Today we’d like to introduce you to Tammy Myers.

Hi Tammy, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.

After building a corporate career for nearly ten years, I decided to walk away from it all. I thought I’d try the stay-at-home-mom life. That lasted about three months before I started looking for new opportunities. This led me to going back to school earning a Professional Marketing Certification at the University of Washington by the following year.

As natural marketer and seller, I decided to test my skill set and launch First & Bloom, a small flower business working out of my kitchen. Little did I know, I had discovered a newfound passion in the floral industry that would carry me through the next ten years!

Life as an entrepreneur can be really lonely.

Looking back, I often felt even more alone in my corporate career. Feeling like my goals weren’t really mine, someone else was determining my path. After 12 years, I’ve been able to achieve so much! It may not have always felt that way in my pocketbook, but I know my skillset could be transferable if I ever wanted to return to corporate life.

In 2019, I pivoted to build a new brand called Lora Bloom. Created as an online floral marketplace, local florists could sell unique floral products for customers to order flower delivery in the Seattle area. This eco-friendly, third-party platform unfortunately launched at the same time as Covid. By the end of 2021, I was exhausted! Generating 100k in sales, it wasn’t a failure! Though I didn’t always feel so positive, I’m incredibly proud of my achievements during that time.

Not fully ready to expand my online floral marketplace concept, I went back to selling flowers as First & Bloom, which turned out to be quite profitable. Singlehandedly, I started turning a 50-60% profit month over month. However, life had other plans for me.

At the peak of business and ready to scale, 2023 hit me very hard. Early in January, I experienced a personal tragedy changing my life forever. My neighbor was killed by a tree on our property. I was the first one on the scene. It destroyed me.

Struggling mentally for most of the year, a career change was needed again. I seemed to have lost my passion for selling flowers. With professional help, I was able to make some very difficult but necessary decisions. I decided to permanently close First & Bloom, what I felt was my identity for over 10 years.

That tragic day will stay with me forever. I spent much of 2024 trying to figure myself out again. I just want to say to anyone reading this, if your mental wellbeing is struggling, please seek help. The healing process of PTSD is far more extensive and impactful than I ever thought it would be on a person’s life.

After two years, I finally feel in recovery and so grateful to be in this new space of opportunity.

Turns out, I love helping other business owners succeed in business. Learning things painfully, at times, I have developed a strong network of resources built on my dynamic and extensive experience in marketing, sales, media and the journey in starting a business from the ground up.

For the past year, I’ve been consulting other small businesses on how to achieve their own success in their passion projects! I am absolutely loving the consulting space! It feels like I’m taking all the strengths of past jobs and skillsets developed over the years and applying them directly. Right now, I’m in a networking phase and building my client list. Getting out there and meeting people is so important for business owners right now. Social media changes overnight and business owners need to diversify their marketing channels. I continue to learn and teach, learn and teach. Seeing my clients succeed is so worth it!

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?

The road of entrepreneurship has been absolutely bumpy and sometimes seemingly impossible. Honestly, I’ve failed so many times that failure just doesn’t feel so bad now. Failures are just lessons learned. Now, when my plan doesn’t go quite right, I brush it off and focus on the next challenge. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt in the moment or hit my ego for a bit. Now, I just know it’s all going to be ok, regardless.

When I think back to all the bumps in the road, it’s not the failure that jolted me the most. It was the loss of passion I experienced after the accident. Passion is what pushes you through the hard stuff. Yet, when your tank is literally empty, albeit negative, what drives a person?

With my failures, I was always able to bounce back within a few days or weeks. But the trauma I experienced altered that bounce-back in an instant. I had to hit bottom mentally to realize I needed help and time.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Lora Bloom Consulting?

My business is really a reflection of me and how I’m evolving and growing as a person. My business started out as this little tiny idea in the back of my head for many many years. When the time was right, I brought that idea forward and turned it into a career. What blossomed was a passion. I threw myself into the florist lifestyle. I became a florist.

I think what truly set me apart from the competition was my design aesthetic, quality of product and storytelling abilities. I genuinely love to know about people and their stories. Flowers have a story too. Flowers are quite remarkable. I just made them look beautiful together, shared their story and did that consistently.

I’m also a pretty good marketer. Having a good website that works for the customer was key. I displayed my beautiful product on a platform (my website) that was easy for the customer to use, and the customer kept returning. Then, I did it again and again and again. I never lost focus on good product, good process, and good people.

This is the same message I work to convey to my consulting clients now. Do one to others as you’d have done to you, is a moto that continuously runs through my head (Thanks, Mom!). If I was the customer, what would I want? It’s that simple.

Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?

As I’ve been transitioning from the floral industry over to the consulting space, I’ve recently discovered a vibrant small business network in my community. As it turns out, networking groups are everywhere! I have met so many other small business owners recently. It’s really opened my eyes!

I actually discovered these networking groups after a coffee meeting with a brand photographer last summer. Discussing ways to meet new business-minded people, and she suggested a few groups she followed. I looked into it and went to a couple of the meetups. I discovered a vast and vibrant community of supportive people who knew exactly how I felt!

Since, I’ve launched my own meetups every month in 2025. The goals for my meetups are really to gain new clients, but truthfully, I’ve gotten so much more! The attendees themselves connect with each other and learn how they can work together. It’s really special to see.

If there isn’t a networking group in someone’s area or line of work, they should create one!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lorabloom.com/
• Instagram: @lorabloom.consulting
• Facebook: @lorabloom.consulting

Image Credits

Dana Romascanu
Missy Palacol