When 'Get Well Soon' Isn't Enough

Pamela Smith, CEO of a writing services company in Atlanta, has the 'write' words for breast cancer patients.

by Nicole D. Smith

May 6, 2008

P amela Smith, CEO of the writing services company Smith Ink in Atlanta, isn’t afraid to let a tear slide down her face. “ I always get emotional,” she says, when she relates her experience of a benign breast biopsy in 2000. “[I thought] if the news is bad, I’m going to quit my job and do what I really want to do’.” And despite already having what Smith defines as a fulfilling job at the Carter Center – a not-for-profit governmental organization – as a publications manager, what Smith really wanted to do was launch her own inspirational business.

 
Three days after the biopsy, Smith says she was beyond thankful that a lump on her right breast wasn’t anything for  further medical concern. But the effects from the good news didn’t just stop there. The thought of a breast cancer scare stayed with Smith and led to her idea to emotionally support those who do face breast cancer as a part of everyday life; she wanted to create greeting cards to give those women diagnosed with breast cancer.  

Although the greeting card industry is a $7.5 billion industry – birthday and anniversary themed cards are most popular – Smith noticed that cards specifically written for women with breast cancer are rarely ever found. Smith thought this would be the perfect opportunity to think like a businesswoman – and like the entrepreneur she wanted to be – and fill a void in the market. Smith decided to give women encouraging words when “get well soon” just isn’t enough.

“When people find out someone has breast cancer, they don’t know what to say.  It’s not a lack of caring. It’s a lack of words. … The cards are a bridge to help people figure out what to say.”

Once Smith had the idea, she started thinking about the business aspects of creating a set of six greeting cards for women breast cancer patients. The details of entrepreneurship started rushing through her mind.

“You have to think, ‘Who are the people you are trying to reach?’ ‘What kind of income level do they have?’ … ‘Is it something the average person can afford?’ You need to know the kind of woman you are targeting.”

Having done her research, Smith realized that 80 percent of the people who buy greeting cards are women, her target audience.  Falling in line with that focus group – the everyday woman – Smith designed the $3 cards with the prominent colors of pink, sky blue and lavender, the colors that reminded Smith of her childhood bedroom. She wrote messages in five of the six cards that would talk woman to woman.


“One reads, ‘I had breast cancer. But today, I’m still here,’” Smith says as she read aloud one her cards while sitting in her ranch house in Atlanta. "‘Now it’s time for me to help you fight – and win'.”

Smith goes beyond just the words in her cards to help “fight” breast cancer. This entrepreneur takes the revenue she makes from the cards – an amount she never discloses – and donates a portion of her profits to several organizations that fight breast cancer, one being the Henry W. Grady Health System Foundation at Grady Hospital. “It’s like buying the cards is the gift that keeps on giving,” Smith says.

She says that her personal experience is what opened her eyes to mixing business with inspiration. “A biopsy certainly was not what I envisioned to thrust me into living more fully and purposefully, but I’m thrilled that it was ‘in the cards’ for me.”

Photos courtesy of Alex Jones, Business Photography Atlanta