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

Brynn, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Risking taking is a huge part of most people’s story but too often society overlooks those risks and only focuses on where you are today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – it could be a big risk or a small one – but walk us through the backstory.

We have been in business since 2011. We went from a cleaning company that made our own cleaning products, to selling our products to our customers, to closing the cleaning business down and just selling our products at farmers markets, to adding clean burning candles in, to launching a wholesale online business, to FLASH FORWARD opening up our first brick and mortar store in the heart of covid in 2020. All of the joys and struggles of being a small biz, as well as a maker that relies on the supply chain to create during a pandemic and tanking economy, and flooded market have been real ride. Lots of trial and error, lots of heart ache, lots of disappointment, but also lots of victories, faith, and joy

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

We are Vida Verde Home. A Mercantile and candle studio in Stanwood Washington. We offer elevated, natural, home goods, and house made clean ingredient candles, and home cleansers. Some of our other fun offerings are plants, Local, organic, and bio dynamic wines, Local, and organic cheese, local, natural jams preserves as well as many other charcuterie goods. We offer our community a one stop shop of healthy and chic thoughtfully curated items. We aim for quality over quanity to ensure whatever treausure you leave with is a beautiful, unique purchase that you can feel good, and excited about. We aim for a wholistic experience from the atmosphere, to the candle we are burning, the lighting, the music we play, and all the offerings we present are hand picked from the heart and extended to everyone who walks in. I want it to feel like you are coming into my home. I want the feeling to be so warm and welcomed and that you are hosted well.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

I would say in business you don’t have a choice other than to be resilient. Your other option is to close your doors and never return so you have to find your grit and constantly be stretched to the point where sometimes it feels unbearable. I think that social media does business owners no justice. The constant pivoting, investing, sleepless nights, swollen tear-stained eyes, and heart ache that paves the road to success. So many times, we just see the end result. The beautiful post of a candle or new product but we don’t get to share weakness as often as we should to encourage others around us. We make it look easy and will be the first to say it certainly is not. It goes against who I am and stretches me endlessly as someone who is sensitive and more creative than I am business minded. The business side of this does not come easy to me. I can make candles all day and create beautiful experiences and content but throw me into a harsh competitor market, or a vision or idea that seemingly gets stolen, or cutthroat behavior in the business world and you can put a fork in me. lol. It takes everything in me sometimes to keep going… keep growing… I think surviving business through covid, and this economy, this journey…it weathers you…success, at no point came easy. It makes things just feel EXTRA personal. It’s a lesson for me to hold things loosely and trust through my faith in God that he has a good plan for me. Far better than what I could ever come up with. A constant reminder to keep my head up, hold on tight to your faith and constantly seek peace, stay the course, stay authentic, stay in my lane and keep showing up. As long as the end result is true to who I am I can be ok with losses and even more grateful for gains.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

My career has been LACED with pivoting. You would think I would be teaching seminars on it by now! HA! I remember back when I was JUST getting off the ground running with our cleaning business we had invested in all new merch and marketing. We shortly after got approached by a company from out of town saying our business name was too close to there’s and they were going to sue if we didn’t change it immediately. It was a real heart break, and an expensive one at that. I had to work extra hard to get brand recognition and re teach our customers who we were. Shortly after that we had a competitor pop up with almost our exact name kind of jumbled around just enough to completely confuse people. At the time we were selling our product at farmers markets, and they began to as well which completely confused people yet again. this would be the second time had to change our name. We again, had to go through the heart ache and expense of finding our brand recognition except this time we got smart and trademarked our name federally… the hard lessons we learn along the way make us stronger and were really a set up for what was coming next for us. We opened our store front in 2020 and you wouldn’t believe how many times for different reasons we have had to shift gears. We live in a small town and it is bursting with small business growth which is wonderful but makes it VERY tricky to carry goods unique to your store. You have to constantly be willing to let brands go, or shift your gears to keep things interesting for customers. In small business it seems no good idea is your own. The minute you think it someone else is executing it. It can drive you crazy so you have to learn the Rythm of grace for your own path. Just recently I have been in a pivoting season trying to differentiate our business offerings to create a draw into our store and offer something that is unique in our market which is very hard to do in a small town. Its always a push to stay creative, and relevant while respecting other stores and businesses that surround. It’s always better when you can champion each other and work together for the good of customer experience. To me, there is nothing more fun than going to local shops that all offer something a little different. You end up needing them all at different times and you know you can count on them to offer something unique from each other. Even better, when a store owner can say ” I dont actually carry that item, but you kn0w who does is the store across town. Go check them out!”

Contact Info:

• Website: vidaverdehome.com
• Instagram: @vidaverdehome
• Facebook: vida verde home

Image Credits
Kaitlyn Montanaro photography