Month 2 Update

Not what we planned!

We leaned on our "Breathe" affirmation this month, and it helped us get through some difficult times.

The New Year started off great, but January 6th was the day the frustrations began. One of our Co-Founder's Facebook account was hacked, and the email was changed, on top of this, he recently changed his phone number as well and it was not yet updated on Facebook before the hack. Efforts to reset the password were fruitless as there was no access to email or phone numbers to recover the account. Efforts to complete the identity verification process were completed 95% until the last step in the process when Facebook would ask for a new email address to reset the account, and would not accept any of the email addresses we entered as valid, so the system would not let us complete that process. We used AI to try and help us solve this but not of the suggested options was successful. Meta does not allow you to speak with a human, and none of their systems worked for us; so we suspended the account so the hacker could not abuse it; and filed the hacked account form - which we were told that the hacker linked the account to a suspended Instagram account that had violated the terms of service, and we were in a 180 day suspension. SO we completed the form to challenge all of that, and we told we would receive a reply within the 180 day window….here we are more than 4 weeks and 28 days since the formal complaint was filed we have yet to hear a response.

Well so what! Who cares? Well the problem compounded as our next steps of development were to connect our Facebook and Instagram accounts to our TeeMill website store inventory so that it would allow us to auto populate our stores and sell directly on those two huge platforms. Hours and hours were wasted trying to troubleshoot Meta/Facebook. Then we reached out to TeeMill and said, can we login to our Instagram plugin through our Instagram account instead of the Facebook login - but they were not able to offer any customer service to help us solve this issue and remained stubborn that my request was unreasonable and would impact their entire engineering roadmap for 2025. It was not until we provided them with the actual code needed to allow Instagram Login to the Instagram plugin that they relented and acknowledged that it wasn’t a big change and could be done easily, but that they were unlikely to prioritize it until Q3 2025. Frustrated with more wasted time and no help to find a solution - and the time wasted preventing us from making progress on our other goals - we regrouped and shifted gears. We Are Unstoppable! Facebook will not stop us. We are beginning the process of formally incorporating Black & White Affirmations as an LLC and then we will formally begin the B-Corp Certification Application process shortly thereafter. Formally establishing our LLC will allow us to access credit to grow, and to legally establish an Etsy Store. It will also let us create a YouTube Business account which we are excited to share new content of our artist, co-founder Ray Long’s, creative process producing the Hand Drawn collection. The sound of the sharpie on the card stock art paper is enchanting and watching Ray’s steady hand produce each letter with precision and flourish, is a thing of beauty. Watch your favorite affirmations appear.

ON THE HORIZON

Excited to announce we have a new batch of Hand Drawn Affirmations that will be dropping in February! We will add them first to our T-Shirt Collection, and then into our Landscape Framed Prints and our Stickers.

We are still gathering feedback from our Women Affirmers! Please let us know which Women’s Cut T-shirts you would like us to add to our Collection? Tank top, Scoop Neck, Long sleeve, etc. We will gather replies All February with plans to launch our Women’s line in March 2025! Click the Link and Please Share your Opinion!

Suggest an Affirmation

We don’t have your favorite affirmation right now? No Worries, let us know! Leave your name if you would like to be notified and credited when we launch your affirmation!

The Numbers

Month 2: 2 Affirmation Ts sold; just 17 unique visitors to BWAffirmations.com ; frozen at 69 Facebook followers with account suspended; up to 22 Instagram followers, but Meta is throttling our reach. Added a LinkedIN Page that has 14 followers.