Episode 151 // Laura Capp of Postscript Press
On today’s episode of the Rural Revival podcast we’re with Laura Capp of Postscript, a stationery shop in Ashland, Nebraska (pop. 3,191). Laura’s sharing how the journey of becoming an English professor turned into an entrepreneurial journey that brought her back to her hometown. We talk about why she chose a small town over the nearby city, learning how to market a new business in a small town, the importance of an email list and good photography, and more!
You’ll love what Laura has created with her shop and how she’s shown us a niche store like this really can work in a small town! While I was in Ashland I discovered some really fun shops there, so I put together a Small Town Shopping Guide for Ashland on the blog. This is a really fun destination for a small town shopping day! You’ll find that in the show notes, as well as links where you can follow Postscript.
“My advice is, if you can manage to try it, just try it. I literally went to therapy because I was so scared of failing at this endeavor. I’m sort of a perfectionist by nature and I’m a school nerd. I liked achieving and feeling in control over my ability to achieve. And so starting a business and knowing nothing about that and doing it in what felt like a risky situation, I was very scared of failing. And so I had to just sit psychologically with the possibility of that being an outcome and what would I do if that happened, like what would my next moves be? Would I be happier having tried and failed than I would be letting go of the idea and not pursuing it. Ultimately I came down on the side of, I just need to give this a try, and if it doesn’t work out that’s a reality I’ll have to figure out when I come to it. I think it’s just a hard feeling to be haunted by the possibility of what if and the regret of not trying something.”
- Laura Capp
“I think when I opened the shop a lot of the things I sold were sort of aspirational for me. I wanted to be the sort of person who was writing regular letters. I wanted to be the sort of person who was reading voraciously. But I think my life up to that point, my time was always fairly limited because of having little kids and being in school for so long. So over the course of running the shop I’ve prioritized those activities in my life so now most mornings I try to start my day by having coffee and writing a letter before I open email, before I do anything else, that’s how I like to begin. And if I get a letter off in the mail to somebody and I use a little calligraphy to do the envelope and I use some vintage stamps and I am actually using the things I tell other people are worthwhile investing it, it really does genuinely start my day off so well and I feel proud of prioritizing things that in my head matter a lot to me.”
- Laura Capp
“I’m a big believer in try it and see what happens, and hopefully a really good thing will blossom from it. And if not, then maybe the process of learning that will lead you to something else that’s beautiful. But it’s always better to know than to not know what could have been.”
- Laura Capp
“I think that we’re raised with these notions that when you grow up in a rural area success means moving off to a big city and making it in that context. I think you feel that people have somehow missed the boat if they end up living in their hometown and raising their kids there and that they didn’t sort of make it in the world in some more exciting way. And we moved back and it’s been amazing. It’s like a win/win/win.”
- Laura Capp
“By the time I got done with grad school I just knew I really wanted the freedom to have more agency over my career and have a career that was more creative than what I think a traditional academic job would have allowed me. And there might be a handful of positions like that across the country, but it felt like the surest bet was to try to invent it and see what happened.”
- Laura Capp
“I feel like one gift of the shop for me is it’s really allowed me to step into the dream version, the ideal version of ourselves that we carry around in our head. Often that’s so out of step with the actual version of ourselves that we walk around with. And I’m grateful that the experience of the shop has kind of allowed me to step closer to that. I feel like you practice what you preach. And if I can honestly say to people these are things that have made my quality of life so much better, then I hope that becomes true for them too.”
- Laura Capp
“I do think that no matter where you are, at least speaking from my field, there are people who are hungry, I mean really starved for creative experiences. I think we all struggle to make time for that in our daily lives. So to carve out time to connect with a friend over letters back and forth or to carve out time to read a book for yourself is kind of hard. And if you are not necessarily in settings where other people are doing it or you’re not getting inspired by what you’re seeing, sometimes we just let those things fall by the wayside and dwindle and then just start to wither emotionally inside because we’re not being fed in those ways. It’s a gift to me to walk into those spaces that fill me with creative longing. It sort of wakes something up inside of you that is really important and needs air to breathe and space. Giving that space to ourselves to pursue dreams like that is really important.”
- Laura Capp
PODCAST SHOW NOTES AND LINKS:
Ashland, Nebraska
Center for the Book - University of Iowa
Home Ec Workshop
RSVP
Glacial Till
The Gift Niche
Willow Point Gallery
Salt Creek Mercantile
Fariner Bakery
Heather Hall Photography
Poetry by Post
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
Task Pad by Shorthand Press
Follow along with Postscript here:
WEBSITE | INSTAGRAM | FACEBOOK
We’re challenging small towns to create opportunities and shift the mindset of our kids so they choose to stay in our rural communities instead of leave.