We recently connected with Brenna Estrada and have shared our conversation below.
Brenna, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
Three Brothers Blooms. Our story is in the name.
Our boys were born to first responder parents. Life had always been high stress and fast paced. Long shifts. Night shifts. Overtime. Fatigue. Burnout. When your daily life involves helping others navigate life threatening emergencies it is impossible to ignore how fragile the mortality is of all people, those you love being no exception. No day is guaranteed. Time goes by ever so fast. We wanted to be more present for our boys and that meant changes needed to be made. So my husband and I planned, prepared and worked with diligent intention until we found a way to the life we knew we needed. The kind of life we wanted our boys to remember and associate with their childhood. After 2 decades of public service between active duty military and 911 dispatch, I (the mother of the three brothers) changed careers in a drastic way. That way was through flowers.
I was able to earn a position with a world renowned flower farm, which allowed me to leave my career as a 911 dispatcher. The next few years I was immersed in all things flowers with a flexible work schedule allowing me more time home with our boys. When not working I was often outside tending to our own garden, and they were often out there with me. They would help plant. Help harvest. They asked so many questions. And then they asked if they could sell our flowers at the local market.
The boys continued to help with markets for a couple more seasons, but as they grew, school work became more demanding. The garden shifted from being a place they played in the dirt and helped cut flowers to a place they sought out calm and quiet moments to connect and talk with me. In those connections, I could tell they needed even more from me than I was able to give at that time. So I resigned from my job and we modified our cost of living again. What began as a little summer business for them, now serves as a means to allow me to be truly present with them every day while living my own passion.
Brenna, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Our little flower farm is located on Camano Island in the Pacific Northwest. We grow our flowers on an acre of land surrounded by lush pines and cedar trees. We begin our season with daffodils, tulips, ranunculus and anemones in March. By May our peonies, bearded irises and roses are in bloom. Late June brings in an array of annuals, all grown from seed, and by late July our dahlias are in full bloom. We offer seasonal bouquets as long as we have flowers blooming. Most of our customers reach out directly as they need flowers, but we can also be found in local shops and at area markets throughout the summer, as well. We also accommodate a few small weddings each year.
For me, arranging flowers is like painting. It is my art. Every bouquet is unique. Although it is time consuming and not very cost efficient, it is what makes me happiest and what I feel the flowers deserve. I am fortunate in that I can balance my business between profit and passion. I have found that when I work too fast or produce too much, the flowers get lost within each other and they no longer represent the garden they came from. When my customers receive a bouquet, I want them to feel like it was cut from a secret garden. A bit wild, a touch elegant and entirely magical. I want it to be filled with texture and fragrance. A loving blend of sentiment and wonder.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Our business started very small and the intention with our posts has always been very simple. Sharing the beauty of our flowers just how we see them. From our first Farmer’s Market, we had so many questions about our flowers. So many people that had never seen the varieties we were growing and couldn’t believe they were real. I traversed my home to find the perfect light that captured the real-life authentic color and detail of each flower. I wanted to show the flowers in a way that made people really look at them, really see them. Even if they had seen that kind of flower countless times, I wanted my photos to make them pause and notice something about that flower that they had never noticed before. I aim to be genuine and authentic in my content always. Hopefully, inspiring others to grow these flowers in their own gardens.
My advice is to find your own style and signature. To post genuinely from a place of authentic inspiration. If you always post within your brand, your followers are likely to be onboard with exactly that and will be with you indefinitely. It can be difficult to stick with, as ever changing algorithms often prove a foe and our feeds produce a river of constant comparison. But I have always put more worth on whom my followers are rather than how many followers I have. To have kind and genuine people along with incredibly talented gardeners, growers, artists and professionals engaging with me through my flowers is where the true affirmation lies for me.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
I have had the opportunity to take classes, courses and instruction from some of the most talented professionals in the floral industry. Their advice is worth its weight in gold for me. But it took me awhile to realize that not all of their advice is meant for me. That was a hard lesson to learn- or more-so unlearn.
I think when we are being taught by someone we admire, we automatically try to apply everything we have learned. For example, …how to do more, how to do it faster, how to make more profit, how to lengthen your season. Such important lessons and for many businesses this is how they elevated themselves to incredible success. For me, for my family, I needed to be setting boundaries and limits within my business. I needed to make a profit, but I also needed to have a firm restriction on the amount of time I invested in my business. By applying all these lessons, I quickly found the demand for my flowers exceeding the amount of time I wanted to be putting into them. I was growing far more flowers than I wanted to spend the time caring for. The lessons I learned were certainly working, but they weren’t working for my business plan and end goal. Or perhaps, it’s that they weren’t the right lessons for my end goal. Even the best proven advice may not be the right advice for your circumstances. Make sure you keep your business plan and end goal at the forefront of your mind always.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://threebrothersblooms.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/threebrothersblooms/