Show Notes
In this episode of The Localist, host Carrie Rollwagen sits down with Stephanie Friedman, CEO of City Paper Company, a fourth-generation, women-owned business that’s been serving Birmingham and beyond for over 128 years. Stephanie shares how City Paper has evolved from a humble paper goods supplier into a full-service branding agency, providing everything from custom packaging and branded apparel to promotional products and internal e-commerce platforms for major national brands. She explains the company’s consultative approach, emphasizing that great merch isn’t just about sticking a logo on an item — it’s about creating products that truly resonate with people and reflect the brand’s personality.
Stephanie opens up about the complexities and rewards of running a family business, including working alongside her husband, navigating generational transitions and ultimately becoming the CEO. She also discusses her leadership philosophy, which centers on transparency, listening and empowering her team to collaborate and solve problems creatively. Throughout the conversation, Stephanie offers thoughtful insights on company culture, employee retention, and how even small moments — like a branded welcome gift or an intentional holiday campaign — can strengthen relationships and leave a lasting impression.
Mentioned in this episode:
Episode Transcript
Carrie
Music.
Carrie
Welcome to the localist, a conversation with local makers and independent entrepreneurs. I’m your host, author of The localist book and former small business owner Carrie Rollwagen. Today we’re talking with Stephanie Friedman, CEO of City Paper Company. City Paper is a branding, corporate collateral and promotional materials company that’s done business here in Birmingham for over 125 years. Stephanie represents the fourth generation of the same family owning the business. City Paper is a Birmingham brand and works with a lot of Birmingham companies, but they’re not just a Birmingham brand. They also work with national corporations. Their portfolio includes Cracker Barrel, Hard Rock Cafe, Spanx, Kendra Scott, Cafe Du Monde and lots more. So City Paper does everything from retail packaging to branded clothing and so much more. So today we’re gonna talk about building a business that you have a strong personal stake in, but that you didn’t actually personally start. So welcome to the podcast, Stephanie.
Stephanie Friedman
thank you for having me.
Carrie
Yeah. So, kind of to start out, I wanted to talk about or to ask you what should businesses be thinking about when they are looking at branded materials, promotional materials? And also how does City Paper distinguish themselves in that space? Like what’s different?
Stephanie Friedman
This is, like a really big question. So basically, which is jumping right in? I kind of really love it, so I’m gonna answer, I’m gonna answer the second part of your question first, because I think City Paper is very unique in the sense that we really, truly started as a retail packaging and paper goods company. And you know, to go from toilet paper and paper towels once upon a time to now being truly a tangible branding agency, you have to really be willing to evolve and take risks and really just understand the scope of how companies are utilizing product and how they can best brand themselves. So I think that we really try to position ourselves very consultatively. No one size fits all. So some of our customers are really centered around retail, and obviously the first lead in that we talked to them about is their packaging and what that looks like for them, and what what their brand needs to represent, and what sort of statement they’re trying to make. Are they high end retail? Are they more Mom and Pop, you know, really, just trying to identify what does that look like for them, and then finding the right packaging components that fit their budget and fit their look and their feel and their style. For some of our other types of customers, the more corporate, you know, manufacturing customers we usually lead with, you know, the promotional marketing materials they are needing, you know, print materials they are needing, the branded apparel they are needing the, you know, corporate sales incentives. And so we really try to identify how we can best help them, and our job truly is to be the expertise of all things branding. And so for us, it is really the amount of research, the amount of detail, the supplier network. It’s a very long winded answer, but it is really just truly understanding and then taking those best practices to replicate that in an individual way for each of our different types of customers. What was the first question?
Carrie
Well, he I have more questions, because what you said, so I’ll get back to that. But, I think it’s really cool, like I the idea of a tangible branding agency. I love that positioning, because I haven’t really thought about that before, but I think a lot of times where you kind of people go to a branding agency, and then they’re kind of like, oh, just slap the logo on on a cup, right?
Stephanie Friedman
But it’s not that simple.
Carrie
Right.
Stephanie Friedman
It’s so much more complex. You know? What’s funny, I went to University of Georgia, and I I majored in publication management, but really what I loved about that particular specific it was through the Grady School of Journalism. But what I loved about that specific degree was that I took half of my classes in marketing in the Terry School of Business, and I took the other half of my classes in the The School of Journalism in advertising. And truly, you cannot have advertising without marketing. You cannot have marketing without advertising. And what’s so funny to me is, how are there not classes on this, right? Yeah, in college like this is a $26 billion industry, and yet it’s so often overlooked by even advertising agencies. At times, not infomedia, but it is oftentimes sort of the last thing, or the first thing that gets cut in the budget. And I don’t understand that, because if you look at right now, if you walk into Target, Poppy just sold to Pepsi, right? Almost said the wrong one to Pepsi for buckets, right? And they have an entire rollout inside a target right now, and my daughter’s picking it up going Poppy, Mom, and you don’t even drink Poppy. And yet it is making such a poignant statement to the market of we’re going to drive you to this, right, and we’re going to have you wear it, and then people are going to drink it because you’re wearing it, because they’re right. And how many times do we see that through Instagram and through Facebook and through Tiktok? It’s constant, right?
Carrie
And I think also the difference between working with city paper versus somebody else is that, I mean, we know I should have also mentioned city paper’s an infomedia client, so we know you guys pretty well, and you really nerd out on like, the the cup, the shirt. You know,
Stephanie Friedman
We do nerd out. We geek out over it. We get excited about it. And when we want I always say, like, if I don’t want to use our own product, how’s somebody else going to want to do it? Right? So we really pride ourselves on putting out the best self promos we possibly can. And I’m I may not wear the apparel like some of our team does, but, man, you never see me without my cup
Carrie
right. Exactly
Stephanie Friedman
It is. You know how people are building those, like AI Barbies now? Well, mine would most definitely have the Stanley Cup, that has our logo all over it. And, and my, my, my coffee mug every morning it is. And when people are passionate, just, I’m totally sidetracking, but I do geek out over this. If you look at what the Masters does, it’s brilliant. It’s brilliant. Millions and millions and millions of dollars just spent on merch, marketing, yeah, and they don’t sell it online. You have to be there to buy it. And yet, some people are walking in and they’re spending $2,600 on a gnome.
Carrie
Yeah, yeah.
Stephanie Friedman
What? I mean, it’s so ironic to me that, like, we get so underlooked as an industry.
Carrie
Did you see they also did, I think they had, like, a kit you could buy at home where you get the pimento cheese and all the things. And they’re branded, it’s a branded thing that it comes in.
Stephanie Friedman
And then for all of the years that they’re not at the Masters, because right, so right, the exclusivity of it, they get to put it on display and watch the Masters, right? It creates this, this bond with the experience, and that is what City Paper hones in on. That is the true differentiation in working with us from a lot of the other millions, yeah, thousands of mom and pops and big corporations that do this. I worked for a very large company, and we were very factory, and it was efficient. We won lots of big deals. I worked with PepsiCo, I worked with Verizon. It was awesome, but it lost some of the individuality, and it lost some of the sense of creativity, and it felt very corporate, and that’s what we really hone in on. The clients that we work with, and the people that choose to work with us know that they’re going to get a very individualistic experience. It’s going to be very catered to what they need, and our team is going to reflect that, that you’re going to get matched up with the designer and the marketing merchandise, or that’s gonna best suit supporting your particular brand. And we’re really proud of that.
Carrie
So I do like because it’s that whole part in the process, because you have the branding side too, and because you know the products. So I do think there’s so many. I think sometimes branded products get a bad rap because you get something that is cheaply made, or somebody just put a logo that was already done on a product they didn’t understand, and then it’s peeling and it’s not a great product.
Stephanie Friedman
And listen, you can’t always control that. If you take the pretty mug and you put it in the dishwasher, not supposed to go in the dishwasher, I can’t help you, but we do try our best to really vet out what we’re doing, who we’re working with, what the quality of the product is. One of the things we always say is, whenever we have time to do pre production samples to let you see it, feel it, touch it, hit all the senses, then you have a better feeling about what it’s going to look like in the long run, right? Things happen, though, and I think that’s the other side of us as a company, is because we take it all so personally, if something doesn’t hit, if something doesn’t work, we’re gonna do everything in our power to make it right, so that the next time or the rerun or the, you know, we one of Brad. You know Brad. Brad is technically our fourth generation, my husband, and he’s our president. And one of the things his grandfather, who took over at 18 years old, always said is that a customer should last forever. If we are doing our job correctly, then we are not ever giving them a reason, an incentive or a desire to want to go anywhere else. And we have customers here in Birmingham, Bromberg’s, for example, who’s been a customer for over 100 years, right? Pretty amazing.
Carrie
Which it really is, yeah.
Stephanie Friedman
And it’s, there’s a, you know, a sweetness to that. There’s a trust to that. And, you know, there’s a desire to protect that greatly.
Carrie
Yeah. So I think the question that I we missed, because I made more questions out of it, but, and we kind of hit on this, but what? How is City Paper different? So again, we touch on some of that, but tell people a little bit about because, because, again, you have, like, internal branding and things like that, and designers and that seems unusual for what you do. Is it or is that?
Stephanie Friedman
It’s I would say the common place is people are I think our industry is now grasping the idea that creativity, living inside is important. I don’t know that we have secret weapons, our people in our City Paper Studios team are truly our secret weapons. Amy and Miranda and Ayla and Ella are truly talents when it comes to designing boxes, putting together idea presentations, putting together full mood board concepts that dive so deep they go. They jump from, you know, a girly retail industry into, you know, a pet company, back into a manufacturing plant and and yet they do it so seamlessly. They make it look so easy, and every customer is so uniquely different. And one of the things that they really, really emphasize is this importance of being an extension of the company’s our customers marketing team, we have to know the branding guidelines as well as they do anybody that touches that. We have to know if blue is allowed to be a color in their palette, if the the decoration colors is three colors, and what are those three colors, and what method are they allowed to be used, and what methods are not allowed to be used. There’s just this importance that having an internal design team putting together box designs or bag designs, it really just gives us a different sort of advantage that I think our competition doesn’t necessarily put as much emphasis or resource behind. And, you know, I am very, very proud of what that team has developed, and the awards that they’ve won and the the output that they’ve really, they take it very seriously. And it’s really, it shows.
Carrie
Yeah, well and you also have am I correct that you you for certain companies, they can they have their own e commerce side. So their their people tell me a little bit about that.
Stephanie Friedman
So I would say about 11 years ago, the world I came from was very big into e com and business to business sales and this idea of big corporations needing basically their own internal stores for a multitude of uses, whether it’s for employees to proudly show the brand, whether it’s HR for new hire kits, whether it’s the easy access of being able to order business cards and envelopes and All of the print materials that they might need. And City Paper had not dabbled in that yet, and we worked with partners that we really trusted and that I knew, and I had worked with previously, and we rolled out our first site about 11 years ago that was with Truckworx. It was really exciting. They’re still a customer today. We’re really proud of that.
Carrie
An Infomedia client, too. Everybody loves Truckworx.
Stephanie Friedman
Yeah, yeah. Everybody loves Truckworx, and everybody loves the Truckworx swag. So it’s something we’re really proud of, and it’s evolved over time. We have, we have a huge handful of customers now. I say handful, it’s like a dozen, or maybe 12 to 15. We’re rolling out multiple this year, which is really exciting. We’ve and I would say the majority of them are truly internal sites that are meant for the sales team to be able to access items that they’re giving away for their brand. Print materials, you know, and we warehouse all of it here in Birmingham, some of it we drop ship directly from from our suppliers and our decorators. And it’s, it’s become its own mechanism for how people want to be able to allow their brand to be accessed. And I think the importance behind that is, you know, we are in a an age where our, you know, so many companies are really fighting to keep their employees to have their employees be proud of where they work and not job hop and not leave, and keeping that retention is hugely important, but also the growth in the you know, the sales aspect, there’s a lot of competition out there, and so the way that they’re utilizing these e com sites is truly, In those several ways I just mentioned, like employee satisfaction, employee appreciation, and then also as a mechanism for them to go out and help them close sales and close deals. And it’s truly cool when you can see how the product you know, translates as a gift or as a way of showing your company pride. You know, it becomes much bigger than just a pen with a logo on it.
Carrie
Yeah, we have been doing like company book groups, and we read like the power of moments and unreasonable hospitality. And I think both of those books talk about those kinds of things, like in the power of moments. They talk about when you bring on a new person, that’s a very like, that’s a I think they call them like pit and peak moments where it’s like either, and that’s a vulnerable time for them. And saying like having a t shirt or having a little gift at their desk is,
Stephanie Friedman
If you think about it, if they show up at the desk and it’s just empty and it’s just the laptop, okay, yeah. But if they show up and their coffee mug is there, and their new Stanley is there, and their T shirt is there, and there’s a little welcome sign, and we’re happy to have you here, yeah, okay, yeah, that’s like, ready to eat cake, like, let’s go. It creates the moment. It’s the first impression, right? It’s the first impression, and it is. It’s not just the first impression. It’s the lasting impressions that go on over and over and over, and it’s the holiday gift that that they receive, and it’s the that’s something City Paper does a makes it a huge deal out of every year, we make a huge deal out of our holiday gift, and to the point now where people are like, what’s it gonna be this year? We’ve done custom chess sets. We’ve done my favorite, my absolute favorite was our choose campaign. And during 2020 when we all didn’t have a lot of choices, we actually created our own internal e commerce site and sent out a link to our customers and said, you didn’t have a whole lot of choices this year, but you get to choose your gift. And then, as a part of that, you’re also choosing your intention for 2021 so we had choose comfort. I want. I want 2021 to continue to be all about being comfortable in my home, and there were blankets and slippers and socks and a sleep mask and lavender and, you know, melatonin. I think, I don’t know. I don’t even remember. And then we had choose joy, and it was all things happy. And it was choose 2021 I’m ready to piece out of 2020 and it was like a celebration box. And choose adventure. I’m ready to go. It’s
Carrie
That’s awesome, yeah.
Stephanie Friedman
It allowed people this sort of, we got so much amazing feedback on it, and it just, it just spreads, you know, happiness and joy and excitement and, you know, it just conversation, right?
Carrie
Yeah. And I like being so intentional about the product, because, again, it’s not, you know, it’s not waste, if it’s kind of like, it’s intentional and people are going to use it instead of just,
Stephanie Friedman
I can look at an item and I can tell you whether or not someone’s going to keep it, yeah. I mean, I can tell you whether or not it’s going to stick around for, you know, roughly six weeks, five minutes, 10 years. And a lot of that really does depend, you know, we’ve got a lot of name brands now in our space, which is really exciting. And they’re, they’re people are spending money on them, you know, I mean, it hasn’t that. Part of it has not slowed down. No, prices are gonna obviously go up, and that’s gonna happen. Um, but people will get what they want and what they know will stick around. And there is something to be said about about the name brands, but there’s also so many wonderful supplier made brands that private label is what we call them, and that have great quality, and they are great. I wouldn’t call them dupes, because I think that they’re very you know, they do a great job of making them different, but there are definitely alternatives that you can look for and that can still hit a really good price point.
Carrie
Yeah. Well, how was this may have happened before you were involved with the company, but how is that transition from more of a paper company. So you mentioned, like, toilet paper and paper towels. This is really dating myself. But I used to manage Jonathan Benton bookseller, which was a little bookstore in mountain Brook, and we always got our bags from City Paper.
Stephanie Friedman
yeah, paperworks Back in the day, everybody knows. we still had people driving up to paperwork up until the day we moved off first avenue north. And they were like, What do you mean? You’re closed? Go talk to Party City. Yeah, you know, it, it wasn’t, it wasn’t overnight, any of it. I mean, we’re 128 years old this year. It is. There have been a lot of, a lot of family members over the years, and a lot of moments where we’ve had to pivot different directions. I would say, you know, Brad likes to tell a story about his grandfather being at a local Birmingham business, and he went in to buy something, and he came back the next day. He had taken the brown paper bag he had received, and he drew the logo of the store on there, and he asked the shop owner to go outside, and he went, and he stood on the other side of the street and held up both bags, and was like, which one would Which one do you see? And he was like, and that was it, like, I don’t want to, you know, Chick fil A, like, chicken sandwich, yeah? But like, you know, I think that he just saw a vision, right? We call him pop, pop. But Paul Senior, he just saw a vision for what could elevate. And it, it became sort of this, you know, new thought process. At first it was stamps, and then it became ink. And, you know, printed ink. And as as the technology and the the resources grew, I think, and evolved, we just started really leaning into that as a company, obviously, way before my time, and in about the 80s, they really brought in the advertising specialties side, and so that was a segment that was still growing and small, but I would say Cafe Du Monde was One of our probably top first customers that we ever started doing a diner mug for, yeah, and that was super special. We still have that great relationship today, and it’s pretty cool when you can walk by and see people. One of our artists, Ella, drew this amazing design, and it ended up on hats, and, you know, was photographed, and just, you know, when one of your products, it’s kind of going viral. It’s kind of cool, it’s just neat. And to have some of these brands that are such staples in Birmingham and also just in the country, or it’s just, it’s really amazing. But evolution is something that we just never stopped doing. And about 11 years ago, Brad said to me, you know, you’ve been working for this other company. I had kind of been saying to him, like, why aren’t you growing in this area? Why aren’t you doing this? Why don’t you have ecom Why aren’t you doing print materials? You’re walking out. And I think he got tired of me bugging him, and it was time for us to move to Birmingham. We were living in Atlanta and and that was really the moment that we really stepped in, and we leaned in, heavy, into changing the shape and the look and really rebuilding the company with a much fresher, younger demographic. We made everybody read Who Moved My Cheese that classic, and we moved the cheese big time. And we have moved it again, probably multiple times.
Carrie
Well, I think to exist is a company that is, you know, a growing, thriving company for that long you have to do that. And I do think that it that’s so hard for so many businesses, and you want to hold on to the old and the new. And there are parts of the old that I think you guys have hung on to in a good way, but you can’t be all things to all people, I guess, like, so you’re saying like, again, if Party City is undercutting you on everything like you can’t just be like, Okay,
Stephanie Friedman
it’s hard. It’s hard because everybody gets so invested, right? Especially family. Yeah, I could go, Yeah, on a whole other topic about working with family, and how that has its wonderful moments and also its challenges, right? And, and I think that it’s so important, though, that we remain flexible, that we remain open, that we adapt to change, that we are allowing ourselves. You know, one of the things I hope my team would agree is that I can’t fix something if I don’t know that it’s broken. But don’t come to me with the broken without a suggestion or a Solution, right? I want you to utilize your intelligence and your skill set and and help come up with how to fix it. We’re rolling out a CRM this year. I mean, 128, years, we’ve never had a true CRM. Yeah, we are rolling out a new ERP system that will better tie into the promo industry. That’s an undertaking. We’re moving warehouses. I mean, we have to be willing to evolve and change as our growth happens, which is a blessing, but it’s also hard, right? And I think the biggest thing that I would tell anybody that is running a business is you have to listen. Shut up, shut up, and listen and hear what they have to say. You can make assumptions all day long, but it doesn’t matter at the end of the day, if you’re not hearing what’s really going on. And one of the things I really try to make a point to do is, in a given week, people will maybe notice, maybe not, that I walk around the office and I pop into people’s offices, and it’s my version of a check in, but I will pop into somebody in accounting, and then I’ll pop into somebody when sales, I will pick up the phone, and I’ll call somebody in one of our, you know, other locations, and I’ll say, you know, what’s going on, you know? Or, How’s your dad, how’s your you know, you know, how’s the house hunt, remembering those little moments, right? It they you need, they need to feel heard. They need to feel appreciated. What happens then is they then take that to everybody they’re interacting with, as a representative of your company. So just stop talking and listen, and then everybody will have a clear vision of what you need to do next.
Carrie
Well, I think that’s true, and also it helps, kind of everybody feel more fulfilled. Because if you’re a leader and every decision is on you, you burn out very quickly.
Stephanie Friedman
You can also get as somebody who is very open about it. I deal with anxiety. I take medication for it. I go see a therapist for it. It could eat me alive if I let it. I don’t want to hold that. I don’t want to sit in that by myself, right? So I lead from a very transparent style, yeah, a very open style. I everybody in the company knows this. My door is 99.9% of the time my door is open, right? And it’s open for a very specific reason, because when I close it, it sections me off from what is going on from everybody else, and it sends a different Am I bothering them signal? Right? My door is open. My door is open because I want you coming in. I want you coming out. I want you going to the closet. I want you to come in and ask me a question. I want you to pull me into something you need me for, and allows me to be more available when I am more aware I have less anxiety.
Carrie
Right. No. I mean, that’s not
Stephanie Friedman
if you but so often as as business owners, we could let that eat us up, right? And we could lose sight of what is truly the most important. And so I sometimes just have to remind myself, like, it’s we’re not, you know, we’re what we’re doing is important. But like, it’s not life or death.
Carrie
Yeah, well, and I think also, like, when you’re when you’re inviting feedback from other people and ideas and solutions, like I, I kind of feel the same. It’s different. If, if this is just my idea, and it’s all on me, then it is gonna eat me.
Stephanie Friedman
It hits different. It also hits different, right? When you have people collaborating, we’re saying, what about this? Right? This, and that’s our marketing meetings. We’re coming up with, like, just going back to the holiday gift, right? We’re brainstorming, and it isn’t until we’re all in sync, and we’re like, this is it, this is the idea that. This is the concept. And when we’re all gelled like that, then we’re so jazzed and excited, everybody else is going to get into that too. If I’m like, This is what I want to do. This is how I want to do it. This is how it’s going to get done. That’s so dictatorial. Not, it’s not, you’re not going to get the buy-inthat you need. Yeah.
Carrie
And then it’s always, it’s all about success or failure reflecting on like you or me or. Exactly.
Stephanie Friedman
I want us to do it as a team. And I do. There are moments in business where you have to and this is where, working with Brad, he and I are a little bit yin and yang. I am definitely more the empath and the HR brain. I am, I am the, a bit visionary in that sense, but he is very capable of the financial decisions that are going I mean, listen, I’d probably be the one giving out raises, like, every Week. And like, here’s another bonus and here’s another. He you gotta stay right. You gotta balance right, and you gotta, you gotta also. I mean, maybe I’m sounding too much like everyone gets a medal. Yeah, but, but, you know, he keeps me in perspective about how we make those decisions, and not just being loose about it, being really mindful to end up with the best possible outcome and the best possible reward for everybody, which is a good balance.
Carrie
Well, tell me some about that transition of you joining the company, and then, you know, you’re, we’re you and Brad and everybody are changing the direction of the company. But it’s, it’s all, yeah, it’s his family. There’s a lot, there’s a lot like, I also, infomedia is also a family business, but it’s not my family, so it’s different.
Stephanie Friedman
So I think that there’s, we’ve had Brad’s dad and his uncle, his dad, Mark and his uncle, Paul Junior. Brad’s aunt Kathy was very big. And that specialty side Brad’s cousins, Brad sister, she, you know, just there’s been Brad’s aunt Sandy. Brad’s mother, at one point, worked at paperworks when she was alive, and that was around. I mean, there’s just been so many people who’ve really lent a hand and played a huge role in what it is today, and that should never, ever go unnoticed or unrecognized. But also people’s investment in that changes over time. You know, it was time for the new generation to really step up. Brad had earned it at that point. He had really, he’d become the number one sales sales rep, and he stepped up to his dad and his uncle, and he said, I’m ready. I want to do this. And if you’re willing, I really, I’m ready for this. And it was difficult, but I think we got to a place where we were able to take over. And the dynamic was not always the easiest, but I think we are at a place where we’ve just been able to maintain the importance of what a family business, what our family business means I don’t take it lightly, that I get to be a part of it, that I, yes, married into it, but also I I very much feel strongly that I earned my seat at the table because of the experience that I had before I came.
Carrie
Well, yeah, your degree, and your experience
Stephanie Friedman
I had your 10 years of sales and promo and marketing experience and working on very large corporate rollouts for branding and for promotional marketing and print before I ever stepped foot into city paper. But I still had to learn the City Paper way, and I still had to earn the respect of the people that are there, and I worked very hard to be able to gain that, and I worked very hard to keep it. A couple of years ago, Brad came to me and he said, How would you feel about us becoming women owned? And I was like, well, that’s a bigger conversation for you to have. Yeah, you know. And he said, This is what I think we need. This aligns properly with our customers. It aligns properly with we are predominantly female as a company. And he said, and you are becoming the face of the company. And so it makes sense on multitude of levels. And so we did the paperwork, and we did the all of the necessities to be able to have that become a reality. And two years ago, we received our Women’s Business Enterprise certification, which was incredibly exciting, and also incredibly strange. I have always been somebody who’s loved to work. I have always been very driven. I’ve always been sort of a leader in that respect. And I always envision myself being a CMO. I never thought it would be an opportunity for me to be a CEO. And so the day that Brad said that to me, it’s not very often your husband’s gonna come to you and say, Hey, I’m gonna take a step down and put you up. Yeah, that ego usually stands in the way of that. And for that, I’m very, very, very grateful and humbled that my husband has the confidence in me to be able to do that. It makes me still a little bit emotional today, so, you know it, but it’s something I never saw being a possibility. And so no, I don’t take it lightly, and I think that I, in fact, I think that I have really pushed to try to elevate our presence, and it’s really helped us in a lot of different capacities. Yes, last year was the best year in the history of the company.
Carrie
That’s awesome.
Stephanie Friedman
Besides COVID, which, you know?
Carrie
Yeah.
Stephanie Friedman
But selling our products, right? And, and we’re extremely proud of that, and, and we really just getting to work with my husband on something we’re so both so passionate about, as yin and yang as we are, we make it work. And it’s, it’s it, if you think about it too much, it can be overwhelming. You know, all your eggs in one basket, but, but we love it so much.
Carrie
Yeah. Well, tell me about some of your strategies, because I work with my husband too, and I also wonder, as you were saying, you know that he, he came to you and said, like, I want you to take this step. Kind of reminded me people used to joke when we run into them, like they would ask my husband, like, Oh, is she your boss? And he would say, no but.
Stephanie Friedman
He says yes.
Carrie
He would say, yeah, exactly. Well, Russell would say no, but she will be someday. And now I am right, but yeah, so I think maybe that’s a good sign.
Stephanie Friedman
Maybe I need your strategy.
Carrie
But if somebody, if somebody is willing to, you know, would just say, like, oh, no, you should have I think that may be a good sign that it will work out. Because I think for so many couples, it would not work out, yeah, to work together. But what? What are some of those strategies that you have? Like, I think I read your offices are on different sides?
Stephanie Friedman
We are on opposite side, and he’s about to move further, because we’re blowing through some walls. I’m like, go with just like, four feet.
Carrie
Yeah. Russell works from home.
Stephanie Friedman
He is so loud. Everybody can hear him. It is the joke that don’t You don’t tell Brad anything the second he repeats it back to you, everybody’s gonna know. It’s a long walk from one end to the other. So I usually am the one that has to breathe pretty intensely before I get there, especially if it’s about something, you know, having to do with our girls, or the logistics of later. But you know, I will say we don’t carpool in the morning. We ride separate. We really treat it very independently. He still kisses me goodbye before he heads to the office. We’re not sitting around having lunch every day, but usually, sometimes they’ll bring me something back. I mean, we’re pretty independent during the day, I know without a doubt if it has something, most of my team knows this, if it has something to do with spending a big amount of money, most of the time, I’m still gonna go and check it, run it by him right before just making a decision.
Carrie
Yeah. But it sounds like that’s kind of outsourcing, like what, what people’s talents are, yeah,
Stephanie Friedman
yeah. And that is really what his talent is, is making a judgment call on some of those things. I would be more I have to recognize when I’m going to make an emotional decision versus when he’s going to make a logical one. And so, you know, I think when we can acknowledge our weaknesses. And so there’s my strategy acknowledging my weakness, to know what his strengths are, and him doing the same, he will defer to me when he thinks it’s a decision that I but when I really believe in something and when I really feel strongly about it. There is no hesitation. And really having that conversation, and really, you know, trying to state my case. And you know, he does joke, you know, she’s the CEO at home, and she’s at the office, and, you know, but he always says that he’d run in circles without me. So I don’t know, maybe he really just needed me to give him direction. But he’s so talented, and so I think I mean his biggest skill set is sales. He loves motivating our sales reps. He loves helping them close big deals, and he loves closing them himself. He’s waiting for the first rep to outsell him. And it’s gonna happen, and I’m excited for that day to happen, because it’s just, it’s just, you know, that just means that we’re doing our job well and teaching them well and guiding them well and supporting them well, and doing all the things that we need to but he also is very big on like, when he checks out, he is fully present with our girls and their sports and activities, and just being able to take care of himself, and, you know, the the things that are important to him. So just being able to be independent, but also, you know, being respectful, being mindful, being thoughtful, and maintaining those boundaries of who should be making, what decisions, I think is, is probably the most important component.
Carrie
Well, I think it’s important it it is important in a family or in a marriage, in work, but it’s also just important in any work scenario, you know, to respect you even talked about that with your entire team is respecting, you know, their talents and when they’re bringing solutions.
Stephanie Friedman
And also that the outside world seeps in, you know, and we are oftentimes with our colleagues more than we’re with our families. And sometimes that doesn’t need to be the case, right? Sometimes we need to be fluid, and we need to be able to allow them the space to grieve or to heal or to do what they need to do. And, you know, I think when you create that, when you when you’re human about it, it just and I’m human, so my team allows me that time. One of the things I will say that is so not really relevant to work, but we make time to, you know, I put a date on his calendar. I’m like, you and I are gonna go. And we don’t talk about work like it is our time to if I start to, he’ll shut me down and be like, stop asking, right? Yeah. And, you know, we what my our team knows. Every year we go on our honeymoon. Every year it is our own. No, the kids aren’t allowed to go. We’re going on our 15th honeymoon this year, and it is something that is very important to me and to him, that we get time away and that we I don’t, I can’t claim that he actually puts his out of office up. He doesn’t, but it is a lot of time. It’s time for us to really just center ourselves and our marriage and that being really important. So I digress.
Carrie
no, but I think on those things that work comes up. But to me, it comes up less when we’re in when we’re in the regular, everyday environment, it’s just easy to directly go into where it it could.
Stephanie Friedman
And we’ve really tried to make a point that dinner time and we’re putting the phones away. And, you know, there’s times that are more stressful than others, and when problems are arising, or, I’ll never forget, we were on one of one of the honeymoons, and we were sitting on the beach, and I got a phone call, and the old office was flooding. And I’m like, which office? they’re like, Well, which one isn’t flooding? You know, panic sets in and and he again, the yin to the Yang. I’m like, anxiety. Oh my gosh. What are we gonna do? Oh no. And he’s like, it’s gonna be fine, right? And then we moved so, we sold the building. Yeah, it was fine, and now it’s a Nature Conservancy. It’s fine, but it doesn’t come without those moments of panic and, and just we’re in it together and, and then also, that’s the importance of having people invested in city paper that not just that work with us, that also our customer, I mean our customer, our vendors. They care they care about our outcome. They care about us doing well. They care about supporting us. And that makes all the difference. When you are in a moment of crisis. I could have a whole podcast about just crisis. Yeah, that’s a whole other you know?
Carrie
well it seems like you really do try to teach, treat your teams and maybe vendors by extension, also more like family, which I think is a buzzword, and usually that seems usually, when somebody says that, I’m like, okay, yeah right.
Stephanie Friedman
it feels fraudulent.
Carrie
yeah, but it does some of what you’ve said today. And I think you have, like, do you still do like, putt putt and things like that? Or do you have like, things around the office?
Stephanie Friedman
We haven’t done that in a while. We need to bring that back. We used to have Friday putt putts. You know, COVID changed a little bit of that, because we do have more remote work days available where, even for me, I do work from phone Fridays. Now I don’t go into the office. Usually, my team doesn’t make meetings for me on Fridays, unless we really need to. I will do them sometimes, but I try to avoid really, that’s my day to catch up, right? That’s my day to hone in on reports and run errands. And I call it work from phone, work from home.
Carrie
I love that.
Stephanie Friedman
And you know it I’m getting things done. I’m usually at my daughter’s school at 7am doing the teacher breakfast. And you know, I want to be just like everyone else. I want to be able to do it all, sometimes well, sometimes not well. Esually, somebody’s got to get me in check about me being the wrong day, wrong thing. But that’s it’s a very color coded calendar, but so, but we were going to the Birmingham barons game. Our team’s doing a breakout. We do sales meetings. We just all, a lot of our team just went to Vegas for the big promotional product Show in January, which is great team bonding. We had a big sales meeting in August this past year. So for us, it’s, it’s celebrating the big moments. We lost an employee in November, and we, many of us, showed up for that funeral.
Carrie
Yeah.
Stephanie Friedman
You know, it’s the highest and the lows, right? And you cannot work side by side with these people without loving them. It’s impossible. And when we’ve lost people to, you know, other companies or whatever, it’s funny how we still stay in touch with so many of them. Yeah, we were in Vegas. She’s we’re in Vegas, and one of our old employees, who lives out in Texas, she always makes a point to come and find us and have a drink with us and give us hugs. And she’s doing great. She’s on an amazing team with a competitor and working on an amazing account, and she’s killing it, and that was really what her what she needed. But she’s still part of our family, still very much. And so I think it is oftentimes a word thrown around very loosely, but I will say that’s why our our interview process, and when we hire is very it’s, it’s, it’s strenuous, it’s, it’s, you’re gonna go through a lot of people, you’re gonna meet, you’re gonna be asked a lot of different questions and and most of it is just to gage, are you for real? Are you real? Yeah, are you being authentic? Are you what you say you are? Are you going to act the way you are, telling us you are, and then, does that match up with what our values are and what? And really, it’s not that hard.
Carrie
yeah.
Stephanie Friedman
It’s kindness, it’s sincerity, it’s respect, it’s all the things that you would want out of a company and not settling for anything less than that. And one of the biggest things I would say for any business owner is when problems arise, you address them and you address them immediately, not out of reaction, not out of you know if you need a cool off, cool off.
Carrie
Right. But as soon as you know when this is what needs to be done,
Stephanie Friedman
When the problems start to fester and they get swept under the rug, they’re only going to grow and you can’t, especially in a smaller business. I mean, we’re 24 people in our office. You just can’t, you just don’t have the, you don’t have the bandwidth to have animosity and and frustration. Now you’re not going to make it perfect, right? You’re not going to make it perfect because, you know, it’s that’s just, that’s just not reality, but, but you can set the expectations that this is how we operate, this is who we are, this is what we expect. You also, as the leader, have to practice that. You can’t just tell people and then say, Do as I say, not as I do. You have to set the tone. And I take that part of my role very, very seriously.
Carrie
Yeah, well, I loved this. I could keep talking, but we actually need to wrap up, but
Stephanie Friedman
It was very fun.
Carrie
Yeah, I loved this.
Stephanie Friedman
Reflective for me. So thank you. Thank you.
Carrie
Well, thank you.
Stephanie Friedman
Getting to revisit some of these core memories about where we are today. I don’t often reflect, and it’s nice to sit down and sort of think about how far we’ve come.
Carrie
Well, it’s also, I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever talked to a company that was over 100 years old. So this is,
Stephanie Friedman
Don’t I look so young?
Carrie
Yeah, yes, that’s true. Well, a lot of our business, our listeners, are small businesses. But we have, we have some larger businesses too. So kind of tell me about, if somebody wants to become a city paper client, what is kind of the threshold there, and what should they do?
Stephanie Friedman
We are open to, you know, the small mom and pops just getting started, all the way to the big corporations. And Iwhat I would say is to visit our website, City Paper Company. It’s beautiful. It’s designed by this awesome company called Infomedia. And I would I would say, visit citypapercompany.com. There’s a multitude of ways you can get in touch with us and one of our team, but you can also email me directly if anybody wants to chit chat or ask questions. And that’s stephanie@citypapercompany.com.
Carrie
Awesome. Well, thank you so much.
Stephanie Friedman
Thank you for having me. It was so fun.
Carrie
Yeah, the localist podcast is written by me Carrie Rollwagen and produced here at infomedia studios. You can find show notes about this week’s topic at Carrie rollwagen.com and find me pretty much everywhere on social @crollwagen. Our showrunner is Taylor Davis. Jen Tucker is our outreach manager, and Alana Harmond is our promotions manager. If you’re interested in podcasting or reels or anything else from infomedia studios, hit us up at infomedia.com We’d love to help and until next time, here’s to thinking global by acting local and putting small shops before big box.