We were lucky to catch up with Kate LaPietra recently and have shared our conversation below.

Kate, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

Yes, It was always my intention to prove that I could make a living off of creative work which is why I’ve put so much focus on the business side of things. I knew I didn’t have to be the best, most creative florist. I just had had to be the smartest!

I didn’t start out with the greatest system. I had some excel spreadsheets and every so often I would run a P&L report. In those beginning years when jobs were scarce I was pulling in meager profit margins and certainly not paying myself. One of the books that really changed my perspective was Profit First by Mike Michalowicz. This book got me really disciplined about setting percentages aside for all the important expense buckets like taxes, labor, and most importantly profit. This way no matter what sales came in for the month, I was paying myself a certain percentage first. This really got me focused on cutting costs and looking for productivity improvements.

To this day I do my own bookkeeping and accounting because I like it and also it gives me a greater awareness of where I am financially. My business coach Christi Lopez was also instrumental in getting me to think about my salary goals and what milestones I needed to hit to reach those.

Kate, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am the granddaughter of two gardeners and always felt a connection to the soil and nature. I loved crafting as a kid and found I was really skilled at working with my hands. But like any good 80s baby I ignored those instincts and pursued a “real career.” When it came time to go to college, I got my degree in International Relations and then a Masters in Public Administration. I really enjoyed public service and started my career as an economist for the US Dept of Labor in NYC. Working for the government and commuting to the city every day can really take a toll and after a few years I started to get the itch to do something that made me happier. After seeing a poster in the subway, I enrolled in night and weekend classes at the NY Botanical Garden’s Floral Design certification program. That was really when the bug bit me and I started to think about whether I could turn this into a career.

The choice became clearer to me when I became pregnant with our first child and I knew I was not going to return to my government job once the baby came. I began that December selling custom wreaths out of our freezing garage to family and friends and that’s really how Fountainhead was started.

Today our company is primarily a wedding and event florist and we help engaged couples and their families getting married in Connecticut and beyond. We empower and educate our clients in their decor choices, in particular those who are planning from afar and need tools and flexibility to meet their busy schedules. More recently, we’ve added floral preservation services to our give our clients the ability to archive the flowers from their most memorable moments into keepsakes they can treasure for years to come.

What really sets our company apart from others is transparency. We are one of the only florists to offer a free pricing tool that allows clients to craft their wedding flower budget using our actual prices. There really is a bit of a sense of mystery in the flower arena and breaking down those barriers creates an open relationship with the clients from the get-go.

I want everyone to know that I take the privilege of planning wedding flowers for our clients very seriously. These are memories that will live on long after their wedding day is over. I believe every aspect of the process should be enjoyable and fun and leave our couples with a sense of peace going into their big day.

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

I think I’m similar to many creatives in that I’ve struggled with my mental health at various times in my career. I’m an empath, highly-sensitive individual who has gone through depression and anxiety and that can be incredibly challenging to deal with in the business world. I’ve had to unlearn that my drive and motivation don’t always play nicely with my mental health and only one wins out.

In 2020, I was pregnant with my third child when the pandemic began. Our son was born 2 weeks into lockdown and suddenly my entire support system dropped out from under me. I was homeschooling a kindergartener and a preschooler while juggling a newborn on no sleep and a husband who had to work outside the home. But I’m stubborn and I told myself I wasn’t going to let this interfere with my business goals so I worked every spare minute I could. I won a grant and I was able to open my studio space, hire our first employee but it came at a price. I was doing too much and I found myself in the ER having a massive panic attack. I couldn’t see what was important. I thought rebounding from a shit situation was going to be the golden ticket to this experience having some meaning. But really I learned that if you don’t take care of yourself, then all the success in the world won’t matter. There is a strength in that.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Ack Social Media! It’s a little like a four letter word for me. But over the years I’ve really made my peace with it and for anyone out there who is in a service-based business serving a geographic region this message is for you. If you own a service-based business, you do not have to be an influencer to be successful. Our clients hop on social media to get a sense of our design style and who are company is. Period. The number of followers we have is not directly tied to the number of inquiries we get at any given time. I learned almost everything I know about social media marketing from Jenna Kutcher on the Goal Digger Podcast and my best advice for anyone starting out is to use social media as a funnel to the content you actually own and care about: your website, your blog, your inquiry form, and/or your online shop.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.fountainheadfloraldesign.com
• Instagram: @fountainheadfloraldesign
• Facebook: Fountainhead Floral Design

Image Credits
Jessra Photography, Barbara Zachary Photography