Profile of Success: Blue Mountain Arts

In the late 1960’s, two idealistic college grads with zero business experience started a business printing and selling silkscreened posters, featuring her art and his poetry.

With no money, backing or resources, they began as their own traveling salesforce, living out of a yellow pick-up truck and camper, personally convincing stores to carry their products, one by one.

By the early 1980’s, they turned their humble start into Blue Mountain Arts, publisher of the #1 bestselling line of greeting cards in America. Susan Polis Schultz, one of the co-founders says “We stumbled and bumbled, but we learned something everytime we took a step forwards or backwards.” They even survived a dangerous and difficult legal battle with Hallmark.

Today, it’s almost impossible to walk into a greeting card or gift shop and not find racks of the beautifully illustrated Blue Mountain Arts greeting cards and books. (I even saw them at my local CAR WASH of all places.)

Nearly 2-Billion of their greeting cards have been sold! You can read their story in Susan’s book Blue Mountain: Turning Dreams Into Reality. Their story is one of entrepreneurial vision, commitment, persistence, creative problem-solving and responding effectively to adversity, and accomplishment.

Here are a few of Susan’s thoughts from the book:

“If you believe in something, you must stand by your belief despite people who try to discourage you. Not everyone will like everything you do. Don’t let negative comments deter you from reaching your goal.”

“When a problem occurs, don’t try to distance yourself from it or assume it will just go away. You must face it head on and solve it.”

“It is essential to identify the most important and critical aspects of a business, and then focus on perfecting them.” (A great quote for MLM isn’t it?)