We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Cynthia Fernandez . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Cynthia below.

Cynthia, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I feel that everyone has their own definition and vision of what success looks and fells like. People define it as how much money they have in the bank, what they own, but what I’ve learned in my experience is that success is a mindset. Success to me as a business owner, mom, wife, and all the things, is having the mindset to create goals for myself that are attainable, and once I’ve reached those goals I create new ones, and keep going.

When I started my business, like many other people I’m sure, I had no idea what I was doing. I was constantly questioning myself and everything that I did. I felt like because I was new to the floral industry, I had to make sure everyone was aware that I was new for some reason, and of course as an actual newbie I didn’t have the experience, but I for sure didn’t have the confidence I do now in myself and my work, which seeped through in a lot of my interactions. I feel like I let that overcome me in a lot of ways. I have always had this issue of not believing in myself, and looking back I feel that I have probably battled imposter syndrome my whole life, and still do, but now I know how to control it.

Leading to my point on how I’ve developed this view and feeling of success, is that one day after a few years in the industry I really felt like giving up and throwing in the towel because I started to constantly compare myself to others and just didn’t see myself getting to where I wanted to go. this end goal that I had for myself. I started thinking of ways to close my business and what I would say to friends and family that asked me why, and when I would think of those things I felt really sad, like there was a part of me also being like “no wait but why? look at how far you’ve come.” Which at the time this voice was the low voice in the back of my mind.

A few days later, still contemplating on this end everything idea, I came across an episode of this podcast I listen to, called the Bossbabe podcast, and they were talking about why we create unattainable goals for ourselves and how harmful it is to our overall growth. I realized that I was setting goals for myself that were like “end goals,” like larger than life goals that for someone in my position at the time was not ready for nor had the experience yet to get to, and I was putting myself down for not being there yet.

I realized that I wasn’t setting myself up for success, and in a lot of ways I was self-sabotaging myself into thinking negatively about my accomplishments. I wasn’t setting the stepping stones or creating a foundation to support me to grow and get to those end goals. So I slowly started to change my way of thinking, which I feel I am still working on everyday, but what has helped me to feel good as a business owner and entrepreneur, is setting business and personal weekly goals, sometimes even daily goals to achieve. I wake up everyday and write down what I want to accomplish, which is usually 3-5 goals and when I would like to accomplish them, and that’s how I plan out my day. There are time when I’m not able to accomplish them, but I get honest with myself and give myself the space I need to plan out a better timeframe to achieve those goals I wasn’t able to accomplish. For those goals that I do achieve, I celebrate myself and my work and ten move on to the next. Continuously achieving and setting goals gives me the drive and momentum I need to be and feel successful in my work.

Cynthia, 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 have always had a creative spirit, and love for all art forms. I was born and raised in San Diego, CA, and throughout my life I have explored different creative mediums, including dance, clothing design, and now floral design.

Floral design for me started as a meditative physical space for healing. Back in 2018, my husband had an idea to create a business and wanted to create a business with me. We would throw different ideas around back and forth, and nothing really stuck. We kept thinking about coming up with a clothing brand idea, but we didn’t get really far, we realized that wasn’t where a passion was.

Fast forward a year later in early 2019, my grandmother, who raised me and who I was very close to, was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, and after going through radiation her health quickly deteriorated and she passed away later that year in September. On the evening of her funeral I found myself restless and heart broken, we had all of the flowers from the service in our home, and I decided to start rearranging all of the arrangements. I reworked all of the flowers until 4am when I was finally able to go to sleep.

A few days later I was feeling her loss pretty hard, and decided to go to a local wholesaler to buy some flowers and make a few arrangements. I found myself going on frequent trips to the market and coming home to make arrangements, I was able to loose myself in the flowers, and felt a close connection to my grandmother since she loved gardening, and all things flowers too.

A few months later in December, I brought some holiday greens home and my husband came through the door and asked randomly, as he liked to do, “when are we starting a business”? I laughed it off, like I usually do, and answered ” I don’t know yet, but someday.” When I finished the arrangement that I was making for our holiday dinner table, something went off in my head, it finally clicked! I ran over to him and told him “let’s start a flower business!”

I found inspiration for the name for our business, Florencia, in my grandmother’s name, her middle name. I kept buying flowers and creating with them, taking photos of my work. My husband, being the analytical guy he is was all about making everything legit, and so we went through all of the business things and got everything done together, built the website, social media, and sold our first official arrangement in January 2020.

I have an even deeper love for flowers now and as a self-taught designer, I am constantly learning and find inspiration from the natural elements around me, to discover new ways to express form, shape, and color in my designs. Floral design started as something to keep my mind and heart at peace, and has become something that not only brings joy and love to me, but to the lives and special moments of my clients as well.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social media is something that I feel I am constantly navigating through to unlearn/learn ways to grow our audience, our connections, and show the world what we have to offer. I have learned recently that I can’t consume my thinking around how many likes and followers we have. I have taken a more “que sera, sera” approach and have changed my mindset to seeing our social media platforms (Instagram and Tiktok) as digital portfolios where clients and soon to be clients can fall in love with our work, find inspiration, and build a connection with us.

I would say that if you’re starting out, and want to grow your social media, remember that your friends and family are your biggest fans, be sure to reach out to them to engage and share your your work with their followers. Videos and engaging posts are ways to be more favored by the algorithm, as well as posting regularly. Being authentic in your content and what you do, if you are representing your brand, something you create, or a product or service, presenting it in way that speaks true to what it is and who you are as a CEO/Founder/Creative will help to create trust with your audience. Also, showing face, which is something I need to work on….sharing your voice directly with your audience in videos or on stories, putting a name to a face, shows that your brand has something unique to offer.

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 feel as a business owner you can sometimes see your brand as your baby. You created it, grew it and nurtured it, you feel so responsible for it and all you want is to see it grow and thrive.

Something that I had to unlearn, because it was something that was bringing me down in my business, was not listening to others outside of the creative space, not asking for help, and putting all of the weight on my shoulders.

I felt like no one knew my business like I did, but it was because I didn’t let anyone know it. Even though my husband started the business with me, I felt like I even kept him out of the loop for a while. I wouldn’t be open to any form of criticism on how to run a business, because I felt like other people just didn’t get it.

I quickly started realizing that doing everything by myself, not asking for help, not listening, all the things that are limiting was becoming so exhausting to maintain. It kept me from growing and the business from growing as well. It took me to the point to burning out a few times to really get it, to finally realize that something had to change. I knew that what I was doing wasn’t sustainable and that I needed to shift things up.

It took me a bit but I started learning how to delegate better, I started asking friends in the industry for help, trusting more and letting go a little by little, so that I could concentrate on the parts of the business that brought me happiness and fueled my creativity.

I have come to find that in growing and maintaining a creative business, you are continuously learning and unlearning ways to make things better, more efficient, and what can keep you moving forward towards growth.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.florenciaflorals.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/florenciaflorals/?hl=en
• TikTok: @florenciaflorals

Image Credits
Photographers: Dina Diaz (Dina Diaz Photo), Tarynne Webb (Everglow Photo), Aysia Lanae (South of June)