We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Momilani Delostrico a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Momilani, appreciate you joining us today. So, let’s imagine that you were advising someone who wanted to start something similar to you and they asked you what you would do differently in the startup-process knowing what you know now. How would you respond?

This might be a hot take, but I can’t see myself changing my path so far. I can pinpoint the affect that each job I’ve had has on my ability to handle things in my life currently. I picked up flexible people skills as a server in college, the power of persuasion and viewing “no” as a roadblock not a dead end from my sales job, and grew my attention to detail and technicalities from working in events. I can’t regret something that I still use skills from to this day. In an infamous Steve Jobs allegory, he took calligraphy at Reed college because he has an extra credit to fill. When they began building the mac brand, he used the knowledge from that course about calligraphy and fonts which made the company stand out from an aesthetic vantage point.

In my opinion, having such a uniquely different path is what makes a person’s story so inspirational. Sure, we want to follow certain pathways and habits from people who have a life similar to what we want for ourselves, but if we want to be something truly different, truly significant, we have to trust our instincts and ability to choose what is right for ourselves, even if it sometimes doesn’t make sense, because in the end, it all will.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

The duality of my career (almost a perfect example of my previous response), is that I’m a business-owning event florist by day and a recording/performing artist by night. I’ve spent most of my career since college in business + marketing heavy jobs when I was under the impression that my life goal was to become a strong headed business woman. Finding myself constantly physically suffering from common colds, anxiety, regular fatigue and genuine disinterest in my direction, I started to ask myself scary questions like, “is the path that I’m on going to lead my to a place where I want to end up?” or “am I making the best use of my skillset?” or “am I here because I love it or am I here because I’m comfortable?”, and lastly, “do I have the strength to make changes in my life to redirect myself to where I want to go?”.
And after transitioning to a freelance position with the events company I was working with, I finished my last contract with them in November 2023. I started releasing music I had been writing for years but never recorded, and in the last days of 2023, I had a dream about starting the flower business (which had mostly been just a side hobby up until then). So In January 2024, I started Spacey Floral, which has now become a child of mine. Running a business allows me to control my schedule and frees up a lot of time that would normally be employee dues that I can now use to take care of my health and foster more creativity in the things I’m passionate about like music and writing.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Artists starve. Choose the safe job and build wealth for yourself.

Let me ask you something: When you’re 80, looking back on you spent your life, what is the worth of all those things money bought if you feel like you wasted your life chasing it?

People who are bold enough to chase an unrealistic dream from the beginning are lucky. But of course, it’s never too late. Guy Kawasaki who spent a lot of time with Steve Jobs as he was building Mac learned from him “that changing your mind, changing what you’re doing and reversing yourself at an extreme is a sign of intelligence.” Don’t discredit the ideas in the back of your mind begging you to do something more fulfilling. And no, you’re not too old to do it.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

When I first started Spacey Floral, I’d had a small instagram account that I had been posting little arrangements here and there that I’d put around the house. When it became an actual business with small and large projects, I just started to document things. I made small clips here and there and followed trends, and started posting consistently because it was becoming my every day scene. And it wasn’t all intricate videos, sometimes they were just short clips, but consistency started to work with growing my account. Especially in the beginning season because I was so passionately happy to be in the middle of starting a business that took off almost immediately. I will say that my struggle now is maintaining consistency in the non-passionate seasons. But it really isn’t about the intricacy of a post. It’s just posting. There’s no need to be a perfectionist with social media, just get content out there. TikTok is also a great place to get a very niche following. The algorithm there gets your content in front of the right crowd.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://spaceyfloral.com
• Instagram: SpaceyFloral, momidelostrico
• Linkedin: Momilani Delostrico
• Other: TikTok: momidelostrico

Image Credits

BFA photos are watermarked, tshirt photo, white shorts looking top left by Isabelle Rose. White background photos by Kalia Wasson.