva, Buzzstream) operations (Trello), and accounting/payroll (Quickbooks). 

 Who is your business role model? Why?

 My dad, because of his extreme work ethic and patience. I would also like to add Elon Musk for apparent reasons.

What is your beauty routine? What are some of your favorite products?

I take showers and brush my teeth 1-2x per day, and the so-called buck stops there. The rest is an all-natural baby.

How do you balance work and life?

There isn’t really a balance except when I'm decompressing (see below).  Here is my current schedule: 6 am – 7 am: wake up and work on startup - Tellinga

·       8 am – 5 pm: Career

·       6 pm – 11 pm: back to working on startup - Tellinga

·       No day is ever the same. 

 What’s your favorite way to decompress?

 Drinking bourbon and going on bike rides across the city but obviously not at the same time.

 What do you have planned for the next six months?

In 2020, we plan to integrate a "sharing economy" model to quickly onboard aspiring artists similar to Airbnb and Uber.  In late 2020, we plan to start on-boarding writers/novelists to write love letters, poems, or any fun story to send through the mail.  We want to own the mailbox!

How can our readers connect with you?

Website:  Tellinga.com

Facebook: @TellingaStories

Instagram:  @TellingaStories

Pinterest:  @TellingaStories